Proofed by David A. Maddock [Redactor's note: Italics are indicated by underscores surroundingthe _italicized text_. ] THE CONTEST IN AMERICA BY JOHN STUART MILL REPRINTED FROM FRASER'S MAGAZINE The Contest in America The cloud which for the space of a month hung gloomily over thecivilized world, black with far worse evils than those of simple war, has passed from over our heads without bursting. The fear has not beenrealized, that the only two first-rate Powers who are also freenations would take to tearing each other in pieces, both the one andthe other in a bad and odious cause. For while, on the American side, the war would have been one of reckless persistency in wrong, on oursit would have been a war in alliance with, and, to practical purposes, in defence and propagation of, slavery. We had, indeed, been wronged. We had suffered an indignity, and something more than an indignity, which, not to have resented, would have been to invite a constantsuccession of insults and injuries from the same and from every otherquarter. We could have acted no otherwise than we have done: yet it isimpossible to think, without something like a shudder, from what wehave escaped. We, the emancipators of the slave--who have weariedevery Court and Government in Europe and America with our protests andremonstrances, until we goaded them into at least ostensiblycoöperating with us to prevent the enslaving of the negro--we, who forthe last half century have spent annual sums, equal to the revenue ofa small kingdom, in blockading the African coast, for a cause in whichwe not only had no interest, but which was contrary to our pecuniaryinterest, and which many believed would ruin, as many among us still, though erroneously, believe that it has ruined, our colonies, --_we_should have lent a hand to setting up, in one of the most commandingpositions of the world, a powerful republic, devoted not only toslavery, but to pro-slavery propagandism--should have helped to give aplace in the community of nations to a conspiracy of slave-owners, whohave broken their connection with the American Federation on the soleground, ostentatiously proclaimed, that they thought an attempt wouldbe made to restrain, not slavery itself, but their purpose ofspreading slavery wherever migration or force could carry it. A nation which has made the professions that England has, does notwith impunity, under however great provocation, betake itself tofrustrating the objects for which it has been calling on the rest ofthe world to make sacrifices of what they think their interest. Atpresent all the nations of Europe have sympathized with us; haveacknowledged that we were injured, and declared with rare unanimity, that we had no choice but to resist, if necessary, by arms. But theconsequences of such a war would soon have buried its causes inoblivion. When the new Confederate States, made an independent Powerby English help, had begun their crusade to carry negro slavery fromthe Potomac to Cape Horn; who would then have remembered that Englandraised up this scourge to humanity not for the evil's sake, butbecause somebody had offered an insult to her flag? Or even ifunforgotten, who would then have felt that such a grievance was asufficient palliation of the crime? Every reader of a newspaper, tothe farthest ends of the earth, would have believed and remembered onething only--that at the critical juncture which was to decide whetherslavery should blaze up afresh with increased vigor or be trodden outat the moment of conflict between the good and the evil spirit--at thedawn of a hope that the demon might now at last be chained and flunginto the pit, England stepped in, and, for the sake of cotton, madeSatan victorious. The world has been saved from this calamity, and England from thisdisgrace. The accusation would indeed have been a calumny. But to beable to defy calumny, a nation, like an individual, must stand veryclear of just reproach in its previous conduct. Unfortunately, weourselves have given too much plausibility to the charge. Not byanything said or done by us as a Government or as a nation, but by thetone of our press, and in some degree, it must be owned, the generalopinion of English society. It is too true, that the feelings whichhave been manifested since the beginning of the American contest--thejudgments which have been put forth, and the wishes which have beenexpressed concerning the incidents and probable eventualities of thestruggle--the bitter and irritating criticism which has been kept up, not even against both parties equally, but almost solely against theparty in the right, and the ungenerous refusal of all those justallowances which no country needs more than our own, whenever itscircumstances are as near to those of America as a cut finger is to analmost mortal wound, --these facts, with minds not favorably disposedto us, would have gone far to make the most odious interpretation ofthe war in which we have been so nearly engaged with the UnitedStates, appear by many degrees the most probable. There is no denyingthat our attitude towards the contending parties (I mean our moralattitude, for politically there was no other course open to us thanneutrality) has not been that which becomes a people who are assincere enemies of slavery as the English really are, and have made asgreat sacrifices to put an end to it where they could. And it has beenan additional misfortune that some of our most powerful journals havebeen for many years past very unfavorable exponents of English feelingon all subjects connected with slavery: some, probably, from theinfluences, more or less direct, of West Indian opinions andinterests: others from inbred Toryism, which, even when compelled byreason to hold opinions favorable to liberty, is always adverse to itin feeling; which likes the spectacle of irresponsible power exercisedby one person over others; which has no moral repugnance to thethought of human beings born to the penal servitude for life, to whichfor the term of a few years we sentence our most hardened criminals, but keeps its indignation to be expended on "rabid and fanaticalabolitionists" across the Atlantic, and on those writers in Englandwho attach a sufficiently serious meaning to their Christianprofessions, to consider a fight against slavery as a fight for God. Now, when the mind of England, and it may almost be said, of thecivilized part of mankind, has been relieved from the incubus whichhad weighed on it ever since the _Trent_ outrage, and when we are nolonger feeling towards the Northern Americans as men feel towardsthose with whom they may be on the point of struggling for life ordeath; now, if ever, is the time to review our position, and considerwhether we have been feeling what ought to have been felt, and wishingwhat ought to have been wished, regarding the contest in which theNorthern States are engaged with the South. In considering this matter, we ought to dismiss from our minds, as faras possible, those feelings against the North, which have beenengendered not merely by the _Trent_ aggression, but by the previousanti-British effusions of newspaper writers and stump orators. It ishardly worth while to ask how far these explosions of ill-humor areanything more than might have been anticipated from ill-disciplinedminds, disappointed of the sympathy which they justly thought they hada right to expect from the great anti-slavery people, in their reallynoble enterprise. It is almost superfluous to remark that a democraticGovernment always shows worst where other Governments generally showbest, on its outside; that unreasonable people are much more noisythan the reasonable; that the froth and scum are the part of aviolently fermenting liquid that meets the eyes, but are not its bodyand substance. Without insisting on these things, I contend, that allprevious cause of offence should be considered as cancelled, by thereparation which the American Government has so amply made; not somuch the reparation itself, which might have been so made as to leavestill greater cause of permanent resentment behind it; but the mannerand spirit in which they have made it. These have been such as most ofus, I venture to say, did not by any means expect. If reparation weremade at all, of which few of us felt more than a hope, we thought thatit would have been made obviously as a concession to prudence, not toprinciple. We thought that there would have been truckling to thenewspaper editors and supposed fire-eaters who were crying out forretaining the prisoners at all hazards. We expected that theatonement, if atonement there were, would have been made withreservations, perhaps under protest. We expected that thecorrespondence would have been spun out, and a trial made to induceEngland to be satisfied with less; or that there would have been aproposal of arbitration; or that England would have been asked to makeconcessions in return for justice; or that if submission was made, itwould have been made, ostensibly, to the opinions and wishes ofContinental Europe. We expected anything, in short, which would havebeen weak and timid and paltry. The only thing which no one seemed toexpect, is what has actually happened. Mr. Lincoln's Government havedone none of these things. Like honest men, they have said in directterms, that our demand was right; that they yielded to it because itwas just; that if they themselves had received the same treatment, they would have demanded the same reparation; and that if what seemedto be the American side of a question was not the just side, theywould be on the side of justice; happy as they were to find aftertheir resolution had been taken, that it was also the side whichAmerica had formerly defended. Is there any one, capable of a moraljudgment or feeling, who will say that his opinion of America andAmerican statesmen, is not raised by such an act, done on suchgrounds? The act itself may have been imposed by the necessity of thecircumstances; but the reasons given, the principles of actionprofessed, were their own choice. Putting the worst hypothesispossible, which it would be the height of injustice to entertainseriously, that the concession was really made solely to convenience, and that the profession of regard for justice was hypocrisy, even so, the ground taken, even if insincerely, is the most hopeful sign of themoral state of the American mind which has appeared for many years. That a sense of justice should be the motive which the rulers of acountry rely on, to reconcile the public to an unpopular, and whatmight seem a humiliating act; that the journalists, the orators, manylawyers, the Lower House of Congress, and Mr. Lincoln's own navalsecretary, should be told in the face of the world, by their ownGovernment, that they have been giving public thanks, presents ofswords, freedom of cities, all manner of heroic honors to the authorof an act which, though not so intended, was lawless and wrong, andfor which the proper remedy is confession and atonement; that thisshould be the accepted policy (supposing it to be nothing higher) of aDemocratic Republic, shows even unlimited democracy to be a betterthing than many Englishmen have lately been in the habit ofconsidering it, and goes some way towards proving that the aberrationseven of a ruling multitude are only fatal when the better instructedhave not the virtue or the courage to front them boldly. Nor ought itto be forgotten, to the honor of Mr. Lincoln's Government, that indoing what was in itself right, they have done also what was bestfitted to allay the animosity which was daily becoming more bitterbetween the two nations so long as the question remained open. Theyhave put the brand of confessed injustice upon that rankling andvindictive resentment with which the profligate and passionate part ofthe American press has been threatening us in the event of concession, and which is to be manifested by some dire revenge, to be taken, asthey pretend, after the nation is extricated from its presentdifficulties. Mr. Lincoln has done what depended on him to make thisspirit expire with the occasion which raised it up; and we shall haveourselves chiefly to blame if we keep it alive by the furtherprolongation of that stream of vituperative eloquence, the source ofwhich, even now, when the cause of quarrel has been amicably made up, does not seem to have run dry. {1} {1. I do not forget one regrettable passage in Mr. Seward's letter, in which he said that "if the safety of the Union required thedetention of the captured persons, it would be the right and duty ofthis Government to detain them. " I sincerely grieve to find thissentence in the dispatch, for the exceptions to the general rules ofmorality are not a subject to be lightly or unnecessarily tamperedwith. The doctrine in itself is no other than that professed andacted on by all governments--that self-preservation, in a State, asin an individual, is a warrant for many things which at all othertimes ought to be rigidly abstained from. At all events, no nationwhich has ever passed "laws of exception, " which ever supended theHabeas Corpus Act or passed an Alien Bill in dread of a Chartistinsurrection, has a right to throw the first stone at Mr. Lincoln'sGovernment. } Let us, then, without reference to these jars, or to the declamationsof newspaper writers on either side of the Atlantic, examine theAmerican question as it stood from the beginning; its origin, thepurpose of both the combatants, and its various possible or probableissues. There is a theory in England, believed perhaps by some, half believedby many more, which is only consistent with original ignorance, orcomplete subsequent forgetfulness, of all the antecedents of thecontest. There are people who tell us that, on the side of the North, the question is not one of slavery at all. The North, it seems, haveno more objection to slavery than the South have. Their leaders neversay one word implying disapprobation of it. They are ready, on thecontrary, to give it new guarantees; to renounce all that they havebeen contending for; to win back, if opportunity offers, the South tothe Union by surrendering the whole point. If this be the true state of the case, what are the Southern chiefsfighting about? Their apologists in England say that it is abouttariffs, and similar trumpery. _They_ say nothing of the kind. Theytell the world, and they told their own citizens when they wantedtheir votes, that the object of the fight was slavery. Many years ago, when General Jackson was President, South Carolina did nearly rebel(she never was near separating) about a tariff; but no other Stateabetted her, and a strong adverse demonstration from Virginia broughtthe matter to a close. Yet the tariff of that day was rigidlyprotective. Compared with that, the one in force at the time of thesecession was a free-trade tariff: This latter was the result ofseveral successive modifications in the direction of freedom; and itsprinciple was not protection for protection, but as much of it only asmight incidentally result from duties imposed for revenue. Even theMorrill tariff (which never could have been passed but for theSouthern secession) is stated by the high authority of Mr. H. C. Careyto be considerably more liberal than the reformed French tariff underMr. Cobden's treaty; insomuch that he, a Protectionist, would be gladto exchange his own protective tariff for Louis Napoleon's free-tradeone. But why discuss, on probable evidence, notorious facts? The worldknows what the question between the North and South has been for manyyears, and still is. Slavery alone was thought of, alone talked of. Slavery was battled for and against, on the floor of Congress and inthe plains of Kansas; on the slavery question exclusively was theparty constituted which now rules the United States: on slaveryFremont was rejected, on slavery Lincoln was elected; the Southseparated on slavery, and proclaimed slavery as the one cause ofseparation. It is true enough that the North are not carrying on war to abolishslavery in the States where it legally exists. Could it have beenexpected, or even perhaps desired, that they should? A great partydoes not change suddenly, and at once, all its principles andprofessions. The Republican party have taken their stand on law, andthe existing constitution of the Union. They have disclaimed all rightto attempt anything which that constitution forbids. It does forbidinterference by the Federal Congress with slavery in the Slave States;but it does not forbid their abolishing it in the District ofColumbia; and this they are now doing, having voted, I perceive, intheir present pecuniary straits, a million of dollars to indemnify theslave-owners of the District. Neither did the Constitution, in theirown opinion, require them to permit the introduction of slavery intothe territories which were not yet States. To prevent this, theRepublican party was formed, and to prevent it, they are now fighting, as the slave-owners are fighting to enforce it. The present government of the United States is not an Abolitionistgovernment. Abolitionists, in America, mean those who do not keepwithin the constitution; who demand the destruction (as far as slaveryis concerned) of as much of it as protects the internal legislation ofeach State from the control of Congress; who aim at abolishing slaverywherever it exists, by force if need be, but certainly by some otherpower than the constituted authorities of the Slave States. TheRepublican party neither aim nor profess to aim at this object. Andwhen we consider the flood of wrath which would have been poured outagainst them if they did, by the very writers who now taunt them withnot doing it, we shall be apt to think the taunt a little misplaced. But though not an Abolitionist party, they are a Free-soil party. Ifthey have not taken arms against slavery, they have against itsextension. And they know, as we may know if we please, that thisamounts to the same thing. The day when slavery can no longer extenditself, is the day of its doom. The slave-owners know this, and it isthe cause of their fury. They know, as all know who have attended tothe subject, that confinement within existing limits is itsdeath-warrant. Slavery, under the conditions in which it exists in theStates, exhausts even the beneficent powers of nature. So incompatibleis it with any kind whatever of skilled labor, that it causes thewhole productive resources of the country to be concentrated on one ortwo products, cotton being the chief, which require, to raise andprepare them for the market, little besides brute animal force. Thecotton cultivation, in the opinion of all competent judges, alonesaves North American slavery; but cotton cultivation, exclusivelyadhered to, exhausts in a moderate number of years all the soils whichare fit for it, and can only be kept up by travelling farther andfarther westward. Mr. Olmsted has given a vivid description of thedesolate state of parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, once among therichest specimens of soil and cultivation in the world; and even themore recently colonized Alabama, as he shows, is rapidly following inthe same downhill track. To slavery, therefore, it is a matter of lifeand death to find fresh fields for the employment of slave labor. Confine it to the present States, and the owners of slave propertywill either be speedily ruined, or will have to find means ofreforming and renovating their agricultural system; which cannot bedone without treating the slaves like human beings, nor without solarge an employment of skilled, that is, of free labor, as will widelydisplace the unskilled, and so depreciate the pecuniary value of theslave, that the immediate mitigation and ultimate extinction ofslavery would be a nearly inevitable and probably rapid consequence. The Republican leaders do not talk to the public of these almostcertain results of success in the present conflict. They talk butlittle, in the existing emergency, even of the original cause ofquarrel. The most ordinary policy teaches them to inscribe on theirbanner that part only of their known principles in which theirsupporters are unanimous. The preservation of the Union is an objectabout which the North are agreed; and it has many adherents, as theybelieve, in the South generally. That nearly half the population ofthe Border Slave States are in favor of it is a patent fact, sincethey are now fighting in its defence. It is not probable that theywould be willing to fight directly against slavery. The Republicanswell know that if they can reëstablish the Union, they gain everythingfor which they originally contended; and it would be a plain breach offaith with the Southern friends of the Government, if, after rallyingthem round its standard for a purpose of which they approve, it weresuddenly to alter its terms of communion without their consent. But the parties in a protracted civil war almost invariably end bytaking more extreme, not to say higher grounds of principle, than theybegan with. Middle parties and friends of compromise are soon leftbehind; and if the writers who so severely criticize the presentmoderation of the Free-soilers are desirous to see the war become anabolition war, it is probable that if the war lasts long enough theywill be gratified. Without the smallest pretension to see further intofuturity than other people, I at least have foreseen and foretold fromthe first, that if the South were not promptly put down, the contestwould become distinctly an antislavery one; nor do I believe that anyperson, accustomed to reflect on the course of human affairs introubled times, can expect anything else. Those who have read, evencursorily, the most valuable testimony to which the English publichave access, concerning the real state of affairs in America--theletters of the _Times'_ correspondent, Mr. Russell--must have observedhow early and rapidly he arrived at the same conclusion, and with whatincreasing emphasis he now continually reiterates it. In one of hisrecent letters he names the end of next summer as the period by which, if the war has not sooner terminated, it will have assumed a completeanti-slavery character. So early a term exceeds, I confess, my mostsanguine hopes; but if Mr. Russell be right, Heaven forbid that thewar should cease sooner; for if it lasts till then, it is quitepossible that it will regenerate the American people. If, however, the purposes of the North may be doubted ormisunderstood, there is at least no question as to those of the South. They make no concealment of _their_ principles. As long as they wereallowed to direct all the policy of the Union; to break throughcompromise after compromise, encroach step after step, until theyreached the pitch of claiming a right to carry slave property into theFree States, and, in opposition to the laws of those States, hold itas property there; so long, they were willing to remain in the Union. The moment a President was elected of whom it was inferred from hisopinions, not that he would take any measures against slavery where itexists, but that he would oppose its establishment where it existsnot, --that moment they broke loose from what was, at least, a verysolemn contract, and formed themselves into a Confederation professingas its fundamental principle not merely the perpetuation, but theindefinite extension of slavery. And the doctrine is loudly preachedthrough the new Republic, that slavery, whether black or white, is agood in itself, and the proper condition of the working classeseverywhere. Let me, in a few words, remind the reader what sort of a thing thisis, which the white oligarchy of the South have banded themselvestogether to propagate and establish, if they could, universally. Whenit is wished to describe any portion of the human race as in thelowest state of debasement, and under the most cruel oppression, inwhich it is possible for human beings to live, they are compared toslaves. When words are sought by which to stigmatize the most odiousdespotism, exercised in the most odious manner, and all othercomparisons are found inadequate, the despots are said to be likeslave-masters, or slave-drivers. What, by a rhetorical license, theworst oppressors of the human race, by way of stamping on them themost hateful character possible, are said to be, these men, in verytruth, are. I do not mean that all of them are hateful personally, anymore than all the Inquisitors, or all the buccaneers. But the positionwhich they occupy, and the abstract excellence of which they are inarms to vindicate, is that which the united voice of mankindhabitually selects as the type of all hateful qualities. I will notbandy chicanery about the more or less of stripes or other tormentswhich are daily requisite to keep the machine in working order, nordiscuss whether the Legrees or the St. Clairs are more numerous amongthe slave-owners of the Southern States. The broad facts of the casesuffice. One fact is enough. There are, Heaven knows, vicious andtyrannical institutions in ample abundance on the earth. But thisinstitution is the only one of them all which requires, to keep itgoing, that human beings should be burnt alive. The calm anddispassionate Mr. Olmsted affirms that there has not been a singleyear, for many years past, in which this horror is not known to havebeen perpetrated in some part or other of the South. And not uponnegroes only; the _Edinburgh Review_, in a recent number, gave thehideous details of the burning alive of an unfortunate Northernhuckster by Lynch law, on mere suspicion of having aided in the escapeof a slave. What must American slavery be, if deeds like these arenecessary under it?--and if they are not necessary and are yet done, is not the evidence against slavery still more damning? The South arein rebellion not for simple slavery; they are in rebellion for theright of burning human creatures alive. But we are told, by a strange misapplication of a true principle, thatthe South had a _right_ to separate; that their separation ought tohave been consented to, the moment they showed themselves ready tofight for it; and that the North, in resisting it, are committing thesame error and wrong which England committed in opposing the originalseparation of the thirteen colonies. This is carrying the doctrine ofthe sacred right of insurrection rather far. It is wonderful how easyand liberal and complying people can be in other people's concerns. Because they are willing to surrender their own past, and have noobjection to join in reprobation of their great-grandfathers, theynever put themselves the question what they themselves would do incircumstances far less trying, under far less pressure of realnational calamity. Would those who profess these ardent revolutionaryprinciples consent to their being applied to Ireland, or India, or theIonian Islands. How have they treated those who did attempt so toapply them? But the case can dispense with any mere _argumentum adhominem_. I am not frightened at the word rebellion. I do not scrupleto say that I have sympathized more or less ardently with most of therebellions, successful and unsuccessful, which have taken place in mytime. But I certainly never conceived that there was a sufficienttitle to my sympathy in the mere fact of being a rebel; that the actof taking arms against one's fellow-citizens was so meritorious initself, was so completely its own justification, that no question needbe asked concerning the motive. It seems to me a strange doctrine thatthe most serious and responsible of all human acts imposes noobligation on those who do it of showing that they have a realgrievance; that those who rebel for the power of oppressing others, exercise as sacred a right as those who do the same thing to resistoppression practised upon themselves. Neither rebellion nor any otheract which affects the interests of others, is sufficiently legitimatedby the mere will to do it. Secession may be laudable, and so may anyother kind of insurrection; but it may also be an enormous crime. Itis the one or the other, according to the object and the provocation. And if there ever was an object which, by its bare announcement, stamped rebels against a particular community as enemies of mankind, it is the one professed by the South. Their right to separate is theright which Cartouche or Turpin would have had to secede from theirrespective countries, because the laws of those countries would notsuffer them to rob and murder on the highway. The only real differenceis that the present rebels are more powerful than Cartouche or Turpin, and may possibly be able to effect their iniquitous purpose. Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that the mere will toseparate were in this case, or in any case, a sufficient ground forseparation, I beg to be informed _whose_ will? The will of any knot ofmen who, by fair means or foul, by usurpation, terrorism, or fraud, have got the reins of government into their hands? If the inmates ofParkhurst Prison were to get possession of the Isle of Wight, occupyits military positions, enlist one part of its inhabitants in theirown ranks, set the remainder of them to work in chain gangs, anddeclare themselves independent, ought their recognition by the BritishGovernment to be an immediate consequence? Before admitting theauthority of any persons, as organs of the will of the people, todispose of the whole political existence of a country, I ask to seewhether their credentials are from the whole, or only from a part. Andfirst, it is necessary to ask, Have the slaves been consulted? Hastheir will been counted as any part in the estimate of collectivevolition? They are a part of the population. However natural in thecountry itself, it is rather cool in English writers who talk soglibly of the ten millions (I believe there are only eight), to passover the very existence of four millions who must abhor the idea ofseparation. Remember, _we_ consider them to be human beings, entitledto human rights. Nor can it be doubted that the mere fact of belongingto a Union in some parts of which slavery is reprobated, is somealleviation of their condition, if only as regards futureprobabilities. But even of the white population, it is questionable ifthere was in the beginning a majority for secession anywhere but inSouth Carolina. Though the thing was pre-determined, and most of theStates committed by their public authorities before the people werecalled on to vote; though in taking the votes terrorism in many placesreigned triumphant; yet even so, in several of the States, secessionwas carried only by narrow majorities. In some the authorities havenot dared to publish the numbers; in some it is asserted that no votehas ever been taken. Further (as was pointed out in an admirableletter by Mr. Carey), the Slave States are intersected in the middle, from their northern frontier almost to the Gulf of Mexico, by acountry of free labor--the mountain region of the Alleghanies andtheir dependencies, forming parts of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, in which, from the nature of theclimate and of the agricultural and mining industry, slavery to anymaterial extent never did, and never will, exist. This mountain zoneis peopled by ardent friends of the Union. Could the Union abandonthem, without even an effort, to be dealt with at the pleasure of anexasperated slave-owning oligarchy? Could it abandon the Germans who, in Western Texas, have made so meritorious a commencement of growingcotton on the borders of the Mexican Gulf by free labor? Were theright of the slave-owners to secede ever so clear, they have no rightto carry these with them; unless allegiance is a mere question oflocal proximity, and my next neighbor, if I am a stronger man, can becompelled to follow me in any lawless vagaries I choose to indulge. But (it is said) the North will never succeed in conquering the South;and since the separation must in the end be recognized, it is betterto do at first what must be done at last; moreover, if it did conquerthem, it could not govern them when conquered, consistently with freeinstitutions. With no one of these propositions can I agree. Whether or not the Northern Americans will succeed in reconquering theSouth, I do not affect to foresee. That they _can_ conquer it, iftheir present determination holds, I have never entertained a doubt;for they are twice as numerous, and ten or twelve times as rich. Notby taking military possession of their country, or marching an armythrough it, but by wearing them out, exhausting their resources, depriving them of the comforts of life, encouraging their slaves todesert, and excluding them from communication with foreign countries. All this, of course, depends on the supposition that the North doesnot give in first. Whether they will persevere to this point, orwhether their spirit, their patience, and the sacrifices they arewilling to make, will be exhausted before reaching it, I cannot tell. They may, in the end, be wearied into recognizing the separation. Butto those who say that because this may have to be done at last, itought to have been done at first, I put the very serious question--Onwhat terms? Have they ever considered what would have been the meaningof separation if it had been assented to by the Northern States whenfirst demanded? People talk as if separation meant nothing more thanthe independence of the seceding States. To have accepted it underthat limitation would have been, on the part of the South, to give upthat which they have seceded expressly to preserve. Separation, withthem, means at least half the Territories; including the Mexicanborder, and the consequent power of invading and overrunning SpanishAmerica for the purpose of planting there the "peculiar institution"which even Mexican civilization has found too bad to be endured. Thereis no knowing to what point of degradation a country may be driven ina desperate state of its affairs; but if the North _ever_, unless onthe brink of actual ruin, makes peace with the South, giving up theoriginal cause of quarrel, the freedom of the Territories; if itresigns to them when out of the Union that power of evil which itwould not grant to retain them in the Union--it will incur the pityand disdain of posterity. And no one can suppose that the South wouldhave consented, or in their present temper ever will consent, to anaccommodation on any other terms. It will require a succession ofhumiliation to bring them to that. The necessity of reconcilingthemselves to the confinement of slavery within its existingboundaries, with the natural consequence, immediate mitigation ofslavery, and ultimate emancipation, is a lesson which they are in nomood to learn from anything but disaster. Two or three defeats in thefield, breaking their military strength, though not followed by aninvasion of their territory, may possibly teach it to them. If so, there is no breach of charity in hoping that this severe schooling maypromptly come. When men set themselves up, in defiance of the rest ofthe world, to do the devil's work, no good can come of them until theworld has made them feel that this work cannot be suffered to be doneany longer. If this knowledge does not come to them for several years, the abolition question will by that time have settled itself. Forassuredly Congress will very soon make up its mind to declare allslaves free who belong to persons in arms against the Union. When thatis done, slavery, confined to a minority, will soon cure itself; andthe pecuniary value of the negroes belonging to loyal masters willprobably not exceed the amount of compensation which the United Stateswill be willing and able to give. The assumed difficulty of governing the Southern States as free andequal commonwealths, in case of their return to the Union, is purelyimaginary. If brought back by force, and not by voluntary compact, they will return without the Territories, and without a Fugitive SlaveLaw. It may be assumed that in that event the victorious party wouldmake the alterations in the Federal Constitution which are necessaryto adapt it to the new circumstances, and which would not infringe, but strengthen, its democratic principles. An article would have to beinserted prohibiting the extension of slavery to the Territories, orthe admission into the Union of any new Slave State. Without any otherguarantee, the rapid formation of new Free States would ensure tofreedom a decisive and constantly increasing majority in Congress. Itwould also be right to abrogate that bad provision of the Constitution(a necessary compromise at the time of its first establishment)whereby the slaves, though reckoned as citizens in no other respect, are counted, to the extent of three fifths of their number, in theestimate of the population for fixing the number of representatives ofeach State in the Lower House of Congress. Why should the masters havemembers in right of their human chattels, any more than of their oxenand pigs? The President, in his Message, has already proposed thatthis salutary reform should be effected in the case of Maryland, additional territory, detached from Virginia, being given to thatState as an equivalent: thus clearly indicating the policy which heapproves, and which he is probably willing to make universal. As it is necessary to be prepared for all possibilities, let us nowcontemplate another. Let us suppose the worst possible issue of thiswar--the one apparently desired by those English writers whose moralfeeling is so philosophically indifferent between the apostles ofslavery and its enemies. Suppose that the North should stoop torecognize the new Confederation on its own terms, leaving it half theTerritories, and that it is acknowledged by Europe, and takes itsplace as an admitted member of the community of nations. It will bedesirable to take thought beforehand what are to be our own futurerelations with a new Power, professing the principles of Attila andGenghis Khan as the foundation of its Constitution. Are we to see withindifference its victorious army let loose to propagate their nationalfaith at the rifle's mouth through Mexico and Central America? Shallwe submit to see fire and sword carried over Cuba and Porto Rico, andHayti and Liberia conquered and brought back to slavery? We shall soonhave causes enough of quarrel on our own account. When we are in theact of sending an expedition against Mexico to redress the wrongs ofprivate British subjects, we should do well to reflect in time thatthe President of the new Republic, Mr. Jefferson Davis, was theoriginal inventor of repudiation. Mississippi was the first Statewhich repudiated, Mr. Jefferson Davis was Governor of Mississippi, andthe Legislature of Mississippi had passed a Bill recognizing andproviding for the debt, which Bill Mr. Jefferson Davis vetoed. Unlesswe abandon the principles we have for two generations consistentlyprofessed and acted on, we should be at war with the new Confederacywithin five vears about the African slave-trade. An English Governmentwill hardly be base enough to recognize them, unless they accept allthe treaties by which America is at present bound; nor, it may behoped, even if _de facto_ independent, would they be admitted to thecourtesies of diplomatic intercourse, unless they granted in the mostexplicit manner the right of search. To allow the slave-ships of aConfederation formed for the extension of slavery to come and go free, and unexamined, between America and the African coast, would be torenounce even the pretence of attempting to protect Africa against theman-stealer, and abandon that Continent to the horrors, on a farlarger scale, which were practised before Granville Sharp and Clarksonwere in existence. But even if the right of intercepting their slaverswere acknowledged by treaty, which it never would be, the arrogance ofthe Southern slave-holders would not long submit to its exercise. Their pride and self-conceit, swelled to an inordinate height by theirsuccessful struggle, would defy the power of England as they hadalready successfully defied that of their Northern countrymen. Afterour people by their cold disapprobation, and our press by itsinvective, had combined with their own difficulties to damp the spiritof the Free States, and drive them to submit and make peace, we shouldhave to fight the Slave States ourselves at far greater disadvantages, when we should no longer have the wearied and exhausted North for anally. The time might come when the barbarous and barbarizing Power, which we by our moral support had helped into existence, would requirea general crusade of civilized Europe, to extinguish the mischiefwhich it had allowed, and we had aided, to rise up in the midst of ourcivilization. For these reasons I cannot join with those who cry Peace, peace. Icannot wish that this war should not have been engaged in by theNorth, or that being engaged in, it should be terminated on anyconditions but such as would retain the whole of the Territories asfree soil. I am not blind to the possibility that it may require along war to lower the arrogance and tame the aggressive ambition ofthe slave-owners, to the point of either returning to the Union, orconsenting to remain out of it with their present limits. But war, ina good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. Waris an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed anddegraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothingworth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere humaninstruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the serviceand for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; awar to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which istheir own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their freechoice--is often the means of their regeneration. A man who hasnothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares moreabout than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by theexertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injusticehave not terminated _their_ ever renewing fight for ascendancy in theaffairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to dobattle for the one against the other. I am far from saying that thepresent struggle, on the part of the Northern Americans, is wholly ofthis exalted character; that it has arrived at the stage of beingaltogether a war for justice, a war of principle. But there was fromthe beginning, and now is, a large infusion of that element in it; andthis is increasing, will increase, and if the war lasts, will in theend predominate. Should that time come, not only will the greatestenormity which still exists among mankind as an institution, receivefar earlier its _coups de grâce_ than there has ever, until now, appeared any probability of; but in effecting this the Free Stateswill have raised themselves to that elevated position in the scale ofmorality and dignity, which is derived from great sacrificesconsciously made in a virtuous cause, and the sense of an inestimablebenefit to all future ages, brought about by their own voluntaryefforts.