The compromises that promise any thing more than respect for the sovereignty of the States in the matter of slavery, promise more than they could perform; every one feels this, in the South as in the North. The policy of the South forms a whole of which nothing subsists if any thing be retrenched, and above all if the complicity of the Government ceases to be assured to it. On the day that the South accepts any compromise whatever, it will have renounced, not the maintenance doubtless, but the propagation of slavery; it will have renounced its rule. Compromises, (there will be such, perhaps, let us swear to nothing; before or after the war, with the entire South, or with a part of it,) compromises will be signed henceforth without any delusion. The South knows, marvellously well, that these compromises will bear little resemblance to those signed in former times. Those marked, by their constantly increasing pretension, the upward march of the South; these will mark the phases of its decline. How many changes which can never be retraced! No more conquests to promote slavery, no more reopening of the African slave trade, no more impunity secured to those numerous slave-ships which daily, to the knowledge and in the sight of all, for years past, have quitted the ports of the Confederation; no more chance of equalling, by the creation and population of new States, the rapid development of the North; henceforth the question is ended, the South must be resigned to it: the majority of the free States will become such that it can be contested neither in the House of Representatives, nor in the Senate, nor in the presidential election; the supremacy resides at the North, the programme of the South is rent in a thousand pieces.
Against this, all the compromises in the world can do nothing. If Mr. Lincoln is the first President opposed to slavery, Mr. Buchanan is the last President favorable to slavery; the American policy is henceforth fixed. Reflect, in fact, on what these four years of government will produce. The result is so enormous, that, unhappily, one might be tempted to say at Washington: "We will do all that is wished, provided we preserve the handling of affairs."
The power of a President is doubtless inconsiderable, but his advent is that of a party. This party is about to renew all administrations, great and small; the same majority which has elected him will modify before long the tendencies of the courts; in fine, the general affairs of the Union will be managed in a new spirit. It was advancing in one direction, it is about to move in the opposite. Mr. Lincoln is not one to shut his eyes on filibustering attempts to strive to take Cuba for the slavery party, to permit States to be carved out of Mexico, and others to be made ready by subdividing Texas. The process which is about to be accomplished reminds me of the measures taken to combat a vast conflagration: the first thing done is to circumscribe its locality.
At the end of the four years of Mr. Lincoln's administration, the flames which threatened to devour the Union will be completely hemmed in. Considering the United States as a whole, and independently of the incidents of separation, we are justified in believing that the respective number of free and of slave States will leave no chance for the ulterior extension of a great scourge. Do we delude ourselves by thinking that the progress already begun in the border States will have been accelerated in its course, and that many of them will have freely passed over to the side of liberty? Is it certain, moreover, that the hesitation of some of the churches will have ceased, and that the influence of the Gospel, so decisive in America, will have finally placed itself entire at the service of the good cause?
Let there be a compromise or not, let the great secession of the South be prevented or not, let civil war break forth or not, let it give or not give to the South the fleeting eclat of first successes, one fact remains settled henceforth: the United States were tottering on their base, they have regained their equilibrium; the deadly perils which they lately incurred from the plans of conquest of the South and the indefinite extension of slavery, are at length conjured down; they have no longer to ask whether, some day, the South having grown beyond measure, secession must not be effected by the North, leaving in the hands of the slaveholders the glorious name and the starry banner of the Union.
I think that I have gone over the whole series of hypotheses which offer any probability. I have been careful to adopt none of them, for I make no pretension, thank God, to read the future. It would be puerile to prognosticate what will happen, and not less puerile, perhaps, to describe it from what has happened. In the face of the accidents in different directions which are attracting public attention and filling the columns of newspapers, I have attempted to make a distinction between what may happen and what must endure. The lasting consequences of the present crisis are what I proposed to investigate faithfully. The reader knows what are my conclusions. It may be that it will end in the adoption of some blamable compromise; but whatever may be inscribed in it, the election of Mr. Lincoln has just written in the margin a note that will annul the text. The time for certain concessions is past, and the South has no more doubts of it than the North. It may be that the slave States will succeed in founding their deplorable Confederacy, but it is impossible that they should succeed in making it live; they will perceive that it is easier to adopt a compact or to elect a President, than to create, in truth, in the face of the nineteenth century, the nationality of slavery.
I have, therefore, the right to affirm that, whatever may be the appearances and incidents of the moment, one fact has been accomplished and will subsist: the United States were perishing, and are saved. Yes, whatever may be the hypothesis on which we pause, three new and decisive facts appear to our eyes: we know that the North henceforth has the mastery; we know that the perils which threaten the Union came from the South and not from the North; we know that the days of the "patriarchal institution" are numbered. Beneath these three facts, it is not difficult to perceive the uprising of a great people.
The victory of the North, the consciousness which it has of its strength and of its fixed resolution, whatever may be the appearances to the contrary, to circumscribe an evil which was ready to overflow on every side, is the first fact; there is no need to return to it.
As to the second, Carolina and Georgia have charged themselves with bringing it to light. They have proved by their acts that abolitionism had been calumniated in accusing it of menacing the unity of the United States. The secessionist passions have shown themselves in the other camp; there, upon the mere news of a regular election, have been sacrificed unhesitatingly the greatness, and, it would seem, the very existence of the country. The proclamations from Charleston, and the shots fired on the Federal flag, have apprised us of what intelligent observers suspected already: that the States for which slavery had become a passion and almost a mission, must some day experience the need of procuring to such a cause the security of isolation.
And in acting in this wise, these States, strange to say, have themselves stated the problem of abolition. No one thought of it, it may be said; every one respected the constitutional limits of their sovereignty. They would not have it thus; they carried the question into the territory of Federal right and Federal relations; they exclaimed: "Secure the extension of slavery, and perish the United States!" If the United States had perished, there would not have been maledictions deep enough for those who had committed such a crime. The United States will not perish; but they will long remember with gratitude what they owe to the secessionists of 1860. When the hour of emancipation shall have struck, and it will strike some day, the secessionists of 1860 will not probably speak of their rights to indemnity; they have just given a quittance of it in cannon balls.