Chap. I. III. On the score of the Tariff the South had two complaints to urge, which should be kept distinct from one another. The Congress of the United States is by the Constitution prohibited from imposing export duties, but it has authority to tax imports, provided the taxation be uniform and no preference be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one culty; but it seems to me not insuperable. It will not do for us to say to you, in justification of non-performance, The stipulation is immoral, and therefore we cannot execute it;' for you deny the immorality, and we cannot assume to judge for you. On the other hand, you ought not to exact from us the literal performance of the stipulation when you know that we cannot perform it without conscious culpability. A true solution of the difficulty seems to be attainable by regarding it as a simple case where a contract, from changed circumstances, cannot be fulfilled exactly as made. A court of equity in such a case decrees execution as near as may be. It requires the party who cannot perform to make a compensation for non-performance. Why cannot the same principle be applied to the rendition of fugitives from service? We cannot surrender-but we can compensate. Why not, then, avoid all difficulties on all sides, and show respectively good faith and good will, by providing and accepting compensation where masters reclaim escaping servants and prove their right of reclamation under the Constitution? Instead of a judgment for rendition, let there be a judgment for compensation, determined by the true value of the services, and let the same judgment assure freedom to the fugitive. The cost to the National Treasury would be as nothing in comparison with the evils of discord and strife. All parties would be gainers."-Chittenden's Debates and Proceedings of the Peace Conference, p. 430. On the amount of the loss suffered by escapes the following passage occurs in the Introduction to the American Census Returns of 1860- 66 The number of slaves who escaped from their masters in 1860 is not only much less in proportion than in 1850, but greatly reduced numerically. The greatest increase of escapes appears to have occurred in Mississippi, Missouri, and Virginia, while the decrease is most marked in Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, and Tennessee. "That the complaint of insecurity to slave property by the escape of this class of persons into the Free States, and their recovery impeded, whereby its value has been lessened, is the result of misapprehension, is evident not only from the small number who have been lost to their owners, but from the fact that up to the present time the number of escapes has been gradually diminishing to such an extent that the whole annual loss to the Southern States, from this cause, bears less proportion State over those of another. It had been the uniform Chap. I. practice, in exercise of this power, to raise by import duties nearly the whole (I believe, about seven-eighths) of the supplies necessary for the public expenditure of the Union, leaving the State Governments to provide for their public expenditure by direct taxation. This practice, it was alleged, was disadvantageous not so much to the amount of capital involved, than the daily variations which in ordinary times occur in the fluctuations of State or Government securities in the city of New York alone. "From the tables annexed, it appears that while there escaped from their masters 1,011 slaves in 1850, or one in each 3,165 held in bondage (being about th of 1 per cent), during the census year ending June 1, 1860, out of 3,949,557 slaves, there escaped only 803, being 1 to about 5,000, or at the rate of th of 1 per cent. Small and inconsiderable as this number appears, it is not pretended that all missing in the Border States, much less any considerable number escaping from their owners in the more Southern regions, escaped into the Free States; and when we consider that, in the Border States, not 500 escaped out of more than 1,000,000 slaves in 1860, while near 600 escaped in 1850 out of 910,000, and that at the two periods near 800 are reported to have escaped from the more Southern slave-holding States, the fact becomes evident that the escape of this class of persons, while rapidly decreasing in ratio in the Border Slave States, occurs independent of proximity to a free population, being, in the nature of things, incident to the relation of master and slave. "It will scarcely be alleged that these returns are not reliable, being, as they are, made by the persons directly interested, who would be no more likely to err in the number lost than in those retained. Fortunately, however, other means exist of proving the correctness of the results ascertained, by noting the increase of the free coloured population, which, with all its artificial accretions, is proven by the census to be less than 13 per cent. in the last ten years in the Free States, whereas the slaves have increased 23 per cent., presenting a natural augmentation altogether conclusive against much loss by escapes; the natural increase being equal to that of the most favoured nations, irrespective of immigration, and greater than that of any country in Europe for the same period, and this in spite of the 20,000 manumissions which are believed to have occurred in the past ten years. An additional evidence of the slave population having been attended from year to year, up to the present time, with fewer vicissitudes, is further furnished by the fact that the free coloured population, which from 1820 to 1830 increased at the rate of 36 per cent., in 1840 exhibited but 204 per cent. increase, gradually declining to 1860, when the increase throughout the United States was but 1 per cent. per annum." Chap. I. to the consumer of the imported goods as to the producer of the exports which paid for them. These consisted chiefly of raw products, while the imports were chiefly manufactured goods; and of the former the great bulk had until recently come from the South, the official returns for 1840 giving to the South in round numbers. 78,000,000 dollars (of which more than 61,000,000 dollars represented raw cotton), to the West 18,000,000 dollars, and to the East somewhat less than 5,400,000 dollars.1 Immigration, the extension of the Western railways, with the abolition of protective duties in England, and the generally increased demand for food in Europe, had indeed, within the twenty years ensuing, tripled the exports from the West: they stood in 1860 at 61,000,000 dollars in round numbers, and those of the East at 26,000,000 dollars, but the South exported in that year not less than 229,000,000 dollars. The South then, it was urged, in this way alone paid more than her share of the general charges of the Union. But the tariff, it was added-and on this the chief stress was laid-had been made to serve, not only for revenue, but for protection; and the Southerners complained, with justice, that they were compelled to pay higher prices for all the things they wanted most, in order that the mill-owners and iron-masters of the Northern and Middle States might be enabled to manufacture goods at a profit. To this it was answered, as it has often been answered elsewhere, that the encouragement of native industry was for the benefit of the whole nation, and that those who had to pay for it ought to resign themselves to the sacrifice. The controversy is one with which we are familiar, and it had in America no special character beyond what it owed to its connection with the slavery question, to the peculiar structure of the Union, and the local distribution of the great branches of industry. 1 American Annual Cyclopædia for 1861, p. 100. The tariff underwent in fact ten or twelve changes Chap. I. during the forty years preceding 1860, not in one uniform direction, the planting and maritime States fighting against the protective system with varying success, and not with uniform consistency. In 1832 the total revenue from import duties had risen to nearly 50 per cent. of the aggregate value of the goods subject to duty; and it was in that year that South Carolina broke into open resistance, which was partly overcome by the resolute firmness of President Jackson, partly bought off by the large prospective reductions made in the Compromise Tariff of Mr. Clay. The scale had been raised in 1842; lowered, on the whole, in 1846, when the ad valorem principle was made general; and lowered again considerably in 1857. The duties, however, on iron, woollen, and manufactured cotton goods, though not so high as formerly, were still protective. Sugar was protected for the benefit of Louisiana, as iron was for that of Pennsylvania, lead for Missouri, and hemp for Kentucky. Tea and coffee had long been admitted duty free. Of the changes made by the Morrill Tariff I do not speak; they did not become law until after the Secession, and have therefore no place among its causes or its apologies.1 1 In the foregoing account of the grievances of the South, and of the state of feeling there, I have relied on speeches delivered by prominent Southerners in Congress and elsewhere before the Secession, and on the manifestoes published afterwards. CHAPTER II. Parties in the United States.-The Disorganizing Influence of the Slavery Question. Elections to the Presidency from 1848 to 1860 —Election of President Lincoln.-Constitutional and Moral Aspects of "Secession." IN America, as in England, that lower form of public spirit which we call the spirit of party-low sometimes to the verge of baseness, but useful as an antidote to mere selfishness, laziness, and indecision, and as an engine for working out great political aimshas never been wanting; and there, as here, the need for the stimulant has been strengthened by habit. The general cleavage, if I may so say, of party organization has been determined by the structure of the Republic itself, which in its earlier form was a mere federation or perpetual league of independent communities, and still has imbedded in it a substantial element of federalism. Under such a Constitution, wherever it exists, there will always be persons inclined to strengthen the General Government, and side with it against the Local Governments as often as the limits of its authority are in question, and other persons whom feeling or opinion lead the opposite way. Two parties, therefore, have always divided the American commonwealth; they were in existence, indeed, before the Constitution was framed, and it was shaped by their opposing influences. The great States of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, with the Carolinas and Georgia, then formed the Union party, which was kept in check by a minority possessing less than half their population and not a |
