North America — Volume 1

by Anthony Trollope

CHAPTER XX.

FROM BOSTON TO WASHINGTON.

From Boston, on the 27th of November, my wife returned to England, leaving me to prosecute my journey southward to Washington by myself. I shall never forget the political feeling which prevailed in Boston at that time, or the discussions on the subject of Slidell and Mason, in which I felt myself bound to take a part. Up to that period I confess that my sympathies had been strongly with the northern side in the general question; and so they were still, as far as I could divest the matter of its English bearings. I had always thought, and do think, that a war for the suppression of the southern rebellion could not have been avoided by the North without an absolute loss of its political prestige. Mr. Lincoln was elected President of the United States in the autumn of 1860, and any steps taken by him or his party towards a peaceable solution of the difficulties which broke out immediately on his election, must have been taken before he entered upon his office. South Carolina threatened secession as soon as Mr. Lincoln's election was known, while yet there were four months left of Mr. Buchanan's Government. That Mr. Buchanan might, during those four months, have prevented secession, few men, I think, will doubt when the history of the time shall be written. But instead of doing so he consummated secession. Mr. Buchanan is a northern man, a Pennsylvanian; but he was opposed to the party which had brought in Mr. Lincoln, having thriven as a politician by his adherence to southern principles. Now, when the struggle came, he could not forget his party in his duty as President. General Jackson's position was much the same when Mr. Calhoun, on the question of the tariff, endeavoured to produce secession in South Carolina thirty years ago, in 1832,—excepting in this, that Jackson was himself a southern man. But Jackson had a strong conception of the position which he held as President of the United States. He put his foot on secession and crushed it, forcing Mr. Calhoun, as senator from South Carolina, to vote for that compromise as to the tariff which the Government of the day proposed. South Carolina was as eager in 1832 for secession as she was in 1859-1860; but the Government was in the hands of a strong man and an honest one. Mr. Calhoun would have been hung had he carried out his threats. But Mr. Buchanan had neither the power nor the honesty of General Jackson, and thus secession was in fact consummated during his Presidency.

But Mr. Lincoln's party, it is said—and I believe truly said—might have prevented secession by making overtures to the South, or accepting overtures from the South, before Mr. Lincoln himself had been inaugurated. That is to say,—if Mr. Lincoln and the band of politicians who with him had pushed their way to the top of their party, and were about to fill the offices of State, chose to throw overboard the political convictions which had bound them together and insured their success,—if they could bring themselves to adopt on the subject of slavery the ideas of their opponents,—then the war might have been avoided, and secession also avoided. I do believe that had Mr. Lincoln at that time submitted himself to a compromise in favour of the Democrats, promising the support of the Government to certain acts which would in fact have been in favour of slavery, South Carolina would again have been foiled for the time. For it must be understood, that though South Carolina and the Gulf States might have accepted certain compromises, they would not have been satisfied in so accepting them. They desired secession, and nothing short of secession would, in truth, have been acceptable to them. But in doing so Mr. Lincoln would have been the most dishonest politician even in America. The North would have been in arms against him; and any true spirit of agreement between the cotton-growing slave States and the manufacturing States of the North, or the agricultural States of the West, would have been as far off and as improbable as it is now. Mr. Crittenden, who proffered his compromise to the Senate in December, 1860, was at that time one of the two senators from Kentucky, a slave State. He now sits in the Lower House of Congress as a member from the same State. Kentucky is one of those border States which has found it impossible to secede, and almost equally impossible to remain in the Union. It is one of the States into which it was most probable that the war would be carried;—Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri being the three States which have suffered the most in this way. Of Mr. Crittenden's own family, some have gone with secession and some with the Union. His name had been honourably connected with American politics for nearly forty years, and it is not surprising that he should have desired a compromise. His terms were in fact these,—a return to the Missouri compromise, under which the Union pledged itself that no slavery should exist north of 36.30 degrees N. lat. unless where it had so existed prior to the date of that compromise; a pledge that Congress would not interfere with slavery in the individual States,—which under the constitution it cannot do; and a pledge that the Fugitive Slave Law should be carried out by the northern States. Such a compromise might seem to make very small demand on the forbearance of the Republican party, which was now dominant. The repeal of the Missouri compromise had been to them a loss, and it might be said that its re-enactment would be a gain. But since that compromise had been repealed, vast territories south of the line in question had been added to the Union, and the re-enactment of that compromise would hand those vast regions over to absolute slavery, as had been done with Texas. This might be all very well for Mr. Crittenden in the slave State of Kentucky—for Mr. Crittenden, although a slave-owner, desired to perpetuate the Union; but it would not have been well for New England or for the West. As for the second proposition, it is well understood that under the constitution Congress cannot interfere in any way in the question of slavery in the individual States. Congress has no more constitutional power to abolish slavery in Maryland than she has to introduce it into Massachusetts. No such pledge, therefore, was necessary on either side. But such a pledge given by the North and West would have acted as an additional tie upon them, binding them to the finality of a constitutional enactment to which, as was of course well known, they strongly object. There was no question of Congress interfering with slavery, with the purport of extending its area by special enactment, and therefore by such a pledge the North and West could gain nothing; but the South would in prestige have gained much.

But that third proposition as to the Fugitive Slave Law and the faithful execution of that law by the northern and western States would, if acceded to by Mr. Lincoln's party, have amounted to an unconditional surrender of everything. What! Massachusetts and Connecticut carry out the Fugitive Slave Law! Ohio carry out the Fugitive Slave Law after the "Dred Scot" decision and all its consequences! Mr. Crittenden might as well have asked Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Ohio to introduce slavery within their own lands. The Fugitive Slave Law was then, as it is now, the law of the land; it was the law of the United States as voted by Congress and passed by the President, and acted on by the Supreme Judge of the United States' Court. But it was a law to which no free State had submitted itself, or would submit itself. "What!" the English reader will say,—"sundry States in the Union refuse to obey the laws of the Union,—refuse to submit to the constitutional action of their own Congress!" Yes. Such has been the position of this country! To such a dead lock has it been brought by the attempted but impossible amalgamation of North and South. Mr. Crittenden's compromise was moonshine. It was utterly out of the question that the free States should bind themselves to the rendition of escaped slaves,—or that Mr. Lincoln, who had just been brought in by their voices, should agree to any compromise which should attempt so to bind them. Lord Palmerston might as well attempt to re-enact the Corn Laws.

Then comes the question whether Mr. Lincoln or his Government could have prevented the war after he had entered upon his office in March, 1861? I do not suppose that any one thinks that he could have avoided secession and avoided the war also;—that by any ordinary effort of Government he could have secured the adhesion of the Gulf States to the Union after the first shot had been fired at Fort Sumter. The general opinion in England is, I take it, this,—that secession then was manifestly necessary, and that all the bloodshed and money-shed, and all this destruction of commerce and of agriculture might have been prevented by a graceful adhesion to an indisputable fact. But there are some facts, even some indisputable facts, to which a graceful adherence is not possible. Could King Bomba have welcomed Garibaldi to Naples? Can the Pope shake hands with Victor Emmanuel? Could the English have surrendered to their rebel colonists peaceable possession of the colonies? The indisputability of a fact is not very easily settled while the circumstances are in course of action by which the fact is to be decided. The men of the northern States have not believed in the necessity of secession, but have believed it to be their duty to enforce the adherence of these States to the Union. The American Governments have been much given to compromises, but had Mr. Lincoln attempted any compromise by which any one southern State could have been let out of the Union, he would have been impeached. In all probability the whole constitution would have gone to ruin, and the presidency would have been at an end. At any rate, his presidency would have been at an end. When secession, or in other words rebellion, was once commenced, he had no alternative but the use of coercive measures for putting it down;—that is, he had no alternative but war. It is not to be supposed that he or his ministry contemplated such a war as has existed,—with 600,000 men in arms on one side, each man with his whole belongings maintained at a cost of £150 per annum, or ninety millions sterling per annum for the army. Nor did we, when we resolved to put down the French revolution, think of such a national debt as we now owe. These things grow by degrees, and the mind also grows in becoming used to them; but I cannot see that there was any moment at which Mr. Lincoln could have stayed his hand and cried Peace! It is easy to say now that acquiescence in secession would have been better than war, but there has been no moment when he could have said so with any avail. It was incumbent on him to put down rebellion, or to be put down by it. So it was with us in America in 1776.

I do not think that we in England have quite sufficiently taken all this into consideration. We have been in the habit of exclaiming very loudly against the war, execrating its cruelty and anathematizing its results, as though the cruelty were all superfluous and the results unnecessary. But I do not remember to have seen any statement as to what the northern States should have done,—what they should have done, that is, as regards the South, or when they should have done it. It seems to me that we have decided as regards them that civil war is a very bad thing, and that therefore civil war should be avoided. But bad things cannot always be avoided. It is this feeling on our part that has produced so much irritation in them against us,—reproducing, of course, irritation on our part against them. They cannot understand that we should not wish them to be successful in putting down a rebellion; nor can we understand why they should be outrageous against us for standing aloof, and keeping our hands, if it be only possible, out of the fire.

When Slidell and Mason were arrested, my opinions were not changed, but my feelings were altered. I seemed to acknowledge to myself that the treatment to which England had been subjected, and the manner in which that treatment was discussed, made it necessary that I should regard the question as it existed between England and the States, rather than in its reference to the North and South. I had always felt that as regarded the action of our Government we had been sans reproche; that in arranging our conduct we had thought neither of money nor political influence, but simply of the justice of the case,—promising to abstain from all interference and keeping that promise faithfully. It had been quite clear to me that the men of the North, and the women also, had failed to appreciate this, looking, as men in a quarrel always do look, for special favour on their side. Everything that England did was wrong. If a private merchant, at his own risk, took a cargo of rifles to some southern port, that act to northern eyes was an act of English interference,—of favour shown to the South by England as a nation; but twenty shiploads of rifles sent from England to the North merely signified a brisk trade and a desire for profit. The "James Adger," a northern man-of-war, was refitted at Southampton as a matter of course. There was no blame to England for that. But the "Nashville," belonging to the Confederates, should not have been allowed into English waters! It was useless to speak of neutrality. No Northerner would understand that a rebel could have any mutual right. The South had no claim in his eyes as a belligerent, though the North claimed all those rights which he could only enjoy by the fact of there being a recognized war between him and his enemy the South. The North was learning to hate England, and day by day the feeling grew upon me that, much as I wished to espouse the cause of the North, I should have to espouse the cause of my own country. Then Slidell and Mason were arrested, and I began to calculate how long I might remain in the country. "There is no danger. We are quite right," the lawyers said. "There are Vattel and Puffendorff and Stowell and Phillimore and Wheaton," said the ladies. "Ambassadors are contraband all the world over,—more so than gunpowder; and if taken in a neutral bottom, &c." I wonder why ships are always called bottoms when spoken of with legal technicality? But neither the lawyers nor the ladies convinced me. I know that there are matters which will be read not in accordance with any written law, but in accordance with the bias of the reader's mind. Such laws are made to be strained any way. I knew how it would be. All the legal acumen of New England declared the seizure of Slidell and Mason to be right. The legal acumen of Old England has declared it to be wrong; and I have no doubt that the ladies of Old England can prove it to be wrong out of Vattel, Puffendorff, Stowell, Phillimore, and Wheaton.

"But there's Grotius," I said, to an elderly female at New York, who had quoted to me some half-dozen writers on international law, thinking thereby that I should trump her last card. "I've looked into Grotius too," said she, "and as far as I can see," &c. &c. &c. So I had to fall back again on the convictions to which instinct and common sense had brought me. I never doubted for a moment that those convictions would be supported by English lawyers.