Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

This signal shell opened actual war; its discharge was, figuratively speaking, heard around the world; it awakened a lethargic people in the Northern States of the Union; it caused many who had never dreamed of war to prepare for it; it set on fire the blood of a people, North and South, of the same race, not to cool down until a half-million of men had been consumed in the fierce heat of battle; it was the opening shot intended to vindicate and establish human slavery as the essential pillar of a new-born nation, the first and only one on earth formed solely to eternally perpetuate human bondage as a social and fundamental political institution; but, in reality, this shot was also a signal to summon the friends of human freedom to arms, and to a battle never to end until slavery under the Constitution of the restored Union should cease to exist.

Captain Fox's expedition was not organized as he had planned it, and though it reached its destination off Sumter an hour before the latter was fired on, it could not, from want of light boats or tugs, send to the fort the needed supplies or men. Major Anderson, after two days' bombardment, was therefore forced to agree to evacuate the fort, which he accordingly did on Sunday afternoon, April 14th, after having saluted the flag as it was lowered.(18)

There were men North as well as South who censured President Lincoln and his advisers for not, as was at one time contemplated, peacefully evacuating Fort Sumter, thus removing the immediate cause for bringing on hostilities, and leaving still more time for compromise talk and Northern concession. But the Union was already dissolved so far as the seceding States were able to do it, and a peaceable restoration of those States to loyalty and duty was then plainly impossible.

South Carolina was the first to secede, and it is more than probable that President Lincoln clearly discerned that the overt act of assailing the Union by war would take place at Charleston. So long as surrenders of public property went on without resistance, the Confederacy was growing stronger and more defiant, and in time foreign recognition might come. It was much better for the Union cause for the first shot to be fired by Confederate forces in taking United States public property than by United States forces in retaking it after it had been lost.

The people North had wavered, not in their loyalty to the Union, but in their judgment as how to preserve it, or whether it could be preserved at all, until Sumter came, then firmness of conviction took immediate possession of them, and life and treasure alike thenceforward devoted to the maintenance of Federal authority. Of course, there was a troublesome minority North, who, either through political perversity, cowardice, or disloyalty, never did support the war, at least willingly. It was noticeable, however, that many of these were, through former residence or family relationship, imbued with pro-slavery notions and prejudice against the negro.

It should be said, also, that there were many in the North, born in slave States, who were the most pronounced against slavery. And there were those also, even in New England, who had never had an opportunity of being tainted with slavery, who opposed the coercion of the seceding States, and who would rather have seen the Union destroyed than saved by war. Again, long contact and co- operation of certain persons North with Southern slave-holders politically, and bitter opposition to President Lincoln and his party, made many reluctant to affiliate with the Union war-party. Some were too weak to rise above their prejudices, personal and political. Some were afraid to go to battle. There was also, though strangely inconsistent, a very considerable class of the early Abolitionists of the Garrison-Smith-Phillips school who did not support the war for the Union, but who preferred the slave- holding States should secede, and thus perpetuate the institution of slavery in America—the very thing, on moral grounds, such Abolitionists had always professed a desire to prevent. They opposed the preservation of the Union by coercion. They thus laid themselves open to the charge that they were only opposed to slavery in the Union, leaving it to flourish wherever it might outside of the Union. This position was not only inconsistent, but unpatriotic. The persons holding these views gave little or no moral or other support to the war for the preservation of the integrity of the Republic.

There were many loyal men in the South, especially in sections where slavery did not dominate. In the mountain regions of the South, opposition to secession was the rule, notably in Western Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Eastern Tennessee, and Western North Carolina. There were also loyal men in Northern Alabama and Georgia. But wherever the determined spirit of the slave-holding disunionists controlled, as in the cities and more densely populated parts of the South, though the slave-holding population was even therein the minority, the white community was forced to array themselves with the Confederates. There were many South who, at first, determined to oppose disunion, but who succumbed to the pressure, under the belief that the Confederacy was an accomplished fact, or that the North either would not or could not fight successfully, and would be beaten in battle. Boasts of superiority and the great display and noisy preparation for war were misleading to those who only witnessed one side of the pending conflict. The North had, up to Sumter, been slow to act, and this was not reassuring to the friends of the Union South, or, perhaps, anywhere. The proneness of mankind to be on the successful side has shown itself in all trying times. It is only the virtue of individual obstinacy that enables the few to go against an unjust popular clamor.

But political party ties North were the hardest to break. Those who had been led to political success generally by the pro-slavery politicians of the South could not easily be persuaded that coercion did not mean, in some way, opposition to themselves and their past party principles. Though patriotism was the rule with persons of all parties North, there were yet many who professed that true loyalty lay along lines other than the preservation of the Union by war. These even, after Sumter fell, pretended to, and possibly did, believe what the South repudiated, to wit: That by the siren song of peace it could be wooed back to loyalty under the Constitution. There were, of course, those in the North who honestly held that the Abolitionists by their opposition to slavery and its extension into the Territories had brought on secession, and that such opposition justified it. This number, however, was at first not large, and as the war progressed it grew less and less. It should be remembered that coercion of armed secession was not undertaken to abolish slavery or to alter its status in the slave States. The statement, however, that the destruction of slavery was the purpose and end in view was persistently put forth as the justifying cause for dissolving the Union of States. The cry that the war on the part of the North was "an abolition war," that it was for "negro equality," had its effect on the more ignorant class of free laborers in both sections. There is an inherent feeling of or desire for superiority in all races, and this weakness, if it is such, is exceedingly sensitive to the touch of the demagogue.

There were those high in authority in the Confederate councils who were not entirely deluded by the apparent indifference and supineness of the Northern people. When Davis and his Cabinet held a conference (April 9th) to consider the propriety of firing on Fort Sumter, there was not entire unanimity on the question. Robert Toombs, Secretary of State, is reported to have said:

"The firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen; and I do not feel competent to advise you."(19)