CHAPTER XVIII. WHY THE SOUTH HAS NOT DENOUNCED THE DEMOCRATIC
PARTY—WHAT KEEPS THE PARTY ALIVE—WHAT THE FINAL END OF THIS REPUBLIC.
THREE more questions, please, and then I will not trouble you more. What you have already said seems to be true, and yet so new and so strange are these revelations to my ears—stranger than any fiction I ever read in the works of Sir Walter Scott or others—that had you not substantiated each proposition with arguments drawn from antecedent probability, from sign, and from example, I could scarcely have believed them. But three queries yet remain in my mind. Allowing all that you have said to be veritable history, how comes it that the South has not denounced the Democratic party for its perfidy in making promises which it never fulfilled? How comes it that, with such a weight of sin upon it, the party can still be kept alive? And, from all your study of history, what deductions do you draw as to the final decline and fall—if such a thing is to be—of this Republic?
Your questions are plain, frank, yet pointed, and I will endeavor to answer each in as plain and frank a manner. First, as to the truth of what we have already said, if the statements and propositions related to any other than a political subject, there would be no more doubt of their truthfulness than of any statement or proposition made by Gibbon, Macaulay, Bancroft, or any other historian. But upon the two subjects of politics and religion, men are generally so set in their opinion that blindness in the one and bigotry in the other seems to be as natural to the human mind "as for grass to be green, or skies to be blue, on bright clear days in June." Nor are such statements ever allowed to go unchallenged, however true they may be, unless the parties have been so long dead and buried that no sympathy remains. What Macaulay says of political parties and of church influences in his History of England, is just as true as any other part of his admirable work, and yet the work had scarcely made its appearance before the most violent epithets were hurled at him because of these. Had Gibbon written his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ten or even five centuries earlier, it would have received most bitter denunciation from all who yet sympathized with the wrongs which Gibbon pointed out, and even so late as the eighteenth century, when his work was first published, it did not escape censure. While Bancroft only wrote of the long, long ago, in his capital History of the United States, nobody questioned his statements or deductions; but as he approached nearer to the present, and had of necessity to say something of the acts and influence of political parties and of churches, he awoke the sleeping demons—blindness and bigotry—and from thenceforth there was more or less growl whenever a new volume appeared. I revive and mention these facts now, only to show you, my friend, that I am not at all surprised at your inquiries; nor shall I be surprised if the last six chapters of this volume, and, because of these, the whole book, are most violently and bitterly denounced by the entire Democratic press of this country, and by every religious and political journal in this country and Europe whose special province it is to uphold foreign religious and political influence. With these as introductory remarks, I will now proceed to answer your inquiries.
1. How comes it that the South has not denounced the Democratic party for its perfidy in making promises which it never fulfilled?
We have no sympathy now, and never had, with rebellion, as such; and, while it continued, helped to fight it as best we could; but we had then, and have now, a very deep sympathy with those who were blindly led to their own destruction by wicked, designing men. To no people in all of history are the words of our blessed Saviour more applicable than to the people of the South, when he said, "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!"
We have heretofore spoken of Jefferson Davis, his Cabinet, and of others with whom he advised, as high-minded, honorable gentlemen. This character they had before the war, maintained it during the war, and such as survived continued to maintain it after the war. After the war, Mr. Davis had but little to say of the events of the past. He preferred not to talk of them at all, as he often said to those who broached the subject, and never would talk of them except to his most confidential friends. He desired to live a quiet, peaceful, retired, Christian life, in the bosom of his little family (and no man ever had a truer or more faithful helpmeet than Mrs. Davis proved to be to her husband), nor would he allow himself to talk of politics at all, as before stated, except to a very few. From one of these few we have it, as from Mr. Davis's own lips, that no one felt, nor could feel, more keenly than he did, the perfidy, the meanness, the baseness which had been practised upon the South by certain leading Democratic politicians of the North; and yet he could not but recollect that others, as they had opportunity, had aided him and their cause to the full extent of their ability, and had the will to aid them a thousand times more, if they could have done so with safety to themselves, personally and pecuniarily. This last recollection took the keen edge off the first, and left a sort of dulcamara—a bitter-sweet—to rest upon his mind.
And, besides this, only a choice of evils was left to him and his followers. Their own party of Secession having been destroyed, only the Democratic and Republican parties remained. To side with or go into the Republican party was out of the question. Such as did, would be charged with, or suspected of, treachery by both sides. To denounce and yet expect to get into, or cooperate with, the Democratic party, was out of the question. No one can regard as a friend one that curses him. So, you see, they were walled in, as it were, on every side, and, as a choice of evils, thought it best to go into the Democratic party—to which most of them had belonged all their lives, previous to the rebellion—to hold their peace, and to "wait for the good time coming which the voice of certain siren leaders still whispered into their ears. We say this not in a poetic, but in a historic sense; for we know it to be true that, after the close of the rebellion, prominent leaders of the Democratic party North said to prominent gentlemen of the South that so soon as they could get the general government once again into their own hands, all Southern claims upon the government, because of the war, should be adjusted, the same as Northern claims had been; all bonds issued by the Confederate government during the war should be placed upon precisely the same footing as the bonds issued by the United States government during the same period; and that slavery should be restored as it was before the war, or those who had owned slaves, or their legal representatives, should be paid full value for every slave they had lost. When it was said to them that to do all this would require several alterations in the United States Constitution as it now stands, their ready reply was, "Only put the government into our hands, and we'll find means to amend the Constitution just as readily as to make laws, for all needed purposes. Your wrongs and ours will find a way, or make one!" With such assurances, made over and over again in the most solemn manner, how could a Southern man find it in his heart to denounce the Democratic party, notwithstanding all the wrongs he had suffered from it?