Southern Aids To The North.

II.

If war did little else, it would have its value from the fact that it acts so extensively as an institution for the dissemination of useful knowledge. Every murmur of political dissension sends thousands to consult the map, and repair their early neglect of geography. Perhaps if atlases and ethnographical works were more studied we should have less war. And it is by no means impossible that the mutual knowledge which has been or is to be acquired by the people of the South and the North during this present war will eventually aid materially in establishing a firm bond of union.

That we have much to learn is shown in the firm faith with which so many have listened to the threats of 'a united South.' Until recently the fierce and furious assurances of the rebel press, that south of Mason and Dixon's line all were wedded heart and soul to their cause, were taken almost without a doubt. Who has forgotten the late doleful convictions of the dough-faces that the South would hold together to the last in spite of wind or weather, concluding invariably with the old refrain,—'Suppose we conquer them—what then?' Had the country at large known in detail, as it should have known from a common-school education, what the South really is,—or from experience of life what human nature really is,—it would never have believed that this boasted unanimity was based on aught save ignorance or falsehood. The Southern press itself, almost without an exception, betrays gross ignorance of its own country, and is very superficial in its statistics, inclining more than any other to warp facts and figures to suit preconceived views. We, like it, have tacitly adopted the belief that south of a certain line a certain climate invariably prevailed, and that under its influences, from the Border to the Gulf of Mexico, there has been developed a race essentially alike in all its characteristics. The planter and the slave-owner, or the city merchant, has been the type with which our writers have become familiar at the hotel and the watering-place, or in the 'store,' and we have accepted them as speaking for the South, quite forgetful that in America, as in other countries, the real man of the middle class travels but little, and when he does, is seldom to be found mingling in the 'higher circles.' Yet even this Southern man of the middle class and of 'Alleghania,' when at the North frequently affects a 'Southern' air, which is not more natural to him than it is to the youthful scions of Philadelphia and New York, who, when in Europe, so often talk pro-slavery and bowie knife, as though they lived in the very heart of planterdom. But the truth is that when we search the South out closely we find that in reality there is a very great difference between its districts and their inhabitants, and, in fact, as has been very truly said, 'not only is there no geographical boundary between the free and slave States, but no moral and intellectual boundary.'

In the great temperate region which, parting from either side of the Alleghanies, extends from Virginia to Alabama, and is still continued in the pleasant level of Texas, slavery has rolled away from either mountain side like a flood, leaving it the home of a hardy population which regards with jealousy and dislike both the wealthy planter and the negro. James W. Taylor, in his valuable collection of facts, claims that through the whole extent of the Southern Alleghania slavery has relatively diminished since 1850, and that the forthcoming census tables will establish the assertion. 'The superintendent of the census,' he says, 'would furnish a document, valuable politically and for military use, if he would anticipate the publication of this portion of his voluminous budget.' If government, indeed, were to communicate to the public what information it now holds, and has long held, relative to the numbers and strength of the Union men of the South, an excitement of amazement would thrill through the North. It was on the basis of this knowledge that our great campaign was planned,—and it can not be denied that thousands of stanch Union men were greatly astonished at the revelations of sympathy which burst forth most unexpectedly in districts where the stars and stripes have been planted. But the Cabinet 'knew what it knew' on this subject. Much of its knowledge never can be revealed, but enough will come to-night to show that in our darkest hour we had an enormous mass of aid, little suspected by those weaker brethren who stood aghast at the Southern bugbear, and who, falling prostrate in nerveless terror at the windy spectre, quaked out repeated assurances that they had no intention of 'abolitionizing the war,' and even earnestly begged and prayed that the emancipationists might all be sent to Fort Warren,—so fearful were the poor cowards lest the united South, in the final hour of victory, might include them in its catalogue of the doomed. What would they say if they knew the number and power of the ABOLITIONISTS OF THE SOUTH,—a body of no trifling significance, whose fierce grasp will yet be felt on the throat of rebellion and of slavery? It is grimly amusing to think of the aid which the South counted on receiving from these Northern dough-faces,—little thinking that within itself it contained a counter-revolutionary party, far more dangerous than the Northern friends were helpful.

It should be borne in mind that where such an evil as slavery exists there will be numbers of grave, sensible men, who, however quiet they may keep, will have their own opinions as to the expediency of maintaining it. The bigots of the South may rave of the beauty of 'the institution,' and make many believe that they speak for the whole,—a little scum when whipped covers the whole pail,—but beneath all lies a steadily-increasing mass of practical men who would readily enough manifest their opposition should opportunity favor free speech. Such people, for instance, are not insensible to the enormously corrupting influence of negroes on their children. Let the reader recall Olmsted's experiences,—that, for example, where he speaks of three negro women who had charge of half a dozen white girls of good family, 'from three to fifteen years of age.'

Their language was loud and obscene, such as I never heard before from any but the most depraved and beastly women of the streets. Upon observing me they dropped their voices, but not with any appearance of shame, and continued their altercation until their mistresses entered. The white children, in the mean time, had listened without any appearance of wonder or annoyance. The moment the ladies opened the door, they became silent.—Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 222.

The Southern Cultivator for June, 1855, speaks of many young men and women who have 'made shipwreck of all their earthly hopes, and been led to the fatal step by the seeds of corruption which in the days of childhood and youth were sown in their hearts by the indelicate and lascivious manners and conversation of their fathers' negroes.' If we had no other fact or cause to cite, this almost unnamable one might convince the reader that there must be a groundwork somewhere in the South among good, moral, and decent people, for antipathy to slavery,—human nature teaches us as much. And such people exist, not only among the hardy inhabitants of the inland districts, who are not enervated by wealth and 'exclusiveness,' but in planterdom itself.

There are few in the North who realize the number of persons in the South who silently disapprove of slavery on sound grounds, such as I have mentioned. Does it seem credible that nearly ten millions of people should socially sympathize with some three hundred thousand slave-holders, who act with intolerable arrogance to all non-slave-holders? 'Even in those regions where slavery is profitable,' as a writer in the Boston Transcript well expresses it, 'the poor whites feel the slaveocracy as the most grinding of aristocracies.'

In those regions where it is not profitable, the population regard it with a latent abhorrence, compared with which the rhetorical and open invectives of Garrison and Phillips are feeble and tame. Anybody who has read Olmsted's truthful narrative of his experience in the slave States can not doubt this fact. The hatred to slavery too often finds its expression in an almost inhuman hatred of 'niggers,' whether slave or free, but it is none the less significant of the feelings and opinions of the white population.

As I write, every fresh thunder of war and crash of victory is followed by murmurs of amazement at the enthusiastic receptions which the Union forces meet in most unexpected strongholds of the enemy, in the very heart of slavedom. Yet it was known months ago, and prophesied, with the illustration of undeniable facts, that this counter-revolutionary element existed. One single truth was forgotten,—that these Southern friends of the Union, even while avowing that slavery must be supported, had no love of it in their hearts. Emancipation has been sedulously set aside under pretence of conciliating them; but it was needless,—'old custom' had made them cautious, and mindful of 'expediency;' but the mass of them hate 'the institution.' It is for the traitorous Northern dough-faces, and the paltry handful of secessionists, 'on a thin slip of land on the Atlantic,' that slavery is, at present, cherished. The great area of the South is free from it,—and ever will be.

It has frequently been insisted on that the mere geographical obstacles to disunion are such as to render the cause of slavery hopeless in the long run. Yet to this most powerful Southern aid to the North, men seem to have been strangely blind during the days of doubt which so long afflicted us. These obstacles are, briefly, the enormous growing power of the West, and its inevitable outlet, the Mississippi river. 'For it is the mighty and free West which will always hang like a lowering thunder-cloud over them.'[14] On this subject I quote at length from an article, in the Danville (Ky.) Review, by the Rev. R. J. Breckenridge, D.D.:—

Whoever will look at a map of the United States, will observe that Louisiana lies on both sides of the Mississippi river, and that the States of Arkansas and Mississippi lie on the right and left banks of this great stream—eight hundred miles of whose lower course is thus controlled by these three States, unitedly inhabited by hardly as many white people as inhabit the city of New York. Observe, then, the country drained by this river and its affluents, commencing with Missouri on its west bank and Kentucky on its east bank. There are nine or ten powerful States, large portions of three or four others, several large Territories—in all, a country as large as all Europe, as fine as any under the sun, already holding many more people than all the revolted States, and powerful regions of the earth. Does any one suppose that these powerful States—this great and energetic population—will ever make a peace that will put the lower course of this single and mighty national outlet to the sea in the hands of a foreign government far weaker than themselves? If there is any such person he knows little of the past history of mankind, and will perhaps excuse us for reminding him that the people of Kentucky, before they were constituted a State, gave formal notice to the federal government, when Gen. Washington was President, that if the United States did not require Louisiana they would themselves conquer it. The mouths of the Mississippi belong, by the gift of God, to the inhabitants of its great valley. Nothing but irresistible force can disinherit them.

Try another territorial aspect of the case. There is a bed of mountains abutting on the left bank of the Ohio, which covers all Western Virginia, and all Eastern Kentucky, to the width, from east to west, in those two States, of three or four hundred miles. These mountains, stretching south-westwardly, pass entirely through Tennessee, cover the back parts of North Carolina and Georgia, heavily invade the northern part of Alabama, and make a figure even in the back parts of South Carolina and the eastern parts of Mississippi, having a course of perhaps seven or eight hundred miles, and running far south of the northern limit of profitable cotton culture. It is a region of 300,000 square miles, trenching upon eight or nine slave States, though nearly destitute of slaves itself; trenching upon at least five cotton States, though raising no cotton itself. The western part of Maryland and two-thirds of Pennsylvania are embraced in the north-eastern continuation of this remarkable region. Can anything that passes under the name of statesmanship be more preposterous than the notion of permanent peace on this continent, founded on the abnegation of a common and paramount government, and the idea of the supercilious domination of the cotton interest and the slave-trade over such a mountain empire, so located and so peopled?

As a further proof of the utter impossibility of peace except under a common government, and at once an illustration of the import of what has just been stated, and the suggestion of a new and insuperable difficulty, let it be remembered that this great mountain region, throughout its general course, is more loyal to the Union than any other portion of the slave States. It is the mountain counties of Maryland that have held treason in check in that State; it is forty mountain counties in Western Virginia that have laid the foundation of a new and loyal commonwealth; it is the mountain counties of Kentucky that first and most eagerly took up arms for the Union; it is the mountain region of Tennessee that alone, in that dishonored State, furnished martyrs to the sacred cause of freedom; it is the mountain people of Alabama that boldly stood out against the Confederate government till their own leaders deserted and betrayed them.

It is not a strong point, but it is worth noting, that even in South Carolina there is an Alleghanian area of 4,074 square miles, equal to the State of Connecticut, in which the diminished proportion of slaves, with other local causes, are sufficient to indicate the Union feeling which indeed struggles there in secret. These counties are:—

FREE.SLAVE.
Spartanburgh,18,3118,039
Greenville,13,370 6,691
Anderson,13,867 7,514
Pickens,13,1053,679

Slavery is here large, as compared to the other counties of 'Alleghania,' but the great proportion of free inhabitants, as contrasted with the districts near the Atlantic, makes it worth citing. In accordance with a request, I give from Jas. W. Taylor's collection, illustrating this subject, the table of population in East Tennessee:—

The following table, from the census of 1850, presents the slave and cotton statistics of this district, in their relation to the free population:

COUNTIES.FREE.SLAVE.COTTON, 400 lb. bales.
Johnson,3,4852060
Carter,5,9113530
Washington,12,6719300
Sullivan,10,6031,004153
Hancock,5,4472022
Hawkins,11,5671,6900
Greene,16,5261,0930
Cocke,7,5017193
Sevier,6,4504030
Jefferson,11,4581,6280
Granger,11,1701,0351
Knox,16,3852,1930
Union, new county,
Claiborne,8,6106600
Anderson,6,3915030
Campbell,5,6513181
Scott,1,808370
Morgan,3,3011019
Cumberland, new county,
Roane,10,5251,544121
Blount,11,2131,0846
Munroe,10,6231,1880
McMinn,12,2861,5682,821
Polk,5,88440029
Bradley,11,4787441,600
Meigs,4,4803952
Hamilton,9,2166720
Rhea,3,9514360
Bledsoe,5,0368270
Sequatche, new county,
Van Buren,2,4811752
Grundy,2,52223624
Marion,5,71855124,413
Franklin,10,0853,623637
Lincoln,17,8025,6212,576

The geographical order of the foregoing list of counties is from the extreme north-east—Johnson—south-west to Lincoln, on the Alabama line. I have included a tier of counties the west, which embrace the summits and western slopes of the Cumberland Hills, regarding their physical and political features as more identified with East than Middle Tennessee. Such are Lincoln, Franklin, Grundy, Van Buren, Cumberland, Morgan and Scott counties.

I estimate the area of this district as about 17,175 square miles, an extent of territory exceeding the aggregate of the following States:

Massachusetts,7,800 square miles.
Connecticut,4,674 square miles.
Rhode Island,l,306 square miles.
———
13,180 square miles.

Yet it is not many months since even this Tennessee region, it was generally feared, would be false to the Union, on account of its attachment to slavery.

The reader who has studied the facts which I have cited, indicating the existence of a powerful Union party at the South (and the facts are few and weak compared to the vast mass which exist, and which are known to government), may judge for himself whether that party is Union in spite of pro-slavery principles, as so many would have us believe. Let him see where these Union men are found, where they have come forth with the greatest enthusiasm, and then say that he believes they are friends to slavery. Let him bear in mind the hundreds of thousands of acres, the vast tracts, equal in extent to whole Northern States, in the South, which are unfitted for slave labor, and reflect whether the inhabitants of these cool, temperate regions are not as conscious of their inadaptability to slave labor as he is himself; and whether they are so much attached to the institution which fosters the Satanic pride, panders to the passions, and corrupts the children of the planter of the low country.

Since writing the above, the long-expected declaration of President LINCOLN has appeared in favor of adopting a plan which may lead to the gradual abolishment of slavery. He proposes that the United States shall coöperate with such slave States as may desire Emancipation, by giving such pecuniary aid as may compensate for any losses incurred. No interference with State rights or claims to rights in the question is intended.

It is evident that this message is directed entirely to the strengthening and building up of the Union party of the South, and has been based quite as much on their demands and on a knowledge of their needs, as on any Northern pressure. And it will have a sure effect. It will bring to life, if realized, those seeds of counter-revolution which so abundantly exist in the South. The growth may be slow, but it will be certain. So long as the certainty exists that compensation may be obtained, there will be a party who will long for it; and where there is a will there is a way. The executive has finally officially recognized the truth of the theory of Emancipation, and thereby entitled itself to the honor of having taken the greatest forward step in the glorious path of Freedom ever made even in our history.