History of the United States, v.1, by James Ford Rhodes, 1910 [c1892].

Chapter 4, Part 2: Lack of Schools through Reflections

The lack of schools was painfully apparent. The deficiency in the rudiments of education among the poor whites and smaller slave-holders was recognized, and attracted attention from the Southern newspapers, and occasionally from those high in office. Much vain declamation resulted, but no practical action. Indeed, the situation was one of difficulty. To plant schools in a sparsely settled country, among a people who have not the desire of learning and who do not appreciate its value, requires energy, and this energy was lacking. Nevertheless, there must have been among the slave-holding lords a secret satisfaction that the poor whites were content to remain in ignorance;2 for in the decade before the war great objections were made to schoolbooks prepared and published at the North, and yet there were no others. In the beginning of the abolitionist agitation, Duff Green, perceiving that the benefits of slavery
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2 " We imagine that the propriety of shooting a Yankee schoolmaster, when caught tampering with our slaves, has never been questioned by any intelligent Southern man. This we take to be the unwritten law of the South. . . . Let all Yankee schoolmasters who purpose invading the South, endowed with a strong nasal twang, a long Scriptural name, and Webster's lexicographic book of abominations, seek some more congenial land, where their lives will be more secure than in 'the vile and homicidal slave States.' "—Richmond Examiner, 1854, cited in a pamphlet entitled A Bake-pan for Doughfaces, published at Burlington, Vt., by C. Goodrich.

ought to be taught to the young, obtained a charter from South Carolina for a Southern Literary Company, whose object was to print school-books adapted to a slave-holding community;1 but this company had apparently not achieved its purpose, for in De Bow's Review, in 1855, there is a complaint that "our text-books are abolition books." The chapter on slavery in Wayland's Moral Science "was heretical and unscriptural." We are using "abolition geographies, readers, and histories," which overrun "with all sorts of slanders, caricatures, and blood-thirsty sentiments." "Appletons' Complete Guide of the World" is "an elegant and comprehensive volume," but contains "hidden lessons of the most fiendish and murderous character that enraged fanaticism could conceive or indite." "This book and many other Northern school-books scattered over the country come within the range of the statutes of this State [Louisiana], which provide for the imprisonment for life or the infliction of the penalty of death upon any person who shall1publish or distribute' such works; and were I a citizen of New Orleans," adds the writer, "this work should not escape the attention of the grand jury.”2 A year later, a writer in the same review 3 maintains that" our school-books, especially, should be written, prepared, and published by Southern men;" and he inveighs against the readers and speakers used in the schools, and gives a list of those which are objectionable. One of them was the "Columbian Orator," and it is interesting to know that this was the first book which the slave, Frederick Douglass, bought. In it were speeches of Chatham, Sheridan, and Fox, and in reading and pondering these speeches the light broke in upon his mind, showing him that he was a victim of oppression, and that, if what they said about the rights of man was true, he ought not to be a slave.4 The writer in the
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1 Life of Garrison, vol. ii. p. 79.
2 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 358
3 De Bow's Review, vol. xx. p. 69, January, 1856.
4 Life of Douglass, p. 75.

Review complained that these books contained poems of Cowper and speeches of Webster which Southern children should not read, and he was certain that if parents knew their whole contents "they would demand expurgated editions for the use of their children." All schoolboys know that the kind of books complained of contain, for the most part, the choice selections of English literature—works that have survived owing to their elevation of thought and beauty of expression. Such attacks were a condemnation of literature itself, for from Homer down the master-spirits of many ages have reprobated slavery.

History, as well as literature, needed expurgation before it was adapted to the instruction of Southern youth. Peter Parley's " Pictorial History of the United States" was complained of, because the author, although a conservative Whig and far from being an abolitionist, deemed it necessary, in the course of his narrative, to mention slavery, the attempts at colonization, and the zeal with which some people labored "in behalf of immediate and universal emancipation." 1

It was likewise necessary to prepare the historical reading of adults with care. In an editorial notice in De Bow's Review of the current number of Harper's Magazine, which had a large circulation at the South, it was suggested that the notice of the Life of Toussaint "had been better left out, so far as the South is concerned." 2 To what absurdities did this people come on account of their peculiar institution! Toussaint, as a brilliant historian of our day has told us, exercised on our history "an influence as decisive as that of any European ruler." 3 He was, alike with Napoleon and Jefferson, one of the important links of that historical chain which secured for us Louisiana and New Orleans.

It is not from a periodical published in a corner, and carrying
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1 See De Bow's Review, vol. xx. p. 74.
2 See ibid., vol. x. p. 492.
3 Henry Adams's History of the United States, vol. i. p. 378.

no influence, that these comments have been cited. De Bow's Review was devoted to economical and social matters; it was one of the most powerful organs of the thinking people and best society of the South. Moreover, it had received the endorsement of fifty-five Southern senators and representatives in Congress for the "ability and accuracy of its exposition of the working of the system of polity of the Southern States." De Bow was professor of political economy in the University of Louisiana, and his Review was published in the commercial metropolis of the South. Indeed, the provision for education in harmony with their institutions was a subject of grave consideration by thinking men, and a thoroughly representative body— the Southern commercial convention which was held at Memphis in 1853—paid it marked attention. The convention earnestly recommended to the citizens of the Southern States: "The education of their youth at home, as far as practicable; the employment of native teachers in their schools and colleges; the encouragement of a home press; and the publication of books adapted to the educational wants and the social condition of these States."1

It is no wonder such recommendations were thought necessary, for many delegates must have remembered the difficulty which attended the publication of the works of Calhoun, although South Carolina appropriated ten thousand dollars for the purpose. A Charleston newspaper complained: "The writings of Mr. Calhoun were edited in Virginia; the stereotyped plates were cast in New York; they were then sent to Columbia, where the impressions were struck off; the sheets were thence transferred to Charleston in order that the books might be bound; and now that they are bound, there is really no publisher in the State to see to their circulation."2
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1 De Bow's Review, vol. xv. p. 268.
2 Charleston News, cited in the New York Independent, October 30th, 1851; see also estimate of the book-publishing business of 1856 in Recollections of a Lifetime, S. G. Goodrich, vol. ii. p. 387, in which the business of the Southern and Southwestern States is given at $750,000, in a total of $16,000,000; in the first-named figures are included Baltimore and Louisville, which were by far the most important publishing cities in the South.

If we contrast the North and the South in material prosperity, the South will appear to no better advantage than it does in respect of intellectual development. Yet the superiority of the North in this regard was by no means admitted. The thinking men of the South felt, if this were proved, a serious drawback to their system would be manifest. We find, therefore, in the Southern literature many arguments to show that the contrary was true; most of them take the form of statistical demonstrations, in which the census figures are made to do strange and wondrous duty. Parson Brownlow, of Tennessee, in a joint debate at Philadelphia, where he maintained that American slavery ought to be perpetuated, brought forward an array of figures which demonstrated to his own satisfaction that the material prosperity of the South was greater than that of the North; at the time he was speaking it seemed to him that his section was smiling with good fortune, while the Northern industries were crippled by the loss of Southern trade and by the financial panic of 1857.1 A favorite method of argument was to make a comparison between two representative States. Georgia and New York were contrasted in the light of the census of 1850, with the result of convincing the Southern mind that in social, political, and financial conditions Georgia was far superior to New York.2 A paper was read before the Mercantile Society of Cincinnati to demonstrate that, as between Maryland and Massachusetts, Virginia and New York, Kentucky and Ohio, the slave States were the more prosperous. "Virginia," says the author, "instead of being poor and in need of the pity of the much poorer population of the North, is perhaps the richest community in
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1 Debate between Brownlow and Pryne at Philadelphia, 1858, pp. 258 and 265.
2 De Bow's Industrial Resources, vol. iii. p. 122.

the world." After a comparison of the census figures, the conclusion is that the free people of the slave-holding States are much richer than those of the non-slave-holding States. De Bow, in introducing this paper to his public, said that, although it had been angrily assailed by the abolition press, it had never been refuted or invalidated in any material respect.1 Arguments, of which these are examples, are made by men who go with preconceived ideas to the statistics, and select therefrom what they deem will sustain their thesis. Such reasoning does not proceed from earnest seekers after truth. The speciousness of such deductions was shown over and over again. Indeed, it needed no extensive marshalling of statistics to prove that the welfare of the North was greater than that of the South. Two simple facts, everywhere admitted, were of so far-reaching moment that they amounted to irrefragable demonstration. The emigration from the slave States to the free States was much larger than the movement in the other direction; and the South repelled the industrious emigrants who came from Europe, while the North attracted them. "Leave us in the peaceable possession of our slaves," cried Parson Brownlow, "and our Northern neighbors may have all the paupers and convicts that pour in upon us from European prisons." 2 This remark found general sympathy, because the South ignored, or wished to ignore, the fact that able-bodied men with intelligence enough to wish to better their condition are the most costly and valuable products on earth, and that nothing can more redound to the advantage of a new country than to get men without having been at the cost of rearing them.3 This was occasionally appreciated at the
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1 De Bow's Review, vol. xxii. p. 623. The paper was read in 1848 and based on the census of 1840. See also De Bow, vol. vii. p. 140.
2 Debate between Brownlow and Pryne, p. 263.
3 One of the imports of the United States, "that of adult and trained immigrants,. . . would be in an economical analysis underestimated at £100,000,000 a year."—Thorold Rogers, Lectures in 1888, Economic Interpretation of History, p. 407.

South,1 and sometimes the greater growth in wealth and population of the North would break in upon the mind of Southern thinkers with such force that they could not hold their peace.2 Sometimes the truth would be owned, but its dissemination was prevented, for fear that the admission of it would furnish arguments to the abolitionists.3

Two of the most careful observers who ever considered the differences between the South and the North are unimpeachable witnesses to the greater prosperity of the latter. Washington noted, in 1796, that the prices of land were higher in Pennsylvania than in Virginia and Maryland, "although they are not of superior quality." One of the important reasons for the difference was that Pennsylvania had passed laws for the gradual abolition of slavery, which had not been done in the other two States; but it was Washington's opinion that "nothing is more certain than that they must, at a period not far remote," take steps in the same direction. 4

De Tocqueville was struck with the external contrast between the free and the slave States. "The traveller who floats down the current of the Ohio," he wrote, "to the point where that river joins the Mississippi may be said to sail between liberty and slavery; and he only needs to look around him in order to decide in an instant which is the more favorable to humanity. On the Southern bank of the river the population is thinly scattered; from time to time one descries a gang of slaves at work, going with indolent air over the half-desert fields; the primeval forest unceasingly reappears; one would think that the people were asleep; man seems to be idle, nature alone offers a picture of activity
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1 See a thoughtful article in the Augusta Chronicle, cited in Niles's Register, April, 1849, vol. lxxv. p. 271.
2See citation from Richmond Enquirer, Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 365; also Richmond Whig, cited in Life of Garrison, vol. i. p. 252. s See proceedings in regard to an address to the farmers at a Virginia agricultural convention, Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 366.
4 Sparks, vol. xii. p. 326.

and life. From the Northern bank, on the contrary, there arises the busy hum of industry which is heard afar off; the fields abound with rich harvests; comfortable homes indicate the taste and care of the laborer; prosperity is seen on all sides; man appears rich and content; he labors."1 The difference was greater when De Tocqueville visited this country than in Washington's day; and it was greater in 1850 than when the philosophic Frenchman recorded his observations in the book which is a classic in the science of politics. The difference was of a nature that must become intensified with the years.

What was the reason of the marked diversity between the two sections of the country? The only solution of the question is that which presented itself to the mind of De Tocqueville. "Almost all the differences which may be remarked between the Southerners and Northerners had their origin in slavery;"2 for the settlers of both sections of the country belonged "to the same European race, had the same customs, the same civilization, the same laws, and their shades of difference were very slight."3 It is true that the Cavalier colonized Virginia, and the Puritan Massachusetts. Yet after the Revolution of 1688 the Cavalier and Puritan in England began coming nearer together, until, by the middle of the nineteenth century, there was no longer a fine of demarcation. After the American Revolution, however, the difference between the Virginian and the man of Massachusetts increased so that it became the remark of travellers, the theme of statesmen, and finally a subject for the arbitrament of the sword. In that contest the Scotch-Irishman of South Carolina fought on one side, and the Scotch-Irishman of Pennsylvania fought on the other; but in the seventeenth century, on their native soil, they would have stood shoulder to shoulder in a common cause.
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1 De la Democratic en Amerique, vol. ii. p. 311. See also H. Martineau, Society in America, vol. i. p. 304.
2 De Tocqueville, vol. ii. p. 316.
3 Ibid., p. 310; see also article of Prof. A. B. Hart, New England Magazine, November, 1891, p. 376.

Nor will the diversity of climate account in any considerable degree for the difference between the South and the North in material prosperity and intellectual development. The climate of Virginia and Kentucky was like that of Pennsylvania and Ohio; yet the contrast was seen in a marked degree between those communities. The climate of the slave States as a whole was not warmer than that of Italy or Spain, and those countries have been the seat of an energetic and intellectual people.1 An illustration showing that the physical conditions of the South did not require slavery was seen in the German colony settled in Texas. By 1857 the Germans made up nearly one-half of the white population of Western Texas, and constituted a community apart. They believed in the dignity of labor; those who had not land were willing to work for the proprietors, and those who had capital would not purchase slaves. They were industrious, thrifty, fairly prosperous, and contented. They brought from their homes some of the flowers of civilization, and were an oasis in the arid desert of slavery. Olmsted had a happier experience among these people than in his journey from the Mississippi to the James, where he failed to see the common indications of comfort and culture.2 Among the Germans of Texas, he wrote, "you are welcomed by a figure in blue flannel shirt and pendent beard," quoting Tacitus; you see " Madonnas upon log walls;" coffee is served you " in tin cups upon Dresden saucers;" and you hear a symphony of Beethoven on a grand piano.3 These Germans loved music and hated slavery. In 1854, after their annual musical festival at San Antonio, they resolved themselves into a political
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1 Contemplated in the mass, facts do not countenance the current idea that great heat hinders progress." — Sociology, Herbert Spencer, vol. i. p. 19. "High degrees of moral sentiment control the unfavorable influences of climate; and some of our grandest examples of men and of races come from the equatorial regions—as the genius of Egypt, of India, and of Arabia."—Emerson's Lecture on Civilization.
2 See p. 349.
3 Olmsted's Texas Journey, p. 430.

convention, and declared that slavery was an evil which ought eventually to be removed.1

In giving the South credit for producing able politicians, we have not exhausted the subject of the virtues of her social system. The little aristocracy, whose nucleus was less than eight thousand large slave-holders,2 had another excellence that deserves high esteem. While in the North their manners were often aggressive, in their own homes they displayed good breeding, refined manners, and dignified deportment. And these were more than outside show; the Southern gentleman was to the manner born. In society and conversation he appeared to the best advantage. He had self-assurance, an easy bearing, and to women a chivalrous courtesy; he was " stately but condescending, haughty but jovial." 3 Underneath all were physical courage, a habit of command, a keen sense of honor, and a generous disposition. The Southerners were fast friends, and they dispensed hospitality with an open hand. They fitted themselves for society, and looked upon conversation as an art. They knew how to draw out the best from their guests; and, with all their high self-appreciation, at home they did not often indulge in distasteful egotism. They amused themselves with literature, art, and science; for such knowledge they deemed indispensable for prolonging an interesting conversation. They were cultured, educated men of the world, who would meet their visitors on their own favorite ground.4 If we reckon by numbers, there were certainly more well-bred people at the North than at the South; but when we compare the cream of society in both sections, the palm must be awarded to the slave-holding community. The testimony
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1 Olmsted's Texas Journey, p. 435 et ante.
2 See p. 346.
3 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 335. "We justly admire the easy, graceful politeness of our Southern brethren." — Todd's Student's Manual, p. 235.
4 "The people [of the South] seem to be fine, open-hearted."—Lieber to Sumner, 1835, Life and Letters of Lieber, p. 109.

of English gentlemen and ladies, few of whom have any sympathy with slavery, is almost unanimous in this respect. They bear witness to the aristocratic bearing of their generous hosts. Between the titled English visitors and the Southern gentlemen there was, indeed, a fellow-feeling, which grew up between the two aristocracies separated by the sea. There was the concord of sentiments. The Southern lord, like his English prototype, believed that the cultivation of the soil was the finest and noblest pursuit.1 But nearly all educated Englishmen, whether belonging to the aristocracy or not, enjoyed their intercourse with Southerners more than they did the contact with the best society at the North, on account of the high value which they placed on good manners. The men and women who composed the Brook Farm community, and the choice spirits whom they attracted, were certainly more interesting and admirable than any set of people one could meet in Richmond, Charleston, or New Orleans but society, properly so called, is not made up of women with missions and men who aim to reform the world. The little knot of literary people who lived in Boston, Cambridge, and vicinity were a fellowship by whom it was an honor to be received; but these were men of learning and wisdom; they were "inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruptions, fenced by etiquette;" and few of them had the desire, leisure, or money to take part in the festive entertainments which are a necessary accompaniment of society.

When the foreign visitors who came here during the generation before the war compared Northern and Southern
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1 "You know I am engaged entirely on my estates at present, and solely occupied, thank God! in the finest and noblest pursuit—the cultivation of the soil."—Letter of F. W. Pickens, of South Carolina, to James Buchanan, Life of Buchanan, Curtis, vol. i. p. 608; see also Memorials of a Southern Planter, Smedes, p. 115. 5 Boston, S New York, S Philadelphie."—J. J. Ampere, Promenade en Amerique, tome ii. p. 155.

society, they had in their minds the people whom they met at dinners, receptions, and balls; the Northern men seemed frequently overweighted with business cares, and, except on the subjects of trade, politics, and the material growth of the country, were not good talkers. The merchant or manufacturer of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia was a busy man; he had not the leisure of his Southern brother to cultivate the amenities of life, and he lacked that abandon of manners which Englishmen found so charming in the slaveholding lords.

This superiority of the best Southern society undoubtedly grew out of the social system of which slavery was the basis; but there went with it two drawbacks. In these circles where conversation was a delight, one subject must be treated with the utmost delicacy. The Englishman could argue with his Southern host that a monarchy was better than a republic, but he might not exult over the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies. The German could deny the inspiration of the Bible, but he might not question that the institution of slavery was divine. One was made to feel in the most emphatic manner that his host desired no expression on the subject other than an opinion that the relation which existed between the whites and the blacks at the South was the necessary one.

The high sense of personal worth, the habit of command, the tyranny engendered by the submission of the prostrate race, made the Southern gentleman jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel. While the duello was not an outgrowth of slavery, its practice in the South was more savage and bloody than anywhere else in the civilized world. The custom of going about fully armed to be prepared for an enemy, the readiness with which pistols were used on slight provocation, the frequent occurrence of deadly street fights, were an anomaly among a people so urbane and generous; but they were the result of slavery.

From youth the slave-holder was accustomed to have his word regarded as law; when he insisted, others yielded.

Accustomed to irresponsible power over his dependants, he could not endure contradiction, he would not brook opposition. When one lord ran against another in controversy, if the feelings were deeply engaged the final argument was the pistol. The smaller slave-holders, influenced partly by the same reason and partly actuated by imitation of the aristocracy, settled their disputes in like manner, but more brutally, for they also used the bowie-knife in their encounters. The poor whites aped their betters. The consequence was a condition of society hardly conceivable in a civilized, Christian, Anglo-Saxon community. In the new States of the Southwest, it was perhaps explainable as incident to the life of the frontier; but when met with in the old communities of Virginia and the Carolinas, it could admit but of one inference—that it was primarily due to slavery.' But slavery itself and these attendant phenomena were survivals in the South, more than in any other contemporary enlightened community, of a passing militant civilization.2

I have endeavored to describe slavery and its effects as it might have appeared to an honest inquirer in the decade before the war. There was no difficulty in seeing the facts as they have been stated, or in arriving at the conclusions drawn. There was a correct picture of the essential features
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1 My authorities for this description of the manners of the South are Olmsted's Cotton Kingdom and Seaboard Slave States; Kemble's Journal; Martineau's Society in America; Buckingham's Slave States of America; Mackay's Life and Liberty in America; De Bow's Resources; Basil Hall's North America; America and the Americans, by Achille Murat; Pro-slavery Argument; De Bow's Review; Promenade en Amerique, J. J. Ampere.
"L'influence de l'esclavage, combinee avec le caractere anglais, explique les moeurs et l'fitat social du Sud."—De la Dgmocratie en Am6rique, vol. i. p. 46. See also Hurry graphs, N. P. Willis, p. 302.
2 For distinction between militant and industrial organizations, see Herbert Spencer's Sociology, passim; also Data of Ethics, p. 135, where Spencer writes: While militancy "is dominant, ownership of a slave is honorable, and, in the slave, submission is praiseworthy;" but as industrialism "grows dominant, slave-owning becomes a crime, and servile obedience excites contempt."

of slavery in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the book which everybody read. The author of it had " but one purpose, to show the institution of slavery truly just as it existed."1 While she had not the facts which a critical historian would have collected—for the "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" was not compiled until after the novel was written—she used with the intuition of genius the materials gained through personal observation, and the result was what she desired. If we bear in mind that the novelist, from the very nature of the art, deals with characteristic and not with average persons, the conclusion is resistless that Mrs. Stowe realized her ideal. Fanny Kemble wrote to the London Times that she could bear witness to the truth and moderation of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a representation of the slave system in the United States, and added that her testimony was "the experience of an eye-witness, having been a resident in the Southern States, and having opportunities of observation such as no one who has not lived on a slave estate can have."3 It was certain, she proceeded, that the incident of Uncle Tom's death was not only possible, but it was unfortunately a very probable occurrence.3 Olmsted came to the conclusion that cases like the Red River episode were not extremely rare.4

The fidelity to truth of that portion of the novel was sometimes questioned in a curious way. Bishop Polk assured an English clergyman that he "had been all over the country on Red River, the scene of the fictitious sufferings of Uncle Tom, and that he had found the temporal and spiritual welfare of the negroes well cared for. He had confirmed thirty black persons near the situation assigned to Legree's estate."5

A Northern doctor of divinity who wrote a book in defence of slavery based on a three months' sojourn at the South, admitted that "some of the warmest advocates of slavery [at the South] said that they could parallel most of
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1 Introduction to new edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, p. 12.
2 Kemble's Journal, p. 300.
3 Ibid., p. 301.
4 Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 356.
5 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 213.

the abuses in slavery mentioned in the book out of their own knowledge; and on speaking of some bad master and wishing to express his tyrannical character and barbarous conduct, they would say, 'He is a real Legree;' or, 'He is worse than Legree.'" 1 A Southern Presbyterian preacher who published a book of speeches and letters to maintain that "slavery is of God," and ought "to continue for the good of the slave, the good of the master, and the good of the whole American people," said: "I have admitted, and do again admit, without qualification, that every fact in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' has occurred in the South;" and again he speaks of it as "that book of genius, true in all its facts, false in all its impressions."3 The great desire of the author to be impartial was evident from the portrayal of slave-holders; the humane and generous men were even more prominent in the story than the inhuman ones. She did justice to the prevailing and correct sentiment at the South that Northerners were harder masters than Southern men, by making Legree, whose name became a synonym for a brutal slave-holder, a son of New England.

Mrs. Stowe was felicitous in her description of the negro character. There was a fitness in the secondary title of the book, "Life among the Lowly." It was the life she had studied with rare human sympathy, and in its portrayal the author's genius is seen to the best advantage. Some critics objected that Uncle Tom was an impossible character, and that the world, in weeping at the tale of his ill-treatment and sufferings, exhibited a mawkish sentimentality. But the author knew his prototype.3 Frederick Douglass also describes a colored man whose resemblance to Uncle Tom was "so perfect that he might have been the original of Mrs. Stowe's Christian hero."4 Rev. Noah Davis, who wrote
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1 South-side View of Slavery, Nehemiah Adams, p. 158.
2 Slavery Ordained by God, Ross, pp. 5, 38,53.
3 Preface to new edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, p. vii.
4 Life of Douglass, p. 94.

in a little book the narrative of his own life, certainly equalled Uncle Tom in piety, self-denial, and industry.1

The author's most conspicuous failure as a portrayer of manners is in the descriptions of the best society at the South. Nor is this surprising. Her life was an earnest working one, and she had no conception of a society where dinner-parties, receptions, and balls made up the lives of its votaries. Her associates were ministers, devoted to their calling, and hard-working college professors, who esteemed learning above all; their thoughts were so engrossed in their serious occupations that the lighter graces of life seemed like folly and idleness. It is, then, no wonder that the subtle charm which exquisite manners spread over plantation life and New Orleans society completely eluded the observation of the author.

The Southern people desired to stand well at the great tribunal of modern civilization.2 As their peculiar institution was under the ban of the most enlightened portion of the world, they made repeated efforts to set themselves in the right. As long as the argument followed the line of admitting the evil, while averring that for the present, at least, slavery seemed the most advantageous relation between the two races at the South, the slave-holders had much sympathy from the North and from England. It was conceded that if the slaves were freed, civil rights must eventually be accorded them. That condition staggered many who hated slavery. In those Northern States where the negro had the right to vote, that right was exercised only with great difficulty and some danger; but the blacks were few in number, and patiently submitted to a practical annulling of their privilege. But the fact was ap
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1 A Narrative of the Life of Noah Davis, a colored man, written by himself, published at Baltimore, 1859. I am informed by a colored man who knew him well that Davis was truly a religious man, and had the confidence and respect of all classes of citizens.
2 Webster's expression when speaking on slavery, Works, vol. v. p. 304.

appreciated that at the South, owing to the great number of negroes, the problem would be a far different one. There was, therefore, considerable sympathy with the opinion of McDuffie, that if the slaves were freed and made voters, no rational man could live in such a state of society.1 Basil Hall, who travelled in this country in 1827 and 1828, believed that the slave-holders were "a class of men who are really entitled to a large share of our indulgence;" that no men were more ready than were most of the American planters to grant " that slavery is an evil in itself and eminently an evil in its consequences;" but to do away with it seemed " so completely beyond the reach of any human exertions that I consider the abolition of slavery as one of the most profitless of all possible subjects of discussion." 2 The difficulty did not escape the philosophic mind of De Tocqueville. "I am obliged to confess," he wrote, "that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of putting off the struggle between the two races in the Southern States. . . . God forbid that I should justify the principle of negro slavery, as some American writers have done; but I only observe that all the countries which formerly adopted that execrable principle are not equally able to abandon it at the present time."3

Owing, however, to the efforts which Southern statesmen made for the extension of slavery, it became necessary to maintain the proposition that slavery is a positive good. The logic of the abolitionists likewise had influence in goading the Southern reasoners to this position. "Twenty years ago," wrote W. Gilmore Simms, " few persons in the South undertook to justify negro slavery, except on the score of necessity. Now, very few persons in the same region question their perfect right to the labor of their slaves; and, more, their moral obligation to keep them still subject as
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1 Life of Garrison, vol. ii. p. 62.
2 Basil Hall's North America, vol. ii. p. 62.
3 De la Democratic en Amerique, vol. ii. p. 338.

slaves, and to compel their labor, so long as they remain the inferior beings which we find them now, and which they seem to have been from the beginning. This is a great good, the fruit wholly of the hostile pressure."1

The book from which this passage is taken contains all that can be said in favor of slavery. The jurist, the statesman, the litterateur, and the educator—the most distinguished writers of the Southern States united in a publication of collected essays which they had written for Southern magazines, and gave them to the world under the title of "The Pro-slavery Argument." As I have already had occasion to refer many times to this work, an extended abstract of it would be profitless. In the light of our day it is melancholy reading. It is the waste of varied ability in a doomed cause.

Chancellor Harper devotes the larger part of his essay to arguing the good of slavery as an abstract question. Governor (afterwards Senator) Hammond applies himself to proving two texts: First, that the domestic slavery of these States is " not only an inexorable necessity for the present, but a moral and humane institution, productive of the greatest political and social advantages;" 2 and, " I endorse without reserve the much-abused sentiment of Governor McDuffie, that1 slavery is the corner-stone of our republican edifice;' while I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that 1 all men are born equal.' " 3 Simms's contribution to this volume, entitled "Morals of Slavery," was a criticism of Harriet Martineau's description of the peculiar institution. He felt that, as a candid man, he must make some damaging admissions, and that ultimately he would be obliged to resort to recrimination; he therefore fortified his reasoning in advance by demanding, " Why should we account to these
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1 Pro-slavery Argument, p. 179. Published at Charleston by Walker, Richards & Co., 1852.
2 Pro-slavery Argument, p. 100.
3 Ibid., p. 110.

people? What are they, that they should subject us to the question? . . . The Southern people form a nation, and, as such, it derogates from their dignity that they should be called to answer at the tribunal of any other nation. When that call shall be definitely or imperatively made, they will answer with their weapons, and in no other language than that of war to the knife." 1

Dew, the professor of history, metaphysics, and political law at William and Mary College, Virginia, propounded two questions: "Can these two distinct races of people, now living together as master and servant, be ever separated?" and "will the day ever arrive when the black can be liberated from his thraldom and mount upward in the scale of civilization and rights, to an equality with the white?"2 He answered both of these questions with a decided negative; his article, full of deductions from history and law, and abounding in wealth of illustration, essayed to prove that any such consummation was either undesirable or impossible. He narrowed the question to Virginia; but the inference was plain that what applied to Virginia could with greater force be urged in reference to most of the other slave States. The author arrived at this conclusion: "There is slave property of the value of $100,000,000 in the State of Virginia, and it matters but little how you destroy it, whether by the slow process of the cautious practitioner, or with the frightful despatch of the self-confident quack; when it is gone, no matter how, the deed will be done, and Virginia will be a desert." 3

We can only regard with pity these arguments that were retailed in the select circles of the South, and used to
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1 Pro-slavery Argument, p. 184.
2 Ibid., p. 287.
3 Ibid., p. 384. This essay of Prof. Dew was a review of the debate in the Virginia legislature, 1831-32 (see p. 57), attracted much attention, and had great influence on public sentiment in Virginia at the time. The argument was regarded as convincing, and worthy of publication in connection with essays of a later date.

persuade willing Northern and English visitors. When we meet them in their balder form, we can only turn away with disgust. A representative from Louisiana, during the debate on the compromise of 1850, said in the House: "A union is not worth a curse as long as distinction exists between negroes and horses."1 "Niggers are property, sir," an illiterate slave-holder told Olmsted, "the same as horses and cattle; and nobody has any more right to help a negro that has run away than he has to steal a horse."2

A writer in De Bow's Review maintained that slavery of the negro was no worse than slavery of the ass. "God made the world," he tells us. "God gave thee there thy place, my hirsute brother; and, according to all earthly probabilities and possibilities, it is thy destiny therein to remain, bray as thou wilt. From the same great power have our sable friends, Messrs. Sambo, Cuffee & Co., received their position also. . . . Alas, 'my poor black brother!' thou, like the hirsute, must do thy braying in vain. Where God has placed thee, there must thou stay."3 A unique book of several hundred closely printed pages was published at Natchez in 1852, entitled "Studies on Slavery, in Easy Lessons." A considerable portion of it was devoted to combating the views of Wayland as found in his "Moral Science," and of Channing as elaborated in his treatise on " Slavery." The author takes issue with Channing on the statement, "Now, I say, a being having rights cannot justly be made property; for this claim over him virtually annuls all his rights." The Southern apostle rejoins: "We see no force of argument in this position. It is also true that all domestic animals held as property have rights. 'The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib.' They all have 'the right of
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1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Wilson, vol. ii. p. 286.
2 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 92.
3 De Bow's Resources, vol. ii. p. 198.

petition,' and ask in their way for food; are they the less property ?"1

So long as Southern reasoners maintained that the negro race was inferior to the Caucasian, their basis was scientific truth, although their inference that this fact justified slavery was cruel as well as illogical. But the assertion that the negro does not partake of the nature of mankind is as repugnant to science as it is to common-sense. The chimpanzee is not so near in intellect to the blackest Congo as is this negro to Daniel Webster. The common possession of language creates a wide gulf between man and the highest of the other animals.2

The chief argument in favor of slavery was drawn from the Bible. The Mosaic law authorized the buying and holding of bondmen and bondmaids; it was therefore argued that if God's chosen people were not only permitted but enjoined to possess slaves, slavery must certainly be an institution of the Deity. Texts of approval from the New Testament were more difficult to find. Although slavery in the Roman empire was an obtrusive fact, Christ was silent on the subject. The apologists of slavery made the utmost of Paul's exhortation to servants to obey their masters; yet of all the writings of the apostle of the Gentiles, the one of chief value to these special pleaders was his shortest epistle. It was used as a triumphant justification of the Fugitive Slave law. Paul sent back the runaway slave Onesimus to his master Philemon, the inclination to retain him being outweighed by the justice of his owner's claim.3

The most weighty scriptural argument, however, was that
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1 Studies on Slavery, by John Fletcher, p. 183. This book had reached the fifth thousand when the Independent noticed it, August 26th, 1852.
2 "What is it that separates mind from nature—that gives human intelligence an existence of its own, distinguished from general existence? .. . Is it not language ?"—Religion of Philosophy, Perrin, p. 246.
3 See an article in De Bow's Review, entitled Slavery and the Bible, vol. ix. p. 281.

based on the curse of Canaan. This reasoning had been used by the fathers of the Christian church,1 but its force was vastly greater as employed to justify negro slavery. It seems amazing that a few verses of a chapter of Genesis should be sincerely deemed sufficient warrant for the degradation of more than three million human beings. The unscientific use of the Bible in the nineteenth century to defend slavery finds a striking parallel in its use in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 2 to defend the belief in witchcraft against the attacks of science. Jefferson Davis, in the debate upon the compromise measures, asserted that slavery " was established by decree of Almighty God" and that "through the portal of slavery alone has the descendant of the graceless son of Noah ever entered the temple of civilization."3 The persistence with which such statements were urged, and the fact that they were believed in good faith, gave the institution a rooted strength which it could not have gained from reasoning based only on human considerations. When doubts of the right to hold slaves would rise in the minds of religious men at the South, they were checked by the thought that this was to question the mysterious ways of an inscrutable Providence. Noah had said, presumably with authority from on high:
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1 Sec Lecky's Morals, vol. ii. p. 70, note.
2 This peculiar use of the biblical narrative was a characteristic of the decade between 1850-60. Horace Mann, whose religious ideas were liberal, said, in 1853, in his inaugural address at Antioch College, that it was "morally impossible for God to have created in the beginning such men and women as we find the human race now to be." He appealed to the records of the book of Genesis, "which contains the earliest annals of the human family." For the first 2369 years " not a single instance is recorded of a child born blind, or deaf, or dumb, or idiotic, or malformed in any way 1 . . . Not one man or woman died of disease. . . . No cholera infantum, scarlatina, measles, small-pox — not even toothache 1 So extraordinary a thing was it for a son to die before his father that an instance of it is deemed worthy of special notice."—New York Nation, August 6th, 1891.
3 Congressional Globe, vol. xxii. p. 153.

"Cursed be Canaan [the son of Ham]; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." Blessed be Shem, and blessed be Japheth, and Canaan shall be their servant.

Nor was the influence of this argument confined to the South. It seemed to many Christians at the North that it was flying in the face of Providence to wish a change in the divinely ordered relation of master and slave between the descendant of Japheth and the descendant of Ham. Stranger yet does it seem to us, who are willing to accept the conclusions about the origin of race which have been arrived at by the patient and brilliant investigators of our day, that Emerson, who was one to go beyond the letter and grasp the spirit, should have been so profoundly swayed by the Mosaic explanation of the blackness of the negro. "The degradation of that black race," he said, "though now lost in the starless spaces of the past, did not come without sin."1

But the biblical argument in favor of slavery did not remain unchallenged. Between 1850 and 1860, the antislavery people received large accessions from Christian ministers and teachers, and with as firm faith in the inspiration of the Bible as the Southern religionists, they took up the gauntlet and joined issue on the chosen ground. Whether the Bible and the Christian religion sanctioned slavery, was a prominent topic in the joint debates that were held in Northern cities. The anti-slavery literature is full of such discussions. On the logical point, there is no question that the Northern reasoners had altogether the better of the argument.2 The spirit of Christianity was certainly opposed to slavery; under the Roman empire it had ameliorated the condition of the slaves, and during the middle ages
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1 Memoir of Emerson, Cabot, p.428.
2 See especially Debate between Brownlow and Pryne, and Blanchard and Rice; The Church and Slavery, by Albert Barnes. For the refutation of the Ham argument, from the Unitarian point of view, see Life of Parker, Weiss, vol. ii. p. 81.

it had been the chief influence in the abolition of slavery in Europe.1

The fact that the slaves had their material wants supplied and were without anxiety for the morrow was urged without ceasing as one of the benefits of the system. When Seward visited Virginia he was told that they were the "happiest people in the world."2 Frederika Bremer was convinced that under a good master the slaves were "much better provided for than the poor working people in many parts of Europe."3 Lyell quotes the observations of a Scotch weaver who had spent several weeks on cotton plantations in Alabama and Georgia, and who asserted that he had not there witnessed one fifth of the real suffering he had seen in manufacturing establishments in Great Britain. This agreed with Lyell's own experience.4 Lady Wortley was impressed by the fact that the slaves "seemed thoroughly happy and contented." 5 Mackay was convinced that the slaves were "better clad, fed, and cared for than the agricultural laborers of Europe or the slop tailors and sempstresses of London and Liverpool." 6 Achille Murat, who became a Florida
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1 See Lecky's History of Morals, vol. i. pp. 70 and 76; Macaulay's History of England, chap. i.
2 Life of Seward, vol. i. p. 779.
3 Homes of the New World, vol. i. p. 296.
4 Second Visit, vol. ii. p. 78. "To one who arrives in Georgia direct from Europe, with a vivid impression on his mind of the state of the peasantry there in many populous regions, their ignorance, intemperance, and improvidence, the difficulty of obtaining subsistence, and the small chance they have of bettering their lot, the condition of the black laborers on such a property as Hopeton will afford but small ground for lamentation or despondency."—Ibid., vol. i. p. 262.
The women "are always allowed a month's rest after their confinement, an advantage rarely enjoyed by hard-working English peasants." —Ibid., p. 264; see also Diary of a Southern Planter, Smedes, p. 78.
5 Travels in the United States, vol. i. p. 218.
6 Life and Liberty in America, vol. i. p. 311. "The general condition of the Southern slave is one of comparative happiness and comfort, such as many a free man in the United Kingdom might regard with envy." —London Times, September 1st, 1852, quoted in Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin, p. 74. Ampere arrived at the conclusion that the lot of the slaves was not very hard (see tome ii. p. 142), but he is severe on those who attempt to justify slavery, see p. 148. Thackeray wrote from Richmond in 1853: "The negroes don't shock me, or excite my compassionate feelings at all; they are so grotesque and happy that I can't cry over them. The little black imps are trotting and grinning about the streets; women, workmen, waiters, all well fed and happy."—Letters, p. 168.

planter, maintained that the slaves were happier than the laborers in the large English manufacturing towns and than European peasants in general; and he wrote further that slavery, when viewed from afar, has quite a different physiognomy from that which presents itself when viewed on the spot; "that which appears rigorous by law becomes lenient by custom."1

The opinions of these foreign travellers, with the exception of the Scotch weaver who supported himself by manual labor and only saw the lower society, were greatly influenced by the generous hospitality of Southern gentlemen. Harriet Martineau had found that hospitality so remarkable and grateful that she discerned in it the lurking danger of blinding many to the real evils of slavery. In those spacious country-houses everything was so "gay and friendly," there was "such a prevailing hilarity and kindness," that one forgot the misery on which this open-handed way of living was based.2 The liberality and heartiness of Southern entertainments made a powerful impression on Lyell, who has left a graceful testimony of "the perfect ease and politeness with which a stranger is made to feel himself at home."3

The character in which the slave-holding lord wished to appear to the world is well illustrated by a fanciful account in The Southern Literary Journal of a visit by a nineteenth century Addison to Sir Roger de Coverley's plantation. The Carolina de Coverley is described as having all the virtues of the famous English knight, whose faithful old domestics, grown gray-headed in the service, are paralleled by
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1 America and the Americans, pp. 67 and 77.
2 Society in America, vol. i. p. 229.
3 Second Visit, vol. i. p. 245.

"healthy, laughing, contented" negroes, who are "comfortably provided for," whose " sleep is sweet," and who "care not for the morrow." The devotion of the ancient servants to the English Sir Roger, their joyful welcome when he returned from a journey, the mixture of the father and the master of the family in his conduct to his dependants, is likened to the "endearing relation" which exists between the slaves and the Carolina lord.1 But the imitator of the most graceful sketches unwisely draws beyond the lines of his model, and fouls with the dark blot of slavery a bright and charming picture of rural life. "Cleanliness is indispensable to health," says Sir Roger de Coverley of Carolina, "and makes the slave prolific. I have at this time a hundred and fifty of these people; and their annual increase may be estimated as adding as much to my income as arises from all other sources."2 The love of art as well as the love of liberty would have prevented Joseph Addison from putting such words into the mouth of his knight; for had Sir Roger spoken thus, he would have been no longer the old-fashioned country gentleman of high honor and rare benevolence that remains as one of the characteristic creations of English literature.

A well-known result of slavery was the denial of free speech at the South. While Southern advocates of the rightfulness of slavery were heard willingly at the North in joint debate, or from the lyceum platform, Garrison and Parker would have forfeited their lives had they gone South and attempted to get a hearing. The circulation of anti-slavery newspapers and books was suppressed as far as possible. One book, however, and the most dangerous of
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1 "In 'the days that are no more,' so confiding and affectionate was the relation of the master and the slave, and we, who personally loved many of them, cannot now easily become reconciled to the attitude of alienation in which the negroes stand towards us."—Mrs. Davis in 1890, Memoir of Jefferson Davis, vol. i. p. 811.
2 Slave States of America, Buckingham, vol. i. p. 60.

all, found many readers. The desire to read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was too great to be crushed by the usual efforts at repression.1

It must, however, be confessed that reason enough existed for the denial of free speech and a free press. The first duty of a society is self-preservation. Whether or not the danger of slave insurrections was great, it is certain that the fear of them was real and ever present. "I speak from facts," said John Randolph, " when I say that the night bell never tolls for fire in Richmond, that the frightened mother does not hug her infant the more closely to her bosom, not knowing what may have happened. I have myself witnessed some of the alarms in the capital of Virginia."2 De Tocqueville was struck by the inevitable danger of a struggle between the blacks and whites in the slave States. While he found the subject discussed freely at the North, it was ignored at the South; yet the tacit foreboding of servile insurrection in that community seemed more dreadful than the expressed fears of his Northern friends.3 Men in the slave States were wont to deny the danger,4 but Fanny Kemble testified that all Southern women to whom she had spoken about the matter admitted that they lived in terror of their slaves."5 Never elsewhere had she known "anything like the pervading timidity of tone," and it was her belief that the slave
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1 See letter of Francis Lieber, February 3d, 1853: "Apropos of slavery: Uncle Tom's Cabin sells here [in Columbia, S. C] rapidly. One bookseller tells me that he cannot supply the demand with sufficient rapidity."—Life and Letters, p. 257; see also Olmsted's Cotton Kingdom.
2 House of Representatives, Dec, 1811.
3 De la Democratic en Amerique, vol. ii. p. 334.
4 See Kemble, p. 295; Pro-slavery Argument, p. 74; Society in America, vol. ii. p. 120.
5 See Kemble, p. 295.

holders lived in a "perpetual state of suspicion and apprehension." 1 Olmsted saw "more direct expression of tyranny in a single day and night at Charleston than at Naples, under Bomba, in a week."2 Mackay, who was favorably disposed towards the South, was impressed with the surveillance, strict as martial law, to which the negroes were subjected at Charleston.3 Further evidence of this sort need not be adduced. The legislation, the daily conduct of the whites, the great alarms excited by slight provocation, go to show that the Roman proverb, "As many enemies as slaves," acquired the same force in the South after Nat Turner as it had in Rome after the revolt of Spartacus.4

Even had the material condition of the slaves been as good as the apologists of slavery were in the habit of asserting, the eagerness of nearly every negro for liberty was a grave indictment of the system. The evidence of this is so overwhelming that the statement will not be disputed. One of the finest touches in " Uncle Tom's Cabin" is the joyful expression of Uncle Tom when told by his good and indulgent master that he should be set free and sent back to his old home in Kentucky. In attributing the common desire of humanity to the negro, the author was as faithful as she was effective.
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1 Kemble, p. 268. "Ten years ago an eminent Southern statesman told us that he never retired to rest on his plantation without carefully examining his pistols and rifle, which hung by his bedside, to make sure that they were ready for instant use; and a mother of Virginia told us years ago that if accidentally awakened at night by any noise in the neighborhood, her first impulse was one of terror lest it should proceed from a revolt of negroes."—New York Tribune, 1859.
2 Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 350.
3 Life and Liberty in America, vol. i. p. 310; see also Seaboard Slave States, p. 404. Thackeray wrote from Richmond in 1853: "Crowe has just come out from what might have been and may be yet a dreadful scrape. He went into a slave-market and began sketching; and the people rushed on him savagely and obliged him to quit."—Letters, p. 168.
4 See account of Henry S. Foote of excitement in Central Mississippi in 1835, Casket of Reminiscences, p. 250 et seq.

A good deal of currency was given to stories of slaves who escaped and afterwards came to their old masters and voluntarily surrendered themselves.1 Clay grew eloquent when he told of a slave in his own family, who, having been enticed away, "addressed her mistress, and begged and implored of her the means of getting back from the state of freedom, to which she had been seduced, to the state of slavery, in which she was so much more happy."2 There is no doubt that similar instances occurred, but the very prominence given to isolated cases shows that they were the exceptions and not the rule. The small number of fugitive slaves was sometimes urged to show that the dissatisfaction with the servile condition was not general. Only about one thousand negroes escaped yearly into the free States, and only about two thousand were annually manumitted.3 Yet this argument was fallacious. The count of fugitives who reached the North cannot be taken to measure the number of negroes who escaped from their masters. In the cotton States the chance of getting to the land of freedom was small, yet slaves frequently ran away; they were often caught alive by the dogs, occasionally shot, and sometimes they remained for months in the swamps, or in mountainous regions kept secreted among the hills.4

The number of all sorts of fugitives, however, was small compared with the negroes who yearned for freedom, but, owing to insurmountable obstacles, were deterred from making the attempt. Frederick Douglass, one of the brightest and most intelligent of slaves, held notions of geography so vague and indistinct that the eastern shore of Maryland,
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1 See Retrospect of Western Travel, vol. i. p. 242.
2 Speech on the compromise resolutions, Last Years of Henry Clay, p. 330.
3 The number of fugitives escaping into the free States in 1850 was 1011, or one in each 3165 held in bondage; in 1860, 803, or one to about 5000. Twenty thousand slaves were supposed to have been manumitted between 1850 and 1860. United States Census Report.
4 See Cotton Kingdom, under "Runaway Slaves."

where he wrought as a bondman, seemed a vast distance from Pennsylvania; and his description of the barriers that lay in the way of eager fugitives is a sufficient explanation of why their number was so small.1 The vilest and most ignorant of slaves in the cotton States knew that freedom was in the direction of the north star; the wisest of them knew little more, except that the distance was great and that the route lay through a country where everybody kept on the watch, and where their color itself was a grave object of suspicion.

What will the judgment of history be on the Southern men? Must not coming ages ratify the opinion of the moralist and the philosopher who lived in slave times, who loved liberty and yet were able to take a charitable view ?" Slavery is the calamity of our Southern brethren, and not their crime," wrote Channing.2 "The misfortune of the planter," said Emerson," is at least as great as his sin." 3 Least of all may the North or England cast a stone at the South, for each had a hand in the establishing of negro slavery. Yet it does not follow that the Southern men of the generation before the war can plead innocence at the judgment bar of history. They may be arraigned for taking steps backward from the position held by the leaders of Southern opinion when the Constitution was framed. Jefferson made an effort to abolish slavery in his own State. It is true he might have done more; and he was subject to the influence of his environment to the extent that, in his later years, he found a palliation of slavery which his pen would have refused to record in the days when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson, and the great Virginians who were associated with him, freed a country and established a nation. Is it not asking too much that they should have solved the social question and freed a race? Yet that was the duty of the generation which succeeded. Calhoun was the intellectual
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1 Life of Douglass, p. 159.
2 Webster's Works, vol. v. p. 367.
3 Life of Emerson, Cabot, p. 426.

heir of Jefferson,1 and if he had continued to hold the national views with which he started in public life, he might have done much to shatter the system that he consecrated his later years to uphold.2 The mantle of Calhoun fell on Jefferson Davis, who translated into action the logic of his master. The judgment of posterity is made up: it was an unrighteous cause which the South defended by arms; and at the tribunal of modern civilization, Calhoun and Davis must be held accountable for the misery which resulted from this appeal to the sword.

It is true that had Calhoun espoused the cause of freedom, his influence would have been less; he would not have been idolized as the Southern hero and have received the affectionate devotion of his aristocratic order.3 Calhoun and Davis were leaders because in them the feelings of the Southern oligarchy found the ablest expression. It is therefore fitting that the judgment which is meted out to the Southern leaders should be shared by their followers who failed to grapple with the problem sincerely and boldly, and foremost of these were the slave-holding lords. The smaller proprietors, who imitated their betters, were not guiltless; but the most lenient judgment should fall upon the poor whites, who were hoodwinked into fighting for a cause which, though deemed holy, was in reality an instrument in their own degradation. Yet, while making these reflections, the historian cannot forget that in the heat of the conflict the great leader could say: "Both [the North and
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1 This is pointed out by Henry Adams. "A radical democrat, less liberal, less cultivated, and much less genial than Jefferson, Calhoun was the true heir to his intellectual succession." — History of the United States, vol. i. p. 154.
2 Harriet Martineau has an interesting passage on Calhoun, Retrospect, vol. i. p. 241; see also conversation between Calhoun and John Quincy Adams, March, 1820, Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, vol. v. p. 10.
3 " Calhoun sways South Carolina by pampering her vanity."—Francis Lieber, Life and Letters, p. 171.

the South] read the same Bible and pray to the same God. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged."1 Nor, if we suppose the Puritan to have settled Virginia and the Cavalier Massachusetts, it is not inconceivable that, while the question would have remained the same, the Puritan might have fought for slavery and the Cavalier for liberty.

Then, too, it may be that the peculiar institution was so interwoven with the political and social life of the South, that to inaugurate a movement there which should result in the abolition of slavery might have required a genius by the side of whom Calhoun and Davis would seem intellectual pygmies. The mighty Caesar, the sovereign ruler, although convinced of the evil of large slave estates, did not venture to assail the practice of slavery in Rome. Our civilization is certainly superior in the virtue of humanity to that of the ancient world in the time of Caesar, and a man as able and energetic as the Roman imperator might, under republican forms, have worked out the salvation of the South. But one is struck by the absence of any well-directed effort towards the abolition of slavery. Nor were the slave States willing to entertain any plan involving emancipation with compensation.2 No doubt whatever exists that the moral sentiment of the North would have favored employing the treasure and credit of the general government to pay for the slaves, had the Southern owners been willing to emancipate them;3 and while such a course was not without practical and political difficulties, these were by no means insuperable. Yet no such project was entertained; for even had the North made such an offer, it would have been spurned by the South. The Colonization Society, whose object was to remove the negroes to Africa and colonize
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1 From President Lincoln's second inaugural.
2 See Seward's Works, vol. i. p. 87.
3 See Emerson's speech, 1855, Cabot, p. 593.

them at Liberia, undoubtedly proved a salve to the tender consciences of many; but as a means of putting an end to the evil, its operations were a fit subject of ridicule. Garrison charged that seven times as many slaves were annually smuggled into the South as had been transported to Africa in fifteen years by the Colonization Society.1

The Southern lord would not make the sacrifice of his ease to examine the question honestly. Lyell, who was inclined to be partial to the South, was of the opinion that steps ought long ago to have been taken towards the gradual emancipation of the slaves.2 Jefferson Davis and his fellow-planters, who were fond of books and delighted in the study of ancient history, might have read in the year 1857 an impressive lesson; and had their minds been open to the reception of the truth, the words of Mommsen would have appeared to them the highest philosophy; for he furnished an example of a social system strikingly similar to that the Southern lords extolled; he drew the parallel and let the consequence be seen. "Riches and misery," wrote the historian of Rome, "in close league drove the Italians out of Italy, and filled the Peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, partly with awful silence. It is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar to Italy; whenever the government of capitalists in a slave State has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's fair world in the same way. . . . All the arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against nation and
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1 Life of Garrison, vol. i. p. 295. "Mr. Madison, the president of the colonization society, gave me his favorable views of it. Mr. Clay, the vice-president, gave me his. So did almost every clergyman and other member of society whom I met for some months. . . . But I am firmly persuaded that any clear-headed man, shutting himself up in his closet for a day's study of the question, . . . can come to no other conclusion than that the scheme of transporting the colored population of the United States to the coast of Africa is absolutely absurd; and if it were not so, would be absolutely pernicious."—H. Martineau, Society in America, vol. i. p. 346. "It is a tub thrown to the whale."—Ibid., p. 349.
2 Lyell's Second Visit, vol. i. p. 208.

civilization in the modern world remain as far inferior to the abomination of the ancient capitalist States as the free man, be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave; and not until the dragon-seed of North America ripens will the world have again similar fruits to reap."1

When the war ended with the abolition of slavery, the general opinion at the North was that the negro question was settled. This was an illusion; yet no one fully conversant with the literature of slavery in the decade of 1850-60, and with the literature of the race question at the present time, can doubt that the negro problem was a graver one in 1850 than it is in 1892. This the historian may affirm with confidence and yet feel the seriousness of the present situation, which demands the wisdom of action on the part of the South, and the wisdom of forbearance on the part of the North. The North better than ever before appreciates the feeling that induced Madison, in the closing years of his useful life, to give vent to the ardent wish that he might be able to work a miracle; were that power given him, he would make all the negroes white, for then he could in one day abolish slavery.2
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1 Vol. iv. p. 621.
2 See Society in America, Martineau, vol. i. p. 382. Ou the subject of this chapter generally, see article in the Andover Review, August, 1891, entitled " Slavery as Seen by a Northern Man in 1844," by A. P. Peabody.

I desire here to acknowledge my obligations to my friend Raymond S. Perrin, who read with me a large portion of the manuscript of this work, and to whom I am indebted for valuable suggestions. And I wish to mention the assistance received from my friend Professor Bourne, of Adelbert College, who read carefully the whole manuscript, and gave me the benefit of his historical knowledge and literary criticism.


Source: Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States; from the compromise of 1850 to the final restoration of home rule at the south in 1877, v.1. New York: Macmillan, 1910 [c1892].