The Brothers' War

by John C. Reed

The Roman master, in the later days of the republic, having always vast markets open to him, shunned the expense of providing for women and children, and bought new slaves instead of breeding them; but the closing of the African slave-trade, and the softer hearts and manners of modern times, led our planters, at last, to rely on propagation as their only source of supply. The negroes were, therefore, well cared for, and, in a genial clime, increased rapidly. This increase, however, did not keep pace with the increasing demand for southern products, and so the market value of the slave rose rapidly. To the Roman slaveholder, land was almost everything, and his rustic slaves nothing; to the southerner, the slaves were almost everything, and the land nothing. There was no careful cultivation of the soil, no judicious rotation of crops, and no adequate system of fertilization. Southern husbandry was, for the most part, a reckless pillage of the bounty of nature. The planter became possessed with a roving spirit, and was continually seeking “fresh land,” as virgin soil was termed. In the older sections, where there was most stability, the best farming consisted in judiciously eking out the natural fertility of the fields, and when that was exhausted, in leaving them to recuperate by years of rest. Thus a given working force required, year by year, a greater and greater allowance of land, and the plantations became steadily larger, the small farmer retiring, and the white population becoming continually less. Many of these older sections turned, from being agricultural communities, into nurseries, rearing slaves for the younger States where virgin soil was abundant. The fertile lands of the new settlements, by yielding bountiful crops, gave fresh impulse to the plantation system, and here the small holdings were absorbed more rapidly than they had been in the older States. The southern slaves, regarded as property, were the most desirable investment open to the generality of people that has ever been known. They were patient, tractable, and submissive, and never revolted in combined insurrections, as did the slaves of antiquity. Their labor was richly remunerative; their market value was constantly rising; they were everywhere more easily convertible into money than the best securities; and their natural increase was so rapid that a part of it could be squandered by a shiftless owner every year to make both ends meet, and he still be left enough of accumulation to enrich him steadily. And so the plantation, or rather the slave, system swallowed up everything else.

There were no distinct industrial classes. There were negro blacksmiths, negro carpenters, negro shoemakers, etc., all over the land, but they were mere appendages to the plantations, and far inferior in capacity and skill to the artisan slaves of antiquity.

The commerce of the south was non-reciprocal. She traded raw produce for manufactures which she should have made herself, or which she should have got in exchange for manufactures of her own. The over-mastering energy of slave property, dissolving, as it were, all things into itself, kept her from that development of trades, manufactories, and industrial arts which is the solid and unprecedented progress, and far more durable wealth, of the north.

There were a few exceptions in the way of restorative agriculture, and of diversified investments of capital in railways, manufactories, inland navigation, and mercantile enterprises. All along the northern border there were efforts to let go slavery, and non-slave industry was slowly emerging in a few places; but these things were as dust in the balances. The slave system was rooted in the best portions of the land, and nearly all of the productive wealth of the south was in, or dependent upon, planting. Implacable enemies of slavery were rapidly increasing in numbers and power, but she continued blindly sacrificing everything to rear negroes. When actual emancipation came—that nipping May frost—the south showed, on a gigantic scale, in her poverty and one solitary and portentously dried-up source of wealth, a parallel to Ireland, smitten with famine by the sudden failure of her only supply of food. When the charity of the world and the returning bounty of nature had again fed the Green Isle, everything fell back into the old track, and she could go on smoothly as before. But not so with the south: her wealth has fled; her occupation, the plantation system, is gone; and she must, for a generation, grope painfully in the dark, trying novel ways of subsisting, enduring want and many failures, before finding again the light of plenty and comfort.

The duties of the planter have changed. The management of a farm is not like that of a plantation, and one skilled in the management of slaves is not necessarily efficient in the directing of freedmen. Many other countries have been impoverished by wars; but is not this instantaneous and almost complete taking away of a great people’s mode of living unique in history? The most resolute secessionist would have lost heart and put up his sword, could he have seen, before the war commenced, how easily the solitary prop of southern wealth and comfort could be overturned, to be set up no more. But in none of the ablest of the anti-secession arguments of 1860 were the consequences of defeat predicted.

Some portions of our country have been built up into a high degree of prosperity by a steady influx of foreign settlers. How much has been added to the power and wealth of the northern States by the immigration from the old lands of those who, when first they come, can do no more than subsist themselves by their own industry, almost defies computation. How the force of the preponderant population of the north pressed upon the south during the war, and at last crushed her down! Slavery repelled the free immigrant from the south, and he went elsewhere with his power to enrich and defend.

The uniform and rapid advancement of civilization is mainly due to the struggle of the poor to better their condition. These efforts result in complex division of labor, accumulation of wealth, and better than these, in the production of a great population engaged in diversified industries. In such a population, improving year by year in business habits, consists the strength of a nation. The slave had no hope of rising, and the system of which he was a part repelled free workingmen, and thus the south lost the benign emulation and energy of a lower class. The ancient slaves were not alone rural laborers and domestic servants, as were those of the south. The former, being of kindred blood with their masters and near their level in natural capacity, were initiated in the various industries, some of which flourished greatly under their management. Though the slaves of old were very degraded, they were not as low and grovelling as those of our day. Enfranchisement was common; and, in a few generations afterwards, the descendants of the freedman were indistinguishable amid the body of free citizens. The ancient states were not, therefore, prevented by slavery from having advanced and diversified industries, nor were they denied the impulse of a possible rising from the lower to the higher classes. But the American slave was of the remotest race, far below his master in development, and the horror of receiving him into the body of free citizens grew continually stronger. The law discouraged manumission, and frowned upon the increase of freedmen. Thus, the African slavery of the south was the most hopeless form of servitude the civilized world has ever seen; and, by preventing the formation of a great class of freemen, engaged in respectable industry, it killed the very roots of social progress. These influences of slavery, so repugnant to American ideas, will be more vividly seen and understood in the answer to the question, What would have been the present condition of the south had it not been for slavery? Undoubtedly her land would have smiled with a fertility richer than the endowment of nature; her industrial arts would, ere this time, have branched out into multifarious activity; her own ships would have been carrying her produce and manufactures abroad; and, as the crown of all, she would have had a teeming population of workers, whose education in the methods of self-support would have been the assurance of unlimited future advancement. In brief, in all the elements of the greatness of a community, the south might now have equalled, if not excelled, the north.

But there are some other effects of slavery to be noted before the outline of the Old south can be clearly and fully drawn.

Among the planters, costly and liberal instruction was given to a few of those who were to adorn places of leisured ease, or to fill the necessary professions and public positions; but, in the midst of the sparse and shifting rural population, there could not be that devotion to the education of all, which is one of the most conspicuous glories of the northern States.

In consequence of the sparseness of the planters and their roving habits, there was not that subdivision of different portions of the counties into small self-governing wards, which Jefferson so fondly desired. He said of the New England townships, that they had “proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation.” He also said that he considered the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on two hooks, to wit, “the public education, and the subdivision into wards.” This government of every vicinage in its home affairs by itself, as originated in New England, and is now spread far and wide throughout the northern States, is the most beneficent achievement of American democracy. By this coercion of the citizen to participate in the constant administration of public matters directly concerning his interests, self-government becomes, as it should be, the business of everybody, and everybody is compulsorily educated in the best of all learning for the race.