"Every possible atrocity appertains to this rebellion. There is nothing whatever that its leaders have scrupled at. Wholesale massacres and torturings, wholesale starvation of prisoners, firing of great cities, piracies of the cruelest kind, persecution of the most hideous character and of vast extent, and finally assassination in high places—whatever is inhuman, whatever is brutal, whatever is fiendish, these men have resorted to. They will leave behind names so black, and the memory of deeds so infamous, that the execration of the slaveholders' rebellion will be eternal."
True, "slaveholders' rebellion" still survives here and there. So William Harrison Clarke, in The Civil Service Law, Preface, says:
"Parties, when they strive solely for principle, are the life of a nation; but when they strive solely for pelf, patronage, and power they are its death. Even corrupt party leaders may destroy a republic; sometimes even ambitious leaders may do so. Did a nation ever make a narrower escape than did our own during the slaveholders' rebellion? Who but ambitious party leaders caused that rebellion?"
"Vous êtes de France, mais je suis de Bretagne." "Eh bien! Ce n'est pas le même pays." "Mais c'est la même patrie." La femme se borna à répondre, "Je suis de Siscoingnard."—V. Hugo, Quatre-Vingt-Treize.
The war began, the war went on,—this politicians' conspiracy, this slaveholders' rebellion, as it was variously called by those who sought its source, now in the disappointed ambition of the Southern leaders, now in the desperate determination of a slaveholding oligarchy to perpetuate their power, and to secure forever their proprietorship in their "human chattels." On this theory the mass of Southern people were but puppets in the hands of political wirepullers, or blind followers of hectoring "patricians." To those who know the Southern people nothing can be more absurd; to those who know their personal independence, to those who know the deep interest which they have always taken in politics, the keen intelligence with which they have always followed the questions of the day. The court-house green was the political university of the Southern masses, and the hustings the professorial chair, from which the great political and economical questions of the day were presented, to say the least, as fully and intelligently as in the newspapers to which so much enlightenment is attributed. There was no such system of rotten boroughs, no such domination of a landed aristocracy, throughout the South as has been imagined, and venality, which is the disgrace of current politics, was practically unknown. The men who represented the Southern people in Washington came from the people, and not from a ring. Northern writers who have ascribed the firm control in Congress of the national government which the South held so long to the superior character, ability, and experience of its representatives, do not seem to be aware that the choice of such representatives and their prolonged tenure show that in politics, at least, the education of the Southerner had not been neglected. The rank and file then were not swayed simply by blind passion or duped by the representations of political gamesters. Nor did the lump need the leavening of the large percentage of men of the upper classes who served as privates, some of them from the beginning to the end of the war. The rank and file were, to begin with, in full accord with the great principles of the war, and were sustained by the abiding conviction of the justice of the cause. Of course, there were in the Southern army, as in every army, many who went with the multitude in the first enthusiastic rush, or who were brought into the ranks by the needful process of conscription; but it is not a little remarkable that few of the poorest and the most ignorant could be induced to forswear the cause and to purchase release from the sufferings of imprisonment by the simple process of taking the oath. Those who have seen the light of battle on the faces of these humble sons of the South, or witnessed their steadfastness in camp, on the march, in the hospital, have not been ashamed of the brotherhood.
There is such a thing as fighting for a principle, an idea; but principle and idea must be incarnate, and the principle of States' rights was incarnate in the historical life of the Southern people. Of the thirteen original States, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were openly and officially upon the side of the South. Maryland as a State was bound hand and foot. We counted her as ours, for the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay united as well as divided. Each of these States had a history, had an individuality. Every one was something more than a certain aggregate of square miles wherein dwelt an uncertain number of uncertain inhabitants, something more than a Territory transformed into a State by the magic of political legerdemain; a creature of the central government, and duly loyal to its creator.
"The brandished sword of her coat of arms would have shown what manner of placida quies she would have ensued." The proof-reader of the Atlantic not being over-familiar with the Massachusetts coat of arms (Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem) or Scriptural language, substituted for the foregoing what one reads in the article as printed in the Atlantic (p. 82): "The brandished sword would have shown what manner of placida quies would have ensued...."
The wish that South Carolina had been scuttled is the wish of Chilon for Cythera. Herod. 7, 235.
This impression, erroneous as it seems, was contravened in a letter from Mr. Wm. A. Courtenay, Mayor and historian of Charleston, who wrote to me: "The W. L. I. was named for George Washington. The 22d of February was celebrated as the anniversary from 1807-92 (thirty years ago in Fort Sumter under fire), and the connection of the corps with Col. Wm. Washington was not until April, 1827, on the presentation of the Eutaw flag to the corps by his widow." However, the memory of the lesser Washington is still kept alive, and the William Washington house is still one of the show places of my native city. As a further illustration of local patriotism I may add that the Charleston boys were more excited over the 28th of June, the battle of Fort Moultrie, than over the national Fourth of July.