A party had sprung up which proclaimed the constitution to be "an agreement with death and a covenant with hell." This party was daily becoming stronger and more dangerous in spirit. It began at first by taking part in the contests between Whigs and Democrats, and grew upon the agitations in Congress and the newspaper press. This war of petitions for abolition was commenced by John Quincy Adams in 1831, when he presented a petition from Pennsylvania for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, but at the same time declared that he could not vote for it. He who was so denounced when he left the Federal party, on account of its disunion tendencies, and joined the Democratic under Mr. Jefferson, became the "old man eloquent" when he fanned the smoldering spark of sectional division with the burning breath of hate and anger which was yet to burst out in flames and consume the house with the fire whose initial spark he consented to bear and apply to the family dwelling, ever nursing the fire until the building was fairly ablaze. And what was now, in 1860, the worth of the reliance which kept the South quiet in 1790, because it "relied upon the virtue of Congress that it would exercise no unconstitutional authority?" In regard to the right to recapture fugitive slaves, it was at that time obviously a dead letter.
The free States had violated that obligation by their personal liberty statutes, which were consonant with the general spirit of their people. The Abolition party, which denounced the constitution as a "league with death and a covenant with hell," was fast growing in power and influence in the free States, and threatened to become the most powerful political organization within their borders. Massachusetts had adopted resolutions by her legislature, with the assent of her governor, if his message represented his opinions, resolutions which were denounced at the time as being of a disunion character. Her senator, Bates, presented them in silence, and Colonel King, of Alabama, regretted that a proposition should come from Massachusetts to dissolve the Union. (See Lunt's Origin of the War, 128-9.) All hope of acquiring any additional political strength by the South to defend their rights was gone. The free States had announced their determination to exclude slavery from the Territories of the United States, and they had the strength to do it, if they believed, as they affected to do, that the constitution was no obstacle in their path.
The right of growth was thus denied to the power of the slaveholding States, and with the state of feeling then existing and cherished, they had nothing to expect but to be dwarfed and oppressed, judging of the future by the past. Indeed, an armed invasion of Virginia had been just made by John Brown, with the avowed purpose of exciting servile insurrection, and although suppressed by the United States and State forces, it excited no such outburst of horror and denunciation at the North as it might reasonably be expected to have done. On the contrary, he seemed to have been considered more as a martyr perishing in a great and holy cause, than a criminal seeking to excite a servile war, whose victims were to be women and children. "The tolling of bells and the firing of minute guns upon the occasion of Brown's funeral; the meeting houses draped in mourning, as for a hero; the prayers offered, the sermons and discourses pronounced in his honor as for a saint -- all are of a date too recent and too familiarly known to require more than this passing allusion." (Lunt, 328.)
Was there anything in all this calculated to discourage such attempts for the future? On the contrary, would it not be apt to stir up still more deeply excited minds, and the next attempt would probably have caused much more suffering. To expect that the attempt to cast a lighted match into a powder magazine would fail more than once, would be chimerical indeed. In considering the value of his defences under the constitution, a Southern man could not well forget that Mr. Seward, the leader of the party in power, had not only declared the conflict between freedom and slavery to be "irrepressible," but had affirmed there was a higher law than the constitution, to which the later must yield, or that the famous Helper book, endorsed and recommended generally by the Republican members of Congress, declared that "our own banner is inscribed: 'no cooperation with slaveholders in politics; no fellowship with them in religion; no affiliation with them in society; no recognition of pro slavery men, except as ruffians, outlaws and criminals.'" Again: "we are determined to abolish slavery at all hazards." With such a history of the administration of the constitution by the party in power, there was no very pleasant outlook for the slaveholders in the future. Had he any hope from amendments?
That no effort to save the Union should be spared, Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, introduced certain resolutions proposing amendments to the constitution, which would have saved the Union, and which received every Southern vote except the South Carolina senators, who had withdrawn. They proposed to adopt, in effect, the Missouri compromise line, to prohibit Congress from abolishing the slave trade between the States, or slavery in places where the United States had exclusive jurisdiction, or in the District of Columbia, without the consent of Maryland and of the slaveholders, and proposed a more effectual provision for the recovery of fugitive slaves. For these, a substitute was offered by Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, declaring, amongst other things, that the provisions of the constitution are ample for the preservation of the Union, and the resolutions of Mr. Crittenden were voted down, and the substitute adopted by a united vote of the Republicans. Says Lunt: "The vote of the Republican members of the Senate was a blank denial of the necessity of compromise, and showed, of course, that they had deliberately made up their minds to refuse any negotiations." (Lunt's Origin of the War, p. 411.) The adoption of Mr. Crittenden's resolutions, it was said by Mr. Douglass, would have saved every Southern State except South Carolina. Undoubtedly such would have been the effect of a general agreement upon these resolutions between the two sections.
But did the Republicans desire it? It would seem not from the postscript to Mr. Chandler's letter to Governor Blair: "Some of the manufacturing States think that a fight would be awful. Without a little blood letting, this Union will not, in my opinion, be worth a curse." This was from a senator from Michigan, a man of much influence in his party. Virginia, not yet giving up her hope of preserving the Union, interposed to call "a peace conference." Resolutions were adopted by this body, composed of able and eminent men from the different States, very similar to Mr. Crittenden's, which met with no better success. Under these circumstances, what were the slaveholding States to do? In 1790 they kept quiet, because they "relied upon the virtue of Congress that they would do nothing without constitutional authority." Was such a faith any longer rational? Had not the conduct of the free States proved that the guarantees of the constitution upon the subject of slavery were no longer of the slightest avail to them? Upon that subject the majority in Congress, who were from these States, assumed whatever power they wanted. Could the minority rely upon the constitution to protect any of their rights, if it suited the passions or the interests of the majority to invade them? Our government was fast being revolutionized, and becoming one of a despotic majority of numbers; the limitations of a written constitution fast proving themselves to be without the defence of the political power to enforce them. Had the South the slightest hope of attaining any increase of that power?
It had proved itself unable to do this in the past: what was the hope for the future? Lunt (p.363) says with justice: "That it is impossible to regard the proceedings of the Chicago convention in any other light than as equivalent to a proclamation of absolutely hostile purposes against the Southern section of the country. They were not, technically, a declaration of war, to be conducted by arms, simply because they proposed only to use the pacific force of superior numbers, in order to deprive the minority of its rights under the constitution." (Lunt's Origin of the War, p.362). Indeed, one of its resolutions was amended so as to declare: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the cause which impelled them to the separation." This amendment was introduced by a Pennsylvanian (Lunt, p. 358), and passed unanimously by the convention. (Ibid.) To what did this look but secession and separation?
Did it not argue the consciousness of a purpose to drive the South to those extremities? What else could the South do but separate, if possible, from the majority which ruled the government, and were animated by such feelings? Mr. Webster, the great apostle of Union in 1851, had said: "I do not hesitate to say and repeat, that if the Northern States refuse willfully or deliberately to carry into effect that part of the constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, the South would no longer be bound to keep the compact. A bargain broken on one side is broken on all sides." (Lunt, p. 321.) Had not the precise case occurred? Had not the North, deliberately and persistently refused to carry into effect that part of the constitution? Was the South bound any longer to keep the compact, according to this high authority? In this opinion of Mr. Webster, Mr. Jefferson undoubtedly concurred. Says Lunt, p. 203: "Mr. Jefferson took a different view of the subject, and it is proper to give his opinion as stated by Mr. John Q. Adams (who appears to have agreed with him) in his eulogy on
Mr. Madison. Mr. Adams said: 'Concurring in the doctrines that the separate States have a right to interpose in cases of palpable infractions of the constitution by the Government of the United States, and that the alien and sedition acts presented a case of such infraction, Mr. Jefferson considered them as absolutely null and void, and thought the State legislatures competent, not only to declare, but to make them so, to resist their execution within their respective borders by physical force, and to secede from the Union, rather than to submit to them, if attempted to be carried into execution by force.'" On the 2d of March, 1861, Mr. Greeley declared: "We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, 'that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,' is sound and just, and that if the slave States, the cotton States, or the gulf States only, choose to form an independent nation, they have a moral right to do so." (Lunt, p.388-9).
Is it strange that those States concurred in this opinion? They believed that the government was now in hands which were fast converting it into one of a majority of numbers with unlimited powers. Did the South enter into any such Union as that? Had not her leaders constantly declared that in their opinion this was the worst of all forms of government, and if she was willing to stake life, liberty and property on the effort to escape it, did she not thereby demonstrate the earnestness of her conviction of her right to escape, and that her faith had been plighted to a very different instrument, by which she refused any longer to be bound to those who were seeking under its name to destroy the rights which it guaranteed to her, and force her to subserve the purposes of those who were seeking to ruin and degrade her own citizens, her men, women and children. Who drove the South to these extremities? The very men who accuse her of treason. When she accepted the contest, to which she was thus virtually invited in terms of contumelious threat and reproach, she was threatened with being wiped out and annihilated by the superior resources of her antagonist, with whom it was vain and foolish to contend, so unequal were the strength and resources of the two parties. It is true that the South parted in bitterness, but it was in sadness of spirit also. She did not wish it -- certainly, Virginia did not desire it -- if she could maintain her rights within the Union. Probably few men foresaw the extent or the bitterness of the war.
Surely it was a mighty contest to have been waged by two parties of such unequal strength in numbers and resources, with such a promise of success to the weaker, for nearly four years, and doubtless there were periods during that time when those who provoked that trial by battle regretted that they had done so. The South at last fell from physical exhaustion -- the want of food, clothes and the munitions of war; she yielded to no superiority of valor or of skill, but to the mere avoirdupois of numbers. Physically, she was unable to stand up under such a weight of human beings, gathered from wherever they could be called by appeals to their passions or bought by a promise to supply their necessities. It is said that after the battle of the Second Cold Harbor, where Grant so foolishly assailed Lee in his lines, and where his dead was piled in thousands after his unsuccessful attack, the northern leaders were ready to have proposed peace, but were prevented by some favorable news from the southwest. They did not propose peace except upon terms of unconditional submission. When the South was forced to accept those terms to obtain it, the North was not afraid to avow its purposes and carry them out.
Slavery was abolished without compensation, and slaves were awarded equal rights with their masters in the government. It was the fear of these results which drove the South into the war. Experience proved that this fear was reasonable. The war was alleged as the excuse for such proceedings; but can any man doubt that the North would have done the same thing if all constitutional restraints upon the power of the majority had been peaceably removed. To submit peaceably to the unlimited power of the majority was plainly to submit to these consequences or any other action which this majority may strongly desire to take. It is sought to be excused, I know, by assuming that these things were done with the assent of the South. That these constitutional amendments represent the well considered opinion of any respectable party in the South, there is none so infatuated as to believe. They were accepted as the terms of the conqueror, and so let them be considered by all who desire to know the true history of their origin.
To introduce hostile and conflicting statements in the formation of the public opinion, by which the action of the South was to be regulated, might, indeed, weaken and injure that section, but how it would help or benefit the North is yet to be seen, if it should so turn out. I think I have shown that the South had good reason to believe that the North mediated the infliction of these things, and that there was but little hope of finding any defence against them in the constitution. The alacrity with which she put these designs into execution so soon as our conquest enabled her to do so, proved that we did not suspect her wrongfully.
The South had either to acquiesce in this oppression tamely and submissively, or fight to avert it. According to Mr. Webster, she had the constitutional right to do this; according to Mr. Greeley she had the moral right to do this. She fought to avert these injuries, and because she was unwilling to remain under the government of a majority with unlimited powers. What this latter change threatens remains to be seen. Congress has already undertaken by her civil rights bill to regulate social intercourse amongst her people in the States. Will Congress undertake to prescribe fast days, enforce temperance and take charge of the police laws of the States and the towns? These are questions which posterity must answer. Will they have no other remedy against this despotism but to substitute for it the one man power. They at least will be in no doubt as to the causes, and history will be equally clear as to what parties forced it upon us.
"There is no longer any room for hope. We must fight. I repeat it, sir, we must fight. An appeal to arms and to the God of battles is all that is left us." So said and thought Patrick Henry, in reply to the British exactions upon the colonies. So thought, too, the people of the Confederate States, and they did fight. They waged a war for which history has no parallel against such odds in resources and numbers. Borne down by odds, against which it was almost vain to contend, we were bound to submit, and they have taken from us that which, in my opinion, it will be found "Not enriches them, But leaves us poor indeed." Had the South permitted her property, her constitutional rights and her liberties to be surreptitiously taken from her without resistance and made no moan, would she not have lost her honor with them? If the alternative were between such a loss and armed resistance, is it surprising that she preferred the latter?