North America — Volume 2

by Anthony Trollope

But they who created the constitution, who framed the clauses, and gave to this terribly important work what wisdom they possessed, did not presume to think that it could be final. The mode of altering the constitution is arranged in the constitution. Such alterations must be proposed either by two-thirds of both the houses of the general Congress, or by the legislatures of two-thirds of the States; and must, when so proposed, be ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the States.—(Article V.) There can, I think, be no doubt that any alteration so carried would be valid; even though that alteration should go to the extent of excluding one or any number of States from the Union. Any division so made would be made in accordance with the constitution.

South Carolina and the southern States no doubt felt that they would not succeed in obtaining secession in this way, and therefore they sought to obtain the separation which they wanted by revolution,—by revolution and rebellion, as Naples has lately succeeded in her attempt to change her political status; as Hungary is looking to do; as Poland has been seeking to do any time since her subjection; as the revolted colonies of Great Britain succeeded in doing in 1776, whereby they created this great nation which is now undergoing all the sorrows of a civil war. The name of secession claimed by the South for this movement is a misnomer. If any part of a nationality or empire ever rebelled against the government established on behalf of the whole, South Carolina so rebelled when, on the 20th November, 1860, she put forth her ordinance of so-called secession; and the other southern States joined in that rebellion when they followed her lead. As to that fact, there cannot, I think, much longer be any doubt in any mind. I insist on this especially, repeating perhaps unnecessarily, opinions expressed in my first volume, because I still see it stated by English writers that the secession ordinance of South Carolina should have been accepted as a political act by the government of the United States. It seems to me that no government can in this way accept an act of rebellion without declaring its own functions to be beyond its own power.

But what if such rebellion be justifiable, or even reasonable? what if the rebels have cause for their rebellion? For no one will now deny that rebellion may be both reasonable and justifiable; or that every subject in the land may be bound in duty to rebel. In such case the government will be held to have brought about its own punishment by its own fault. But as government is a wide affair, spreading itself gradually, and growing in virtue or in vice from small beginnings,—from seeds slow to produce their fruits,—it is much easier to discern the incidence of the punishment than the perpetration of the fault. Government goes astray by degrees, or sins by the absence of that wisdom which should teach rulers how to make progress, as progress is made by those whom they rule. The fault may be absolutely negative and have spread itself over centuries; may be, and generally has been, attributable to dull good men;—but not the less does the punishment come at a blow. The rebellion exists and cannot be put down,—will put down all that opposes it; but the government is not the less bound to make its fight. That is the punishment that comes on governing men or on a governing people, that govern not well or not wisely.

As Mr. Motley says in the paper to which I have alluded, "No man, on either side of the Atlantic, with Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins, will dispute the right of a people, or of any portion of a people, to rise against oppression, to demand redress of grievances, and in case of denial of justice to take up arms to vindicate the sacred principle of liberty. Few Englishmen or Americans will deny that the source of government is the consent of the governed, or that every nation has the right to govern itself according to its will. When the silent consent is changed to fierce remonstrance, revolution is impending. The right of revolution is indisputable. It is written on the whole record of our race. British and American history is made up of rebellion and revolution. Hampden, Pym, and Oliver Cromwell; Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, all were rebels." Then comes the question whether South Carolina and the Gulf States had so suffered as to make rebellion on their behalf justifiable or reasonable; or if not, what cause had been strong enough to produce in them so strong a desire for secession,—a desire which has existed for fully half the term through which the United States has existed as a nation, and so firm a resolve to rush into rebellion with the object of accomplishing that which they deemed not to be accomplished on other terms.

It must, I think, be conceded that the Gulf States have not suffered at all by their connection with the northern States; that in lieu of any such suffering, they owe all their national greatness to the northern States; that they have been lifted up by the commercial energy of the Atlantic States and by the agricultural prosperity of the western States, to a degree of national consideration and respect through the world at large, which never could have belonged to them standing alone. I will not trouble my readers with statistics which few would care to follow, but let any man of ordinary every-day knowledge turn over in his own mind his present existing ideas of the wealth and commerce of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburg, and Cincinnati, and compare them with his ideas as to New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Richmond, and Memphis. I do not name such towns as Baltimore and St. Louis, which stand in slave States, but which have raised themselves to prosperity by northern habits. If this be not sufficient, let him refer to population tables and tables of shipping and tonnage. And of those southern towns which I have named the commercial wealth is of northern creation. The success of New Orleans as a city can be no more attributed to Louisianians than can that of the Havana to the men of Cuba, or of Calcutta to the natives of India. It has been a repetition of the old story, told over and over again through every century since commerce has flourished in the world; the tropics can produce,—but the men from the North shall sow and reap, and garner and enjoy. As the Creator's work has progressed, this privilege has extended itself to regions further removed and still further from southern influences. If we look to Europe, we see that this has been so in Greece, Italy, Spain, France, and the Netherlands; in England and Scotland; in Prussia and in Russia; and the Western world shows us the same story. Where is now the glory of the Antilles? where the riches of Mexico, and the power of Peru? They still produce sugar, guano, gold, cotton, coffee, almost whatever we may ask them,—and will continue to do so while held to labour under sufficient restraint; but where are their men, where are their books, where are their learning, their art, their enterprise? I say it with sad regret at the decadence of so vast a population; but I do say that the southern States of America have not been able to keep pace with their northern brethren;—that they have fallen behind in the race, and feeling that the struggle is too much for them, have therefore resolved to part.

The reasons put forward by the South for secession have been trifling almost beyond conception. Northern tariffs have been the first, and perhaps foremost. Then there has been a plea that the national exchequer has paid certain bounties to New England fishermen, of which the South has paid its share,—getting no part of such bounty in return. There is also a complaint as to the navigation laws,—meaning, I believe, that the laws of the States increase the cost of coast traffic by forbidding foreign vessels to engage in the trade, thereby increasing also the price of goods and confining the benefit to the North, which carries on the coasting trade of the country, and doing only injury to the South, which has none of it. Then last, but not least, comes that grievance as to the Fugitive Slave Law. The law of the land as a whole,—the law of the nation,—requires the rendition from free States of all fugitive slaves. But the free States will not obey this law. They even pass State laws in opposition to it. "Catch your own slaves," they say, "and we will not hinder you; at any rate we will not hinder you officially. Of non-official hindrance you must take your chance. But we absolutely decline to employ our officers to catch your slaves." That list comprises, as I take it, the amount of southern official grievances. Southern people will tell you privately of others. They will say that they cannot sleep happy in their beds, fearing lest insurrection should be roused among their slaves. They will tell you of domestic comfort invaded by northern falsehood. They will explain to you how false has been Mrs. Beecher Stowe. Ladies will fill your ears and your hearts too with tales of the daily efforts they make for the comfort of their "people," and of the ruin to those efforts which arises from the malice of the abolitionists. To all this you make some answer with your tongue that is hardly true,—for in such a matter courtesy forbids the plain truth. But your heart within answers truly, "Madam,—dear madam, your sorrow is great; but that sorrow is the necessary result of your position."

As to those official reasons, in what fewest words I can use I will endeavour to show that they come to nothing. The tariff—and a monstrous tariff it then was—was the ground put forward by South Carolina for secession, when General Jackson was President, and Mr. Calhoun was the hero of the South. Calhoun bound himself and his State to take certain steps towards secession at a certain day if that tariff were not abolished. The tariff was so absurd that Jackson and his Government were forced to abandon it,—would have abandoned it without any threat from Calhoun; but under that threat it was necessary that Calhoun should be defied. General Jackson proposed a compromise tariff, which was odious to Calhoun,—not on its own behalf, for it yielded nearly all that was asked, but as being subversive of his desire for secession. The President, however, not only insisted on his compromise, but declared his purpose of preventing its passage into law unless Calhoun himself, as senator, would vote for it. And he also declared his purpose, not, we may presume, officially, of hanging Calhoun if he took that step towards secession which he had bound himself to take in the event of the tariff not being repealed. As a result of all this Calhoun voted for the compromise, and secession for the time was beaten down. That was in 1832, and may be regarded as the commencement of the secession movement. The tariff was then a convenient reason, a ground to be assigned with a colour of justice, because it was a tariff admitted to be bad. But the tariff has been modified again and again since that; and the tariff existing when South Carolina seceded in 1860 had been carried by votes from South Carolina. The absurd Morrill tariff could not have caused secession, for it was passed without a struggle in the collapse of Congress occasioned by secession.

The bounty to fishermen was given to create sailors, so that a marine might be provided for the nation. I need hardly show that the national benefit would accrue to the whole nation for whose protection such sailors were needed. Such a system of bounties may be bad, but if so it was bad for the whole nation. It did not affect South Carolina otherwise than it affected Illinois, Pennsylvania, or even New York.

The navigation laws may also have been bad. According to my thinking such protective laws are bad; but they created no special hardship on the South. By any such a theory of complaint all sections of all nations have ground of complaint against any other section which receives special protection under any law. The drinkers of beer in England should secede because they pay a tax, whereas the consumers of paper pay none. The navigation laws of the States are no doubt injurious to the mercantile interests of the States. I at least have no doubt on the subject. But no one will think that secession is justified by the existence of a law of questionable expediency. Bad laws will go by the board if properly handled by those whom they pinch, as the navigation laws went by the board with us in England.

As to that Fugitive Slave Law, it should be explained that the grievance has not arisen from the loss of slaves. I have heard it stated that South Carolina, up to the time of the secession, had never lost a slave in this way—that is, by northern opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law; and that the total number of slaves escaping successfully into the northern States, and there remaining through the non-operation of this law, did not amount to five in the year. It has not been a question of property but of feeling. It has been a political point, and the South has conceived—and probably conceived truly—that this resolution on the part of northern States to defy the law with reference to slaves, even though in itself it might not be immediately injurious to southern property, was an insertion of the narrow end of the wedge. It was an action taken against slavery,—an action taken by men of the North against their fellow-countrymen in the South. Under such circumstances the sooner such countrymen should cease to be their fellows the better it would be for them. That, I take it, was the argument of the South; or at any rate that was its feeling.