It must be admitted, at the same time, that the action of the States which first seceded was marked by a petulant haste; and it is only too probable that the people of these States suffered themselves to be too easily persuaded that the North meant mischief. It is impossible to determine how far the professional politician was responsible for the Civil War. But when we recall the fact that secession followed close on the overthrow of a faction which had long monopolised the spoils of office, and that this faction found compensation in the establishment of a new government, it is not easy to resist the suspicion that the secession movement was neither more nor less than a conspiracy, hatched by a clever and unscrupulous cabal.
It would be unwise, however, to brand the whole, or even the majority, of the Southern leaders as selfish and unprincipled. Unless he has real grievances on which to work, or unless those who listen to him are supremely ignorant, the mere agitator is powerless; and it is most assuredly incredible that seven millions of Anglo-Saxons, and Anglo-Saxons of the purest strain—English, Lowland Scottish, and North Irish—should have been beguiled by silver tongues of a few ambitious or hare-brained demagogues. The latter undoubtedly had a share in bringing matters to a crisis. But the South was ripe for revolution long before the presidential election. The forces which were at work needed no artificial impulse to propel them forward. It was instinctively recognised that the nation had outgrown the Constitution; and it was to this, and not to the attacks upon slavery, that secession was really due. The North had come to regard the American people as one nation, and the will of the majority as paramount.[[10]] The South, on the other hand, holding, as it had always held, that each State was a nation in itself, denied in toto that the will of the majority, except in certain specified cases, had any power whatever; and where political creeds were in such direct antagonism no compromise was possible. Moreover, as the action of the abolitionists very plainly showed, there was a growing tendency in the North to disregard altogether the rights of the minority. Secession, in fact, was a protest against mob rule. The weaker community, hopeless of maintaining its most cherished principles within the Union, was ready to seize the first pretext for leaving it; and the strength of the popular sentiment may be measured by the willingness of every class, gentle and simple, rich and poor, to risk all and to suffer all, in order to free themselves from bonds which must soon have become unbearable. It is always difficult to analyse the motives of those by whom revolution is provoked; but if a whole people acquiesce, it is a certain proof of the existence of universal apprehension and deep-rooted discontent. The spirit of self-sacrifice which animated the Confederate South has been characteristic of every revolution which has been the expression of a nation’s wrongs, but it has never yet accompanied mere factious insurrection.
When, in process of time, the history of Secession comes to be viewed with the same freedom from prejudice as the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it will be clear that the fourth great Revolution of the English-speaking race differs in no essential characteristic from those which preceded it. It was not simply because the five members were illegally impeached in 1642, the seven bishops illegally tried in 1688, men shot at Lexington in 1775, or slavery threatened in 1861, that the people rose. These were the occasions, not the causes of revolt. In each case a great principle was at stake: in 1642 the liberty of the subject; in 1688 the integrity of the Protestant faith; in 1775 taxation only with consent of the taxed; in 1861 the sovereignty of the individual States.[[11]]
The accuracy of this statement, as already suggested, has been consistently denied. That the only principle involved in Secession was the establishment of slavery on a firmer basis, and that the cry of States’ Rights was raised only by way of securing sympathy, is a very general opinion. But before it can be accepted, it is necessary to make several admissions; first, that the Southerners were absolutely callous to the evils produced by the institution they had determined to make permanent; second, that they had persuaded themselves, in face of the tendencies of civilisation, that it was possible to make it permanent; and third, that they conscientiously held their progress and prosperity to be dependent on its continued existence. Are we to believe that the standard of morals and intelligence was so low as these admissions would indicate? Are we to believe that if they had been approached in a charitable spirit, that if the Republican party, disclaiming all right of interference, had offered to aid them in substituting, by some means which would have provided for the control of the negro and, at the same time, have prevented an entire collapse of the social fabric, a system more consonant with humanity, the Southerners would have still preferred to leave the Union, and by creating a great slave-power earn the execration of the Christian world?
Unless the South be credited with an unusual measure of depravity and of short-sightedness, the reply can hardly be in the affirmative. And if it be otherwise, there remains but one explanation of the conduct of the seceding States—namely the dread that if they remained in the Union they would not be fairly treated.
It is futile to argue that the people were dragooned into secession by the slave-holders. What power had the slave-holders over the great mass of the population, over the professional classes, over the small farmer, the mechanic, the tradesman, the labourer? Yet it is constantly asserted by Northern writers, although the statement is virtually an admission that only the few were prepared to fight for slavery, that the Federal sentiment was so strong among the Southerners that terrorism must have had a large share in turning them into Separatists. The answer, putting aside the very patent fact that the Southerner was not easily coerced, is very plain. Undoubtedly, throughout the South there was much affection for the Union; but so in the first Revolution there was much loyalty to the Crown, and yet it has never been asserted that the people of Virginia or of New England were forced into sedition against their will. The truth is that there were many Southerners who, in the vain hope of compromise, would have postponed the rupture; but when the right of secession was questioned, and the right of coercion was proclaimed, all differences of opinion were swept away, and the people, thenceforward, were of one heart and mind. The action of Virginia is a striking illustration.
The great border State, the most important of those south of Mason and Dixon’s line, was not a member of the Confederacy when the Provisional Government was established at Montgomery. Nor did the secession movement secure any strong measure of approval. In fact, the people of Virginia, owing to their closer proximity to, and to their more intimate knowledge of, the North, were by no means inclined to make of the Black Republican President the bugbear he appeared to the States which bordered on the Gulf of Mexico. Whilst acknowledging that the South had grievances, they saw no reason to believe that redress might not be obtained by constitutional means. At the same time, although they questioned the expediency, they held no half-hearted opinion as to the right, of secession, and in their particular case the right seems undeniable. When the Constitution of the United States was ratified, Virginia, by the mouth of its Legislature, had solemnly declared “that the powers granted [to the Federal Government] under the Constitution, being truly derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury and oppression.” And this declaration had been more than once reaffirmed. As already stated, this view of the political status of the Virginia citizen was not endorsed by the North. Nevertheless, it was not definitely rejected. The majority of the Northern people held the Federal Government paramount, but, at the same time, they held that it had no power either to punish or coerce the individual States. This had been the attitude of the founders of the Republic, and it is perfectly clear that their interpretation of the Constitution was this: although the several States were morally bound to maintain the compact into which they had voluntarily entered, the obligation, if any one State chose to repudiate it, could not be legally enforced. Their ideal was a Union based upon fraternal affection; and in the halcyon days of Washington’s first presidency, when the long and victorious struggle against a common enemy was still fresh in men’s minds, and the sun of liberty shone in an unclouded sky, a vision so Utopian perhaps seemed capable of realisation. At all events, the promise of a new era of unbroken peace and prosperity was not to be sullied by cold precautions against civil dissensions and conflicting interests. The new order, under which every man was his own sovereign, would surely strengthen the links of kindly sympathy, and by those links alone it was believed that the Union would be held together. Such was the dream of the unselfish patriots who ruled the destinies of the infant Republic. Such were the ideas that so far influenced their deliberations that, with all their wisdom, they left a legacy to their posterity which deluged the land in blood.
Mr. Lincoln’s predecessor in the presidential chair had publicly proclaimed that coercion was both illegal and inexpedient; and for the three months which intervened between the secession of South Carolina and the inauguration of the Republican President, the Government made not the slightest attempt to interfere with the peaceable establishment of the new Confederacy. Not a single soldier reinforced the garrisons of the military posts in the South. Not a single regiment was recalled from the western frontiers; and the seceded States, without a word of protest, were permitted to take possession, with few exceptions, of the forts, arsenals, navy yards and custom houses which stood on their own territory. It seemed that the Federal Government was only waiting until an amicable arrangement might be arrived at as to the terms of separation.
If, in addition to the words in which she had assented to the Constitution, further justification were needed for the belief of Virginia in the right of secession, it was assuredly to be found in the apparent want of unanimity on so grave a question even in the Republican party, and in the acquiescent attitude of the Federal Government.
The people of Virginia, however, saw in the election of a Republican President no immediate danger of the Constitution being “perverted to their injury and oppression.” The North, generally speaking, regarded the action of the secessionists with that strange and good-humoured tolerance with which the American citizen too often regards internal politics. The common sense of the nation asserted itself in all its strength. A Union which could only be maintained by force was a strange and obnoxious idea to the majority. Amid the storm of abuse and insult in which the two extreme parties indulged, the abolitionists on the one side, the politicians on the other, Lincoln,