The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 / Devoted To Literature And National Policy

by Various

But if the cause of patriotism and civilization should fail in this struggle, what will be the consequences? Standing armies, stronger governments, leagues, and ruptures, internecine wars, European interference. Let this division of our once happy country be consummated now, and there can be no reunion for ages. The Southern nation recognized by European Governments, treaties and alliances formed, and we are involved in European complications through which the separation will be perpetuated. And this disunion made permanent, others will develop themselves, and in time be consummated. It is the interest of the reigning dynasties in Europe to see our nation dismembered: the South would be our rival; and we should not have power to enforce union hereafter. When a politico-geographical weakness is developed along the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific States will not be without ambitious demagogues to attempt the establishment of an independent organization on the Pacific. Another fracture may be developed along the Alleghanies, and the great agricultural West may set up for itself among the nations. New England may be seized with a like madness, and unworthily aspire to a separate national existence. With all these petty nations on this continent, there must be standing armies, leagues, and complications, as in Europe. Diplomacy, with its intrigues, and wars to maintain the 'balance of power,' will make up the great body of national history and absorb those energies which should be employed in advancing the means of human well-being.

But we will not speculate upon probabilities so remote. We will presume the success of rebellion, and one nation south, another north. The evil would still be very great. There must be armed thousands maintained by the two Governments to be ready for war at any moment. Two such nations, even if both were free, and still less with slavery in one of them, could not exist by the side of each other without frequent broils and collisions. Standing armies exhaust the resources of nations and retard the progress of civilization by a double result. They withdraw able-bodied men from the productive energies of the country, and are at the same time a tax upon the industrial forces which remain. The enormous daily expense of the present war must give us some idea of the cost of maintaining a standing army of two or three hundred thousand men even in times of peace. This has done a great deal to retard the progress of Europe; and that we, as a nation, have heretofore been free from this encumbrance, is doubtless one of the reasons why we have made such rapid strides in so much that makes a nation great and happy. But standing armies imply war, and the international wars of Europe have done much to exhaust her resources and paralyze her prosperity. Guizot says—and we may see it in history for ourselves—that 'for nearly three centuries, foreign relations form the most important part of history.' Foreign relations, wars, treaties, alliances, alone occupy the attention and fill the page of history. Sad result of the political divisions of a continent! Unhappy fruits of maintaining the balance of power among neighboring nations! Let this continent be warned! And now is the crisis when this warning needs most to be heeded. And even if this critical juncture should be safely passed, we have need to guard against others, and these truths should be universally recognized as elements of our national preservation. We may profit by the shipwreck of others, to avoid the rock on which they split. There are causes clearly discernible in the history of Europe, for the divisions of that continent, which do not now, and never have obtained here. Her political institutions were developed out of the chaos of barbarism, and she had to unite smaller jurisdictions into larger ones; and she did this as well as the status of civilization would permit at the period when national organization was effected.

The facilities of intercourse between a people, for the transmission of intelligence, for travel and transportation—those accompaniments of civilization which bring remote sections of country near each other and bind them together; the resemblance or the difference of languages spoken; the antipathies, prejudices, sympathies of the peoples—all these are elements which go to determine the geographical extent of a nation. Original difference of language, local prejudices, the want of civilization, contributed to limit the European nationalities to the small extent of territory which, for the most part, they occupy. These causes have not operated against us. Local distinctions on account of language do not even obtain here. There are no real causes to contract the geographical boundaries of our Government; while, on the other hand, the constant increase of facilities for the commercial and social intercourse of one section with another, and the specializations of the agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial interests, in the creation of dependence between different sections of the country, demand, in the name of science, common sense, justice, and the good of the people, that this Government shall remain one and undivided.

We cannot, therefore, afford to allow the present or any other rupture to become permanent, and entail upon ourselves and our children all the disadvantages and calamities incident thereto. It would not be wise to prepare the political stage of this country for the reënaction of the tragedies of Europe. Better any sacrifice than this. Even if we should lose great battles, or if European interference should threaten, it would be better to rally the people anew even to the raising and equipment of millions of men, and sustain the war at this enormous cost, rather than entail division and its necessary calamities on the future political life of this continent. This war is costing immensely in men and property; but if, thereby, the integrity of the Union can be maintained, it will be an economy both in men and means, if only a brief period of the future be taken into the account. We are often reduced to a choice of evils. War is a great evil, but it may prevent others still greater. The indiscriminate arming of slaves and the spread of incendiary fires would be great calamities, but nevertheless justifiable, if the only means of selfdefence, or of preventing still greater and more enduring calamities. But there need be no violation of the ethics of war, no infringement of the rights of humanity. The North is strong in its natural resources, strong in the justice of its cause: it has risen to vindicate the cardinal law of civilization, and by this shall it conquer. There appeared to Constantine a vision of the cross, with the motto, 'By this conquer.' Science has descended in these last days to dwell among mankind. In her hand is a scroll which she unfolds before the nations, and they read, 'Unity, the consummation of social and political destiny.' Thereupon, turning to our nation in the hour of trial, she says: 'The time is approaching when the principle of unitization must sweep a wider circle, and you are chosen to inaugurate this new era in the destiny of nations. Thus far you have done well; be true to the work so happily begun; carry it unflinchingly through this ordeal, and you will be the greatest Power for good upon the earth. There must be an extension of political organization—a widening of the sphere of political unity; and through your example and influence will the nations be gathered into a larger fold.' And pointing to the scroll, she adds: 'Let 'Union' be eternally your motto; by this conquer!'

If we should apply no other than a superficial interpretation to history, overlooking the great laws by which development proceeds, and thence conclude that the world is to follow doggedly in the footsteps of the past, we should anticipate a future far less beautiful in grand results than Destiny has in store for the generations to come.

Are we to have the Empire of Rome or of Charlemagne over again? In the Roman Empire there were no common interests; no representation; no communication among the people; no intersection of the country by the networks of roads—only great military roads leading from province to province; no specialization of industrial and commercial interests; no civilized dependence of one part on another; no natural ties as yet developed to their real significance between the several countries of the Roman Empire: it was held together by the strong and despotic arm of Rome. The Empire of Charlemagne embraced the territory of Middle and Western Europe, inhabited by barbarous peoples, isolated, warlike, and speaking different languages; there were none of the civilized bonds of union; only the genius of Charlemagne held them together; and upon his death the huge fabric he had reared naturally fell to pieces. The Spanish Empire is but another instance showing that geographical and other elements of disconnection must not overbalance those which relate remote sections to each other, and bind them together in a common interest, else dissolution will be the result. In respect to the United States, all these conditions are reversed. Every interest in the natural course of development points to union—demands union, and, in the triumph of justice, shall have union.

Is there anything in the way of this union? Is there a morbid growth—a cause of irritation and disease tending to dissolution? Then, it must be removed. Is ambitious and reckless demagoguism to be apprehended? Then educate the people and diffuse science. But is there not still a worse devil to be cast out? Where slavery is, you cannot educate the people, you cannot diffuse science; and without enlightenment there can be no political justice, since unprincipled demagogues will sway all political destiny. Slavery cannot always exist side by side with freedom; it is the natural enemy of union, the enemy of civilization. Prominent secession leaders have admitted that slavery is the cause of this war, boasting at the same time that the confederate constitution is founded on a scientific distinction of races. Without slavery there could be no sufficient motive for the independent national existence of the South. Had there been no slavery, there had been no civil war. This is, at the present time, the political significance of the institution. There is no safety but in its extinction—so far at least as the border Slave States are concerned, in order to overthrow its power in the United States Senate, to enlarge the sympathies of freedom, and weaken and circumscribe the chances for revolutionary movements which slavery will be ready at any critical moment to precipitate against the Union.

If we have not misinterpreted the law of development, slavery, as it exists in this country, is a morbid political condition, a social disease, which stands in the way of the natural course of social evolution. In this law, therefore, is written the doom of slavery. The enlightened world will not always permit it to blast the fair field of civilization by its poisonous presence.

There is a law of human movement by which predominating conditions extend and perpetuate themselves, overcoming those which are weaker and on the wane. We observed this in our brief survey of the feudal system. Freedom is now in the ascendant, and slavery must go down. And since secession is the child of slavery, and both at war with the cardinal principles of progressive civilization, it is meet that both should fall together.

This war may not directly extinguish slavery, and it may; we do not see the end. But if not directly, we believe the war is, nevertheless, indirectly setting those forces into action which will eventually extinguish the institution. If the 'confederacy' should be destroyed, as, if not saved by foreign intervention, it certainly will be, slavery, if not already dead, will be pent up, and, in that case, will soon die by its own hands.