These conclusions would have been sufficiently unwelcome to the Southern leaders, if they had had no purpose or policy beyond the maintenance of slavery where it exists; but they had already determined to extend the institution southward over Mexico and Central America, and they knew full well the necessity of destroying the Union and the government before such an enterprise could be undertaken with any hope of success. Hence they denied the right of the majority to rule unless they ruled in obedience to the will of the minority. Thus the slaveholders came naturally and unavoidably to the denial of the fundamental principle of the government; and, having denied the principle, there remained no reason why they should not undertake the overthrow of the government itself. And thus the conspiracy and the rebellion sprung naturally and unavoidably from the institution of slavery.
Further, slavery is the support of the conspiracy and the rebellion both in Europe and America. However disastrous slavery may be to the mass of the whites, it affords to the governing class the opportunity and means for constant attention to public affairs.
In all our history the North has felt the force of this advantage. As a general thing, a northern member occupies a seat in Congress for one or two terms, and then his place is taken by an untried man. And even during his term of service, his attention is given in part to his private affairs, or to plans and schemes designed to secure a re-election. The Southern member takes his seat with a conscious independence due to the fact that his slaves are making crops upon his plantation, and that his re-election does not depend upon the hot breath of the multitude. He enjoys a long and independent experience in the public service; and he thus acquires a power to serve his party, his country or his section, which is disproportionate even to his experience. A good deal of the consideration which the South enjoys abroad, and especially in England, is due to the fact that in the South a governing class is recognized, which corresponds to the governing classes wherever an aristocracy or monarchism exists. By a community of ideas the South commands the sympathy, and enjoys the confidence and secret support of the enemies of democracy the world over. Through the political and pecuniary support which the public men of that section have derived from slavery, they have been able to take and maintain social positions at Washington, which, by circumstances, were denied to much the larger number of northern representatives, and thus they have influenced the politics of this country and the opinions of other nations. Consider by how many sympathies and interests England is bound to encourage the policy and promote the fortunes of the South. There is the sympathy of the governing class in England for the governing class in the South, even though they are slaveholders; there is the hostility of the ignorant operatives in their manufacturing towns, who, through exterior influences, have been led to believe that whatever hardships they are brought to endure are caused by the desire of the North to subjugate the South; there is the purpose of English merchants and manufacturers to cripple, or if possible to destroy the manufactures and commerce of the North; and, finally, there is the hope of all classes that by the alienation or separation of the two sections England would derive additional commercial advantages, and that the scheme of here establishing a continental republic would be abandoned, never to be again revived. There is, moreover, a reasonable expectation, founded in the nature of things, and possibly already supported by positive promises and pledges, that England is [pg 224] to stand in the relation of protector to the confederated States. Nor will she be in the least disturbed by the institution of slavery, if perchance that institution survives the struggle. If she can be secure in the monopoly of the best cotton lands on the globe, if she can be manufacturer and shop-keeper for the South, if she can deprive the North of one half of its legitimate commerce, if she can obtain the control of the gulf of Mexico, of the mouth of the Mississippi, if she can command the line of sea-coast from Galveston to Fortress Monroe or even to Charleston, and thus compel us to make our way to the Pacific by the passes of the Rocky Mountains exclusively, there is no sacrifice of men, or of money, or of principle, or of justice, that would be deemed too great by the English people and government. But what then? Are we to make war upon England because her sympathies and interests run thus with the South? Is it not wiser to consider why it is that the South is sustained by the interests and sympathies of England? If slavery for fifty years had been unknown among us, could there be found a hundred men, within the limits of the United States, who would accept a British protectorate under any circumstances or for any purpose whatever? And is it not therein manifest, that our foreign and domestic perils are alike due to slavery? And shall we not have dealt successfully with all our foreign difficulties when we shall have established the jurisdiction of the United States over the territory claimed by the rebels? But until that happy day arrives, we shall not be relieved for an instant from the danger of a foreign war; and if the rebellion last six months longer, there is no reason to suppose that a foreign war can be averted. When we offer so tempting a prize to nations that wish us ill, can we expect them to put aside the opportunity which we have not the courage and ability to master? We have observed the hot haste of England to recognize the rebels as belligerents; we have seen the flimsy covering of neutrality that she has thrown over the illegitimate commerce that her citizens have carried on with the South, and from the time, manner, and nature of her demand for the release of Mason and Slidell, we are forced to infer that she will seize every opportunity to bring about an open rupture with the United States. And though Mr. Seward has carried the country successfully through the difficulty of the Trent, we ought to expect the presentation of demands which we can not so readily and justly meet. Indeed, enough is known of the Mexican question to suggest the most serious apprehensions of foreign war on that account.
The necessity for speedily crushing the rebellion is as strong as it was at the moment when Lord Lyons made the demand for the release of the persons taken from the deck of the Trent.
Is there any reason, even the slightest, to suppose that by military and naval means alone the rebellion can be crushed by the 19th of April next?
Yet every day's delay gives the confederate States additional strength, and renders them in the estimation of mankind more and more worthy of recognition and independent government. Their recognition will be followed by treaties of friendship and alliance; and those treaties will give strength to the rebels and increase the embarrassments of our own government. It is the necessity of our national life that the settlement of this question should not be much longer postponed.
By some means we must satisfy the world, and that speedily, that the rebellion is a failure. Nor can we much longer tender declarations of what we intend to do, or offer promises as to what we will do, in the face of the great fact that for eight months the capital of the Republic has been in a state of siege. If, in these circumstances of necessity and peril to us, the armies of the rebels be not speedily dispersed, and the leaders of the rebellion rendered desperate, will the government allow the earth to again receive seed from the hand of the slave, [pg 225] under the dictation of the master, and for the support of the enemies of the constitution and the Union? If there were any probability that the States would return to their allegiance, then indeed we might choose to add to our own burthens rather than interfere their internal affairs. But there is no hope whatever that the seceded States will return voluntarily to the Union.
There could be no justifying cause for the emancipation of the slaves in time of peace by the action of the general government; and now it must be demanded and defended as the means by which the war is to be closed, and a permanent peace secured. If before the return of seed-time the emancipation of the slaves in several or in all of the disloyal States be declared as a military necessity, and the blacks be invited to the sea-coast where we have and may have possession, they will raise supplies for themselves, and the rebellion will come to an ignominious end, through the inability of the masters, when deprived of the services of their slaves, to procure the means of carrying on the war.