The President, with courage which does him infinite honor, leads the way to this future. His Proclamation is really a rallying-cry to all true men and women, whether they are living at the North or at the South, to take hold and work for its accomplishment. With an army posted in each of the revolted States, with more than one of them completely under National control, he considers that the time for planting has come. He is no such idealist or sentimentalist as to leave these new-made furrows, so terribly torn up in three years of war, to renew their own verdure by any mere spontaneous vegetation.
Practical as the President always is, he is sublimely practical in the Proclamation. "Let us make good out of this evil as quickly as we can," he says; "let peace bring in plenty as quickly as she can." To bring this about, he promises the strong arm of the nation to protect anything which shall show itself worth protecting, in the way of social institutions of republican liberty. He does not ask, like a conqueror, for the keys of a capital. He does not ask, like a Girondist, for the vote of a majority. He knows, it is true, as all the world knows, that, if the vote of all the men of the South could ever be obtained, the majority would utterly overshadow the handful of gentry who have been lording it over white trash and black slaves together. But the President has no wish to prolong martial law to that indefinite future when this handful of gentlemen shall let the majority of their own people pronounce upon their claims to rule them. Waiving the requisitions of the theorists, and at the same time relieving himself from the necessity of employing military power a moment longer than is necessary, he announces, in advance, what will be his policy in extending protection to loyal governments formed in Rebel States. If there can be found in any State enough righteous men willing to take the oath of allegiance and to sustain the nation in its determination for emancipation,—if there can be found only enough to be counted up as the tenth part of those who voted in the election of 1860, though their State should have sinned like Gomorrah, even though its name should be South Carolina, they shall be permitted to reconstruct its government, and that government shall be recognized by the government of the nation.
It is true that this gift is vastly more than any of the Rebel States has any right to claim. When the King of Oude rebels against England, he does not find, at the end of the war, that, because he is utterly defeated, things are to go on upon their old agreeable footing. Rebellion is not, in its nature, one of those pretty plays of little children, which can stop when either party is tired, because he asks for it to stop, so gently that both parties shall walk on hand in hand till either has got breath enough to begin the game again. If the nation were contending against real and permanent enemies, in reducing to order the States of the Confederacy, or if the national feeling towards the people of those States were the bitter feeling which their leaders profess towards our people, the nation would, of course, offer no such easy terms. The nation would say, "When you threw off the Constitution, you did it for better for worse. It guarantied to you your State governments. You spurned the guaranty. Let it be so. Let the guaranty be withdrawn. You cannot sustain them. Let them go, then. You have destroyed them. And the nation governs you by proconsuls." But the nation has no such desire to deal harshly with these people. The nation knows that more than half of them were never regarded as people at home,—that they had no more to do with the Rebellion than had the oxen with which they labored. The nation knows that of the rest of the Southern people literally only a handful professed power in the State. The nation knows, therefore, that what pretended to be a union of republics was, really, to take Gouverneur Morris's phrase, a union of republics with oligarchies,—seventeen republics united to fourteen oligarchies, when this thing began. The nation knows that the fourteen will be happier, stronger, more prosperous than ever, when their people have the rights of which they are partly conscious,—when they also become republics. The nation means to carry out the constitutional guaranty, and give them the republican government which under the Constitution belongs to every State in the Union. The nation looks forward to prosperous centuries, in which these States, with these people and the descendants of these people, shall be united in one nation with the republics which have been true to the nation. For all these reasons the nation has no thought of insisting on its rights as against Rebel States. It has no thunders of vengeance except for those who have led in these iniquities. For the people who have been misled it has pardon, protection, encouragement, and hope. It can afford to be generous. And at the President's hands it makes the offer which will be received.
We say this offer will be received. We know very well the difficulty with which an opinion long branded with ignominy makes head in countries where there is no press, where there is no free speech, where there are no large cities. Excepting Louisiana, the Southern States have none of these. And the "peculiar institutions" throw the control of what is called opinion more completely into the hands of a very small class of men, we might almost say a very small knot of men, than in any other oligarchy which we remember in modern history. It is in considering this very difficulty that we recognize the wisdom of the President's Proclamation. He is conscious of the difficulty, and has placed his minimum of loyal inhabitants at a very low point, that, even in the hardest cases, there may be a possibility of meeting his requisition.
It is not true, on the other hand, that he has placed his minimum so low as to involve the government in any difficulty in sustaining the State governments which will be framed at his call. It must be remembered that this "tenth part" of righteous men will have very strong allies in every Southern State. It is confessed, on all hands, that they will be supported by all the negroes in every State. Just in proportion to what was the strength of the planting interest is its weakness in the new order of things. Given such physical force, given the moral and physical strength which comes with national protection, and given the immense power which belongs to the wish for peace, and the "tenth part" will soon find its fraction becoming larger and more respectable by accretions at home and by emigration from other States. We shall soon learn that there is next to nobody who really favored this thing in the beginning. They will tell us that they all stood for their old State flag, and that they will be glad to stand for it in its new hands.
It will be only the first step that will cost. Everybody sees this. The President sees it. Mr. Davis sees it. He hopes nobody will take it. We hope a good many people will. The merit of the President's plan is that this step can be promptly taken. And so many are the openings by which national feeling now addresses the people of the States in revolt, and national men can call on them to express their real opinions and to act in their real interest, that we hope to see it taken in many places at the same time.
When Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, he supposed that one-thirteenth part of his people were Christians. He was statesman enough to know that a minority of one-thirteenth, united together because they had one cause, would be omnipotent over a majority of twelve-thirteenths, without a cause and disunited. So, if any one asks for an example in our history,—the Territory of Kansas was thrown open to emigration with every facility given to the Southern emigrant, and every discouragement offered to the Northerner. But forty men, organized together by a cause, settled Lawrence, and it was rumored that there was to be some organization of the other Northern settlers, and at that word the Northern hive emptied itself into Kansas, and the Atchisons and Bufords and Stringfellows abandoned their new territory, badly stung. These are illustrations, one of them on the largest scale, and the other belonging wholly to our own time and country, of the worth even of a very small minority, in such an initiative as is demanded now. What was done in Kansas can be done again in Florida, in Texas, if Texas do not take care for herself, in either Carolina, in any Southern State where the "righteous men" do not themselves appear to take this first step on which the President relies.
Take, for instance, this magnificent Florida, our own Italy,—if one can conceive of an Italy where till now men have been content to live a half-civilized life, only because the oranges grew to their hands, and there was no necessity for toil. The vote of Florida in 1860 was 14,347. So soon as in Florida one-tenth part of this number, or 1,435 men, take the oath of allegiance to the National Government, so soon, if they have the qualifications of electors under Florida law, shall we have a loyal State in Florida. It will be a Free State, offering the privileges of a Free State to the eager eyes of the North and of Europe. That valley of the St. John's, with its wealth of lumber,—the even climate of the western shore,—the navy-yard to be reëstablished at Pensacola,—the commerce to be resumed at Jacksonville,—the Nice which we will build up for our invalids at St. Augustine,—the orange-groves which are wasting their sweetness at this moment, on the plantations and the islands,—will all be so many temptations to the emigrant, as soon as work is honorable in Florida. If the people who gave 5,437 votes for Bell and 367 for Douglas cannot furnish 1,435 men to establish this new State government, we here know who can.
"Armies composed of freemen conquer for themselves, not for their leaders." This is the happy phrase of Robertson, as he describes the reëstablishment of society in Europe after the great Northern invasions, which gave new life to Roman effeminacy, and new strength to Roman corruption. The phrase is perfectly true. It is as true of the armies of freemen who have been called to the South now to keep the peace as it was of the armies of freemen who were called South then by the imbecility of Roman emperors or their mutual contentions. The lumbermen from Maine and New Hampshire who have seen the virgin riches of the St. John's, like the Massachusetts volunteers who have picked out their farms in the valley of the Shenandoah or established in prospect their forges on the falls of the Potomac, or like the Illinois regiments who have been introduced to the valleys of Tennessee or of Arkansas, will furnish men enough, well skilled in political systems, to start the new republics, in regions which have never known what a true republic was till now.