The Uprising of a Great People / The United States in 1861. to Which is Added a Word of Peace on the Difference Between England the United States.

by comte de Agénor Gasparin

THE PRESENT CRISIS WILL REGENERATE THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES.

It remains for me to inquire what influence the present crisis may exert on the institutions of the United States. It is at the expense of these institutions that the slave States, inferior in strength, in numbers, in progress of every kind, would reëstablish their fatal and growing preponderance. Here again, therefore, my thesis subsists: the victories of the South had compromised every thing, the resistance of the North is about to save every thing; the election of Mr. Lincoln is a painful but salutary crisis, it is the first effort of a great people rising.

The party of slavery had introduced into the heart of American democracy, a permanent cause of debasement and corruption. In this respect, also, it was leading the Confederation to its death by the most direct and speedy way. I wish to show how it developed the worst sides of the democratic system. I hope to be impartial towards this system; although persuaded that the government of which England offers us the model is better suited to guaranty public liberties and to second true progress in every thing, I am not of those who place the shadow before the substance, and who condemn democracy without appeal. Are we destined some day to pass into its hands? Have we already begun to glide down the descent that leads to it? It is possible. In any case, it would be unjust to hate America on account of it, as is too often done. America has had no choice; in virtue of its origin and its history, it could be nothing else than a democracy. If it has the faults of democracy, the unamiable rudeness, the violent proceedings, the levelling passions, I am scarcely surprised at it. I ask myself rather if it has known how to find a basis of support against the temptations of such a system, if it has prevented the subjugation of individuals by the mass, the absorption of consciences by the State, the substitution of the sovereignty of the end for that of the people. These are the shoals of democracy; have they been shunned by the United States? Have they been able to avoid transforming it either into tyranny or socialism? We shall see that, if it has not succumbed to the temptation, this has not been the fault of the party of slavery. Thanks to it, the corruption of democratic institutions was rapidly advancing; a single adversary, constantly the same, has combated the progress of this work of destruction. We shall encounter again, upon the ground of political institutions, the fundamental antagonism of the Gospel and slavery.

I say first, that it is rarely that names are altogether fortuitous, and do not correspond to things. It has often given rise to astonishment that the party of slavery should have taken the name of the democratic party; notwithstanding, nothing was more natural. How could slavery have been defended if not by exaggerating democracy? It was necessary, in such a cause, to deny the notions of right, of truth, and of justice; it was necessary that the greater number should become right, truth, and justice.

Something more even was needed. The sovereignty of the end must yield, if necessary, before the sovereignty of numbers. A cause like that of slavery is only defended in the heart of a democratic nation, by teaching it contempt of scruples, and the stifling of the conscience. Every thing is allowable, every thing is good, provided that we succeed in our ends! This is the rule which it designs shall prevail in political contests. A single question, seeing nothing but itself, determined to spare nothing, offering itself to parties, whoever they may be, who seek a change, creating factitious majorities to effect the ends of base ambition, taking account neither of honor nor country, and attaining its end through every thing—this is enough to vitiate profoundly institutions and morals. The sovereignty of the idea, when it has laid hands on the sovereignty of the people, is in a position to go to great lengths, and to sink very low. Moral maxims and written laws are trodden under foot, a struggle without pity or remorse begins, a struggle of life and death. Social passions easily acquire a degree of perversity which political passions do not possess; the former are without conscience and without compassion; they will be satisfied, cost what it may; triumph is in their eyes an absolute, an inexorable necessity. Rather than not conquer, they will rend the country.

What the regular working of institutions becomes under such a pressure, every one can divine. For some years past, in proportion as the pretensions of the slavery party had increased, we had seen public morals become tainted in the United States. Indifference to means had made alarming progress, and had been felt even in the habits of commerce, and the relations of private life. The spirit of enterprise had come to be exalted even in its most dishonorable acts; respect for bankrupts seemed almost to be propagated. It is a fact, that men like Mr. Jefferson Davis, the present President of the revolted South, were not afraid to recommend the repudiation of debts. In the school of slavery, a disembarrassed and unscrupulous manner of acting had given its stamp to the general manner of the nation. Affairs were going on rapidly, the liberties of America were on the high road to ruin; it was time that the reaction of liberal and honorable sentiments should make itself felt. The election of 1860 marked the stopping-place.

I wonder that they could have stopped; such a fact demands an explanation, for ordinarily the declivities of democratic decline are never remounted. The natural tendency there being to deny the right of the minority, (the most precious of all,) to sink the man entire in the ballot, to lay violent hands on the private portion of his life, and to force even his conscience into the social contract, it follows that governments arise in which the question of limitation becomes effaced by the question of origin. In the face of such a power, nothing is left standing; no more rights, no more principles, no more of those solid and resisting blocks which serve to stem the popular current; the province of the State becomes indefinite.

And how much more irresistible and more perverse is this tendency, when a profound cause of corruption, such as slavery, adds its action to the strength of such democracies! It is no longer, in such cases, the sovereign majority alone before which the right may be forced to bow, it is a party determined to attain its ends, which penetrates with violence into that domain of conscience where human laws should not enter; a party which sets about regulating sometimes the belief, sometimes the thought, sometimes the speech. Such has been the influence exercised in the United States by the institution of slavery; it has forbidden authors to write, clergymen to preach, and almost individuals to think any thing that displeased it; it has invented the right of secession, in order to have at its disposal a formidable means of intimidation, and to place a threat behind each of its demands. To yield, to descend, to descend still further, to obey a continued impulse of democratic debasement, such is the course to which it has impelled the whole Confederation.

Notwithstanding, the United States have resisted. I shall tell why; I shall show by virtue of what marvellous force Americans have escaped the absolute levelling which seemed destined to be produced by a complicated democracy of slavery. But I wish first to finish depicting the natural effects of such a system.

Suppose for a moment a nation (and such are not wanting) modelled after the antique. The Pagan principle reigns there supremely, the State absorbs every thing, souls are banded together and governed; a centralized power, a visible Providence, is substituted for individual action; creeds have essentially the hereditary and national form; each one believes what the rest believe, each one does what the rest do, each one holds the opinions which are found in the ancient traditions of the country; truth is no longer a personal conviction, acquired at the price of earnest struggles, and worth much because it has cost much; it descends to the rank of customs to which it is fitting to conform, it has its marked place among social obligations, and forms part of the duties of the citizen.