SLAVERY ITS SOLE RESOURCE.

07

moulded to an intense craving for power. And what scope do the institutions of the South provide for the satisfaction, on a large theatre, of the passion which they generate? In free societies the paths to eminence are various. Successful trade, the professions, science and literature, social reform, philanthropy, furnish employment for the redundant activity of the people, and open so many avenues to distinction. But for slaveholders these means of advancement do not exist. Commerce and manufactures are excluded by the necessities of the case. The professions, which are the result of much subdivision. of employment where population is rich and dense, can have no place in a poor and thinly peopled country. Science and literature are left without the principal inducements for their cultivation, where there is no field for their most important practical applications. Social reform and philanthropy would be out of place in a country where human chattels are the principal property. Practically, but one career lies open to the Southerner desirous of advancement-agriculture carried on by slaves. To this, therefore, he turns. In the management of his plantation, in the breeding, buying, and selling of slaves, his life is passed. Amid the moral atmosphere which this mode of life engenders his ideas and tastes are formed. He has no notion of ease, independence, happiness, where slavery is not found. Is it strange, then, that his ambition should connect itself with the institution around which are entwined his. domestic associations, which is identified with all his plans in life, and which offers him the sole chance of emerging from obscurity?

But the aspirations of the slaveholder are not confined within the limits of his own community. He is also a citizen of the United States. In the former he naturally and easily takes theleading place; but, as a member of the larger society in which he is called upon to act in combination with men who have been brought up under free institutions, the position which he is destined to fill is not so clearly indicated. It is plain, however, that he cannot become blended in the general mass of the population of the Union. His character, habits, and aims are not those of the Northern people, nor are theirs his. The Northerner is a merchant, a manufacturer, a lawyer, a literary man, an artisan, a shopkeeper, a schoolmaster, a peasant farmer; he is engaged in commercial speculation, or in promoting social or political reform; perhaps he is a philanthropist, and includesslavery-abolition in his programme. Between such men and the slaveholder of the South there is no common basis for political action. There are no objects in promoting which he

98

POSITION OF THE SOUTH IN THE UNION

can combine with them in good faith and upon public grounds. There lies before him, therefore, but one alternative: he must stand by his fellows, and become powerful as the assertor and propagandist of slavery; or failing this, he must submit to be of no account in the politics of the Union. Here then again the slaveholder is thrown back upon his peculiar system as the sole means of satisfying the master passion of his life. In the society of the Union, no less than in that of the State, he finds that his single path to power lies through the maintenance and extension of this institution. Accordingly, to uphold it, to strengthen it, to provide for its future growth and indefinite expansion, becomes the dream of his life-the one great object of his existence. But this is not all; this same institution, which is the beginning and end of the slaveholder's being, places between him and the citizens of free societies a broad and impassable gulf. The system which is the foundation of his present existence and future hopes is by them denounced as sinful and inhuman; and he is himself held up to the reprobation of mankind. The tongues and hands of all freemen are instinctively raised against him. A consciousness is thus awakened in the minds of the community of slaveholders that they are a proscribed class, that their position is one of antagonism to the whole civilized world; and the feeling binds them together in the fastest concord. Their pride is aroused; and all the energy of their nature is exerted to make good their position against those who would assail it. In this manner the instinct of self-defence and the sentiment of pride come to aid the passion of ambition, and all tend to fix in the minds of slaveholders the resolution to maintain at all hazards the keystone of their social order. To establish their scheme of society on such broad and firm foundations that they may set at defiance the public opinion of free nations, and, in the last resort, resist the combined efforts of their physical power, becomes at length the settled purpose and clearly conceived design of the whole body. To this they devote themselves with the zeal of fanatics, with the persistency and secrecy of conspirators.

The position of slaveholders thus naturally fosters the passion of ambition, and that passion inevitably connects itself with the maintenance and extension of slavery. Whether this ambition would find means to assert itself in the politics of the United States might at one time have seemed more than doubtful. From the very origin of the Republic there were causes in operation which threatened, if not vigorously encountered, to exclude the South from that influence which it aspired to attain. The institutions of the Union are based, in a large

NATURALLY INFERIOR TO THAT OF THE NORTH.

99

degree, on the principle of representation in proportion to numbers. But, as we saw on a former occasion, the social system of the Southern States is ill calculated to encourage the growth of population, while the institutions of the North peculiarly favour it. On the formation of the Federal Union the North and South started in this respect upon nearly equal terms;* and for a while-so long as slave trading with Africa was permitted—this equality was approximately maintained. But in 1808 the African slave trade was abolished; and the principal external source on which the South relied for recruiting its population was thus cut off. On the other hand, free emigration from Europe continued to pour into the Northern States in a constantly increasing stream; while at the same time the natural increase of the Northern people, under the stimulus given to early marriages by the great industrial prosperity of the country, was rapid beyond precedent. From the influence. of these causes, the original equality in numbers between North and South was soon converted into a decided preponderance of the North; and the natural course of events tended constantly to increase the disproportion.

This state of things, it was obvious, threatened ultimately the political extinction of the South, incapable as it was of taking part in politics except as a distinct interest. At first view, indeed, it might seem as if this consummation was not. merely ultimately inevitable, but imminent. In point of fact, however, the South, far from being reduced to political insignificance, has, throughout the whole period that has elapsed since the foundation of the government, maintained paramount sway in the councils of the Union.

This result, so contrary to what one might at first sight have anticipated, it is the fashion to attribute to superior capacity for politics among the Southern people; and the theory certainly receives some countenance from the fact, that of the illustrious men who founded the republic some of the most eminent were furnished by the South. It is, however, quite unnecessary to resort to so improbable an hypothesis, as that political capacity is best nourished by institutions which tend to barbarize the whole life, in order to understand the part taken by the South in the politics of the Union. The sufficient explanation

* In 1790 the numbers were respectively as follows:

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THE THREE FIFTHS VOTE.

is to be found in two circumstances-in the nature of the Fede

ral Constitution, regarded in connexion with the singleness of aim and steadiness of purpose, which naturally characterize men whose interests and ideas are confined within the narrow range permitted by slave institutions.

The Federal Constitution, as is well known, was a compromise between two principles-the democratic principle of representation in proportion to numbers, and the federal principle of representation according to states. In the Lower House of Congress-the House of Representatives—the former principle prevailed; the several states of the Union sending members to this assembly in proportion to the relative numbers of their population. In the Senate-the Upper House, on the other hand, representation took place according to states-each state, without regard to extent or population, being there represented by the same number of senators. In the election of the President these two principles were combined, and the voting power of the several states was determined by adding to the number of their representatives in the Lower House the number of their representatives in the Senate-that is to say, by the proportion of members which each state respectively sent to both Houses. Such was the general character of the scheme.*

In the arrangement, as thus stated, there would seem to be nothing which was not calculated to give to numbers, wealth, and intelligence, their due share in the government of the country. But in applying to the South the principles just described, a provision was introduced which had the effect of very materially altering, as regards that portion of the Union, the popular character of the Constitution. This was the clause enacting what is known as the three-fifths vote. The House of Representatives professed to be based on the principle of representation in proportion to population; but, by virtue of this clause, in reckoning population slaves were allowed to count in the proportion of five slaves to three free persons. Now, when we remember that the slaves of the South number four millions in a population of which the total is under ten millions, it is not difficult to perceive what must be the effect of such an arrangement upon the balance of

* The means by which it has been sought to preserve the balance between these two principles of the Constitution are thus briefly and comprehensively stated in the Federalist :-"The Constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn it is partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers it is national, not federal; in the extent of them again it is federal, not national; and, finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national."-Story on the Constitution of the United States, vol. i., p. 199.

SUPERIOR CAPACITY FOR COMBINED ACTION. 101

forces under the Constitution. In the Presidential election of 1856, the slave representation was nearly equal to one-third of the whole Southern representation; from which it appears that the influence of the South in the general representation of the Union was, in virtue of the three-fifths vote, nearly one-half greater than it would have been had the popular principle of the Constitution been fairly carried out. But the influence of the South, as we formerly saw, merely means the influence of a few hundred thousand slaveholders; the whole political power of the Slave States being in practice monopolized by this body. The case, therefore, stands thus: under the local institutions of the Slave States, the slaveholding interest—a mere fraction in the whole population—predominates in the South; while, under this provision of the Federal Constitution, the South acquires an influence in the Union by one-half greater than legitimately belongs to it. It is true this would not enable the Southern States, while their aggregate population was inferior to that of the Northern, to command a majority in the Lower House by means of their own members. But we must remember that the South is a homogeneous body, having but one interest to promote and one policy to pursue; while the interests and aims of the North are various, and its councils consequently divided. "The selfish, single-purposed party," says Mr. Senior,* "to which general politics are indifferent, which is ready to ally itself to Free-traders or to Protectionists, to Reformers or to Anti-reformers, to Puseyites or to Dissenters, becomes powerful by becoming unscrupulous. If Ireland had been an independent country, separated from England, the Ultra-Catholic party, whose only object is the domination of the clergy and of the Pope, would have ruled her. This is the source of the influence of a similar party in France. The Clerical, or Jesuit, or Popish, or Ultramontane faction-whatever name we give to it has almost always obtained its selfish objects, because those objects are all that it cares for. It supported the Restoration, its Priests blessed the insurgents of February, 1848, and it now worships Louis Napoleon. The only condition which it makes is ecclesiastical and Popish supremacy, and that condition the governor for the time being of France usually accepts.

"Such a party is the Southern party in the United States." Its single aim has been the consolidation and extension of slavery; and to the accomplishment of this end it has always been ready to sacrifice all other interests in the country, and, if necessary, the integrity of the Union itself. We may see, then, in what consists the vaunted aptitude for politics exhibited by

* Slavery in the United States, pp. 16, 17.