But the planters of the South, unlike the farmers of the North, were an educated class, and fully competent to compete with the great leaders of the Northern oligarchy. Their ideas were widely advanced beyond those of the Northern farmer, but their interests were identical—those of agriculture, of production, of labor, of democracy, of manhood against privilege, and therefore they naturally fought the battle against strong government and class distinctions. The government actually adopted was, with the exception of a life tenure in its judicial department, substantially that which was originally advised by the leading minds of the South, and which, instead of being supreme and absolute over the States, as desired by the Northern leaders, was, with certain well-defined exceptions, as utterly powerless and indeed disconnected with the States as the government of England, or any other foreign power. And perhaps no higher or more patriotic example can be found in all history than that of the graceful assent and acceptance of the Northern leaders, when they consented to adopt the present system. As has been said, it was no selfish or base spirit that prompted their desire for a strong government. They saw that the great body of the people were ignorant; all history and all experience warranted them, as they believed, in retaining power in the hands of the few who then possessed it—in a word, they could not rise above the circumstances that surrounded them, or act otherwise than in conformity with their mental habits. But when fairly beaten in the convention and the great forum of popular discussion—for when the ideas of Jefferson and other Southern leaders were brought before the Northern masses, thousands of earnest and enthusiastic apostles of these new and glorious truths sprung up in every direction—then Hamilton and his associates generously assented to the adoption of the present system, and became its warmest advocates. They in no respect changed their views of government, but they became convinced that these views were then impracticable, and however unquestioned their ascendency at the North, that the Southern States would never consent to any union on such basis, and as a federal union on almost any terms was essential to the maritime States, they had the magnanimity to accede to the Southern or democratic view embodied in the present government, and to become, as has been said, the warmest advocates for its adoption before the people. But if this patriotic and high-minded course of Hamilton and the great leaders of Northern opinion, which thus, it may be said, secured to the country and to the world the noblest government ever known in human annals, is worthy of the esteem and admiration of posterity, what a stupendous and boundless benefit Jefferson, Madison, George Mason, and their associates, who not alone assented to, but who originated this government, have conferred upon posterity, and indeed the race itself!
For the first time in human history the grand idea of equality, of an equal freedom or of equal rights, was declared to be the sole foundation of government, and made the vital principle of the political order, the starting-point of a new and more glorious civilization than was ever before dreamed of in the annals of mankind. Christ had promulgated the Divine command, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or recognize in all other men the same rights that you claim for yourselves; but however faithful some may have been to this command in a religious sense, all the “Christian” governments that have ever existed, or that exist now, are in utter conflict with it, and therefore the government created in 1776, which embodied this glorious truth and clothed it with the flesh and blood and body and bones of material power, is unquestionably the most important worldly event that has ever happened in human affairs. The revolt against England, its success, the subsequent independence, the creation of a new government, the beginning of an independent national existence, might all occur without any radical change of principles or any revolution of ideas, as indeed it is certain would have been the case if the views of Hamilton and other Northern leaders had been embodied in the new government. But the grand idea of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards embodied in the federal government, was the starting-point of a revolution the greatest, most beneficent, most radical, and most important, that has ever happened in the history of the race—a revolution, moreover, that has gone on ever since, and must continue until all the governments of the Old World are overthrown, and society reorganized on the basis of the great, indestructible, and immortal truth that underlies our own—that fixed, natural, and unchangeable equality which God has stamped forever on the organism of the race. If, therefore, we compare the services of Jefferson, Madison, and their associates with those of other men in other times or other lands, it will be seen that they rise to a dignity and importance immeasurably greater than even the most elevated and most glorious among the benefactors of mankind. How paltry, in comparison, the Barons of Runymede, who overthrew a tyrant king that had oppressed their order! How mean and selfish Brutus and his follow-conspirators, when slaying the man they envied as well as feared! How insignificant even Hampden and the great leaders of revolution in England, who fought to defend themselves from the increasing oppression of a ruling class, when compared with Jefferson and his associates, who proclaimed an idea and organized a basis for the freedom of the race—for the equal rights of all whom God had made equal!
But great, and, when compared with what others may have done, immense as may be the benefits conferred by Jefferson and his associates on mankind, they only did their duty, and honestly represented the ideas and desires of their constituencies. Or, in other words, they merely expressed the opinions and reflected the mental habits that had their origin in the social condition, and followed as a necessary consequence of juxtaposition with negroes. If there had been no negroes in Virginia—no widely different race with its different capacities and different wants to provide for, in short, if there had been no natural distinctions, then those accidental and artificial things—wealth, education, family pride, etc.—which separate classes would have remained as elsewhere, the basis of political as well as social order. The descendants of English cavaliers, with their traditions and mental habits, would, perhaps, be somewhat liberalized, for their condition was widely changed from that of their ancestors, but without negroes, without the presence of natural distinctions, without those lines of demarcation fixed forever by the hand of God for society to repose upon, they would have remained the most aristocratic community in America. Neither Thomas Jefferson, nor any of the great controlling minds of the day, would have been heard of; or, at all events, would not have figured in that grand rôle where history has always placed them—the authors of a new idea and the founders of a new political system.
They might have had, as Sir Thomas Moore and Algernon Sidney, and, indeed, men of all ages have had, feeble glimmerings of the great truth promulgated in 1776. All who belong to the race or species are created equal; and this great, fixed, and eternal fact, embedded in the physical and mental organism of the race, has always been dimly perceived, but without juxtaposition with a different race, without the actual presence of the negro, without the constant daily perception of those natural distinctions that separate races, in contrast with the artificial distinctions of classes of their own race, neither Jefferson nor any one else could have risen to the level of the grand truth embodied in the Declaration of Independence. They might have been distinguished actors in the great drama of independence, but that, as an historical event, would not have differed from a score of similar events where one people or portion of a people have separated and set up an independent government. The overthrow of the Moorish dominion in Spain—of the rule of the Spaniards in Holland—and the recent independence of Belgium, are parallel events, and many others might be named where foreign dominion has been overthrown and new governments set up without resulting in any change or progress of ideas, or without working out any fundamental revolution in human affairs. And if Jefferson, Madison, and their associates had had the same mental habits as Hamilton, Adams, and others of the North, it is obvious that independence would not have been accompanied by a revolution in ideas. As has been said, a more liberal system than that of the mother country would have been established, but a new system, a radical and fundamental change in the political order—a new starting-point in the progress of the race—a government founded on the universal equality of the citizenship as actually established, it is obvious would have been impossible. And as the public men of a country can never rise above the level of the average opinion or the ordinary mental habits of the people, it is equally obvious that Jefferson and his associates would never have done so, and therefore, if there had not been a condition of things that gave origin to new ideas and new habits of thought in the people of Virginia and elsewhere where these widely different social elements were in juxtaposition, then it is equally obvious that the world would never have heard of them in 1776, and whatever time and circumstances might have brought about in the future, no revolution at that time would have been possible.
In conclusion, therefore, that is repeated in direct terms which has been rather inferred than directly stated. The presence of the negro on this continent, our juxtaposition with a widely different and inferior race, and the existence of natural distinctions or natural lines of demarcation in human society, originating of necessity new ideas and modes of thought, has been the happiest conjunction that has ever occurred in human affairs, and has led directly to the establishment of a new system and a new civilization based on foundations of everlasting truth—the legal and political equality of the race, or of all those whom the Almighty Creator has Himself made equal.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ALLIANCE OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS.
In the foregoing chapter it has been shown how “slavery,” or the presence of the negro element in our midst, has given origin to the American idea of democracy—to more expanded and truthful conceptions of our true relations to each other—to mental habits which led Mr. Jefferson to promulgate the grand idea of equality in 1776—to make that great movement a revolution of ideas as well as a war of independence—to render the latter a mere preliminary for ushering in a new political system based on the equal rights of citizenship and the starting-point of a new civilization widely and radically different in its fundamental idea from anything ever before known in the political experience of mankind. It has been shown that Hamilton and Jefferson, the respective leaders and exponents of the opposing ideas and tendencies of the time, merely reflected the mental habits that belonged to the different social conditions then existing, or of the different constituencies which they represented, and after the great contest for independence which they passed through harmoniously was closed and a new system of government was to be created, that the ideas of Jefferson generally prevailed and the present government embodying these ideas was established.
It has been shown, moreover, that both of these great men and those who acted with them were equally honest and equally patriotic; that neither, nor any of them could rise above the level of opinion in their respective sections, for then they would no longer have been representative men or able to influence the people; that the opinions of Hamilton reflected the mental habits of the North which clung to the forms and spirit of the British system founded on artificial distinctions, while Jefferson, reflecting with equal fidelity the mental habits that originate in a different social condition—where a subordinate race is in juxtaposition—advocated a democratic system resting on the fixed and indestructible laws of nature. And in view of all these historical facts and inductive facts the conclusion was deemed irresistible that the presence of the negro element in our midst, the existence of a natural substratum in the social elements which thus secured the liberty of our own race—the legal and political equality of white men—was the happiest event or conjunction of circumstances that has ever happened in the history of mankind. But while the great northern leaders thus consented to the establishment of a democratic system they were driven on by their own tendencies as well as the mental habits of their people to neutralize its forces and to pervert its spirit. At that period suffrage was extremely limited, while the agricultural class in the Northern States—compared with the present—may be said to have been extremely ignorant.
The northern or federal party were thus enabled to get possession of the new government and to give it such direction as their opinions and interests doubtless seemed to demand. The President himself—the illustrious Washington—was without decided political convictions. His instincts and his family traditions, it is believed, inclined him in the direction of the northern party, while the local tendencies of opinion—the general mental habits of the Virginians to regard the distinctions of race as the legitimate basis of political order—generally restrained him, and in the mighty conflict of opinion kept him in a neutral position. He formed his cabinet out of wholly incongruous materials, made Jefferson Secretary of State, and Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury, and selecting other exponents of the conflicting opinions, sought to neutralize the contending forces by an equal selection of subordinates from the hostile camps.
The public credit, the restoration of commercial confidence was the first and most pressing want of the country as well as of the new government, and in this Hamilton found a pretext for adopting the British system of finance which he foresaw would enable his party to recover to a great extent the ground lost in the creation of the government, and in practice, whatever might be the theory entertained, restore it or closely approximate it to his darling model—that favorite British system which he and his associates believed to be an embodiment of political wisdom. The idea of the British aristocracy that government is an instrument designed for their benefit was deeply implanted in the northern mind, and is so still.