And this enemy is not one that can be conquered once for all. Even after the victory, even in times of peace, the threat of servile insurrection will ever remain suspended over the head of the Southern Confederacy; it will be necessary always to watch, always to be on the guard, always to repress, and, to tell the truth, always to tremble. The planters, whether they know it or not, are not preparing to sleep on a bed of roses. To labor to accomplish an iniquitous work amidst the maledictions of the universe, to increase their estates and their slaves under penalty of death, and to feel instinctively that they will die for having increased them, to tremble because of European hostility, to tremble because of American hostility, to tremble because of hostility from without and within—what a life! That one might accept it in the service of a noble cause, I can comprehend; but the cause of the South! In truth, this would be taking great pains for small wages.
The South inspires me with profound compassion. We have told it, much too often, that its Confederacy was easy to found. To found, yes; to make lasting, no. Here, it is not the first step that costs—it is the second, it is the third. The Southern Confederacy is not viable. Let us suppose that, to its misfortune, it has succeeded in all that it has just undertaken: Charleston is free, the border States are drawn in, there is a new federal compact and a new President, the Northern States have of necessity abandoned the suppression of the insurrection by force, Europe has surmounted its repugnance and received the envoys of the great Slave republic. All questions seem resolved; but no, not a single one has attained its solution.
The policy of the South must have its application. Its first article, whether it declares it or not, exacts conquests, the absorption of Mexico, for example. The fillibusters of Walker are still ready to set out, and the first moment past, when the question is to appear discreet, it is scarcely probable that they will meet with much restraint, now that the prudence of the North is no longer at hand to counterbalance the passions of Slavery.
Admit that this enterprise bring no difficult complications. For these new territories, the question will be to procure negroes. The second article of the Southern policy will find then nolens volens, its inevitable application: the African slave trade will be re-established. The richest planter of Georgia, Mr. Goulden, has taken care to set forth its necessity; mark the language which he held lately: "You have hardly negroes enough for the existing States; obtain the opening of the slave trade, then you can undertake to increase the number of slave States."
Will the official re-opening of the slave trade be some day effected without bringing on a storm which will destroy the new Confederacy? I cannot say. In any case, I know one thing: that the value of the slaves, and consequently that of Southern property, will experience a decline greatly exceeding that by which it is now threatened, as it is said, by the abolition tendencies of the North. Already, through the mere fact of secession, the price of negroes has diminished one-half; and more than one intelligent planter foresees the time when this price shall have diminished three-fourths, perhaps nine-tenths. Southern fortunes are falling off, therefore, with extreme rapidity, and this arises not only from the anticipated effects of the slave trade, but also from the certainty of being unable henceforth to put a stop to the escape of the slaves. These escapes, taken all in all, remained insignificant, so long as the Union was maintained; there are not more than fifty thousand free negroes in Canada. But henceforth the Southern Confederacy will have a Canada everywhere on its frontiers. How retain that slavery that will escape simultaneously on the North, and the South? The Southern republic will be as it were the common enemy, and no one assuredly will aid it to keep its slaves.
It must not be believed, moreover, that it will succeed long in preserving itself from intestine divisions—divisions among the whites. If, at the first moment, when every thing is easy, unanimity is far from appearing as complete as had been foretold, it will, later, be much worse. We shall then perceive how prophetic, if I may dare say so, were the often-quoted words of Washington's farewell address: "It is necessary that you should accustom yourselves to regard the Union as the palladium of your happiness and your security; that you should watch over it with a jealous eye; that you should impose silence on any who shall ever dare counsel you to renounce it; that you should give vent to all your indignation on the first effort that shall be attempted to detach from the whole any part of the Confederation."
A very different voice, that of Jefferson, spoke the same language. A Southern man, addressing himself to the South, which talked already of seceding he described in thrilling words the inevitable consequences of such an act: "If, to rid ourselves of the present supremacy of Massachusetts and Connecticut, we were to break up the Union, would the trouble stop there?... We should soon see a Pennsylvanian party and a Virginian party forming, in what remained of the Confederation, and the same party spirit would agitate public opinion. By what new weapons would these parties be armed, if they had power to threaten each other continually with joining their Northern neighbors, in case things did not go on in such or such a manner! If we were to reduce our Union to North Carolina and Virginia, the conflict would break out again directly between the representatives of these two States; we should end by being reduced to simple unities."
Is not this the anticipated history of what is about to happen in the Southern Confederacy, supposing it to succeed in uniting with a part of the border States? The opening programme will last as long as programmes usually do. When the true plan of the South, veiled for a moment, shall reappear, (and it must indeed reappear, unless it perishes before it has begun to exist;) when the question shall be to increase and be peopled, to make conquests and to reëstablish the African slave trade; when the serious purpose, in a word, shall have replaced the purpose of circumstance, what will take place between the border States and the cotton States? The profound distinction which exists between them will then manifest itself, even if it does not break forth before. A new South and a new North will be formed, as hostile perhaps as the old, and less forgiving towards each other of their mutual faults, inasmuch as they will be embittered by misfortune. Nothing divides people like a bad cause that turns out badly. They think themselves united, they call themselves united, until the moment when they discover that they have neither the same end nor the same mind. I do not see why the victory of Mr. Lincoln will have transformed the South, and suppressed the divergencies which separated it into two groups: that of the Gulf States voting for Mr. Breckenridge, that of the border States voting for Mr. Douglas or Mr. Bell, and even casting ballots for Mr. Lincoln.
Not only will the Gulf States, the only true secessionists, never act in concert with the border States, but they will not be long in seeing parties spring up in their own bosom, which will be little disposed to come to terms. A sort of feudal question, as is well known, is near obtaining a position in the South; the poor whites there are two or three times as numerous as the planters. The struggle of classes may, therefore, break out as soon as the effected secession shall have banished to the second rank the struggle against the adversaries of slavery.
The impoverishment of the South will not aid in calming its intestine quarrels. European immigration, already so meagre in the slave States, (Charleston is the only large American city whose population has decreased, according to the last census,) European immigration, I say, will evidently diminish still more when the South shall have taken an independent and hostile position opposite the Northern States. Who will go then to expose himself lightly to the fearful chances which the first war with any country, American or European, may bring in its train? And credit will go the same way as immigration: to lend money to planters, whose entire property is continually menaced with destruction, is one of those hazardous operations from which commerce is accustomed to recoil. Deprived of the capital furnished it by New York, obtaining only with great difficulty a few onerous and precarious advances in Europe, the South will see itself smitten at once in all its means of production; and, after the harvest of 1860, which secures our supplies for a year, after that of 1861, which it will succeed, probably, in gathering, but which it will be more difficult to sell, it is not easy to divine how it will set to work to continue its crops. While the South produces less cotton, and we lose the habit of buying of it, the cotton culture will become acclimated elsewhere; the future will thus be destroyed like the present; final ruin will approach with hasty strides.