The Brothers' War

by John C. Reed

CHAPTER VI

ROOT-AND-BRANCH ABOLITIONISTS AND FIRE-EATERS

For a long while opposition to slavery was moderate and not unreasoning. The first actual quarrel over it between the sections was when Missouri applied for admission to the union in 1818. That was settled by the famous compromise of 1820. The most of the anti-slavery men of that day stood only against the extension of slavery. While many a one of them believed his conviction was dictated, independently and entirely, by his conscience, it was in fact given him because of his relation to the free-labor nationalization claiming the public lands for itself. That was also true of the great mass of northerners opposed to slavery down to the very beginning of the war. They wanted the Territories for themselves. The contest between the United States and England for Oregon is a parallel case. The American felt, if this territory falls to the United States, I and my children and children’s children can get cheap land somewhere in it; but if it falls to England, I and they are forever shut out. In the intersectional contest over the public lands northerners felt that they would be practically excluded from any part of them into which slavery was carried; for infinitely preferring, as they did, the free-labor system, to which they had been bred, to the slavery system, of which they had no experience, and against which they were prejudiced, they would never voluntarily settle where it obtained. This, the prevalent view, brought about the compromise of 1820, by which all the territory north of 36° 30′ was guaranteed to free labor, that is, to the north, not because its inhabitants were burning with zeal to repress the spread of what they thought to be an unspeakable moral wrong, but because they purposed thereby to insure a fair inheritance to their own children.

So much for what we have called the first quarrel between the sections over slavery. Let us now glance at the stages following until the root-and-branch abolitionist shows himself.

For some twenty years after the Missouri compromise was made there was hardly any public agitation at all as to slavery. In 1840 an abolition ticket for the presidency was nominated, but it received a support much smaller than had been currently predicted. It is not until January, 1836, when, upon Calhoun’s motion in the senate of the United States to reject two petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, there ensued a prolonged and passionate discussion, that we can say that the old free-soil practically begins to pass into an abolition movement. Here moral attack upon slavery seriously begins. If we think but a moment we will understand it too well to explain it as an arousal of conscience, which ought to have been aroused many years before if slavery was indeed the terrible sin the abolitionists now commenced to say it was. The agitation of 1830, the year that Webster replied to Hayne, and that of 1833, when he and Calhoun crossed swords over nullification, mark a great advance of intersectional antagonism beyond that of the time of the Missouri compromise. We can see now as we look back what contemporaries could not see, that is, that the two were avant couriers of the southern confederacy. But some of the contemporaries did discern the fact—not consciously, but instinctively. With these there was, in subliminal ratiocination, a process somewhat as follows: The southern confederacy, if it does come, will disrupt the union, which assures, while it lasts, immunity of our country from frequent wars upon its own soil, and from the heavy load of great armies kept up even in the intervals of peace. This disruption will establish in America all the evil conditions of Europe from which our fathers fled hither. Slavery is the vis matrix, the sole developing force, the life of this menaced confederacy. Let us abolish slavery, and preserve the union.

How accurately the common instincts—especially those protecting our private interests—discern both the favorable and unfavorable, becomes more of a marvel to me every year. To them the favorable is morally right, the unfavorable morally wrong. If the latter threatens great injury, they excite against it deep-seated indignation as if it were a crime. How else can you explain it that all the churches, accepting the same Christ and worshipping the same God, were at last divided, the northern churches impugning and the southern churches defending slavery. Dwell upon this fact until you interpret it aright. On one side the most conscientious and the best of the north unanimous that slavery is morally wrong; on the other the most conscientious and best of the south unanimous that it is morally right. Then think of the northern and southern statesmen, jurists, and the great public leaders; and at the last consider that the entire people of one section prayed for, fought and died for, slavery, while that of the other did the same things against it. When you do this, you must admit that our community, our country, the society of which we are members, fashions our consciences and makes our opinions.

The economic interest of the north was against slavery. It was her interest to get all the territory possible for opportunity to her free workers. It was also a transcendent economic interest of hers that there be no great foreign power near her to require of her that she put thousands of bread-winners and wealth-makers to idle in a standing army. On the other side the economic interest of the south in slavery was so great it commanded her to sacrifice all the advantages of union to preserve slavery, if that should be necessary. Each side feels deeply and more and more angrily that the other is seeking to rob it of the means of production and subsistence—the property to which of all it believes its title most indefeasible. It required some years to bring affairs to this point; but it was accomplished at last; and the north was ready for the root-and-branch abolitionist and the south for the fire-eater. Of course all this effect of oppugnant economical interests is under the guidance of the directors of evolution, who generally have their human servants to masquerade as characters widely different from the true. When these servants put on high airs as if they were doing their own will and not that of their masters, how the directors must smile. They have guaranteed animal reproduction from one generation to another by the impulsion of a supreme momentary pleasure, as Lucretius most philosophically recognizes in his dux vitæ dia voluptas. The passion of anger is the converse of that of love. When consent cannot settle some great controversy that must be settled, the passion of anger is so greatly excited by the instigation of the directors that the disputants leave arguments and come to blows. In the ripeness of time the Ransy Sniffleses[38] come forth. They say and do everything possible to bring on the impending mortal combat. They never grasp the essence of the contention, for it is their mission to arouse feeling, passion, anger. They are resistlessly—most conscientiously and honestly—impelled to make the other side appear detestable and insultingly offensive in heinous wrong-doing. The most zealous and the most influential of the root-and-branch abolitionists were young when they vaulted into the arena. Garrison was twenty-six when he started the “Liberator” in 1831, Wendell Phillips was some six years younger than Garrison, and he was about twenty-six when he made his début with a powerful impromptu in Boston, in 1837. Whittier was two years younger than Garrison, and he was early a co-worker in the “Liberator.” It is demonstrated by everything they said that they were entirely ignorant of the south and its people, of the average condition of the slave in the south, and especially of the negro’s grade of humanity. They never studied and investigated facts diligently and impartially, desiring only to ascertain the truth. They assumed the facts to be as it suited their purposes, given them by the directors, of exciting hatred of their opponents,—and it added greatly to their efficiency that they fully believed their assumptions. Knowing really nothing of the negro except that he was a man, it was natural for them to believe, as they did, that the typical, average negro slave of the south was in all the essentials of good citizenship just such a human being as the typical, average white. If they did not go quite so far, they surely claimed for him something so near to it that it is practically the same. We shall, as suggested above, treat this pernicious error more fully in later chapters.

The root-and-branch abolitionists have claimed ever since the emancipation proclamation became effective that the overthrow of slavery was brought about by them; and thousands upon thousands believing it sing them hosannas. But it is an undeniable fact that the superior power of free labor in its irreconcilable conflict with slavery was bound to do in America what it had done everywhere else. And without the abolitionist at all the days of slavery were numbered, and they were few even if there had been no secession, and very few if secession had triumphed. For free labor—its fell and implacable foe—was on the outside steadily and surely encircling it with a wall that hemmed it from the extension that was a condition of its life; and within its ring fence necessarily it was rapidly exhausting all of its resources. It was the mighty counteraction of free labor that crushed slavery. The root-and-branch abolitionist thrown up by this movement which had set forward irresistibly, long before he was ever heard of, and who believed that he started it and was guiding it, strikingly examples the proverb

“Er denkt zu schieben und ist geschoben.”