THE BANE OF OUR COUNTRY.
While sharing the Provost-Marshal's office, in Portsmouth, Virginia, I was struck with the almost utter absence of cultivation of the understanding of the people living there or in the surrounding country, who entered to obtain passes, or for other purposes. Scarce one of them at first appreciated the nature of an oath, which they all shrank from taking, or objected to, when proposed as a condition of obtaining either the passes or the protection they wished. They were not merely illiterate and untaught, but showed also an extremely low grade of reasoning power. There was, indeed, in most cases, but little development even of those lower grades of intellectual ability which are so frequently seen in simply 'illiterate' persons. They hung back from committing themselves, in any way, as friendly to us, though they evidently did not feel that hatred or ill-feeling characteristic of the bolder secessionist. I afterward saw many more of these people, in Norfolk, at our office. With our continued occupancy of the city, and in the absence of any aggressive action by our Government, they presented themselves more frequently. Among them there was occasionally one who avowed himself, without reservation, for the Union. These people are, I am confident, the only ones in the rebellious States who are other than secessionists. Love of the Union—that which the reader identifies with patriotism and nationality—they had not, because this can nowhere be found in the rebellious States, except in isolated instances. That they remained silent and subdued under the progress of the acts of the secessionists, and never raised hand or voice in contradiction to them, proves in this class an absence of that force of character, or of that moral courage or 'energy' which is the distinguishing attribute of our Northern people, even the poorest, and this was also evinced when we first occupied the town. It was not peacefulness of disposition which I remarked, but the lack first, of decision of character, and next, of decision of understanding respecting the questions at issue. In conversation they could express only very simple notions, nor could I promptly elicit more from them. Even their feelings lacked the qualities of force and intensity. Yet this class is next to the ruling and leading part of the population, which is composed of planters, cotton, tobacco, and produce factors' families, professional men, and others, who court patronage, including shopkeepers, small manufacturers, and money-lenders, and who support in political affairs their own clientéle of supporters. The latter people constitute the determinedly rebellious. It is the first class only, that we can regard as the sole support to Unionism which there is in the rebellious States; but in them we shall find no moral force or power even when the reign of the leading class shall have ceased. These facts, I am aware, are in striking contrast to the usual estimation of the courage and daring of the people of the South. But the usual estimation is true only of the people who have a concert of interest in slavery, and who, whatever their petty disagreements may be, concur in their politics. Nowhere, therefore, is democracy less actual than in the rebellious States; a ruling and a subservient class exists precisely as in England or Austria. To increase the latter, comprising the people I first described, is by no means to increase the power and extend the domination of the other, but the contrary; and undoubtedly the diminution of their number by the sacrifice of their lives in the rebellion, is considered by the chief managers as desirable, in view of the success of their scheme of polity and government.
Accordingly, in enforcing their plan of formally identifying the various States with secession—the form being the ordinance of secession—the suffrages and sense of this ruled class were ruthlessly unheeded, and denied validity.
Hence we say that several of the rebel States did not 'secede,' it being true that a majority of the people expressed their aversion to rebellion—this majority being, for the occasion, the ruling one, in virtue of the principle to which all equally deferred. But it is the will of the ruling or aristocratic class in all similar cases, and not the forms of law or principle, which accomplishes such changes, whether according to the forms of law or in disregard of them. This class are never respecters of principle, but rule in virtue not of what principles empower them to do, as a majority, but of the power of might and dominant strength. It is obvious that were they to do the former, they would be destitute of any other power than pertained to the whole community, they in part, and others equally. Accordingly, they having, once for all, in their adhesion to the Constitution, and again on its eve, consented to an election, and therefore its issue, when a majority of the entire nation elected a representative of the Chicago declaration, they reverted to their power of might, and rebelled.
It is, therefore, the subversion of an unprincipled (the term is of the strictest accuracy) ruling class, or aristocracy, and the obliteration of their peculiar power, that we have to accomplish. This power consists wholly of certain peculiar interests as masters. To deprive them of these, is the only possible terminus of the question at issue. So plain and palpable is the whole question, that we need hardly say that their whole scheme of government turns upon and clusters about this interest. For the preservation of this interest, which they thought touched by the advances of freedom, they rushed into war, and for the conservation of their power, they base all upon it.
That the general question of property is at all affected by the obliteration of this interest, is an egregious error. The property, the possession of which is valid and inviolable, is the product of human skill, industry, labor, invention, or what not. Nor does it confer political dominance on its possessor. The slaveholders are the only class in the nation whose property interest does so; and reciprocally, the sole object of the maintenance of this interest is the maintenance of this dominant power. Whether it be or be not criminal to possess it, is not the point upon which the demand for the abrogation of this interest turns—at least, there is no legal precedent to so think of it—but it turns upon the fact that it is ruinous to a republican system. Not the whole force of republicanism can at once maintain itself and conserve and cherish that; and if it, to a certain extent cherish it, it will do no more than continue the basis of the power of a class, who will use it in the only way it can be used, namely, in contesting whatever interests, principles, or practices are averse to it.
Hence, for more than thirty years not a single widely beneficent measure of legislation has been allowed to pass and become operative by the representatives of this interest. So the South, the seat of this interest, has always been, in its own estimation, 'the South,' despite what we have said of a national Union; rendering it impossible that the republican patriot could unite in one sentiment that which this particular interest divided itself from.
That humanity should dictate the freedom of the slave in the interests of morality, is but natural. With this we have nothing to do; but that the being of an 'aristocracy based on property' should be excluded from the bounds of a republic, is of an importance to it and mankind, not second to religion itself.