Next the south assumes initiative. Extension of slave-territory is so great an economical sine qua non that she attacks its barriers. Using her control of the then dominant democratic party she got the Missouri compromise repealed. Her main purpose in this was to wrench from the anti-slavery men the weapon of congressional restriction, then deemed by them the most powerful of all in their armory. She also contemplated extorting a concession of all lands in the Territories which could be profitably cultivated by slaves from the north, alarmed into apprehending that otherwise slavery might be carried above 36.30′.
This repeal did more than anything else—more even than “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”—to arouse the north into mortal combat with slavery. The historian cannot understand why the south procured it, if he ignores that energy of southern nationalization which we have done our utmost to explain. This nationalization had got into what we may call the last rapids, and was bound to go over the precipice into the gulf of secession.
The bootless struggle by the south against overwhelming odds of northern settlers to make Kansas a slave State was the sequel to the repeal of the Missouri compromise. When the South understood that Kansas was really gone, she advanced her forlorn hope in her endeavor to secure slavery in the union. The essence of the compromise measures of 1850 was that the demand of congressional non-interference with slavery in the States and Territories, made by the south, was declared adopted as future policy. As the forlorn hope just mentioned she now made the demand that the owner’s property in his slaves, if he should carry them into a Territory, should be protected by congress until its people had made the constitution under which the Territory would be admitted into the union. Her adherence to this demand split the democratic party; and the election of Lincoln ensued. This election meant that slavery—the property supporting more than nine-tenths of the southern people, and which was virtually their entire economic system—was put under a ban. There was nothing for it but depreciation in the near future; soon more and more depreciation; until after prolonged stagnation and paralysis the value of all her property would collapse as did that of the continental currency. That was the way it looked to her. We believe that the facts show that her conviction was right. She felt with her whole soul that the time had come to invoke State sovereignty. So she seceded, with intent to save the property of her people and maintain their domestic peace. Of course she purposed an equitable apportionment of the public domain between herself and the north under which she would get the small part that suited slave agriculture.
The circumstances constrained the south throughout every part and parcel of her offensive as powerfully as exhaustion of his supplies constrains the commander of a garrison to a sortie upon what he has reason to believe is the weakest point of the circumvallation. She was hypnotized by the powers. They made her believe that she was always doing the right thing to protect slavery when they were having her to do that only which assured its destruction. She was all the while as conscientious as the mother who, afraid of drafts, keeps the needed fresh air from her consumptive child and thereby kills him.
We recognize the resistless play of the cosmic forces upon the sun, moon, and stars; upon our earth; in the yearly round of the seasons; in the ocean tides; in storms and heated terms; in vegetation; and in things innumerable taken note of by the senses. But this is not all of their empire. They sway individuals, communities, peoples, nations, making the latter even believe that they are having their own way when in fact they are most servilely doing the will of the powers.
CHAPTER XI
TOOMBS
Calhoun solidified the south in resolve to leave the union if the abolition party got control of the federal government. Just before his death there commenced such serious contemplation of an aggressive defence of slavery that we may call it an actual aggressive. Although by reason of his unquestioned primacy he could have assumed the conduct of this aggressive, he did not. Toombs was its real, though not always apparent, leader, from its actual commencement until it resulted in secession. Thus he played an independent part of his own, and deserves a chapter to himself. While Calhoun was the forerunner, Toombs was both apostle and the Moses of secession. As nearly all of my readers have never thought of any one else than Calhoun in this capacity, the statement of Toombs’s prominence just made will probably startle them. But I know if they will follow me through the record they will all at last agree with me. In view of Calhoun’s conspicuousness in the southern agitation from 1835 until his death in 1850, this misapprehension of my readers is very natural. Contemporaries following Sulla, named Pompey, not Julius Cæsar, The Great. Similarly Toombs, as an actor in the intersectional arena, is as yet dwarfed from comparison with the really great but not greater Calhoun.