But leaving this and other points on which we find ourselves at issue with Mr. Fisher, we come to what we regard as the most important part of his pamphlet,—the results which he shows to follow from the law, that "each race has a tendency to occupy exclusively that portion of the country suited to its nature." In the States that lie on the Gulf of Mexico the negro "has found a congenial climate and obtained a permanent foothold." "The negro multiplies there; the white man dwindles and decays." We should be glad to quote at length the striking pages in which Mr. Fisher shows the prospect of the ultimate and not distant ascendency of the black race in this new Africa. The considerations he presents are of vital consequence to the South, of consequence only less than vital to the North. But by the side of "New-Africa" are States and Territories in which the black race has little or no foothold. Free, civilized, and prosperous communities are brought face to face, as it were, with the mixed and degenerating populations of the Slave country. In the Free States the white race is increasing in numbers and advancing in prosperity with unexampled rapidity. In the Slave States the black race is growing in far greater proportion than the white, the most important elements of prosperity are becoming exhausted, and the forces of civilization are incompetent to hold their own against the ever-increasing weight of barbarism. Shall this new Africa push its boundaries beyond their present limits? Shall more territory be yielded to the already wide-spread African, race? It is not the question, whether the unoccupied spaces of the South and West shall be settled by Northern white emigrants with their natural property, or by Southern white emigrants with their legal property,—and there an end; but it is the question, whether New England or New Africa shall extend her limits,—whether the country shall be occupied a century hence by a civilized or by a barbarous race. Every rood of ground yielded to the pretensions of the masters of slaves is so much of the heirloom of freedom and of civilization lost without hope of recovery. Slavery is transient.
As an institution, such as it has developed itself in our Southern States, it has already, given tokens of decay. But the qualities of race are so slowly affected by change as to admit of being called constant and permanent. The predominant influence of the blacks in the Cotton States is already (even putting aside the results of slavery) exhibiting itself in the lowering of the whites. These States are becoming uninhabitable for the whites,—not by reason of climate, or of slavery as an institution, but by reason of the operation of the inevitable increase of the slaves. They must have the land, and the stronger race will be driven out by the weaker, on account of the preponderance of their numbers and the vis inertice of their natures. There is no room in the United States, or in any of their unsettled territory, for the expansion of this transatlantic Africa. Where the black race is now settled it will stay, but it must be confined within its present limits.
We do not look upon the simple secession of the Slave States, or of any one of them, as dangerous, so far as the extension of slavery is concerned,—rather, on the contrary, as likely to end the great debate by securing all unoccupied territory to the North, to freedom, and to the white races. It is only, if an attempt should be made, for the sake of what is miscalled peace, and for the sake of the Union, to conciliate the misguided and unfortunate people of the South by compromise or concession, that we fear the consequences.
The responsibility under which we are to act is not for our own moral convictions alone, but also for the happiness of all future times. There is no room for concession, no space for compromise, in the settlement of the question of the prevalence of the black or of the white race on this continent,—in other words, the prevalence of liberty and Christianity and all their attendant blessings, or that of ignorance and barbarism with their train. "We will decide this question," says Mr. Fisher, whose words were written before the necessity for decision was so distinctly presented as at present, "we will decide it, if we can, as a united people; but if we cannot, if cotton and slavery and the negro have already weakened our Southern brethren by their spells and enchantments, so that the South cannot decide according to the traditions and impulses of our race, then we of the North will still decide it, as by right we may,—by right of reason, of race, and of law."
The Conduct of Life. By R.W. EMERSON Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 288.
It is a singular fact, that Mr. Emerson is the most steadily attractive lecturer in America. Into that somewhat cold-waterish region adventurers of the sensation kind come down now and then with a splash, to become disregarded King Logs before the next season. But Mr. Emerson always draws. A lecturer now for something like a quarter of a century, one of the pioneers of the lecturing system, the charm of his voice, his manner, and his matter has never lost its power over his earlier hearers, and continually winds new ones in its enchanting meshes. What they do not fully understand they take on trust, and listen, saying to themselves, as the old poet of Sir Philip Sidney,—
"A sweet, attractive, kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face,
The lineaments of gospel books."
We call it a singular fact, because we Yankees are thought to be fond of the spread-eagle style, and nothing can be more remote from that than his. We are reckoned a practical folk, who would rather hear about a new air-tight stove than about Plato; yet our favorite teacher's practicality is not in the least of the Poor Richard variety. If he have any Buncombe constituency, it is that unrealized commonwealth of philosophers which Plotinus proposed to establish; and if he were to make an almanac, his directions to farmers would be something like this:—"OCTOBER: Indian Summer; now is the time to get in your early Vedas." What, then, is his secret? Is it not that he out-Yankees us all? that his range includes us all? that he is equally at home with the potato-disease and original sin, with pegging shoes and the Over-soul? that, as we try all trades, so has he tried all cultures? and above all, that his mysticism gives us a counterpoise to our super-practicality?
There is no man living to whom, as a writer, so many of us feel and thankfully acknowledge so great an indebtedness for ennobling impulses,—none whom so many cannot abide. What does he mean? ask these last. Where is his system? What is the use of it all? What the deuse have we to do with Brahma? Well, we do not propose to write an essay on Emerson at the fag-end of a February "Atlantic," with Secession longing for somebody to hold it, and Chaos come again in the South Carolina teapot. We will only say that we have found grandeur and consolation in a starlit night without caring to ask what it meant, save grandeur and consolation; we have liked Montaigne, as some ten generations before us have done, without thinking him so systematic as some more eminently tedious (or shall we say tediously eminent?) authors; we have thought roses as good in their way as cabbages, though the latter would have made a better show in the witness-box, if cross-examined as to their usefulness; and as for Brahma, why, he can take care of himself, and won't bite us at any rate.
The bother with Mr. Emerson is, that, though he writes in prose, he is essentially a poet. If you undertake to paraphrase what he says, and to reduce it to words of one syllable for infant minds, you will make as sad work of it as the good monk with his analysis of Homer in the "Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum." We look upon him as one of the few men of genius whom our age has produced, and there needs no better proof of it than his masculine faculty of fecundating other minds. Search for his eloquence in his books and you will perchance miss it, but meanwhile you will find that it has kindled all your thoughts. For choice and pith of language he belongs to a better age than ours, and might rub shoulders with Fuller and Browne,—though he does use that abominable word, reliable. His eye for a fine, telling phrase that will carry true is like that of a backwoodsman for a rifle; and he will dredge you up a choice word from the ooze of Cotton Mather himself. A diction at once so rich and so homely as his we know not where to match in these days of writing by the page; it is like homespun cloth-of-gold. The many cannot miss his meaning, and only the few can find it. It is the open secret of all true genius. What does he mean, quotha? He means inspiring hints, a divining-rod to your deeper nature, "plain living and high thinking." We meant only to welcome this book, and not to review it. Doubtless we might pick our quarrel with it here and there; but all that our readers care to know is, that it contains essays on Fate, Power, Wealth, Culture, Behavior, Worship, Considerations by the Way, Beauty, and Illusions. They need no invitation to Emerson. "Would you know," says Goethe, "the ripest cherries? Ask the boys and the blackbirds." He does not advise you to inquire of the crows.