VI.
The pretence for strife was resistance to oppression, and the extension and perfection of liberty to the masses; yet they impelled the people to passion, without mingling a single truth with the illusions with which they decorated their standards. Whilst they talked of the independent spirit of the new government, and the glory of resisting the oppressive policy of the invaders, every act and edict gathered closer and stronger the bonds which degraded and burdened the poor white.
The owner of seven slaves was exempt from the hazard of battle, but poverty and starvation of family were no causes of exemption for the non-slaveholder.
The real design, concealed by the strife, was the foundation of an empire of gigantic and seductive form, radiant and glittering with the splendid architecture of aristocratic sovereignty, but without reason or conscience.
The resolve was to control the production of the principal staples of industry and trade, and subject the commercial world to their caprices.
Thus they preferred the intoxications of conquest, the gratifications of lust, to the triumphs of true civilization, to the congratulations of a redeemed race. They cared not for reputation among the nations of the earth, nor immortality, nor renown; and they neglected or despised those happy stars which, now and then, conduct men and races to glory. “Glory belongs to the God in heaven; upon the earth it is the lot of virtue, and not of genius—of that virtue which is useful, grand, beneficent, brilliant, heroic.”
VII.
Revolutions almost always spring from the noble and generous enthusiasm of youth; but seditions arise from the vulgar and ignoble crowd, or from the outcast few, who would, for wealth, sacrifice all that honor and nature hold dear; or for the meaner gratifications of self-aggrandizement, would crumble into dust, and scatter to the winds of the earth, the noblest institutions and laws of mankind. Who will say that this resort to arms was an insurrection of justice in favor of the weak, or that it was a revolt of nature against tyranny?
The agitations of revolutions stir up the innermost natures of men, and from the revelations out of the depths appear the extreme qualities of the soul, elevated or debased, according to the inspirations from Heaven or the influence of a vile cause.
What rays of intellectual light, what flashes of genuine eloquence, burst forth during the tempestuous times of this period to illumine their progress or define the glory of their future? When the minds and imaginations of men are moved in civil war, they betray, in spite of themselves, the nobility or meanness of their cause. Even the ignorant, says Quintilian, when moved by the violent passions, do not seek for what they are to say. It is the soul alone that renders them eloquent. Only the hoarse clamors for revenge, or the hollow laugh against the remonstrance of humanity, do we hear from their tribunals and halls of legislation. Fatuity possessed their minds, and rather than not succeed in their designs, the leaders would have preferred a dreary solitude to the best interests of humanity, or, like Erostratus, they would have rather burned down the temple of liberty itself.