But the assumption of mutual hate between the Northern and the Southern masses is utterly groundless. Nothing in the attitude, the bearing, the utterances, of the loyal millions affords it any justification or countenance. So far are they from cherishing any such aversion to the Southern people, that they can with difficulty, and but inadequately, comprehend the malignity wherewith they are regarded by the revolters, without feeling the smallest desire to reciprocate it. That the Rebellion itself should be regarded with general reprobation throughout the Free States was inevitable, for, in the first place, it involves a most flagitious breach of faith. Republican liberty rests on an implied but essential compact that the result of a fair election shall be conclusive. If those who lose an election are thereupon to rush to arms for a reversal of the decision of the ballot-box, then elections are a stupid sham, whereon no earnest person will waste his breath or his suffrage. Why should any one devote his time and effort to secure a political result which those overborne by it will set at defiance the next hour? It is not merely Jefferson or Adams, Jackson or Lincoln, who is defied by a revolt like that now raging in this country; it is the principle of Popular Elections—it is the right of a constitutional majority to govern. Concede that the Southern States were justifiable in seceding from the Union because Lincoln (with their connivance) was chosen President, and it were absurd ever to hold another Presidential Election, or ask any man to vote hereafter. The North certainly feels that the principle of government by constitutions and majorities is assailed by this rebellion, and that to concede its rightfulness is to displace the very corner-stone of republican liberty.
The North feels also that commercial dishonesty was potent among the influences which fomented this rebellion. Bankruptcy almost universal—planters immersed in debt for lands, for negroes, for food, for fabrics—merchants overhead in debt to the importers and jobbers of the Northern sea-ports—every one owing more or less, and few able or willing to pay: such was the general pecuniary condition of the South at the outset of this subversion. It is no libel on the South to say that relief from the pressure of over-due obligations was primarily sought by an immense number, in plunging into the abyss of revolution. And a great proportion of the Southern merchants, with full intent to defraud their creditors, by lighting the flames of civil war, in 1860 swelled their indebtedness to their Northern friends to the utmost. This was low knavery seeking protection behind the black mantle of treason. If the facts could be fully laid bare, it would be found that disinclination to pay their honest debts has transformed vast numbers from Unionists into traitors. The North can never respect those who seek to slay their creditors, that they may evade their moral as well as legal obligation to pay them.
Nor can the loyal millions respect those who, in setting forth the grounds of their rebellion, and essaying to justify themselves in the eyes of the civilized world, do not hesitate to deny the most palpable truths. The rebel who rests on the inherent or reserved right of each State to secede from the Union at her sovereign pleasure, is a bad logician, and unsound in his constitutional theories; but he is not necessarily a knave. But the rebel apologist who says to Europe, 'This revolt was not impelled by Slavery, but by hostility to the policy of Protection, Internal Improvements, etc., which the North had power in the Union to fasten upon us in defiance of our utmost opposition,' he shows himself a dissembler and a liar. There was no tariff when the Cotton States seceded—there had been none for many years—which those States had not heartily aided to enact. For not more than ten years of the eighty-odd of our existence as a nation, has there been a tariff in operation that South-Carolina did not help enact and sustain. The tariffs which are now trumped up as an excuse for Secession, not only had no existence when that Secession was inaugurated, but could have had none had the Cotton States remained faithful to their constitutional obligations. When, therefore, such men as Lieutenant Maury assure Europe that Slavery did not incite the Southern Rebellion—that it had but a remote and subordinate relation to that outbreak—they betray their own recklessness of truth, and their knowledge that their case is one which can not abide the scrutiny and the dispassionate judgment of Christendom.
But the Southern Whites hate us vehemently. That is unfortunately true of what would seem to be a large majority of them. Misled by artful demagogues—excited by charges of Northern rapacity, perfidy, outrage, and venom, to which no contradiction in their hearing is permitted—the Poor Whites of the South really believe that the North is waging against them an unprovoked and fiendish, war of subjugation and rapine. Of course, they abhor us, and invoke all manner of curses on our heads. But their hatred rests upon and is impelled by egregious falsehoods, and will vanish when those falsehoods shall have been exposed and their influence dissipated. The Whisky Rebels of Western Pennsylvania intensely hated the rule of George Washington; but their rebellion being crushed, all trace of the bitterness it engendered soon faded away.
As to the aristocracy of the South, it understands the case far better, though individuals among its members are misled. The majority are fighting for the extension and perpetuation of that Heaven-defying system which is at once the idol and the bane of the South—for that 'peculiar institution' which makes one half the community helpless victims to the pride, indolence, avarice, and lust of the other half. The aristocracy are fighting for Slavery—neither less nor more—and they fight bravely, desperately. Their existence as a privileged order has been recklessly staked on the issue of the contest, and they mean to triumph at any cost. To suppose that they can be vanquished yet leave their bloody idol intact—that they can be compelled to reënter 'the Union as it was,' and send their Slidells, Hammonds, Howell Cobbs, and Masons, back to a Union Congress—is one of the wildest dreams that ever flitted through a sane mind. Reunion or Disunion is possible; a restoration of 'the Union as it was,' is as impracticable as a return of the Eleventh Century or a replacement of the New World in the condition wherein Columbus found it.
The Southern aristocracy must triumph or cease as an aristocracy to exist. A flogged slaveholder is an anomaly that can not endure; he can not rule his chattels if they know that he has succumbed to a force that he would gladly have defied but could no longer resist. 'Poor White trash' may endure and repay the contempt of their servile neighbors, but a man-owning aristocracy that has fought and been vanquished, can no longer command the respect or the obedience of its chattels.
The issue of our present struggle must be Disunion or Emancipation. And, assuming it to be Emancipation, the hate wherewith the North is regarded at the South would soon die out. New social and industrial relations and interests, new activities, new ambitions, would speedily efface all painful recollections of our desperate struggle. The late slaveholders, having ceased to be such, would no longer be controlled by the impulses nor plastic to the influences which impelled them to rush upon the thick bosses of the Union. They would find in the rapid peopling of their section by immigration from the North and from Europe, and the consequent increase in current value of the lands, timber, mines, water-power, etc., of their Section, new avenues to wealth, new incitements to activity and energy. Shays' rebellion engulfed the greater part of Western Massachusetts; but ten years passed, and it had sunk into a mere tradition. La Vendée was more unanimous and more intense in its hostility to the French Republic than any Southern State now is to a restoration of the Union; yet La Vendée soon after responded meekly to the conscriptions of Napoleon. War alienates and inflames; but Peace speedily re-links the golden chain of mutual interests, and all is kindly again.
Let Slavery disappear, and all incitement to alienation or bitterness between the North and the South will have vanished. God has made them for parts of the same country; their diverse topographies, climates, productions, render them the natural complement of each other. The Cotton, Sugar, Tobacco, etc., of the South will be freely exchanged, as of yore, for the Manufactures, Machinery, and Implements of the North: the former gradually learning to supply her own essential wants to an extent hitherto unknown; but the rapid increase of her population, industry, and wealth, will render her a wider and steadier market for the products of the latter and of Europe than she has ever yet been. The South will soon realize that the death of Slavery has awakened her to a new and nobler life—that what she at first regarded as a great calamity and a downfall, was in truth her beneficent renovation and her chief blessing. So shall North and South, at length comprehending and appreciating each other, walk hand in hand along their common pathway to an exalted and benignant destiny, admonished to mutual forbearance and deference by mournful yet proud recollections of their great struggle, and realizing in their newly established and truly fraternal concord the opening of a long, bright vista of reciprocal kindness and inviolable peace.