The Brothers' War

by John C. Reed

Yet the union men, who were hosts in the north and numerous even in the south at that time, accepted Webster’s speech as the bible of their political faith, and as its reward ennobled him with the pre-eminent title of Expounder of the Constitution. They ignored, or they never learned of, the pulverizing refutation. But the State-rights men and the south generally understood. Webster also understood. He did not make any real rejoinder. And his subsequent utterances are in harmony with the State-rights doctrine to which Calhoun seems to have converted him.[31] I fancy that with that rare humor which was one of his shining gifts, he dubbed himself in his secret meditations, “Expounder because not expounding.” Later I shall tell you how Webster builded better than he knew, and that there was, after all, in the speech that which fully justifies the worship it received from the union men.

But there is something else pertinent to be learned here. That the north generally found out only what Webster said in the debate for his side, and never even heard of what was said on the other, and that the south became at once familiar with both speeches, proves that each section had already formed its own belonging and independent public, and that the southern public kept attentive watch upon all affairs of fact or opinion interesting the other, while the northern public knew hardly anything at all of the south. A large percentage of the southern leaders had studied in northern schools and colleges. In this and many other ways they had been instructed as to the north. Such instruction contributed very greatly to southern supremacy in the federal government until the election of Lincoln. We can now see that the powers in charge, as a part of their work, made the great northern public, which, as Lincoln observed, was to be the savior of the union, stop its ears to all anti-union sentiments or arguments. How else can you understand it that the ante-bellum notices of Webster, the memoir by Everett, the different utterances of Choate, and many, many other sketches, are so utterly dumb as to Calhoun’s great reply? And is not the same dumbness of Curtis, Von Holst, and McMaster, writing after the war, due to the survival in the north of the old constraint? a constraint so powerful that, while Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, in 1883, did concede just a little to Calhoun, he stopped far short of the full justice that I believe he would now render were he to traverse the ground again.

We must now go beyond what we have already hinted, and show you plainly how both the union men and the State-rights men assumed untenable premises, and how the south, maintaining a cause foredoomed, vanquished in the forum of discussion her adversary, maintaining the side which fate had decreed must win. In no other way can the reader be better made to understand the incalculable potency of the forces which preserved the American union after its orators and advocates had all been discomfited; and in no other way can he better learn what principles are to be invoked if he would grasp the real essence of the union.

We emphasize the material and cardinal mistake of the union men, thus phrased by Webster in the speech we have discussed: “Whether the constitution be a compact between States in their sovereign capacities, is a question which must be mainly argued from what is contained in the instrument itself.”

This was to abandon inexpugnable ground. That ground was the great body of pertinent facts, known to all, which begun the making of the union before the declaration of independence, and which, from that time on to the very hour that Webster was speaking, had been making the union stronger and more perfect. He ought to have contended that a nation grows; that it cannot be made, or be at all modified, even by a constitution. Any constitution is its creature, not its creator.

How weak he was when he invoked construction of the federal constitution as the main umpire. That constitution had been always construed against him. The three departments of the federal government had each uniformly treated it as a compact between sovereign States; and they kept this up until the brothers’ war broke out. Mr. Stephens, in his great compilation,[32] demonstrates this unanswerably. But the State-rights men had a still greater strength than even this, if the question be conceded to be one of construction. As the author of the Republic of Republics shows by a mountain of proofs, the illustrious draftsmen of the constitution and their contemporaries who finally got the constitution adopted—all the people, high and low, who favored the cause—declared at the time that the sovereignty of the States would remain unimpaired after adoption.[33]

To sum up, the generation that drafted and adopted the constitution, and all the succeeding ones who had lived under it, agreed that the States were sovereign.

How could even Webster talk these facts out of existence? At every stage of the intersectional debate the cause of the south supporting State sovereignty became stronger. And there were great hosts at the north who understood the record as the south did; and, while they hoped and prayed that separation would never come, they conscientiously conceded State sovereignty to the full. It seems to me to be the fact that, although the federal soldiers cherished deep love for the union, a very great majority of the more intelligent among them did not long keep at its height the emotion excited by the attack on Fort Sumter, and soon settled back into their former creed, holding, because of the reasons summarized above, the States to be sovereign; and while they thought it supreme folly in the south to set up the confederacy, they still believed that to do so was but the exercise of an indubitable right of the States creating it. From what I saw at the time, and the many proofs that appeared to accumulate upon me afterwards, this explains the unprecedented panic with which the federal army abandoned the field at the First Manassas. Consider just a moment. The federal army, giving the confederates a complete surprise, turns their position and drives them back in rout. The confederates make an unexpected stand, fight for some hours, and at last, assuming the offensive, win the field. The troops on each side practically all raw volunteers, very much alike in race and character. But the federals had much more than two to one engaged, as is demonstrated by the fact that the confederates had only twenty-five regiments of infantry in action, and they took prisoners from fifty-five. The more one who, like me, observed much of the war, thinks it over, the more clearly he sees that the flight from Manassas is not to be explained because of the superior courage and stamina of the southern soldiers. I believe that the union men, observing how brave and death-defying their brothers on the other side were in facing disaster that seemed irretrievable and odds irresistible, at last became convinced that these brothers, defending home and firesides, were right, and that they themselves, invading an inviolably sovereign State, were heinously wrong; and thus awakened conscience made cowards of all these gallant men. And it is thoroughly established, I believe, that everywhere in the first engagements of the war, the southern volunteers, if they were commanded by a fighter, showed far more spirit and stomach than their adversaries. In the amicable meetings, often occurring upon the picket line, when we confederates would with good humor ask the union men how it was that we won so many fights, it was a stereotyped reply of the latter, “Why, you are fighting for your country and we only for $13 a month.” It was but natural that, by reason of what has been told in the foregoing, the south unanimously, and a very large number at the north, should believe any State could under its reserved powers rightfully secede from the union whenever and for whatever cause it pleased.

We see now what the angry brothers did not see. The absolute sovereignty of the States, and the right of secession both de facto and de jure could have been conceded, and at the same time the war for the union justified. The unionists could well have said to the south:

“Your independence is too great a menace to our interests to be tolerated, and the high duty of self-defence commands that we resist to the death. The status quo is better for us all. Now that you have set up for yourself, we must tell you, sadly but firmly, that if you do not come back voluntarily, we must resort to coercion,—not under the constitution, for you have thrown that off, but under the law of nations to which you have just subjected yourself.”