But refusing this perfidy, could we have avoided this war? No; for it was simply our refusal of such perfidy which, so far as we are concerned, brought the war on. The South, having ever since the Mexican War stood with its sword half out of the scabbard, perpetually threatening to give its edge,—having made it the chief problem of our politics, by what gift or concession to purchase exemption from that dreaded blade,—at last reached its ultimate demand. "Will you," it said to the North, "abdicate the privileges of equal citizenship? Will you give up this continent, territory, Free States and all, to our predaceous, blood-eating system? Will you sell into slavery the elective franchise itself? Will you sell the elective franchise itself into slavery, and take for pay barely the poltroon's price, that of being scornfully spared by the sword we stand ready to draw?" The North excused itself politely. In the softest voice, but with a soft-voicedness that did not wholly conceal an iron thread of resolution, it declined to comply with that most modest demand. Then the sword came out and struck at our life. "Was it matter of choice with us whether we would fight? Not unless it were also matter of choice whether we would become the very sweepings and blemish of creation.
"But we might have permitted secession." No, we could not. It was clearly impracticable. "But why not?" Because that would have been to surrender the whole under the guise of giving up half. Such a concession could have meant to the people of the rebellious States, and, in the existing state of national belief, could have meant to our very selves, nothing other than this:—"We submit; do what you will; we are shopkeepers and cowards; we must have your trade; and besides, though expert in the use of yardsticks, we have not the nerve for handling guns." From that moment we should have lost all authority on this continent, and all respect on the other.
The English papers have blamed us for fighting; but had we failed to fight, not one of these censuring mouths but would have hissed at us like an adder with contempt Nay, we ourselves should, as it were, soon have lost the musical speech and high carriage of men, and fallen to a proneness and a hissing, degraded in our own eyes even more than in those of our neighbors. Of course, from this state we should have risen; but it would have been to see the redness of war on our own fields and its flames wrapping our own households. We should have risen, but through a contest to which this war, gigantic though it be, is but a quarrel of school-boys.
By sheer necessity we began to fight; by the same we must fight It out. Compromise is, in the nature of the case, impossible. It can mean only surrender. Had there been an inch more of ground for us to yield without total submission, the war would have been, for the present, staved off. We turned to bay only when driven back to the vital principle of our polity and the vital facts of our socialization.
Politically, what was the immediate grievance of the South? Simply that Northern freemen went to the polls as freemen; simply that they there expressed, under constitutional forms, their lawful preference. How can we compromise here, even to the breadth of a hair? How compromise without stipulating that all Northern electors shall henceforth go to the polls in charge of an armed police, and there deposit such ballot as the slave-masters of the Secession States shall direct?
Again, in our social state what is it that gives umbrage to our antagonists? They have answered the question for us; they have stated it repeatedly in the plainest English. It is simply the fact that we are free States; that we have, and honor, free labor; that we have schools for the people; that we teach the duty of each to all and of all to each; that we respect the human principle, the spiritual possibility, in man; in fine, that ours is a human socialization, whose fundamental principles are the venerableness of man's nature and the superiority of reason and right to any individual will. So far as we are base bargainers and unbelievers, they can tolerate us, even though they despise; just where our praise begins, begin their detestation and animosity.
It is, by the pointed confession of Southern spokesmen, what we are, rather than what we have done, which makes them Secessionists; and any man of sense might, indeed must, see this fact, were the confession withheld. In action we have conformed to Southern wishes, as if conformity could not be in excess. We have conformed to an extent that—to mention nothing of more importance—had nearly ruined us in the estimation of mankind. One chief reason, indeed, why the sympathy of Europe did not immediately go with us was that a disgust toward us had been created by the football passivity, as it seemed abroad, with which we had submitted to be kicked to and fro. The rebellion was deemed to be on our side, not on theirs. We, born servitors and underlings, it was thought, had forgotten our proper places,—nay, had presumed to strike back, when our masters chastised us. Of course, we should soon be whipped to our knees again. And when we were again submissive and abject, Europe must so have demeaned itself as still to be on good terms with the conquerors. As for us, our final opinion of their demeanor, so they deemed, mattered very little. The ill opinion of the servants can be borne; but one must needs be on friendly terms with the master of the house. The conduct of Europe toward us at the outbreak of this war is to be thus explained, more than in any other way. According to European understanding, we had before written ourselves down menials; therefore, on rising to the attitude of men, we were scorned as upstarts.
The world has now discovered that there was less cowardice and more comity in this yielding than had been supposed. Yet in candor one must confess that it was barely not carried to a fatal extent. One step more in that direction, and we had gone over the brink and into the abyss. Only when the last test arrived, and we must decide once and forever whether we would be the champions or the apostates of civilization, did we show to the foe not the dastard back, but the dauntless front. And the proposal to "compromise" is simply and exactly a proposal to us to reverse that decision.
Again, we can propose no compromise, such as would stay the war, without confessing that there was no occasion for beginning it. And if, indeed, we began it without occasion, without an occasion absolutely imperative, then does the whole mountain—weight of its guilt lie on our hearts. Then in every man that has fallen on either side we are assassins. The proposal to bring back the seceded States by submission to their demands is neither more nor less than a proposal to write "Murderer" on the brow of every soldier in our armies, and "Twice Murderer" over the grave of every one of our slain. If such submission be due now, not less was it due before the war began. To say that it was then due, and then withheld, is, I repeat, merely to brand with the blackness of assassination the whole patriotic service of the United States, both civil and military, for the last two years.
If, now, such be, in very deed, our guilt, let us lose no moment in confessing the fact,—nor afterwards lose a moment in creeping to the gallows, that must, in that case, be hungering for us. But if no such guilt be ours, then why should not our courage be as good as our cause? If not only by the warrant, but by the imperative bidding of Heaven, we have taken up arms, then why should we not, as under the banner of Heaven, bear them to the end?