[Footnote A: Here, however, the reader must understand that the infernal system of slave-stealing is left entirely out of the account.]
In Sparta, or in the South, the case was far otherwise. Here, slavery existed in its strict severity; it came into being in connection with material conditions,—that is, in connection with a soil especially favorable to agriculture,—and it maintained its existence by reason of its fitness, its indispensableness, to certain social conditions; it could not, therefore, be changed or annulled without running counter both to the inveterate tendencies of Nature and the still more inveterate tendencies of habit. This difference between the two estates of slavery is evident also from the fact, that, while, in the one case, the law would admit of no emancipation, in the other, the emancipation was effected legally, either in the lump, as in New England, or by instalments, as in Athens; and in the latter State we must remember that the process was rendered the more easy and natural by the fact that the slaves were, in the first instance, generally prisoners taken in war, and not unfrequently stood upon the same social level, before their capture, with their captors, while in Sparta the slaves were taken as a subject race, and held as inferiors.
Much glory has been given to Lacedaemon on the score of her martial merits. To ourselves this glory seems rather her shame, since these merits are inseparable from her grand political mistake. We might as justly exalt Feudalism on the ground of its military establishment, which, after all, we must admit to be an absolute necessity in the system. To the Spartan oligarchy it was equally necessary that the whole State should exist perpetually under martial law. In the first place, it was necessary, if for nothing else, for the intimidation of the Helots, who were continually watching their opportunity for insurrection, as is shown in that memorable attempt made in connection with the Messenian War. It was, moreover, necessary for a government not strong by sea to extend its boundaries by military conquest; for by each successive conquest a possible enemy is actually forced into subjection, and made to contribute to the central power which subdues it.
Indeed, it is true that every feature of the State polity which that old rascal Lycurgus gave to Sparta must be considered and judged in connection with this grand martial establishment, upon which the Lacedaemonian oligarchy was based, and through which the nefarious attempt to establish oligarchies in all the rest of the world was supported. The establishment itself was barbarous, and could not possibly have thrived under the art-loving, home-protecting eye of the Athenian Pallas. All domestic sanctities were rudely invaded, and even the infant's privilege to live depended upon its martial promise; the aspirations of religion were levelled down into sympathy with the most brutal enthusiasm, as afterwards happened in the case of Rome; the very idea of Beauty was demolished, and with it all that was sacred in human nature, and all hope of progress. The whole State was sacred to the idea of Military Despotism.
Thus it happened that Sparta, from her first introduction in history to her exit, was at a stand-still in whatever involved anything higher than brute force. In this respect she differed from Athens as much as the South at this day differs from the North, and from precisely the same causes, the principal of which, in each case, was barbarism,—barbarism deliberately organized, and maintained in conscious preference to intellectual refinement.
And yet it is remarkable that both Lacedaemon and the South, as compared with their respective rivals, started in life at an immense advantage, and seemingly with a far more auspicious prospect before them. The early Virginian turned up his nose at Plymouth as a very despicable affair, and wondered that the Puritans did not set sail en masse for the Bahamas. Gorgeous were the descriptions of Virginia sent home by some of the first settlers, in which lions and tigers, and a whole menagerie of tropical animals, came in for no small share of wonder; and, as an offset to this summer luxuriance of life, most disparaging pictures were drawn of the bleak sterility of New England,—and even that which was the only compensation for this barrenness of the earth, namely, the abundance of fish in the sea, was, as respects the revenue derived from it, made an especial subject of derision. Thus, doubtless, did the ancient Peloponnesian look upon Attica in the small beginnings of her infinite growth; he had exactly the same topics for his ridicule,—sterility, fishery, and all; and just as in the case of the South, was the laugh in the end turned against himself. But to the very last there was one stinging jest on the lips of the Spartan,—the very same which the modern slaveholder flings with so great gusto against the unfortunate Yankee,—and that was Athenian cupidity. The ancient and the modern jester are alike condemned on their own indictment, since upon cupidity the most petulant, upon cupidity the most voracious in its greedy demands, rested the whole Spartan polity, as does the system of slaveholding in the South. The Spartan, like the Southern planter, might protest that money was of no consequence whatever, that to him it was only so much iron,—but why? Only because that, by the satisfaction of a cupidity more profound, he was able to dispense with the ordinary necessities of an honest democrat.
In peace, Sparta was a nonentity; in the resources which enrich and glorify the time of peace she was a bankrupt. Fine arts or education she had none: these centred in Athens. These were elements of progress, and could no more be tolerated in Peloponnesus than in our Gulf States. Taking our Southern civilization or that of Lacedaemon, we must say of each that it is thoroughly brutalized; we may challenge either to show us a single master-piece of intellect, whether in the way of analysis or of construction,—but none can they show.
Even in a military sense, the forces which Democracy could marshal, either in ancient Greece or in modern America, were more than a match for the corresponding oligarchical factions. Athens, like New England, was a commercial centre, and therefore a prominent naval power; and this naval prominence, in each instance, was so great as to give a decisive superiority over a non-commercial rival. Sparta used her influence and power to establish oligarchic institutions in the various provinces of Greece, which generally corresponded to our Territories,—in which latter the South has, with an equally unworthy zeal, been for several years seeking to establish her peculiar institutions. Epidamnus proved a Grecian Kansas. As in our own country, the hostile factions refrained from war as long as human nature would allow; but, once engaged in it, it became a vital struggle, that could be terminated only by the exhaustion of one of the parties.
Athens was the stronger: why, then, did she not conquer her rival? With equal pertinence we might ask, Why have not we, who are the stronger, subjugated the South? The answer to both questions is the same. Political prejudice overmasters patriotism. Neither ourselves nor the ancient Athenians appear to have the remotest idea of the importance of the cause for which we are contending. To us, as to them, the avenue to future glory lies through the blood-red path of war, of desperate, unrelenting war. Nothing else, no compromise, no negotiations of any sort, would suffice. This the Athenians never realized; this we do not seem to understand. Among ourselves, as among them, the peace-party—a party in direct sympathy with the aims and purposes of the enemy—blusters and intrigues. President Lincoln meets with the same embarrassments in connection with this party that Pericles met in his campaigns against Sparta: it was his coming into power that precipitated the violence of war; his determined action against all sympathizers with the enemy draws down upon him the intensified wrath of these sympathizers; the generals whom he sends into the field, if, like Alcibiades, they are characterized by any spirit in their undertakings, are trammelled with political entanglements and rendered useless, while some slow, half-brained Nicias, with no heart in the cause, is placed at the head of expeditions that result only in defeat.
There is the same diffusiveness connected with our military plans which characterized the operations of the Athenians against Sparta. We do not make the special advantage which we have over the South through our naval superiority available against her special vulnerability. We intimidate her, as Pericles did the Peloponnesians, by circumnavigating her territories with a great display of our naval power; we effect a few landings upon her coasts; but all these invasions lead to no grand results, they do not subdue our armed enemy. What with these errors in the general conduct of the war, and the lack of energy which characterizes every part, our prospects of ultimate success are fast being ruined. Unless some change be quickly effected, unless political sentiment can be made to give place to the original enthusiasm with which we commenced the war, and this enthusiasm be embodied in military enterprise, our case is a hopeless one. One the other hand, if things go on as they have been going on, the political opposition to the war will rise to such a height as to overturn the Administration, and in its place install those who are desirous of a reconstruction of the Union on a Southern basis. The same errors on the part of Athens led to just this result in Greece; an oligarchy came at last to rule even over the democratic city itself. The consequence was the downfall of Greece, and in her ruin was demonstrated the failure of ancient civilization. In a like event, nothing could save us, nothing could save modern civilization, from the same disastrous ruin.