But no conspiracy could ripen such pernicious fruit, if not rooted in a soil of congenial malignity. To appreciate properly this influence, we must go back to the beginning of the Government.
South Carolina, which takes so forward a part in this treason, hesitated originally, as is well known, with regard to the Declaration of Independence. Once her vote was recorded against this act; and when it finally prevailed, her vote was given for it only formally and for the sake of seeming unanimity.[207] But so little was she inspired by the Declaration, that, in the contest which ensued, her commissioners made a proposition to the British commander which is properly characterized by an able historian as “equivalent to an offer from the State to return to its allegiance to the British crown.”[208] The hesitation with regard to the Declaration of Independence was renewed with regard to the National Constitution; and here it was shared by another State. Notoriously, both South Carolina and Georgia, which, with the States carved from their original territory, Alabama and Mississippi, constitute the chief seat of the conspiracy, hesitated in becoming parties to the Union, and stipulated expressly for recognition of the slave-trade in the National Constitution as an indispensable condition. In the Convention, Mr. Rutledge, of South Carolina, while opposing a tax on the importation of slaves, said: “The true question at present is, whether the Southern States shall or shall not be parties to the Union.” Mr. Pinckney, also of South Carolina, followed with the unblushing declaration: “South Carolina can never receive the plan [of the Constitution], if it prohibits the slave-trade.” I quote now from Mr. Madison’s authentic report of these important debates.[209] With shame let it be confessed, that, instead of repelling this disgraceful overture, our fathers submitted to it, and in that submission you find the beginning of present sorrows. The slave-trade, whose annual iniquity no tongue can tell, was placed for twenty years under safeguard of the Constitution, thus giving sanction, support, and increase to Slavery itself. The language is modest, but the intent was complete. South Carolina and Georgia were pacified, and took their places in the Union, to which they were openly bound only by a most hateful tie. Regrets for the past are not entirely useless, if out of them we get wisdom for the future, and learn to be brave. It is easy to see now, that, had the unnatural pretensions of these States been originally encountered by stern resistance worthy of an honest people, the present conspiracy would have been crushed before it saw the light. Its whole success, from its distant beginning down to this hour, has been from our timidity.
There was also another sentiment, of kindred perversity, which prevailed in the same quarter. This is vividly portrayed by John Adams, in a letter to General Gates, dated at Philadelphia, 23d March, 1776:—
“However, my dear friend Gates, all our misfortunes arise from a single source: the reluctance of the Southern Colonies to Republican Government.”[210]
And he proceeds to declare in strong language that “popular principles and axioms are abhorrent to the inclinations of the barons of the South.” This letter was written in the early days of the Revolution. At a later date John Adams testifies again to the discord between the North and the South, and refers particularly to the period after the National Constitution, saying: “The Northern and the Southern States were immovably fixed in opposition to each other.”[211] This was before any question of Tariff or Free Trade, and before the growing fortunes of the North had awakened Southern jealousy. The whole opposition had its root in Slavery,—as also had the earlier resistance to Republican Government.
In the face of these influences the Union was formed, but the seeds of conspiracy were latent in its bosom. The spirit already revealed was scarcely silenced; it was not destroyed. It still existed, rankling, festering, burning to make itself manifest. At the mention of Slavery it always appeared full-armed with barbarous pretensions. Even in the first Congress under the Constitution, at the presentation of that famous petition where Benjamin Franklin simply called upon Congress to step to the verge of its power to discourage every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men, this spirit broke forth in violent threats. With kindred lawlessness it early embraced that extravagant dogma of State Rights which has been ever since the convenient cloak of treason and conspiracy. At the Missouri Question, in 1820, it openly menaced dissolution of the Union. Instead of throttling the monster, we submitted to feed it with new concessions. Meanwhile the conspiracy grew, until, at last, in 1830, under the influence of Mr. Calhoun, it assumed the defiant front of Nullification; nor did it yield to the irresistible logic of Webster or the stern will of Jackson without a compromise. The pretended ground of complaint was the Tariff; but Andrew Jackson, himself a patriot Slaveholder, at that time President, saw the hollowness of the complaint. In a confidential letter, only recently brought to light, dated at Washington, May 1, 1833, and which during the last winter I had the honor of reading and holding up before the Senatorial conspirators in the original autograph, he says:—
“The Tariff was only the pretext, and Disunion and a Southern Confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the Negro or Slavery Question.”[212]
Jackson was undoubtedly right; but the pretext which he denounced in advance was employed so constantly afterwards as to become threadbare. At the earliest presentation of Abolition petitions,—at the Texas Question,—at the Compromises of 1850,—at the Kansas Question,—at the possible election of Fremont,—on all these occasions, the Union was threatened by angry Slave-Masters.
The conspiracy is unblushingly confessed by recent parties to it. Especially was this done in the Rebel Convention of South Carolina, where, one after another, the witnesses testified all the same way.