The Uprising of a Great People

By comte de Agénor Gasparin

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by Count Agénor de Gasparin

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Title: The Uprising of a Great People
       The United States in 1861. To Which is Added a Word of Peace on the Difference Between England the United States.

Author: Count Agénor de Gasparin

Release Date: January 8, 2004 [EBook #10637]

Language: English


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     THE UPRISING OF A GREAT PEOPLE.
     THE UNITED STATES IN 1861.


     TO WHICH IS ADDED
     A WORD OF PEACE
     ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND
     THE UNITED STATES.



     FROM THE FRENCH OF
     COUNT AGÉNOR DE GASPARIN


     BY MARY L. BOOTH.


     NEW AMERICAN EDITION
     FROM THE AUTHOR'S REVISED EDITION.
     1862.



       *       *       *       *       *



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
TO THE REVISED AMERICAN EDITION.


The edition of the _Uprising of a Great People_ which we issue herewith,
has been carefully revised to conform to the new edition of the original
work, just published at Paris. The author has corrected several errors
of fact, which were noted by American reviewers on the appearance of the
translation, and has also made sundry changes in the work, designed to
bring it down to the present time, and to adapt its counsels to the new
light that is breaking in upon us in the progress of events. These
changes, however, have been few, and relate chiefly to the policy of
emancipation, for so truly has this remarkable book proved a prophecy,
that the author, on reviewing it after a lapse of several eventful
months, can find nothing to strike out as having proved untrue. We are
indebted to the kindness of Count de Gasparin for one or two corrections
of trifling biographical misstatements in the translator's preface.

The pamphlet concerning the Trent affair, and the surrender of Messrs.
Mason and Slidell, which we append to this edition, will be read with
interest at the present crisis, as an able exposition of the views of
European statesmen on the international difficulty which has sprung so
unexpectedly upon us. While it justifies the surrender on the ground of
technical error, it utters a solemn warning in the name of Europe, that,
if the demand were a mere pretext to force us into a ruinous war, such a
proceeding will not again be tolerated. This pamphlet, entitled _Une
Parole de Paix_, is the article which appeared in the _Journal des
Débats_, December 11, 12, and 13, since published as a _brochure_, with
some additions.

This new edition is especially valuable, inasmuch as it seals the faith
of our noble friend and sympathizer. "A few months ago," says Count de
Gasparin, in his preface, "I believed in the uprising of a great people;
now I am sure of it." Let not the issue shame us by disappointing his
trust!

MARY L. BOOTH.

NEW YORK, _February_, 1862.



       *       *       *       *       *



PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION.


I have nothing to change in these pages. When I wrote them before the
breaking out of the American crisis, I foreboded, which was not
difficult, that the crisis would be long and grievous, that there would
be mistakes and reverses; but I foreboded, also, that through these
mistakes and reverses, an immense progress was about to come to light.
Some have undertaken to doubt it: at the sight of civil war, and the
evils which it necessarily entails, at the recital of one or two
defeats, they have hastened to raise their hands to Heaven, and to
proclaim in every key the ruin of the United States.

This is not the place to discuss judgments, sometimes superficial,
sometimes malevolent, which too often pass current among us; to examine
what has been, what should be the attitude of our Europe, what is our
responsibility, what are our interests and our duties. We alone, I am
ashamed to admit it, we alone run the risk of rendering doubtful the
final triumph of the good cause; we have not ceased to be, in spite of
ourselves, the only chance and the only hope of the champions of
slavery.

Perhaps I shall enter ere long, in a new study, upon the important
subject which I confine myself to indicating here, and which
pre-occupies the government at Washington to such a degree that it seems
inclined to order defensive preparations in view of an unnatural
conflict between liberal America and ourselves. Everything may
happen--alas! the seemingly impossible like all else. It is not enough,
therefore, to declare this impossible and monstrous, it is not enough to
prove that the present state of feeling in Europe is far from giving
reason to foresee an intervention in favor of the South; it is necessary
to sap at the base these deplorable sophisms, more fully credited than
is imagined, which may, in due time, under the pressure of certain
industrial needs or of certain political combinations, urge France and
England into a course which is not their own.

For the present, I have only wished to repeat, with a strengthened
conviction, what I said a few months ago. I believed then in the
uprising of a great people; now I am sure of it.

VALLEYRES, _November_ 2, 1861.



       *       *       *       *       *



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.


At this moment, when we are anxiously scrutinizing every indication of
European feeling with respect to the American question, the advent of a
book, bearing the stamp of a close philosophical, political, and
practical study of the subject, and written, withal, in so hopeful a
spirit as to make us feel with the writer that whatever may result from
the present crisis must be for good, cannot fail to be of public
interest and utility. So truly prophetic is this work in its essence,
that we can hardly believe that it was written in great part amid the
mists that preceded the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. All probabilities
appear to have been foreseen, and the unerring exactness with which
events have taken place hitherto precisely in the direction indicated by
the author, encourages us to believe that this will continue until his
predictions will have been fulfilled to the end. Clear-sighted,
philosophical, appreciative of American genius and accomplishment,
critical, yet charitable to tenderness, stigmatizing the fault, yet
forgiving the offender, cheering our nation onward by words of
encouragement, bravely spoken at the needed-moment, menacing Europe with
the scorn of posterity, if, forgetting her oft-repeated professions, she
dare forsake the side of liberty to traffic in principles; such is the
scope of what a late reviewer calls "the wisest book which has been
written upon America since De Tocqueville."

Few men are better qualified to judge American affairs than Count de
Gasparin. A many-sided man, combining the scholar, the statesman, the
politician, the man of letters, and the finished gentleman, possessed of
every advantage of culture, wealth, and position, he has devoted a long
life to the advocacy of liberty in all its forms, whether religious or
political, and has ended by making a profound study of American history
and politics, the accuracy of which is truly remarkable. A few facts
with respect to his career, kindly furnished by his personal friend,
Rev. Dr. Robert Baird, of New York, will be here in place.

Count Agénor Étiénne de Gasparin was born at Orange, July 4, 1810. His
family is Protestant, and of Corsican origin; his father was a man of
talent and position, who served for many years as Prefect of the
District of the Rhone, and afterwards as Minister of the Interior under
Louis Philippe, by whom he was highly esteemed. He received a liberal
education, and devoted himself especially to literature, till 1842, when
he was elected by the people of the island of Corsica to represent them
in the Chamber of Deputies. Here began his political career. At that
time, religious liberty was in danger of perishing in France, assailed
by the powerful opposition of the tribunals and the administration. De
Gasparin declared himself its champion, and, in an eloquent speech in
the Chamber of Deputies, which moved the audience to tears, he boldly
accused the courts of perverting the civil code in favor of religious
intolerance, and claimed unlimited freedom for evangelical preaching and
colportage. He also made strenuous efforts to effect the immediate
emancipation of slaves in the French colonies, and published several
essays on the subject. He devoted himself especially to the protection
of Protestantism, and founded in France the Society for the Protection
of Protestant interests, and the Free Protestant Church, yet, detesting
religious intolerance everywhere, he did not hesitate to denounce the
Protestant persecutions of Sweden as bitterly as he had done the
Catholic bigotry of France. He was head of the Cabinet in the Ministry
of the Interior while his father was Minister, and was in the Ministry
of Public Instruction under M. Guizot. In 1848, while travelling in the
East with his wife, a talented Swiss lady, the author of several works,
he received intelligence of the downfall of the government of Louis
Philippe. This event closed his public career. He addressed a letter of
condolence to the dethroned monarch, to whom he was warmly attached,
then retired to Switzerland to devote himself to literature and
philanthropy, being too warm an adherent of the Orleans dynasty to take
part in the new administration. Politically, he is, like Guizot, an
advocate of constitutional monarchy. Since the Revolution, he has
continued to reside in Switzerland. He has published numerous works on
philosophical and social questions, among which may be instanced:
_Esclavage et Traite; De l'Affranchissement des Esclaves; Intérêts
généraux du Protestantisme Français, Paganismet Christianisme, Des
tables tournantes, du surnaturel en général, et des esprits_, etc.

His present work, so hopeful and sympathizing, recommends itself to the
attention of the American public; and even those who may dissent from
some of his positions or conclusions, cannot but admire his vigorous
comprehension of the outlines of the subject, and be cheered by his
predictions of the future. As the expression of the opinion of an
intelligent, clear-sighted European, in a position to comprehend men and
things, concerning the storm which is now agitating the whole country,
it can scarcely fail of a hearty welcome. I commend the following
interpretation, which I have sought to make as conscientiously literal
as due regard to idioms of language would permit, to all true lovers of
liberty and of the Union, of whatever State, section, or nation.

MARY L. BOOTH.

NEW YORK, _June_ 15, 1861.



       *       *       *       *       *



PREFACE.


In publishing this study at the present time, I expose myself to the
blame of prudent men. I shall be told that I ought to have waited.

To have waited for what? Until there shall be no more great questions in
Europe to dispute our attention with the American question? Or until the
American question has shaped itself, and we are able to know clearly
what interests it will serve, in what consequences it will end?

I am not sorry, I confess, to applaud duty before it is recommended by
success. When success shall have come, men eager to celebrate it will
not be wanting, and I shall leave to them the care of demonstrating then
that the North has been in the right, that it has saved the United
States.

To construct the philosophy of events after they have passed is very
interesting, without doubt, but the work to be accomplished to-day is
far more serious. The point in question is to sustain our friends when
they are in need of us; when their battle, far from being won, is
scarcely begun; the point in question is to give our support--the very
considerable support of European opinion--at the time when it can be of
service; the point in question is to assume our small share of
responsibility in one of the gravest conflicts of this age.

Let us enlist; for the Slave States, on their part, are losing no time.
They have profited well, I must admit, by the advantages assured to them
by the complicity of the ministers of Mr. Buchanan. In the face of the
inevitable indecision of a new government, around which care had been
taken to accumulate in advance every impossibility of acting, the
decided bearing of the extreme South, its airs of audacity and defiance
have had a certain éclat and a certain success. Already its partisans
raise their heads; they dare speak in its favor among us; they insult
free trade, by transforming it into an argument destined to serve the
interests of slavery. And shall we remain mute? Shall we listen to the
counsels of that false wisdom that always comes too late, so much does
it fear to declare itself too early? Shall we not feel impelled to show
in all its true light the sacred cause of liberty? Ah! I declare that
the blood boils in my veins; I have hastened and would gladly have
hastened still more. Circumstances independent of my will alone have
retarded a publication prepared more than a month ago.

ORANGE, _March_ 19, 1861.



       *       *       *       *       *



        CONTENTS


        INTRODUCTION.

    I.--AMERICAN SLAVERY

   II.--WHERE THE NATION WAS DRIFTING BEFORE THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN.

  III.--WHAT THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN SIGNIFIES.

   IV.--WHAT WE ARE TO THINK OF THE UNITED STATES.

    V.--THE CHURCHES AND SLAVERY.

   VI.--THE GOSPEL AND SLAVERY.

  VII.--THE PRESENT CRISIS.

 VIII.--PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS.

   IX.--COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO RACES AFTER EMANCIPATION.

    X.--THE PRESENT CRISIS WILL REGENERATE THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE
        UNITED STATES.

        CONCLUSION.



       *       *       *       *       *


     A GREAT PEOPLE RISING.


       *       *       *       *       *



INTRODUCTION.


The title of this work will produce the effect of a paradox. The general
opinion is that the United States continued to pursue an upward course
until the election of Mr. Lincoln, and that since then they have been
declining. It is not difficult, and it is very necessary, to show that
this opinion is absolutely false. Before the recent victory of the
adversaries of slavery, the American Confederation, in spite of its
external progress and its apparent prosperity, was suffering from a
fearful malady which had well-nigh proved mortal; now, an operation has
taken place, the sufferings have increased, the gravity of the situation
is revealed for the first time, perhaps, to inattentive eyes. Does this
mean that the situation was not grave when it did not appear so? Does
this mean that we must deplore a violent crisis which alone can bring
the cure?

I do not deplore it--I admire it. I recognize in this energetic
reaction against the disease, the moral vigor of a people habituated to
the laborious struggles of liberty. The rising of a people is one of the
rarest and most marvellous prodigies presented by the annals of
humanity. Ordinarily, nations that begin to decline, decline constantly
more and more; a rare power of life is needed to retrieve their
position, and stop in its course a decay once begun.

We have a strange way of seconding the generous enterprise into which
the United States have entered with so much courage! We prophesy to them
nothing but misfortunes; we almost tell them that they have ceased to
exist; we give them to understand, that in electing Mr. Lincoln they
have renounced their greatness; that they have precipitated themselves
head foremost into an abyss; that they have ruined their prosperity,
sacrificed their future, rendered henceforth impossible the magnificent
character which was reserved to them. Mr. Buchanan, we seem to say, is
the last President of the Union.

This, thank God, is the reverse of the truth. But lately, indeed, the
United States were advancing to their ruin; but lately there was reason
to mourn in thinking of them; the steps might have been counted which
it remained for them to take to complete the union of their destiny with
that of an accursed and perishable institution--an institution which
corrupts and destroys every thing with which it comes in contact.
To-day, new prospects are opening to them; they will have to combat, to
labor, to suffer; the crime of a century is not repaired in a day; the
right path when long forsaken is not found again without effort; guilty
traditions and old complicities are not broken through without
sacrifices. It is none the less true, notwithstanding, that the hour of
effort and of sacrifice, grievous as it may be, is the very hour of
deliverance. The election of Mr. Lincoln will be one of the great dates
of American history; it closes the past, but it opens the future. With
it is about to commence, if the same spirit be maintained, and if
excessive concessions do not succeed in undoing all that has been done,
a new era, at once purer and greater than that which has just ended.

Let others accuse me of optimism; I willingly agree to it. I believe
that optimism is often right here below. We need hope; we need sometimes
to receive good news; we need to see sometimes the bright side of
things. The bright side is often the true side; if Love is blindfolded,
I see a triple bandage on the eyes of Hate. Kindliness has its
privileges; and I do not think myself in a worse position than another
to judge the United States because they inspire me with an earnest
sympathy; because, after having mourned their faults and trembled at
their perils, I have joyfully saluted the noble and manly policy of
which the election of Mr. Lincoln is the symptom. Is it not true, that
at the first news we all seemed to breathe a whiff of pure and free air
from the other side of the ocean?

It is a pleasure, in times like ours, to feel that certain principles
still live; that they will be obeyed, cost what it may; that questions
of conscience can yet sometimes weigh down questions of profit. The
abolition of slavery will be, I have always thought, the principal
conquest of the nineteenth century. This will be its recommendation in
the eyes of posterity, and the chief compensation for many of its
weaknesses. As for us old soldiers of emancipation, who have not ceased
to combat for it for twenty years and more, at the tribunal and
elsewhere, we shall be excused without doubt for seeing in the triumph
of our American friends something else than a subject of lamentation.




CHAPTER I.

AMERICAN SLAVERY.


If they had not triumphed, do you know who would have gained the
victory? Slavery is only a word--a vile word, doubtless, but to which we
in time become habituated. To what do we not become habituated? We have
stores of indulgence and indifference for the social iniquities which
have found their way into the current of cotemporary civilization, and
which can invoke prescription. So we have come to speak of American
slavery with perfect sang froid. We are not, therefore, to stop at the
word, but to go straight to the thing; and the thing is this:

Every day, in all the Southern States, families are sold at retail: the
father to one, the mother to another, the son to a third, the young
daughter to a fourth; and the father, the mother, the children, are
scattered to the four winds of heaven; these hearts are broken, these
poor beings are given a prey to infamy and sorrow, these marriages are
ruptured, and adulterous unions are formed twenty leagues, a hundred
leagues away, in the bosom and with the assent of a Christian community.
Every day, too, the domestic slave-trade carries on its work; merchants
in human flesh ascend the Mississippi, to seek in the _producing_ States
wherewith to fill up the vacuum caused unceasingly by slavery in the
_consuming_ States; their ascent made, they scour the farms of Virginia
or of Kentucky, buying here a boy, there a girl; and other hearts are
torn, other families are dispersed, other nameless crimes are
accomplished coolly, simply, legally: it is the necessary revenue of the
one, it is the indispensable supply of the others. Must not the South
live, and how dares any one travesty a fact so simple? by what right was
penned that eloquent calumny called "Uncle Tom's Cabin"?

A calumny! I ask how any one would set to work to calumniate the customs
which I have just described. Say, then, that the laws of the South are a
calumny, that the official acts of the South are a calumny; for I affirm
that the simple reading of these acts and these laws, a glance at the
advertisements of a Southern journal, saddens the heart more, and
wounds the conscience deeper, than the most poignant pages of Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe. I admit willingly that there are many masters who
are very kind and very good. I admit that there are some slaves who are
relatively happy. I cast aside unhesitatingly the stories of exceptional
cruelty; it is enough for me to see that these _happy_ slaves expose
themselves to a thousand deaths to escape a situation declared
"preferable to that of our workmen." It is enough for me to hear the
heart-rending cries of those women and young girls who, adjudged to the
highest and last bidder, become, by the law and in a Christian country,
the property, yes, the property (excuse the word, it is the true one) of
the debauchees, their purchasers. And remark here that the virtues of
the master are a weak guarantee: he may die, he may become bankrupt, and
nothing then can hinder his slaves from being sold into the hands of the
buyer who scours the country and makes his choice.

We should calumniate the South if we amused ourselves by making a
collection of atrocious deeds, in the same manner that we should
calumniate France by seeking in the _Police Gazette_ for the description
of her social state. There is, notwithstanding, this difference between
the iniquities of slavery and our own: the first are almost always
unpunished, while the second are repressed by the courts. An institution
which permits evil, creates it in a great measure: in saying that men
are things, it necessarily engenders more crimes, more acts of violence,
more cowardly deeds, than the imagination of romancers will ever invent.
When a class has neither the right to complain, nor to defend itself,
nor to testify in law; when it cannot make its voice heard in any
manner, we may be excused for not taking in earnest the idyls chanted on
its felicity. We must be ignorant at once of the heart of man and of
history to preserve the slightest doubt on this point. I add that those
who, like me, have had in their hands the documents of our colonial
slavery, have become terribly suspicious, and are likely to look with a
skeptical eye on these Arcadian descriptions, the worth of which they
can appreciate.

Once more, I do not contest the humanity of many masters, but I remember
that there were humane masters too in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and
Bourbon; yet this did not prevent the discovery, on a rigid scrutiny,
sometimes of excesses, as fearful as inevitable, of the discretionary
power; at others, of a systematic depravation, and this to such a point
that in one of our colonies the custom of regular unions had become
absolutely unknown to the slaves.

I cannot help believing that man is the same everywhere. Never, in any
time or in any latitude, has it been given him to possess his fellow,
without fearful misfortunes having resulted to both. Have we not heard
celebrated the delightful mildness of Spanish slavery in Cuba?
Travellers entertained by the Creoles usually return enchanted with it.
Yet, notwithstanding, it is found that on quitting the cities and
penetrating into the plantations, the most barbarous system of labor is
discovered that exists in the entire world. Cuba devours her black
population so rapidly that she is unceasingly obliged to purchase
negroes from abroad; and these, being once on the island, have not
before them an average life exceeding ten years! In the United States,
the planters of the extreme South are also obliged to renew their supply
of negroes; but, as they have recourse to the domestic instead of the
African trade, and as the domestic trade furnishes slaves at an
excessively high price, it follows that motives of interest oppose the
adoption of the destructive system of Cuba. Other higher motives also
oppose it, I am certain; and I am far from comparing the system of
Louisiana or the Carolinas to that which prevails in the Spanish island.
We exaggerate nothing, however; and whatever may be the points of
difference, we may hold it as certain that those of resemblance are
still more numerous: the tree is the same, it cannot but bear the same
fruits.

It must be affirmed, besides, that slavery is peculiarly odious on that
soil where the equality of mankind has been inscribed with so much eclat
at the head of a celebrated constitution. Liberty imposes obligations;
there is at the bottom of the human conscience something which will
always cause slavery to be more scandalous at Washington than at Havana.
What happens in the United States will be denounced more violently, more
loudly, than what happens in Brazil; and this is right.

This said, I pause: I have not the slightest wish to introduce here a
perfectly superfluous discussion on the principle and the consequences
of slavery. I know all with which Americans reproach us Europeans. It
was we, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Spaniards, Hollanders, who imposed on
them this institution which we take delight in combating--this
inheritance which we anathematize! Before attacking slavery, we would
do well to turn our attention to our own crimes--to the oppression of
the weak in our manufactories, for instance! But these retaliatory
arguments have the fault of proving nothing at all. We will leave them;
we have said enough on the nature of American slavery; let us proceed to
the special subject of our work.




CHAPTER II.

WHERE THE UNITED STATES WERE DRIFTING BEFORE THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN.


I have spoken of the great perils which the United States encountered
before the election of Mr. Lincoln. The time has come to enter into some
details in justification of this proposition, which must have appeared
strange at first sight, but the terms of which I have weighed well: if
the slavery party had again achieved a victory, the United States would
have gone to ruin. Here are the facts:

Formerly, there was but one opinion among Americans on the subject of
slavery. The Southerners may have considered it as a necessary evil; in
any case, they considered it as an evil. Carolina herself nobly resisted
its introduction upon her soil; other colonies did the same. Washington
inscribed the wish in his will that so baleful an institution might be
promptly suppressed. To pen up slavery, to prevent its extension, to
reduce it to the _rôle_ of a local and temporary fact, which it was
determined to restrain still more--such was the sentiment which
prevailed in the South, as in the North. And, in fact, slavery was ere
long abolished in the majority of the States composing the Union.
To-day, slavery has become a beneficent, evangelical institution, the
corner-stone of republics, the foundation of all liberties; it has
become a source of blessings for the blacks as for the whites. We not
only are not to think of reducing the number of slave States, but it
becomes important to increase them unceasingly: to interdict to slavery
the entrance into a new territory is almost iniquitous. Such are the
theories proclaimed by the governors, by the legislators of the cotton
States; they propose them openly, without scruple and without
circumlocution, under the name of political--what do I say? of moral and
Christian axioms. For these theories they take fire, they become
excited; they feel that enthusiasm which was inspired in other times by
the love of liberty. See entire populations, who, under the eye of God,
and invoking his support, devote themselves, body, soul, and goods, to
the _holy_ cause of slavery, its conquests, its indefinite extension,
its inter-State and African trade.

And the conquests of slavery do not figure only in platforms; they are
pursued and accomplished effectively on the soil of America. In the face
of the nineteenth century, free Texas has been transformed into a slave
State. To create other slave countries is the aim proposed; and slave
countries multiply, and the South does not tolerate the slightest
obstacle to conquests of this kind, and it goes forward, and nothing
stops it--I am wrong, the election of Mr. Lincoln has stopped it, and
this is why its fury breaks out to-day.

One would he furious for less cause! Every thing had gone so well till
then! The South spoke as a master, and the North humbly bowed its head
before its imperious commands. Its exactions increased from day to day,
and it was not difficult to see to what abysses it was leading the
entire American Union. Shall we give our readers an idea of this
crescendo of pretensions?

We will content ourselves with going back to the last Mexican war and to
the Wilmot proviso. This was, as is known, a measure, or _proviso_,
stipulating that slavery could not be introduced into conquered
provinces. Such was the starting point. It was sought then, in 1847, to
prevent the territorial extension of slavery. This seems to me
reasonable enough; and I am not astonished that the Lincoln platform
tends simply to return to this primitive policy. The measure passes the
House of Representatives, but is defeated in the Senate.
Notwithstanding, the American people hold firm to the principle that
slavery shall henceforth no longer be extended; it elects, in 1848, the
upright Administration of Gen. Taylor. The cause of justice seems about
to triumph, when the death of the whig President, succeeded by the
feeble Mr. Fillmore, comes to restore good fortune to the Southerners,
the _proviso_ is forgotten, and the nation, weary of resistance, ends by
adopting a series of deplorable compromises.

Beginning from this moment, the progress of the evil is rapid. Among the
compromises, the oldest and most respected, dating back to 1820, was
that which bore the name of the _Missouri Compromise_. On admitting
Missouri as a Slave State, it had been stipulated that slavery should be
no longer introduced north of the 36th degree of latitude. Of this
limit, so long accepted, the South now complains; it is no longer
willing that the development of its "peculiar institution" shall be
obstructed in any thing. Other combats, another victory. A bill
proposed by Mr. Douglas annuls the Missouri Compromise, and, based on
the principle of local sovereignties, withdraws from Congress the right
to interfere in the question of slavery.

The Wilmot proviso could not subsist in the presence of these absolute
pretensions. The liberty of slavery (pardon me this mournful and
involuntary conjunction) finds an application on the spot. At this
juncture, Texas, a province detached from Mexico, is admitted in the
quality of a slave State.

What happens then? The partisans of slavery, hampered by nothing any
longer, either by limits at the North, or limits at the South, or
provisos, or compromises, encounter, to their great horror, an obstacle
of quite a different nature. The local sovereignty which they have
invoked turns against them; in the Territory of Kansas, the majority
votes the exclusion of slavery. At once the Southerners change theory;
against local sovereignty they invoke the central power; they demand,
they exact that the decisions of the majority in Kansas shall be trodden
under foot; they put forward the natural right of slavery. Why shall
they be prevented from settling in a Territory with the slaves, their
property? When this Territory shall be by and by transformed into a
State, there will doubtless be a right to determine the question; but to
abolish slavery is quite a different thing from excluding it.

If the South did not win the cause this time, it was not the fault of
the government of the United States, but of the inhabitants of Kansas.
As for Mr. Buchanan, he showed himself what he has constantly been, the
most humble servant of the slavery party. They came together into
collision with _squatter sovereignty:_ they found for the first time in
their path that solid resistance of the West which was manifested in the
last election, and which, I firmly hope, is about to save America. But
in the mean time, they had taken a new step forward--a formidable step,
and one which introduced them into the very bosom of the free States:
they had obtained a decision from the Supreme Court--the Dred Scott
decree. In the preamble of this too celebrated decision, the highest
judicial power of the Confederation did not fear to proclaim two
principles: first, that there is no difference between a slave and any
other kind of property; secondly, that all American citizens may settle
everywhere with their property.

What a menace for the free-soilers! How easy to see to what lengths the
South would shortly go! Since slavery constituted property like any
other, it was necessary to prohibit the majority from proscribing it in
States as well as in Territories. Who knew whether we should not some
day see slaves and even slave-markets (the right of property carries
with it that of sale) in the streets even of Philadelphia or Boston!

Let no one cry out against this: those who demanded and those who framed
the Dred Scott decision knew probably what they wished to do. With the
right of property understood in this wise, no State has the power either
to vote the real abolition of slavery, or to forbid the introduction of
slaves, or to refuse their extradition. And, effectively, horrible laws,
ordering fugitive slaves to be given up, were accorded to the violent
demands of the South. Liberty by contact with the soil, that great maxim
of our Europe, was interdicted America; the very States that most
detested slavery were condemned to assist, indignant and shuddering, in
the federal invasion of a sheriff entering their homes to lay hands on a
poor negro, who had believed in their hospitality, and who was about to
be delivered up to the whip of the planter.

It was asking much of the patience of the North; yet, notwithstanding,
this patience was not yet at an end. The Administration was given up a
prey to the will of the Southerners. On their prohibition, the mails
ceased to carry books, journals, letters, which excited their suspicion.
They had seized upon the policy of the Union, and they ruled it
according to their liking. No one has forgotten those enterprises,
favored underhand, then disavowed after failure, those filibustering
expeditions in Central America and in the islands of Cuba. They were the
policy of the South, executed by Mr. Buchanan with his accustomed
docility. The point in question was to make conquests, and conquests for
slavery. By any means, and at any price, the South was to procure new
States. Cuba would furnish some, several would be carved out of Mexico
and Central America; for otherwise the slavery majorities would be
compromised in Congress, and slavery would be forced to renounce forever
the election of the Presidents of free America. To avoid such a
misfortune, there is nothing that they would not have been ready to
undertake.

Thus, step after step, and exaction after exaction, overthrowing, one
after the other, all barriers, the Wilmot proviso, the Missouri
Compromise, the right of majorities in the Territories, the very
sovereignty of the States annulled by the Dred Scott decision, the South
had succeeded in drawing the United States into those violent and
dishonest political practices which filled the administration of Mr.
Buchanan. The barriers of public probity, and the right of men, yielded
in turn; the administration dared write officially that Cuba was
necessary to the United States, and that the affranchisement of slaves
in Cuba would be a legitimate cause of war. The United States were yoked
to the car of slavery: to make slave States, to conquer Territories for
slavery, to prevent the terrible misfortune of an abolition of slavery,
such was the programme. In negotiations, in elections, nothing else was
perceived than this. If the liberty of the seas and the independence of
the flag were proudly claimed, it was by the order of the South, and
there resulted thence, whether desired or not, a progressive
resurrection of the African slave-trade; if candidates in favor of the
maintenance of the Union were recommended, it was to assure the
conquests of slavery within and without, the invasion of neighboring
countries, the extradition of fugitive slaves, the subjugation of
majorities rebellious to the South, the suppression of laws disagreeable
to the South, the overthrow of the last obstacles which fettered the
progress of the South.

And it was thus far, to this degree of disorder and abasement, that a
noble people had been dragged downwards in the course of years, sinking
constantly deeper, abandoning, one by one, its guarantees, losing its
titles to the esteem of other nations, approaching the abyss, seeing the
hour draw nigh in which to rise would be impossible, bringing down
maledictions upon itself, forcing those who love it to reflect on the
words of one of its most illustrious leaders: "I tremble for my country,
when I remember that God is just!"

All this under the tyrannical and pitiless influence of a minority
constantly transformed into a majority! Picture to yourself a man on a
vessel standing by the gun-room with a lighted match, in his hand; he is
alone, but the rest obey him, for at the first disobedience he will blow
up himself with all the crew. This is precisely what has been going on
in America since she went adrift. The working of the ship was commanded
by the man who held the match. "At the first disobedience, we will quit
you." Such has always been the language of the Southern States. They
were known to be capable of keeping their word; therefore, there ceased
to be but one argument in America: secession. "Revoke the compromise, or
else secession; modify the legislation of the free States, or else
secession; risk adventures, and undertake conquests with us for slavery,
or else secession; lastly and above all, never suffer yourselves to
elect a president who is not our candidate, or else secession."

Thus spoke the South, and the North submitted. Let us not be unduly
surprised at it, there was patriotism in this weakness; many citizens,
inimical to slavery, forbore to combat its progress, in order to avoid
what appeared to them a greater evil. Declivities like these are
descended quickly, and the deplorable presidency of Mr. Buchanan stands
to testify to this. The policy of the United States had become doubtful;
their good renown was dwindling away even with their warmest friends;
their cause was becoming blended more and more with that of servitude;
their liberties were compromised, and the Federal institutions were
bending before the "institution" of the South; no more rights of the
majority before the "institution;" no more sovereignty of the States
before the "institution." The ultra policy of Mr. Buchanan had coveted
Cuba, essayed violence in Kansas, given up the government of America in
fine to a cabinet of such a stamp, that a majority was nearly found in
it, ready to disavow Major Anderson, and to order the evacuation of
forts of the Confederation, menaced by Carolinian forces.

During this time, an incredible fact had come to light. It was one of
the glories of America to have abolished the African slave trade before
any other nation, and even to have put it on the same footing with the
crime of piracy. The South had openly demanded the re-establishment of a
commerce which alone could furnish it at some day with the number of
negroes proportioned to its vast designs. What had Mr. Buchanan done? He
doubtless had not consented officially to an enormity which Congress, on
its part, would not have tolerated; but repression had become so lax
under his administration, that the number of slave ships fitted out in
the ports of the United States had at length become very considerable.
The port of New York alone, which participates but too much in the
misdeeds and tendencies of the South, fitted out eighty-five slavers
between the months of February, 1859, and July, 1860. These slavers
proudly bore the United States' flag over the seas, and defied the
English cruisers. As for the American cruisers, Mr. Buchanan had taken
care to remove them all from Cuba, where every one knows that the living
cargoes are landed. The slave trade is therefore in the height of
prosperity, whatever the last presidential message may say of it, and as
to the application of the laws concerning piracy, I do not see that they
have had many victims.

We can now measure the perils which menaced the United States. It was
not such or such a measure in particular, but a collection of measures,
all directed towards the same end, and tending mutually to complete each
other: conquests, the domestic and the foreign slave trade, the
overthrow of the few barriers opposed to the extension of slavery, the
debasement of institutions, the definitive enthroning of an adventurous
policy, a policy without principles and without scruples; to this the
country was advancing with rapid strides. Do they who raise their hands
and eyes to heaven, because the election of Mr. Lincoln has caused the
breaking forth of an inevitable crisis, fancy then that the crisis would
have been less serious if it had broken forth four years later, when the
evil would have been without remedy? Already, the five hundred thousand
slaves of the last century have given place to four millions; was it
advisable to wait until there were twenty millions, and until vast
territories, absorbed by American power, had been peopled by blacks torn
from Africa? Was it advisable to await the time when the South should
have become decidedly the most important part of the Confederation, and
when the North, forced to secede, should have left to others the name,
the prestige, the flag of the United States? Do they fancy that, by
chance, with the supremacy of the South, with its conquests, with the
monstrous development of its slavery, secession would have been avoided?
No! it would have appeared some day as a necessary fact; only it would
have been accomplished under different auspices and in different
conditions. Such a secession would have been death, a shameful death.

And slavery itself, who imagines, then, that it can be immortal? It is
in vain to extend it; it will perish amidst its conquests and through
its conquests: one can predict this without being a prophet. But,
between the suppression of slavery such as we hope will some time take
place, and that which we should have been forced to fear, in case the
South had carried it still further, is the distance which separates a
hard crisis from a terrible catastrophe. The South knows not what
nameless misfortunes it has perhaps just escaped. If it had been so
unfortunate as to conquer, if it had been so unfortunate as to carry out
its plans, to create slave States, to recruit with negroes from Africa,
it would have certainly paved the way, with its own hands, for one of
those bloody disasters before which the imagination recoils: it would
have shut itself out from all chance of salvation.

It is not possible, in truth, to put an end to certain crimes, and
wholly avoid their chastisement; there will always be some suffering in
delivering the American Confederation from slavery, and it depends
to-day again upon the South to aggravate, in a fearful measure, the pain
of the transition. However, what would not have been possible with the
election of Mr. Douglas or Mr. Breckenridge, has become possible now
with the election of Mr. Lincoln; we are at liberty to hope henceforth
for the rising of a great people.




CHAPTER III.

WHAT THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN SIGNIFIES.


I think that I have justified the fundamental idea of this work, and the
title which I have given it. If the slavery policy had achieved a new
triumph; if the North had not elected its President, the first that has
belonged to it in full since the existence of the Confederation; if
supremacy had not ranged itself in fine on the side with force and
justice, this unstable balance would have had its hour of downfall: and
what a downfall! Of so much true liberty, of so much progress, of so
many noble examples, what would have been left standing? The secession
of the South is not the secession of the North; affranchisement with
four millions of slaves is not affranchisement with twenty millions; the
crisis of 1861 is not that of 1865 or of 1869. The United States, I
repeat, with a profound and studied conviction,--the United States have
just been saved.

There are those who ask gravely whether the electors of Mr. Lincoln have
a plan all ready to effect the abolition of slavery. We answer that this
is not in question. Among the influential and earnest men of the
victorious party, not one could be cited who would think of proposing
any plan whatever of emancipation. One thing alone is proposed: to check
the conquests of slavery. That it shall not be extended, that it shall
be confined within its present limits, is all that is sought to-day. The
policy of the founders of the Confederation has become that of their
successors in turn; and to this policy, what can be objected? Is not the
sovereignty of the States respected? do they not remain free to regulate
what concerns them? do they not preserve the right of postponing, so
long as they deem proper, the solution of a dreaded problem? could not
this solution be thought over and prepared by those who best know its
elements?

The matter is, indeed, more complicated and difficult than is generally
imagined. Should we be imprudent enough to meddle with it, we might
rightfully be blamed. Here, summary proceedings are evidently not
admissible. Time and the spirit of Christianity must do their work by
degrees; they will do it, be sure, provided the evil be circumscribed,
provided the seat of the conflagration be hemmed in and prevented
henceforth from spreading further.

Now, such is the great result acquired by the election of Mr. Lincoln;
it is nothing more than this, but it is all this: it is prudence in the
present, and it is also the certainty of success in the future.
Emancipation is by no means decreed; it will not be for a long time,
perhaps: yet the principle of emancipation is established, irrevocably
established in the sight of all. Irrevocability has prodigious power
over our minds: without being conscious of it, we make way for it; we
arrange in view of it our conduct, our plans, and even our doctrines.
Once fully convinced that its propagandism is checked, that the future
of which it dreamed has no longer any chances of success, the South
itself will become accustomed to consider its destiny under a wholly new
aspect. The border States, in which emancipation is easy, will range
themselves one after another on the side of liberty. Thus the extent of
the evil will become reduced of itself, and instead of advancing, as
during some years past, towards a colossal development of servitude, it
will proceed in the direction of its gradual attenuation.

I reason on the hypothesis of a final maintenance of the Union, whatever
may be the incidents of temporary secession. I am not ignorant that
there are other hypotheses, which may possibly be realized, and which I
shall examine in the course of this treatise; but whatever may happen, I
have a full right to call to mind the true scope of the vote which has
just been taken. It does not involve the slightest idea of present
emancipation; it contents itself with checking the progress of slavery;
and to check its progress is, doubtless, to diminish the perils of its
future abolition.

It was important to present this observation, for nothing perverts our
judgment of the American crisis more than the inexact definitions which
are given of abolitionism. We willingly picture abolitionists to
ourselves as madmen, seeking to attain their end on the spot, regardless
of all else, through blood and ruin! That there may be such is possible,
is even inevitable; but the men who exercise any political influence
over the North have not for a moment adopted such theories. This is so
true, that the other day, at Boston, the people themselves (the people
who nominated Mr. Lincoln) dispersed a meeting intended to discuss
plans of immediate emancipation.

What if abolitionism, moreover, be a party? what if it make use of the
means employed by parties? what if it have its journals, its publicists,
its orators? what if it seek allies? what if it be based on interests
which may be given it by the majority? what if it appeal to the passions
of the North, as the slavery party appeals to those of the South? I do
not see, in truth, why this should astonish us. I am far from believing
that all the acts of abolitionism are worthy of approbation; I say only
that it would be puerile to repudiate a great party for the sole reason
that it has the bearing of a party. The duty of citizens in a free
country is to choose between parties, and to unite with that whose cause
is just and holy. Let them protest against wrong measures, let them
refuse to participate in them--nothing can be better; but to withdraw
into a sort of political Thebais because the noblest parties have stains
on their banner, is, in truth, to turn their back on the civil
obligations of real life.

The abolition party is a noble one. Several of its champions have given
their lives to propagate their faith. But lately, indeed, the Texan
journals took pains to tell us that a number of them had just been hung
in that State; and, without even speaking of these noble victims, whose
death completes the dishonor of the Southern cause, are there any bolder
deeds in the history of mankind than those of the citizens of New
England who, to wrest Kansas from slavery, went thither to build their
cabins, thus braving a fearful struggle, not only with the slaveholders,
but with the President, his illegal measures, and the troops charged
with maintaining them?

We must fight to conquer. This seems little understood by those who
reproach abolitionism with having been a party militant; to hear them,
the true way of bringing about the abolition of slavery was to let it
alone: to attack was to exasperate it.

This argument is so unfortunate as to be employed in all bad causes. I
remember that when measures were taken against the slave trade, we were
told that the sufferings of the slaves would be thus increased, and that
the slavers would be _exasperated_. Later, when we held up to the
indignation of the whole world the Protestant intolerance of Sweden, we
were assured that these public denunciations would put back the question
instead of accelerating it. We persevered, and we did rightly. Sweden
is advancing, though at too slow a pace, towards religious liberty. It
would be difficult to cite any social iniquities that have reformed of
themselves; and, since the existence of the world, the method which
consists in attacking evil has been the one sanctioned by success. In
America itself, the progress made by the border States does not seem to
confirm what is told us of the reaction caused by the aggressions of
abolitionism. In Virginia, in Kentucky, in Missouri, in Delaware, etc.,
the liberty party has been continually gaining ground; and the votes
received in the slave States by Mr. Lincoln prove it a very great
mistake to suppose letting alone to be the condition of progress. Would
to God that slavery had not been let alone when the republic of the
United States was founded! Then, abolition was easy, the slaves were few
in number, and no really formidable antagonism was in play. Unhappily,
false prudence made itself heard: it was resolved to keep silence, and
not to deprive the South of the honor of a voluntary emancipation--in
fine, to reserve the question for the future. The future has bent under
the weight of a task which has continued to increase with years, thanks
to letting it alone.

A little more letting alone, and the weight would have crushed America;
it was time to act. The Abolition party, or rather the party opposed to
the extension of slavery, has acted with a resolution which should
excite our sympathies. The future of the United States was at stake; it
knew it, and it struggled in consequence. Remember the efforts essayed
four years ago for the election of Mr. Fremont, efforts which would have
succeeded perhaps, if Mr. Fremont had not been a Catholic. Remember
those three months of balloting, by which the North succeeded in
carrying the election of speaker of the House of Representatives.
Remember the conduct of the North, in the sad affair of John Brown, its
refusal to approve an illegal act, its admiration of the heroic farmer
who died after having witnessed the death of his sons. On seeing the
public mourning of the Free States, on hearing the minute gun discharged
in the capital of the State of New York on the day of execution, one
might have foreseen the irresistible impulse which has just ended in the
triumph of Mr. Lincoln.

The indignation against slavery, the love of country and of its
compromised honor, the just susceptibilities of the North, the liberal
instincts so long repressed, the desire of elevating the debased and
corrupt institutions of the land, the need of escaping insane projects,
the powerful impulse of the Christian faith, all these sentiments
contributed, without doubt, to swell the resistance against which the
supremacy of the South has just been broken. This, then, is a legal
victory, one of the most glorious spectacles that the friends of liberty
can contemplate on earth. It was the more glorious, the more efforts and
sacrifices it demanded. The Lincoln party had opposed to it, the
Puseyistic and financial aristocracy of New York; the manoeuvres of
President Buchanan were united against it with those of the Southern
States. Many of the Northern journals accused it of treading under foot
the interests of the seaports, and of compromising the sacred cause of
the Union.

To succeed in electing Mr. Lincoln, we must not forget that it was
necessary to put the question of principle above the questions of
immediate interests, which usually make themselves heard so distinctly.
The unity, the greatness of the country, the gigantic future towards
which it was advancing, were so many obstacles arising in the way. Then
came the reckoning of profits and losses, the inevitable crisis, the
Southern orders already withdrawn, the certain loss of money; it seems
to me that men who have braved such chances, have nobly accomplished
their duty.

America, it is said, is the country of the dollar; the Americans think
only of making money, all other considerations are subordinate to this.
If the reproach is sometimes well-founded, we must admit, at least, that
it is not always so. Those who wish to persuade us that the
Abolitionists in this again have simply sought their own interests, by
seeking to break down the competition of servile labor, forget two or
three things: first, that the slaves produce tobacco or cotton, while
the North produces wheat, so that there is not a race in the world that
competes less with it: next, that the cotton of the South is very useful
to the North, useful to its manufactures, useful to its trade, both
transit and commission. The people of the North are not reputed to lack
foresight; they were not ignorant that in electing Mr. Lincoln, they
had, for the time at least, every thing to lose and nothing to gain;
they were not ignorant that Mr. Lincoln occasioned the immediate threat
of secession; that the threat of secession was a commercial crisis, was
the political weakening of the country, and the unsettling of many
fortunes. But neither were they ignorant that above the fleeting
interests of individuals and of the nation, arose those permanent
interests which must rest only on justice; they decided, cost what it
might, to wrest themselves from the detestable, and ere long fatal
allurements of the slavery policy.

Let us beware how we calumniate, without intending it, the few generous
impulses which break out here and there among mankind. I know that there
is a would-be prudent skepticism which attacks all moral greatness that
it may depreciate it, all enthusiasm that it may translate it into
calculation. To admire nothing is most deplorable, and, I hasten to add,
most absurd. Without wandering from the subject of slavery, I can cite
the great Emancipation Act, wrested from Parliament by Christian public
opinion in England. Have not means been found to prove, or at least to
insinuate, that this act, the most glorious of our century, was at the
bottom nothing but a Machiavellian combination of interests? Doubtless,
those who have taken the trouble to look over the debates of the times
know what we are to think of this fine explanation; they know what
resistance was opposed by _interests_ to the emancipation, both in the
colonies and in the heart of the metropolis; they know with how much
obstinacy the Tories, representing the traditions of English politics,
combated the proposed plans; they know in what terms the certain ruin of
the planters, the manufactures, and the seaports, was described; they
know by how many petitions the churches, the religious societies, the
women, and even the children, succeeded in wresting from Parliament a
measure refused by so many statesmen. But the mass of the people do not
go back to the beginning; they take for granted the summary judgment
that English emancipation was a master-piece of perfidy.

We hear very nearly the same thing said of that glorious movement which
has just taken place in America. We would gladly detect all motives in
it except one that is generous and Christian. As if a vulgar calculation
of interest would not have dictated a contrary course! And it is
precisely this that makes the greatness of the resolution adopted by the
North. It knew all the consequences; they had been announced by the
South, recapitulated by prudent men, stated in detail by the newspapers
of great commercial cities; it chose to be just. Despite the inevitable
mingling of base and selfish impulses, which always become complicated
in such manifestations, the ruling motive in this was a protest of
conscience, and of the spirit of liberty.

The accounts that have come to us from America demonstrate the lofty
character of the joy which was manifested after the election. Men shook
hands with each other in the streets; they congratulated each other on
having at last escaped from the yoke of an ignoble policy; they felt as
though relieved from a weight; they breathed more freely; the true, the
noble destinies of the United States reappeared on the horizon, they
saluted a future that should be better than the present, a future worthy
of their sires, those early pilgrims who, carrying nothing with them but
their Bibles, had laid the foundation of a free country with poor but
valiant hands.

I should like to quote here the sermon in which the Rev. Mr. Beecher
poured out his Christian joy at that time. He spoke of the strength of
the weak; he showed that principles, however despised they may be, end
by revenging themselves on interests; he recalled the fact that the
Gospel is a power in America. To rise up, to attack its enemy manfully,
to arraign the causes of the national decline, to approach boldly the
solution of the most formidable problem which could be propounded here
on earth, such is not the act of a nation of calculators. Something
else is implied in it than tactics, something else than combinations of
votes or sectional rivalries. To vote as they did, they had to overcome
almost as many obstacles in the North as in the South; for, in
consequence of the vote, the North had to suffer like the South, and
they knew it.

If you wish to be just to the United States, compare them with other
countries in which slavery exists. In the United States there is a
struggle; the question is a living one; men do not turn aside from it
with lax indifference. I love the noise of free nations; I find in the
very violence of their debates a proof of the earnestness of
convictions. Men must become excited about great social problems; if
abuses exist, they must, at least, be pointed out, attacked, and
stigmatized; the prescription of silence must never be accorded them;
devoted voices must exclaim against them, unceasingly, in the name of
justice and of humanity. Such a spectacle does good to the soul; it
solaces the sorrows of the present, it carries within itself guarantees
for the future.

The sad, profoundly sad, spectacle, is that of nations where crimes make
no noise. Look at Brazil. Like the United States, it has slavery, but it
is an honorable, discreet slavery, of which nothing is said. Whatever
may happen there, no one inquires about it; there are no discussions,
either through the press or in the courts. No party would dare insert
such a question into its platform. One thing, very properly, has been
found to disturb it, and the public sale of slaves has just been
forbidden.

Look, above all, at Spain and its island of Cuba. There, too, is perfect
silence. Nothing, in truth, opposes the belief that Cuba is the abode of
felicity, and that the atrocities of slavery are the monopoly of the
United States. But inquisitive people, who like to search to the bottom
of things, discover that if the masters are very gentle at Havana, the
overseers are scarcely so on their account on the plantations; I have
already given the proof of it. Out of ten slavers that are seized on the
high seas, nine are always destined to Cuba. Spain has forbidden the
slave trade; she has even been compensated for it by the English; but
this does not prevent her from suffering it to be carried on before her
eyes with almost absolute impunity. Her high-sounding phrases change
nothing; the smallest fact is of more value. At Cuba, the landing of
slaves is continual, and the places of disembarkation are known. Now,
the American flag protects no one at the time of disembarking. Why is no
opposition made to this? Why has the importation of negroes tripled in
Cuba? Why does no slaver, American or any other, steer towards Brazil,
since Brazil has _desired_ to put an end to the slave trade? The answer
to these questions will be given us on the day when Spain shall
_desire_, in turn, to suppress it. In the mean time she prefers to keep
silence, unless when a word from London strikes out a concert of
protestations more patriotic than convincing; save in this case, the
government is silent, public opinion is silent, no colonial sheet is
found ready to hazard an objection, nor even a metropolitan journal that
is willing to disturb so touching an equanimity. The court of Madrid, in
which many questions are agitated, prudently stands aloof in the matter
of slavery and the slave trade; among the numerous parties disputing for
power, not one dares venture on a ground where it would meet nothing but
unpopularity. Ah! after this death-like silence, how the soul is
refreshed by the fiery contests of the United States, the great
word-combats carried on in every village of the Union, the appeals
addressed to the conscience, the battle in broad daylight! How
refreshing to see by the side of these nations, who sleep so tranquilly,
while regarding the inroads of slavery, a people whom, it disquiets,
whom it irritates, who refuse to take part in it, and who, rather than
conform to the evil, agitate, become divided, and rend themselves
perchance with their own hands!




CHAPTER IV.

WHAT WE ARE TO THINK OF THE UNITED STATES.


We are not just towards the United States. Their civilization, so
different from ours, wounds us in various ways, and we turn from them in
the ill-humor excited by their real defects, without taking note enough
of their eminent qualities. This country, which possesses neither
church, nor State, nor army, nor governmental protection; this country,
born yesterday, and born under a Puritanic influence; this country,
without past history, without monuments, separated from the Middle Ages
by the double interval of centuries and beliefs; this rude country of
farmers and pioneers, has nothing fitted to please us. It has the
exuberant life and the eccentricities of youth; that is, it affords to
our mature experience inexhaustible subjects of blame and raillery.

We are so little inclined to admire it, that we seek in its territorial
configuration for the essential explanation of its success. Is it so
difficult to maintain good order and liberty at home when one has
immense deserts to people, when land offers itself without stint to the
labor of man?--I do not see, for my part, that land is lacking at Buenos
Ayres, at Montevideo, in Mexico, or in any of the pronunciamento
republics that cover South America. It seems to me that the Turks have
room before them, and that the Middle Ages were not suffering precisely
from an excess of population when they presented everywhere the
spectacle of anarchy and oppression.

Be sure that the United States, which have something to learn of us,
have also something to teach us. Theirs is a great community, which it
does not become us to pass by in disdain. The more it differs from our
own Europe, the more necessary is impartial attention to comprehend and
appreciate it. Especially is it impossible for us to form an enlightened
opinion of the present crisis, unless we begin by taking into
consideration the surroundings in which it has broken out. The nature of
the struggle and its probable issue, the difficulties of the present,
and the chances of the future, will be clear to us only on condition of
our making a study of the United States. A few details will, therefore,
be permitted me.

Among the Yankees, the faults are on the surface. I am not one to
justify Lynch law, whatever may be the necessities which exist in the
Far West. Riots in the United States are cited which have performed
their work of fire and devastation, and which no one has dared treat
rigorously afterwards, for fear of incurring disgrace from the sovereign
people; but I remember, I fancy, that similar things have been seen in
Paris itself. We will not, therefore, lay too great stress on them.

One thing that is not seen in Paris, is, unhappily, remarked in America:
the general tendency among women to substitute masculine qualities which
scarcely befit them, for the feminine qualities which constitute their
grace, their strength, and their dignity; thence results a certain
something unpleasant and rude which does no credit to the New World. I
by no means admire coarseness, and I do not admit that it is the
necessary companion of energy; the tone of the journals and of the
debates in Congress is often calculated to excite a just reprobation.
There is in the United States a levelling spirit, a jealousy of acquired
superiority, and, above all, of inherited distinctions, which proceeds
from the worst sentiments of the heart. What is graver still, the
tender and gentle side of the human soul, such as shines forth in the
Gospel, appears too rarely among this people, where the Gospel,
notwithstanding, is in honor, but where the labor of a gigantic growth
has developed the active instead of the loving virtues; the Americans
are cold even when good, charitable and devout.

They may love money, and often concentrate their thoughts on the means
of making it; I will not contest this, although I doubt, on seeing what
passes among ourselves, whether we have the right to cast the stone at
them; especially as American liberality, as I shall presently show, is
of a nature to put our parsimony to shame. As to the bankrupt acts, of
which American creditors have many times complained, nothing can justify
them; yet here again the rôle of pedagogue scarcely becomes us. If more
than one American railroad company have taken advantage of a crisis to
declare without much dishonor, a suspension of payment, it is not proved
that these suspensions of payment must be converted into bankruptcy. If
more than one town or more than one county make the half yearly payments
of their debts with reluctance, the courts always do fair justice on
this ill will; there are some countries, Russia, for instance, where
the courts do not do as much. If, in fine, at one time, a number of
States failed to keep their engagements, and a single one dared proclaim
the infamous doctrine of repudiation, all have since paid, except one
State of the extreme South, Mississippi. Once more, are we sure of being
in a position to reprove such misdeeds; we, whose governments, anterior
to '89, made use, without much scruple, of the fall of stocks, and
bankruptcies; we, whose debt, on emerging from the Revolution, took the
significant name of _tiers consolidé?_

Let us not forget that the population of the United States has increased
tenfold since the close of the last century; they have received
immigrants annually, by hundreds of thousands, who have not always been
the elite of the Old World. Must not this perpetual invasion of
strangers promptly transformed into citizens, have necessarily
introduced into the decision of public affairs some elements of
immorality? I admire the honorable and religious spirit of the Americans
which has been able to assimilate and rule to such a degree these great
masses of Irish and Germans. Few countries would have endured a like
ordeal as well.

Remark that, in spite of all, public order is maintained without paid
troops, (Continental Europe will find it hard to credit this.)
Tranquillity reigns in the largest cities of the United States; respect
for the law is in every heart; great ballotings take place, millions of
excited men await the result with trembling; yet, notwithstanding, not
an act of violence is committed. American riots--for some there are--are
certainly less numerous than ours; and they have the merit of not being
transformed into revolutions.

The greater part of the immigrants remain, of course, in the large
cities; here they come almost to make the laws, and here, too, noble
causes encounter the most opponents. Mr. Lincoln, to cite an example,
received only a minority of suffrages in the city of New York, whilst
the unanimity of the country suffrages secured him the vote of the
State. Contempt of the colored class, that crime of the North, breaks
out most of all in the large cities, and particularly among
agglomerations of immigrants; none are harsher to free negroes, it must
be admitted, than newly-landed Europeans who have come to seek a fortune
in America.

As to crimes, they are numerous only in cities; still the criminal
records of the United States appear somewhat full when compared with
ours. I know how great a part of this must be assigned to the
insufficiency of repression; in America, criminals doubtless escape
punishment much oftener than among us. Notwithstanding, there is real
security; and a child might travel over the entire West without being
exposed to the slightest danger.

M. de Tocqueville has said that morals are infinitely more rigid in
North America than elsewhere. This is not, it seems to me, a trifling
advantage. Whatever may be the depravity of the seaports, where the
whole world holds rendezvous, it remains certain that it does not
penetrate into the interior of the country. Open the journals and novels
of the United States; you will not find a corrupt page in them. You
might leave them all on the drawing-room table, without fearing to call
a blush to the brow of a woman, or to sully the imagination of a child.

In the heart of the manufacturing States, model villages are found, in
which every thing is combined to protect the artisans of both sexes from
the perils that await them in other countries. Who has not heard of the
town of Lowell, where farmers' daughters go to earn their dowry, where
the labor of the factories brings no dissipation in its train, where the
workwomen read, write, teach Sunday-schools, where their morality
detracts nothing from their liberty and progress? When I have added
that the United States have not a single foundling asylum, it seems to
me that I have indicated what we are to think at once of their good
morals and good sense.

And let not the Americans he represented as a people at once honest and
narrow-minded. If they are still far from our level--and this must
necessarily be true, in an artistic and literary point of view--we are
not, however, at liberty to despise a country which counts such names as
Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, Cooper, Poe, Washington Irving,
Channing, Prescott, Motley, and Bancroft. Note that among these names,
men of imagination hold a prominent place, which proves, we may say in
passing, that the country where we oftenest hear the exclamation, "Of
what use is it?" agrees in finding poetry of some use. And I speak here
neither of orators, like Mr. Seward or Mr. Douglas, nor of scholars,
like Lieutenant Maury, nor of those who, like Fulton or Morse, have
applied science to art: judgment has been passed on all these points.

But the true superiority of Americans is in the universality of common
instruction. The Puritans, who came hither with their Bibles, were of
necessity zealous founders of schools; the Bible and the school go
together. See, therefore, what the schools are in the United States! The
State of Massachusetts alone, which does not number a million of souls,
devotes five millions yearly to its public instruction. If other States
are far from equalling it in academies and higher institutions, all are
on a level with it as regards primary schools; a man or woman,
therefore, is rarely found outside the class of immigrants, who does not
possess a solid knowledge of the elementary sciences, the extent of
which would excite our surprise. By the side of the primary school, and
to complete its instruction in the religious point of view, the
Americans have everywhere opened Sunday-schools, kept gratuitously by
volunteer teachers, among whom have figured many men of the highest
standing, several of whom have been Presidents of the Confederation.
These Sunday-schools, not less than twenty thousand in number, and
superintended by one hundred and fifty thousand teachers, count more
than a million of pupils, of which ten thousand at least are adults.
Calculate the power of such an instrument!

People read enormously in America. There is a library in the meanest
cabin of roughly-hewn logs, constructed by the pioneers of the West.
These poor log-houses almost always contain a Bible, often journals,
instructive books, sometimes even poetry. We in Europe, who fancy
ourselves fine amateurs of good verses, would scarcely imagine that
copies of Longfellow are scattered among American husbandmen. The
political journals have many subscribers; those of the religious papers
are no less numerous. I know of a monthly journal designed for children,
(the _Child's Paper_,) of which three hundred thousand copies are
printed. This is the intellectual aliment of the country. In the towns,
lectures are added to books, journals, and reviews: in all imaginable
subjects, this community, which the Government does not charge itself
with instructing, (at least, beyond the primary education,) educates and
develops itself with indefatigable ardor. Ideas are agitated in the
smallest market-town; life is everywhere.

Accustomed to act for themselves, knowing that they cannot count on the
administrative patronage of the State, the Americans excel in bringing
individual energies into action. There are few functionaries, few
soldiers, and few taxes among them. They know nothing, like us, of that
malady of public functions, the violence of which increases in
proportion as we advance. They know nothing of those enormous imposts
under which Europe is bending by degrees--those taxes which almost
suppress property by overburdening its transmission; they have not come
to the point of finding it very natural to devote one or two millions
every year to the expenses of the State, and no theory has been formed
to prove to them that of all the expenses of the citizens, this is
applied to the best purpose. They have not entered with the Old World
into that rivalry of armaments in which each nation, though it become
exhausted in the effort, is bound to keep on a level with its neighbors,
and in which no one will be stronger in the end when the whole world
shall be subjugated. Their ten thousand regulars suffice, and they have
their militia for extraordinary occasions. Lastly, their Federal debt is
insignificant; and, if the private debts of a few States reach a high
figure, they are nowhere of a nature to impose on the tax-payers a large
surplus of charges.

All of the great liberties exist in the United States: liberty of the
press, liberty of speech, right of assemblage, right of association.
Except in the slave States, where the national institutions have been
subjected to deplorable mutilations in fact, every citizen can express
his opinion and maintain it openly, without meeting any other obstacle
than the contrary opinion, which is expressed with equal freedom.

But there is one ground above all where we should acknowledge the
superiority of America: I mean, religious liberty. We are still in the
beginning of doubts upon the point as to where the interference of the
State should cease; in what measure it should govern the belief of the
citizens, and its manifestation. These questions, alas, are still
propounded among us. And there are countries at our doors, where men
shudder at the mere idea that the law may some day cease to decide for
each in what manner he is bound to worship God, that the courts may
cease to punish those whose conscience turns aside from the path of the
nation. Protestant Sweden but lately condemned dissenters to fine and
imprisonment; Catholic Spain daily inflicts the severest penalties on
those who suffer themselves to profess or to propagate beliefs which are
not those of the country--those who sell the Scriptures, and those who
read them.

The United States have not only proclaimed and loyally carried out the
glorious principle of religious liberty, but have adopted as a corollary
another principle, much more contested among us, but which I believe
destined also to make the tout of the world: the principle of separation
of Church and State. That believers should support their own worship,
that religious and political questions should never be blended, that the
two provinces should remain distinct, is a simple idea which seems most
strange to us to-day. It will make its way like all other true ideas,
which begin as paradoxes and end by becoming axioms. Meanwhile, the
American Confederation enjoys an advantage which more than one European
government, I suspect, would at some moments purchase at a high price:
it has not to trouble itself about religious interests, either in its
action without or its administration within. If there are conflicts
everywhere in the spiritual order, it leaves them to struggle and become
resolved in the spiritual order, without needing to trouble itself in
the matter. Hence arises for the State a freedom of bearing, a
simplicity of conduct, which we, who have to steer adroitly through so
many dangers, can hardly comprehend. The American government is sure of
never offending any church--it knows none; it does not interfere either
to combat or to aid them; it has renounced, once for all, intervention,
in the domain of conscience.

The result, doubtless, is, that this domain is not so well ordered as in
Europe; the administrative ecclesiastical state has by no means
submitted to such regulation. Is that to say that this inconvenience (if
it be one) is not largely compensated for by its advantages? Is it
nothing to suppress inheritance in religious matters, and to force each
soul to question itself as to what it believes? In the United States,
adhesion to a church is an individual, spontaneous act, resulting from a
voluntary determination. This is so true that four-fifths of the
inhabitants of the country do not bear, the title of church members.
Although attending worship, although manifesting an interest and zeal in
the subject to which we are little accustomed, although assiduous
church-goers, and liberal givers, they have not yet felt within
themselves a conviction strong and clear enough to make a public
profession of faith. Think what we may of such a system, we must avow,
at least, that it implies a profound respect for sacred things; nothing
can less resemble that indolent and formal assent which we give, in
conformity with custom, and without binding ourselves, in earnest, to
the religion that prevails among us.

Hence arises something valiant in American convictions. Hence arises
also, it may be said, that dispersion of sects, the picture of which is
so often drawn for us. I am far from loving the spirit of sectarianism,
and I am careful not to present the American churches as the beau ideal
in religious matters. The sectarian spirit, the fundamental trait of
which is to confound unity with uniformity, to transform divergencies
into separations, to refuse to admit into the bosom of the church the
element of diversity and of liberty; to exact the signing of a
theological formula, and the formal adhesion as a whole to a collection
of dogmas and practices, without tolerating the slightest shade of
difference--the sectarian spirit, with its narrowness, with its
traditions of men, with its exaggeration of little things, with its
separate denominations, is certainly not worthy of admiration. I reject
it in America as elsewhere, but I think it well to state that the
religious disruption produced by it has been much exaggerated. We must
greatly abbreviate the formidable list of churches furnished us by
travellers. Putting aside those which have no value, either as to
influence or numbers, we reduce the numbers of denominations existing in
the United States, outside the Roman Catholic church, to five, (and
these are too many;) namely: Methodist, Baptist, Congregational,
Episcopal, and Presbyterian. The remainder is composed of small
eccentric congregations which spring up and die, and of which no one
takes heed, except a few tourists, who are always willing to note down
extraordinary facts.

We will add that the sectarian spirit is now attacked in America, and
that the essential unity which binds the members of the five
denominations together, in spite of some external differences, is
manifesting itself forcibly. Not only does the evangelical alliance
prove to the most sceptical that this unity is real, but a fact peculiar
to the United States, the great awakening produced by the crisis of
1857, has given evidence of the perfect harmony of convictions. In the
innumerable meetings caused to spring up by this awakening from one end
of the country to the other, it has been impossible to distinguish
Baptists, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists from each other. All have
been there, and no one has betrayed by the least shade of dogmatism
those self-styled profound divisions about which so much noise is made.
I invite those still in doubt to look at the manner in which public
worship is established in the West: as soon as a few men have formed a
settlement, a missionary comes to visit them; no one inquires about his
denomination, for the Bible that he brings is the Bible of all, and the
salvation, through Christ, which he proclaims, is the faith of all. It
suffices, besides, to see this entire people, so restless, so laborious,
leaving its business on Sunday to occupy itself with the thoughts of
another life; it suffices to observe the unanimous uprising of the
public conscience at the rumor of an attack directed against the Gospel,
to perceive that unity subsists beneath lamentable divisions, and that
individual conviction creates the most active of all cohesive powers in
the heart of human communities; I know of no cement that equals it.

If individual convictions are a strong bond, they are also an
inexhaustible source of life. It is easy to assure ourselves of this by
a brief survey of the proofs of Christian liberality which are displayed
in the United States. Here, there is no legal charity, no aid to be
expected from the government, either for the support of churches, or for
that of the sick and poor; the _voluntary system_ must suffice for all.
And, in fact, it does suffice for all.

What is the first thing in question? To collect thirty million francs
annually for the payment of the clergy. The thirty millions are
furnished: poor and rich, all give eagerly, and without compulsion. The
next thing in question is to provide for the construction of new
churches; now, it is necessary to finish not less than three of these
daily, for the clearing of the forests advances with rapid strides, and
a thousand churches, at least, are built every year. The majority of
these churches are doubtless composed of beams laid one upon another,
then painted white, or left of the natural color, and surmounted by a
bell; they are simple and inexpensive, and, in the infant villages, the
streets of which are still blocked up by trees left standing, the place,
serving at once for a church and a school, where the people gather round
an itinerant preacher, is not decorated with much sumptuousness; yet
these new edifices demand annually from twelve to fifteen millions.

Next come the religious societies. In the West, preachers are needed,
hardy laborers, who live in privations, traversing vast solitudes on
horseback, and journeying continually, without repose, until their
strength is exhausted. Eight hundred missionaries or agents are required
for the American Board of Missions, for the Presbyterians, the Baptists,
and all the other churches. Now, they cannot send them to the four
quarters of the globe without providing for their wants. The Bible
Society, which prints three hundred thousand Bibles annually, the
Religious Tract Society, which publishes every year five millions of
tracts, and which, in New York alone, employs a thousand visitors or
distributors; the various works, in a word, expend from nine to ten
million francs.

Such, then, is the budget of voluntary charity in the United States.[A]
It amounts to fifty or sixty million francs, without counting the very
considerable donations destined to public instruction; without counting
(and this is immense) the relief of the sick and the poor. You will
scarcely find a village in the whole United States that has not its
benevolent society, and private benevolence, which is the best, also
carries on its work, independently of societies. I know of no country
where acts of profuse liberality are more frequent; one man founds a
hospital, another an observatory. Asylums are opened for all human
unfortunates, for lunatics, the blind, the deaf, orphans, abandoned
children.

Was I not right in saying that this is a great people? Whatever may be
its vices, we are not at liberty to speak of it with disdain. If the
Americans know how to make a fortune, they know, also, how to make a
noble use of their fortune; accused with reason, as they are, of being
too often preoccupied with questions of profit, we have seen them
retrenching much of their luxury since the commercial crisis, yet
economizing very little in their charities. The budget of the churches
and religious societies remained intact at the very time that
embarrassment was everywhere prevailing. I cannot help believing that
there are peculiar blessings attached to so many voluntary sacrifices
which carry back the mind to the early ages of Christianity. We may be
sure that the religion that costs something, brings something also in
return.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: It seems that I have understated the truth; but I prefer to
do so; I wish, above all, to avoid exaggeration.]




CHAPTER V.

THE CHURCHES AND SLAVERY.


This leads me to examine a side of the American question upon which,
attention is, naturally fixed at the present time; how is it that the
iniquities of slavery are maintained among this charitable and liberal
people? how is it that such iniquities have subsisted under the
influence of so powerful a Christian sentiment? Can it be true that
Christians have deserted the cause of justice? Has the Gospel had the
place which belongs to it, in the great struggle that is going on
between the North and the South? yes; or no. This is perhaps the point
of all others most important to clear up; first, because it is the one
on which the most errors have accumulated; next, because it is the one
most closely connected with the final solution; for this solution will
not be happy, if the Gospel has no hand in it.

To judge rightly, let us approach and endeavor to comprehend the true
position of those whose conduct we seek to appreciate. See the South,
for example, where the almost universal opinion is favorable to slavery,
where governors write dithyrambics on its benefits, where many
Christians have succeeded in discovering that it is sanctioned by the
Gospel, where men of sincerity are now placing their impious crusades in
behalf of its extension under the protection of God, where numerous
preachers expound in their own way the celebrated text "Cursed be
Canaan!" Do not these sentiments of the South, detestable as they are,
find, to a certain point, their explanation and excuse in the
circumstances in which the South is placed?

The power of surroundings is incalculable. If we ourselves, who condemn
slavery, and are right in so doing, had been reared in Charleston; if we
had led a planter's life from our earliest infancy; if we had nourished
our minds with their ideas; if we considered our monetary interests
menaced by Abolitionism; if the image of more fearful perils, of violent
destructions and massacres, appeared to haunt our thoughts; if the
political antagonism between the North and the South came to add its
venom to the passions already excited within us, is it certain that we
ourselves should no be figuring at the present time among the
desperadoes who are firing upon the ships of the Union, and attempting
the foundation of a Southern Confederacy?

It is well to ask this of ourselves, in order to learn to respect, to
love, and consequently to aid those whose conduct we blame the most
strongly. For my part, whenever I am tempted to set myself up as a judge
or an accuser of the South, I ask myself what I should do if I belonged
to the South, and this brings me back to the true position. I remember,
too, what I saw, with my own eyes, at the time when the discussion on
slavery was carried on in France; the colonial passions, the blindest
and most violent of all, broke out in Martinique and the isle of
Bourbon, as they had broken out before in Jamaica, where the circulars
of Mr. Canning, the proposition, for example, to suppress the
flagellation of women, had excited a veritable explosion. There were
some very honorable men among those who were indignant at this measure;
and, among us, likewise, the planters who determined to combat all
modification of the negro system, were good men. Severity is almost
always a defect of memory; we blame others without pity, only when we
begin by forgetting our own history. We Frenchmen, who had so much
difficulty in emancipating our own slaves, and who would not, perhaps,
have succeeded in it, had it not been for the bold decision of M.
Schoelcher; we, who have sought to take back, in part, through our
colonial regulations, the liberty accorded the blacks; we, who suffered
recruitals by purchase to be made on the African coast; who formerly
organized the expedition charged with re-establishing slavery and the
slave trade at St. Domingo; who suppressed the slave trade at the
Congress of Vienna only in stipulating its continuance for some years;
who carried into our discussions on the right of search, a very meagre
interest for the victims of the slavers; we, whose consciences are
burdened with these misdeeds, are bound to use indulgence towards the
States of the South.

This remark was necessary: it is from the South that the Biblical
theories in favor of slavery proceed; it is on account of the South that
these theories have been adopted by certain Christians of the North,
desirous, above every thing, of avoiding both the dismemberment of the
United States, and that of the churches and religious societies. Take
away the South, and no one in America, any more than in Europe, will
dream of discovering in the Gospel the divine approbation of the
atrocities of slavery.

I comprehend better than most, the sentiment of indignation that is
caused by these deplorable teachings, in which slavery is sometimes
excused, sometimes exalted; I comprehend, that, under the impulse of a
sentiment so justifiable, one may be led on to anathematize preachers
and churches in a mass, that he may even come to the point of
representing to himself the Christian faith as the true obstacle to the
progress of liberty. This is a great perversion of the truth, but we can
easily understand how it has succeeded in gaining the assent of generous
and sincere minds. I myself have read a sermon which was listened to
with sympathy in a certain Presbyterian church in New York, in which
slavery, declares right until the return of Jesus Christ, ceases to be
so, I know not why, during the millennium? I know the nature of that
theology, too truly styled _cottony_, which is displayed in the clerical
columns of the _New York Observer_. Notwithstanding, I hasten to say
that these revolting excesses seldom appear except in seaports, and
especially in New York. The interests of this great city are bound up to
such a degree with those of the cotton States, that, until very lately,
New York might have been considered as a prolongation of the South. We
need not be surprised, therefore, to find some congregations there which
are ruled by the prejudices of the South. Besides, even in New York,
other churches protest with holy zeal, and other journals, among which I
will cite the _Independent_, the organ of the Congregationalists, combat
slavery unceasingly in the name of the Gospel.

Then people persist in seeing only New York, in taking notice only of
what passes in New York; but they forget that New York is ordinarily an
exception in the North, as much by its commercial position as by its
opinions and votes. Let us go ever so short a distance from the city
into the surrounding country, and we will encounter a different
spirit--a spirit thoroughly impregnated with Christian faith, and little
disposed to covenant with slavery. There we begin to see that race of
Puritan farmers, but lately represented by John Brown. Has not the
attempt been made to transform him also into a free thinker, a
philosophic enemy of the Bible, and, from this very cause, an enemy to
slavery? We need nothing more than his last letter to his wife, to show
from what source he had drawn that courage, so misdirected but so
indomitable, which he displayed at Harper's Ferry; the Christian, the
Biblical and orthodox Christian, comes to explain the liberal and the
hero.

That Christians in general condemned the enterprise of John Brown, while
sympathizing with him, I hasten to acknowledge; and I am far from
blaming them. That many have committed the real wrong of recoiling
before the consequences of an open and decided conduct, I am forced to
admit. Yes, without even mentioning the South, where, as every one
knows, the reign of terror prevails, there are numerous Protestant and
Catholic churches in the remainder of the Confederation, which have
refused to declare themselves, as they should have done, in opposition
to the crime of slavery. Let us not hasten, however, to cry out against
falsehood and hypocrisy; most honorable and sincere men have believed
that they would do more harm than good by bringing on a rupture with the
South. Let us not forget that political rupture is complicated here with
religious rupture. Now, all the churches extend over both North and
South; all the charitable societies number committees and subscribers in
both North and South. The point in question then, (let us weigh the
immensity of the sacrifice,) the point in question is to rend in twain
all the churches, to break in pieces all the societies, to expose to
perilous risks all the great works that do honor to the United States.

Doubtless, to have gone their way, to have done their duty, and not to
have troubled themselves about the consequences, was the great rule of
action. I grant it; yet, notwithstanding, I refuse to stigmatize, as
many have done, those men who have committed the fault of hesitating; I
feel that to rank them among the champions of slavery is to pervert
facts, and to fall into a blamable exaggeration. Again, to-day, after
the election of Mr. Lincoln, cannot citizens be cited in the North who
are devoted to the cause of the negroes, but who refuse to participate
in abolitionist demonstrations, because they fear (and the sentiments
does them honor) to encourage the impending insurrections?

This said, I wish to prove by some too well-known facts, what has been
this forbearance, or even this pretended hesitation of orthodox
Christianity. On regarding the churches, I see two, and the most
considerable, which have openly declared themselves: the
Congregationalists and the Methodists. About six months since, the
General Conference of Methodists resolutely plunged into the current
without suffering itself to be trammelled by the protests which came to
it from the South. I read in a report presented to one of the great
divisions of this church: "We believe that to sell or to hold in bondage
human beings under the name of chattels, is in contradiction to the
divine laws and to humanity; and that it conflicts with the golden rule
and with the rule of our discipline." Last year, a numerous assemblage
of delegates of the Congregational churches adopted the following
resolution: "Slaveholding is immoral, and slaveholders should not be
admitted as members of Christian churches. We ought to protest against
it without ceasing, in the name of the Gospel, until it shall have
entirely disappeared." And this resolution has not remained a dead
letter: a Congregational church of Ohio has expelled from its bosom one
of its deacons, who had contributed in the capacity of magistrate to the
extradition of a fugitive slave.

Other churches, without taking so decided a position, have at least
manifested by their internal convulsions the profound interest excited
among them by the question of slavery. In this manner a secession has
just rent the Presbyterian church in twain, because the declared
adversaries of slavery were unwilling to remain responsible for a
forbearance which appeared to them criminal. These things are signs of
life, and these signs are beginning to show themselves even in the midst
of ecclesiastical bodies which have acted, until now, in the most
unchristian manner. A warm discussion has been thus called forth, and
this signifies a great deal, among the members of the Episcopal church
in New York. The majority stifled the debate; will it be able to do this
always?

If from the churches we proceed to the religious societies, we find the
same symptoms among them; here, they declare themselves openly against
slavery, in spite of the menaces of the South; there, they succeed in
staving off the question, yet at the price of excited debates, which
continually spring up again, of a great scandal, and of protests which
are heard by Christians through the whole world. The course of conduct
adopted by the great American Board of Missions is the more significant,
inasmuch as its committee is composed of members belonging to various
evangelical denominations; it stands, therefore, as their permanent
representative, yet this has not prevented its adoption, after long
hesitation, of resolutions indicating in what course it will henceforth
proceed: it has broken off its relations with the missionaries employed
among the Choctaws, for the sole reason that they obstinately refused
openly to attack Indian slavery, and the abominable practices which it
engenders. The Society, which long, too long, contented itself with a
timid and inconsistent censure, has been obliged, therefore, to resort
to more decisive measures.

Another great body, the Tract Society, unfortunately, has not followed
this example; the general assemblies held at New York, and ruled by the
spirit of that city, have given a majority to the party opposed to the
discussion of the subject; but, be it said to the honor of American
Christians, the very large minority resisted to the end; the latter was
sustained by outside opinion, and many friends of the Gospel joined with
it in deploring the pusillanimity which yielded to the menaces of the
South. A crisis thence arose, which has not yet reached its height, and
the first fruits of which have been the foundation of a rival society in
Boston, to which adherents are gathering from all sides.

These are grave events, for they manifest the inmost revolutions of the
human soul. Would you know what will take place in political societies?
Begin by informing yourself about what is taking place in the
consciences of the public. Now it is evident that the public conscience
is in motion in the United States. The vast obstacles by which this
movement was trammelled have been surmounted on every side. I wish no
other proof of this than the deplorable fact of which I have just made
mention: the conduct of the Tract Society, the internal crisis which it
has experienced, the reprobation which it encounters, in Europe as in
America. Are not these palpable proofs of the too little known truth
that the great moral force which is struggling with American slavery is
the Gospel?

And how could it be otherwise? If we had not positive facts before our
eyes, if we did not know that one entire sect of Christians, the
Quakers, have devoted themselves, body and goods, to the service of poor
fugitive slaves, if we did not recognize the deep Puritan imprint in the
movement which has colonized Kansas, and in that which has borne Mr.
Lincoln to the presidency, should we not be forced to ask ourselves
whether it is possible that the Gospel remains a stranger to a struggle
undertaken for liberty? There exist, thank God, between liberty and the
Gospel, close, eternal, and indestructible relations. I know of one
species of freedom which contains the germ of all the rest--freedom of
soul; now what was it, if not the Gospel, that introduced this freedom
into the world? Remember ancient Paganism: neither liberty of
conscience, nor liberty of individuals, nor liberty of families--such
was its definition. The State laid its hand upon all the inmost part of
existence, the creeds of the fathers, and the education of the children;
moral slavery also existed everywhere, and if slavery, properly called,
had been anywhere wanting, it would have given cause for astonishment.
The Gospel came, and with it these new phenomena: individual belief,
true independence makes its advent here on earth, a liberty worthy of
the name appears finally among men. From this time we see men lifting up
their heads, despotism finding its limits, the humblest, the weakest
opposing to it insurmountable barriers.

They act without reflection, who attempt to place in opposition these
two things: the Gospel and liberty. And remark that in the United
States, in particular, the Gospel and liberty are accustomed to go
together; they first landed together at New Plymouth with the passengers
of the Mayflower. Why had these poor pilgrims torn themselves from all
the habits of home and country, to seek in the dead of winter an asylum
on an unknown soil? Because they loved the Gospel, and because they
desired liberty; the chief of liberties--that of the conscience. From
the 21st of December, 1620, there existed on the shores of the New World
the beginning of a free people--free through the powerful influence of
the Gospel. All who have studied the United States with sincerity, will
ratify the opinion of M. de Tocqueville: "America is the place, of all
others, where the Christian religion has preserved the most power over
souls." This power is such, that we find it at the base of all lasting
reforms. In this country, in which the idea of authority has little
force, there is one authority, that of the Bible, before which the
majority bow, and which is of the more importance inasmuch as it alone
commands respect and obedience.

If you doubt the decisive part which the Gospel fills in American
debates, look at the pains taken by parties to render public homage to
it, the Democrats as the Republicans, Mr. Buchanan as Mr. Lincoln. Then
look more closely at the Republican party, do you not find in it again
the visible traces of Puritanism? It is the ancient States, it is old
America, it is also the Young America of the farmers, of the pioneers of
the Western solitudes, the America of the clearers of the forests, the
America of the Bible and the schools. This America long since abolished
slavery, and prevented its introduction into the territories that
acknowledged its influence. In the meanest of its cabins, you will find
the Scriptures, hymn books, reports of religious societies; in the
majority of its families, domestic worship is celebrated; in its
prayer-meetings, it is not rare to see physicians, lawyers, magistrates,
marine officers, taking part publicly; its statesmen do not think
themselves dishonored by keeping a Sunday-school; the Gospel, in a word,
is a power to which no other can compare, and outside of which it would
be puerile to expect to succeed in accomplishing any thing of
importance.

Here the action of the Gospel can be plainly detected; an important
religious event preceded and paved the way for the political event which
we have witnessed: before the election of Mr. Lincoln, an awakening took
place. The American awakening, which must not be confounded with those
_revivals_, the description and sometimes the caricature of which have
been transmitted us by travellers, the awakening, which had neither
ecstasies nor convulsive sobs, and the distinctive feature of which was
a tone of simplicity and conviction, produced one of those profound
agitations of the conscience, which give rise to generous resolutions.
The financial crisis had just overthrown the fortunes of the people;
they turned towards God and began to pray. On a route of three thousand
miles, wherever one might stop, he found a meeting, a simple,
spontaneous meeting, at which the pastors did not take the initiative,
where they were present instead of presiding. Ere long, public attention
became fixed on this movement, the greatness of which could not be
contested; the most hostile journals ended by rendering it homage. And
it lasted, it still subsists, it has produced something else than
meetings and prayers, it has induced extensive moral reforms, it has
closed places of debauchery and taverns by hundreds. The military and
commercial marine of the United States has been especially subjected to
its influence; captains, officers, and sailors in great numbers, have
shown by their lives that their habits of piety are more than a vain
form; American vessels are perhaps the only ones at the present day in
which groups of sailors assemble to converse on the interests of their
soul, and to make the praises of God resound over the ocean.

In strengthening the religious element, in exciting the Puritan fibre of
America, the awakening certainly contributed a great share to the
success of the party opposed to slavery. South Carolina acknowledged
this herself lately, when she inserted the following phrase in her
declaration of independence: "The public opinion of the North has given
to a great political error the sanction of a still more erroneous
religious sentiment." Is this religious sentiment, assailed by the
slaveholders, that of free thinkers, or of Christians? The South is not
mistaken; it knows that the truly difficult acts of emancipation are
accomplished on earth only by the power of the Gospel; it saw the great
abolition impulse rise in England, and spread over the United States;
journals, committees, correspondence, all indicated that the English had
become the American movement, and was continued under the same banner.
Under this banner, and this alone, it has conquered. A colossal work in
fact is here in question, before which all purely human forces fall to
the ground. If such prodigious Christian efforts were needed to give the
victory to Wilberforce, what will be required in the heart of a country
where slavery is not exiled to distant colonies, and where it has
acquired formidable proportions with years. There are easy abolitions,
which are wrought in some sort of themselves, and which seem the natural
corollary of a political revolution; as, for instance, that which
occurred forty years ago in the Spanish republics. Bolivar, Quiroga, and
the other leaders, needed the support of all classes of the population
in their struggle against Spain; they adopted the expedient of
suppressing slavery. In taking this resolution, they accomplished a
most honorable deed, but they made little change in the condition of the
country, for large planting was rare, and both the blacks and the whites
were few in numbers, less numerous, indeed, than the Indians and the
half breeds.

If political reasons then sufficed, it is evident that they are far from
sufficing to-day: we must seek elsewhere for the explanation of the
movement which, a long time wavering and suppressed, has just manifested
its irresistible power in the United States. We have recognized in it
the hand of the Gospel; and this is no indifferent matter, for if the
Gospel had no part in it, such a movement would end in destruction.

The responsibility of Christians will be great in America; they can do
much for the favorable solution of a problem which menaces the future of
their country, and overshadows that of humanity. The mode of
pacification here is, to declare themselves; the pretensions of the
South, its fatal progress, the extreme peril to which but lately it
exposed the Confederation, are due much more than is imagined to the
deplorable hesitation of the religious societies and the churches. If it
had long since been brought face to face with a determined evangelical
doctrine, the South, which knows also, though in a less degree, the
influence of the Gospel, would have avoided falling into the excesses to
which it is now abandoned. The faults of the past are irreparable, but
it is possible to ward off their return. Let all Northern churches, let
all societies, let all eminent Christians take henceforth with firmness
the position which they ought to have taken from the first; let them
present to their Southern brethren a solid rallying point, and the
effects of this faithful conduct will not be slow in making themselves
felt. There is, in the slave States, especially in those occupying an
intermediate position, more disturbance of thought, and more conflicts
of feeling, than we generally suppose. Let the banner of the Christian
faith be openly displayed, and many good men will rally round it: this
is certain.

And let no one put forward the shameful pretext: there are sceptics,
rationalists, free thinkers in the ranks of Abolitionism! Why not?
Questions of this sort, thanks to the Gospel, have entered in the domain
of common morality; shall I desert these questions in order to avoid
contact with men who reject the essential doctrines of Christianity? I
confess that the orthodoxy which should draw such conclusions would
appear suspicious to me. Voltaire pleading for the Calas will not make
me turn my back on religious liberty; Channing writing pages against
slavery, revealing a heart more Christian than his doctrine; Parker,
blending his noble efforts in favor of the negroes with his assaults
against the Bible, will not alienate me from a cause which was mine
before it was theirs.

I say, besides, that the objections of these men against Christianity
force me to ask whether our conduct as Christians be not one of the
principal causes of their scepticism. Is it quite certain that Voltaire
himself would have been the adversary that we know him, if he had not
seen that thought was stifled, that liberty was crushed, that conscience
was violated in the name of the Gospel? Would not this same Gospel have
presented itself under a different aspect to Parker, Channing, and the
other Unitarians of Boston, if they had seen it at its post, the post of
honor, at the head of all generous ideas and true liberties? Yes; there
are Abolitionists who reject the Bible because they have heard certain
orthodox Christians maintain that the Bible is in favor of slavery.
Whoever preaches this, is of a school of impiety.




CHAPTER VI.

THE GOSPEL AND SLAVERY.


How did they set to work to preach this? I will answer this question by
two others: How did Bossuet set to work to write his _Politique tirée de
l'Ecriture,_ to proclaim in the name of the Bible obligatory monarchy,
divine right, the absolute authority of kings, the duty of destroying
false religion by force, the duty of officially sustaining the truth,
the duty of having a budget of modes of worship, the duty of uniting
Church and State, without speaking of his Biblical apology for war, for
the use of Louis XIV.? How did certain doctors among the Roundheads, in
their turn, set to work to proclaim the divine right of republics, and
to ordain the massacre of the new Amalekites? The method is very simple:
it consists only in confounding the law with the Gospel. This confusion
once wrought, the political and civil institutions of the Old Testament
lose their temporary and local character, and we go to the New
Testament in search of what is not there: namely, political and civil
institutions.

Though the Gospel is not the law, it is a truth which has been making
its way since the seventeenth century, and which seems to be no longer
contested to-day, except in the camp of the champions of slavery. The
Gospel, which addresses itself to all nations and all ages, does not
pretend to force them into the strait vestments of the ancient Jewish
nation; no more does it pretend to "sew a piece of new cloth on an old
garment, else the new cloth taketh away from the old, and the rent is
made worse." I speak here with a view to those who, in the law as in the
Gospel, in the New Testament as in the Old, venerate the infallible word
of God. A revelation, to be divine, does not cease to be progressive,
and nothing exacts that all truths should be promulgated in a single
day. If God deemed proper to give to his people, so long as they needed
it, a legislation adapted to their social condition, this legislation,
divinely given at that time, may be also divinely abrogated afterward.
And this is what has taken place. Those who quote to us texts from the
Old Testament concerning slavery, appear to have forgotten the saying of
Jesus Christ in reference to another institution, divorce: "It was on
account of the hardness of your hearts." Yes, on account of the hardness
of their hearts, God established among the Israelites, incapable, at
that time, of rising higher, provisory regulations,[B] perfect as
regards his condescension, but most imperfect, as he declares himself,
as regards the absolute truth. He who makes no account of this great
fact will find in the books of Moses, and in the Prophets, pretexts
either for practising to-day what was tolerated only for a time, or for
attacking the Scriptures, indignant at what they contain.

It was Jesus Christ himself, therefore, who drew the line of demarcation
between the law and the Gospel--who announced the end of local and
temporary institutions. Has he revealed other institutions, this time
definitive? To form such an idea of the Gospel, we must never have
opened it. The Gospel is not a Koran. In the Koran, we doubtless find
both civil and criminal laws, and the principles of government; the
Apostles did not once tread on this ground. Fancy what their work would
have been, had they substituted a social for a spiritual revolution--had
they touched, above all, the question of slavery, which formed part of
the fundamental law of the ancient world. And here I wish my thought to
be clearly comprehended: I do not pretend that the Apostles were
conscious of the unlawfulness of slavery, and that they avoided pointing
it out through policy, for fear of compromising their work. No, indeed,
this happened unconsciously. According to all appearances, they held the
opinions of their times, and God revealed nothing to them on the
subject, wishing that the abolition of slavery, like all the social
results of the Gospel, should be produced by moral agency, which works
from within outward, which changes the heart before changing the
actions.

At the time of the Apostles, there were many other abuses than slavery;
they never wrote a word in their condemnation. They make allusions to
war, yet say nothing of the nameless horrors which then attended it;
they speak of the sword placed in the king's hands to punish crime, yet
say nothing of those atrocious tortures, in the first rank of which must
be cited crucifixion; they make use of figures borrowed from the public
games, yet say nothing either of the combats of the gladiators, or of
the abominations which sullied other spectacles; they unceasingly call
to mind the reciprocal relations of husbands and wives, of parents and
children, yet say nothing of the despotic authority which the Roman law
conferred upon the father, or of the debasement to which it condemned
the wife. The evangelical method is this: it has not occupied itself
with communities, yet has wrought the profoundest of the social
revolutions; it has not demanded any reform, yet has accomplished all of
them; the atrocities of war and of torture, the gladiatorial combats and
immodest spectacles, the despotism of fathers and the debasement of
women, all have disappeared before a profound, internal action, which
attacks the very roots of the evil.

Not only does the Gospel forbear to touch on social and religious
problems, but, even on questions of morals, it refuses to furnish
detailed solutions. Its system of morality is very short; and in this
lies its greatness, through this it becomes morality instead of
casuistry. Cases of conscience, special directions, a moral code,
promulgated article by article--you will find in it nothing of this
sort. What you will find there, and there alone, is a growing morality,
which passes my expression. Two or three sayings were written eighteen
centuries ago, and these sayings contain in the germ a series of
commandments, of transformation, of progression, which we have not
nearly exhausted. I spoke a moment since of the progress of revelations;
I must speak now of the progress which is being wrought in virtue of a
revelation constantly the same, but constantly becoming better
understood, which multiplies our duties in proportion as it enlightens
our conscience. With the one saying: "What ye would that men should do
unto you, do ye also to them," the Gospel has opened before us infinite
vistas of moral development.

Before this one saying, the cruelties and infamous customs of ancient
society, not mentioned by the Apostles, have successively succumbed;
before this one saying, the modern family has been formed; before this
one saying, American slavery will disappear as European slavery has
disappeared already. With this saying, we are all advancing, we are
learning, and we shall continue to learn. Yes, the time will come, I am
convinced, when we shall see new duties rise up before us, when we
cannot with a clear conscience maintain customs, what, I know not, which
we maintain conscientiously to-day.

This carries us somewhat further, it must be granted, than a list of
fixed duties _ne varietur_; it opposes slavery in a different manner
than a sentence pronounced once for all. The Gospel took the surest
means of overthrowing it when, letting alone the reform of institutions,
it contented itself with pursuing that of sentiments; when it thus
prepared the time when the slaveholder himself would be forced to ask
what is contained in the inexhaustible saying: "What ye would that men
should do unto you, do ye also unto them." Even in the heart of the
Southern States, despite the triple covering of habits, prejudices, and
interests, this saying is making its way, and is disturbing the
consciences of the people much more than is generally believed. And the
work that it has begun it will finish; it will force the planters to
_translate_ the word SLAVERY, to consider one by one the abominable
practices which constitute it. Is it to do to others as we would that
they should do to us, to sell a family at retail? To maintain laws which
give over every slave, whether wife or maiden, to her owner, whatever he
may be, and which take away from this maiden, from this wife, the
_right_ of remembering her modesty and her duties--what do Christians
call this? To produce marketable negroes, to dissolve marriages, to
ordain adulteries, to inflict ignoble punishment, to interdict
instruction--is this doing to others what we would that they should do
to us?

The Christian sense of right is relentless, thank God; it does not
suffer itself to be deceived by appearances; where we dispute about
words, it forces us to go to facts. Now, look at the facts which are
really in question in America, when the great subject of slavery is
discussed there theoretically. Against the great evangelical system of
morality, the Judaical interpretations of such or such a text have
little chance. The epistle of Paul, sending back to Philemon his
fugitive slave Onesimus, is quoted to us. Assuredly, the Apostle
pronounces in it no anathema against slavery, nor does he exact
enfranchisement; these ideas were unknown to him; but he says: "I
beseech thee for my son whom I have begotten in my bonds, whom I have
sent again: thou therefore receive him, that is my own bowels. Without
thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were
of necessity, but willingly. For perhaps he therefore departed for a
season, that thou shouldest receive him forever; not now as a servant,
but above a servant, a brother beloved. Having confidence in thy
obedience I wrote unto thee, knowing that thou wilt do also more than I
say."

Does any one fancy Philemon treating Onesimus, after this epistle, as
fugitive slaves are treated in America, putting up his wife and children
directly after for sale, or delivering him, over to the first slave
merchant that was willing to take charge of him, and carry him a hundred
leagues away? It is so certain that Philemon did more than had been told
him, that the Epistle to the Colossians shows us the "faithful and
well-beloved brother Onesimus" honorably mentioned among those concerned
about the spiritual interests of the church.

Do what one will, there is an implied abolition of slavery (implied but
positive) at the bottom of that close fraternity created by the faith in
the Saviour. Between _brethren_, the relation of master and slave, of
merchant and merchandise, cannot long subsist. To sell on an
auction-block or deliver over to a slave-driver an immortal soul, for
which Christ has died, is an enormity before which the Christian sense
of right will always recoil in the end. "In this," it is written, "there
is neither Greek nor Jew, nor circumcision nor uncircumcision, nor
barbarian nor Seythian, nor bond nor free, but Christ is all and in
all." Let slaveholders put to themselves the question what they would
say to-day if the epistle to Philemon were addressed to them; and it is
addressed to them; the Onesimuses of the South--and such there are--are
thus thrown upon the conscience of their masters, their brothers.

I have said enough on the subject to dispense with examining very
numerous passages in which slavery is _supposed_ by the writers of the
New Testament. The duties of masters and of slaves are laid down by them
without doubt, and the existence of the institution is not contested for
a moment; only, it is brought face to face with that which will slay it:
the doctrine of salvation through Christ, of pardon, of humility, of
love, is, in itself, and without the necessity of expressing it, the
absolute negation of slavery.

It has fully proved so, and the early ages of Christianity leave no
doubt as to the interpretation given by Christians to the teachings of
the Apostles. Despite the rapid corruptions introduced into the
churches, we see one brilliant fact shining forth in them: emancipations
becoming more frequent, slaves, as well as free men, succeeding to
ecclesiastical offices, spiritual equality producing the fruit which it
cannot help producing, namely, legal equality. Observe, too, how the
edicts of the emperors multiplied as soon as the influence of
Christianity was exerted in the Roman world. And all these edicts had
but one aim: to sweeten servitude, to increase affranchisement by law,
to facilitate voluntary emancipation.

What the Gospel did then against European slavery, it is doing now
against American slavery. Its end is the same; its weapons are the same;
they have not rusted during eighteen centuries. Those planters of the
English islands were not mistaken, who, instinctively divining where lay
their great enemy, had recourse to every measure to expel missionaries
from among them. Neither were those Texan executioners mistaken, who
lately put to death the missionary Bewley, a touching martyr to the
cause of the slaves. I ask, in the face of the gallows of Bewley, what
we are to think of that prodigious paradox according to which the Gospel
is the patron of slavery. To those who mistake its meaning on this
point, the Gospel replies by its acts; it replies also by the unanimous
testimony of its servants. What is more striking, in fact, than to see
that, apart from the country in which the action of interests and habits
disturbs the judgment of Christians, there is but one way of
comprehending and interpreting the Scripture on this point? Consult
England, France, Germany; Christians everywhere will tell you that the
Gospel abolished slavery, although it does not say a single word which
would proclaim this abolition. Why, if the doubt were possible, would
not diversity of opinions be also possible among disinterested judges?
To speak only of France, see the synods of our free churches, which
continually stigmatize both Swedish intolerance and American slavery;
see an address signed three years ago by the pastors and the elders of
five hundred and seventy-one French churches, which has gone to carry to
the United States the undoubted testimony of a conviction which in truth
is that of all.

It seems to me that our demonstration is complete. What would it be if I
should add that American slavery, which its friends so strangely claim
to place under the protection of the Apostles, has nothing in common
with that of which the Apostles had cognizance. The thing, however, is
certain. Slavery, in the United States, is founded on color, it is
_negro_ slavery. Now, this is a fact wholly new in the history of
mankind, a monstrous fact, which profoundly modifies the nature of
slavery. Before Las Casas, that virtuous creator of the slave trade, the
name of which comprises to him alone a whole commentary on the maxim "Do
evil that good may come," before Las Casas, no one had thought of
connecting slavery with race. Now, the slavery connected with race is
that of all others most difficult to uproot, for it bears an indelible
sign of inequality, a sign which the law did not create, and which it
cannot destroy.

Such was not the slavery that offered itself to the eyes of the Prophets
and Apostles; a normal servitude, of right, based upon a native and
indestructible inferiority was not then in question, but an accidental
servitude among equals, to which the chances of war had given birth, and
which emancipation suppressed entire. Quite different is the slavery
which depends on race, and which, it may be said, supposes a
malediction; do what one will, this latter will subsist, it will, in a
manner, survive itself; it will find, besides, in the idea of a
providential dispensation, the natural excuse for its excesses. This
slavery the Bible condemns in the most explicit manner. If its champions
dare suppose two species, the book of Genesis shows them all mankind
springing from one man, and the Gospel recounts to them the redemption
wrought in behalf of all the descendants of Adam; if they argue from the
curse pronounced against Canaan, the Old Testament presents to them the
detailed enumeration of the Canaanites, a vast family, in which the
whites figure as well as the blacks.

In short, there is a deadly struggle between the Gospel and slavery
under all its forms, and particularly under the odious form which the
African slave trade has given it in modern times. The Gospel has been,
is, and will be, at the head of every earnest movement directed against
slavery. It is important that it should be so; it is the only means of
avoiding the acts of violence, the revolts, the extreme calamities from
which the whites and the blacks would equally suffer. The Gospel is
admirable, inasmuch as by the side of the duties of masters, it
proclaims those of slaves; as in the time of the Apostles, it does not
hesitate to recommend to them gentleness, submission, scrupulous
fidelity, love for those who maltreat them, the practice of difficult
virtues; it makes them free within, in order to render them capable of
becoming free without.

To judge of this method, we have only to compare the miserable
population of St. Domingo with the beautiful free villages which cover
the English islands. How true the saying: "The wrath of man never
accomplishes the justice of God." Wherever the wrath of man has had full
sway, even to chastise abominable abuses, it has remained a curse. I
tremble when I think of the revolts which may break out at any moment in
the Southern States. Bloodshed, let us not forget, would sully our
banner; to the right of the slaves, such a crisis would be forever
opposed, and who knows whether a terrible return might not burst upon
them?

The mind becomes troubled at the mere image of the horrors that would
ensue from civil war. May the Christians of America comprehend, at
length, in a more perfect manner, the greatness of the part that God
reserves for them, and the extent of the responsibilities that are
weighing upon them. To take a stand frankly against slavery; to remove
their last pretexts from sincere men who seek to reconcile it with the
Gospel; to organize in the North the action of a vast moral power; to
address to the South words breathing forth truth and charity; to appeal
without wearying to the hearts of masters and slaves; to prepare for
trying moments that guarantee which nothing can replace, the common
faith of the blacks and the whites; to keep courage even when all seems
lost; to practise the Christian vocation, which consists in pursuing and
realizing the impossible; to show once more to the world the power that
resides in justice--this is to accomplish a noble task.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote B: These provisory and imperfect regulations appear none the
less admirable when compared, not only with the systems of legislation
of other nations of antiquity, but with those which prevail to-day even
in the Southern States. According to the law of Moses, the Jewish slave
always becomes free in seven years; the foreign slave also becomes free
when his master wounds him in chastising him; he has the right to
testify in law; he has the right to acquire and to possess.]




CHAPTER VII.

THE PRESENT CRISIS.


We now possess the principal elements of our solution; we can approach
the problem just propounded by the present crisis, and, confining
ourselves no longer to the appreciation of the past, can glance at the
future. Not, indeed, that I make any pretensions to prophecy; political
predictions, suspected with reason in all times, should be still more so
at our epoch, which is that of the unforeseen. But I have a right to
prove that the work which is being pursued in America is, as I have
affirmed, a work of elevation, not of destruction. The dangers which the
nation is advancing to meet are nothing, compared with those towards
which it was lately progressing; the election of Mr. Lincoln, and the
secession of the cotton States have introduced a new position which at
last affords a glimpse of real chances of salvation.

I have named secession: what are we to think of the principle on which
it rests? For this question another may be substituted: what is a
Confederation? If we reduce it, which is inadmissible, to a simple
league of States, it still remains none the less binding on each of
them, so long as the end of the league remains intact. Never yet existed
on earth, a federal compact conceived in this wise: "The States which
form a part of this league will remain in it only till it pleases them
to leave it." Such, notwithstanding, is the formula on which the
Southern theorists make a stand. Among the anarchical doctrines that our
age has seen hatched, (and they are numerous,) this seems to me worthy
of occupying the place of honor. This right of separation is simply the
_liberum veto_ resuscitated for the benefit of federal institutions. As
in the horseback diets of Poland, a single opposing vote could put a
stop to every thing, so that it only remained to vote by sabre-strokes,
so Confederations, recognizing the right of separation, would have no
other resort than brute force, for no great nation can allow itself to
be killed without defending itself.

Picture to yourselves, I intreat you, the progress that political
demoralization would make under such a system. As there is never a law
or a measure that is not displeasing to some one, it would be necessary
to live in the presence of the continually repeated threat: "If the law
passes, if the measure is adopted, if the election takes place, if you
do not do all I want, if you do not yield to all my caprices, I leave
you, I constitute myself an independent State, I provoke the formation
of a rival Confederacy." The worst causes are the readiest to threaten
in this style; having nothing reasonable to say in their own favor, they
willingly proceed to violence, and the saying of Themistocles would find
here a legitimate application: "You are angry, therefore, you are
wrong."

What the result of this would be, we can imagine. No question would be
longer judged by its own merits; the despotism of bad men would be
established; expedients would take the place of principles; fear would
put justice to flight; national resolutions would be nothing more than
compromises and bargains. This, we must admit, is something like what
has been passing in the United States since the South proclaimed its
ultra policy, and placed its pretensions under the protection of its
threats. If they had once more bowed the head, all would have been lost;
the dignity, the mental liberty of America, would have suffered complete
shipwreck; of all this noble system of government, there would have
remained standing but a single maxim: Accord always and everywhere
whatever is necessary to prevent the separation of the South.
Unconstitutional in all places, the theory of separation is doubly so in
the United States, where the federal system is more concentrated than
elsewhere. It is without doubt a federal system; the separate States
preserve the right in it of regulating their special legislation, of
governing themselves as they choose, and even of holding and practising
principles which are profoundly repugnant to other parts of the
Confederation; the central power is, however, endowed with an extended
sphere.

It has its taxes, its officers, its army, its courts; it possesses in
the Territory of the different States federal property depending upon it
alone; in fine, its general government and general legislation apply to
the effective handling of all the essential interests of the nation. I
am not surprised that the American Confederation is so strongly cemented
together, excluding the pretended right of separation better than any
other; the States that united towards the close of the last century were
already in the habit of acting in concert; they were of the same blood,
and had lived under the same rule; their history, their interests,
their customs, their tongue, their religion, all contributed to bind
them closely to each other.

Besides, the question is unanimously resolved in the United States.
Apart from the _fire-eaters_, not a person is found who has the
slightest doubt as to the impossibility of modifying, by the violent
decision of a few, the common Constitution which contains the
enumeration of the States, and which can only be amended by a solemn
act, voted in the special form prescribed by the compact. Mr. Lincoln
merely expressed the general opinion when he said the other day: "The
Union is a regular marriage, not a sort of free relation which can be
maintained only by passion." _Secession is Revolution_ is a political
axiom which has been current at all times in the United States. It is
because they are something else than a juxtaposition of States, that
they comprise, by the side of a Senate in which all the States are
equal, a House of Representatives, in which the number of deputies is in
proportion to the population. "Our Constitution," wrote Madison, "is
neither a centralized State nor a Federal Government, but a blending of
the two." The experience which they had had from 1776 to 1789 had taught
the different States the necessity of giving a more concentrated
character to their federation. Let us not forget that they are bound by
oath to remain faithful to _perpetual union_, and that there is not a
federal officer in America who has not sworn to maintain this Union.

I shall not dwell on the fact that the Confederation purchased with its
money two of the States that now pretend to secede from it; that it gave
seventy-five millions to France for Louisiana, and twenty-five millions
to Spain for Florida; no, I choose to appeal from this to precedents,
the authority of which is not contested, and which form, in some sort,
the interpreting commentary of the Constitution. In the last century,
the State of New York, on giving in its adhesion to the Constitution,
desired to reserve to itself this same power of seceding some day if it
pleased; but such a reservation was rejected. At the epoch of the war of
1812 and the embargo laws, a convention of the New England States
assembled at Hartford, and talked of eventual separation, whereupon the
Southern party likened all separation without consent to treason, and
this doctrine was sustained by the _Richmond Inquirer_, the organ of
Jefferson. When, afterwards, South Carolina, accustomed to the fact,
dared proclaim that act of nullification which was the prelude to a
complete renunciation of federal obligations, it was plainly signified
to her that a revolt would be suppressed by force of arms, and she
yielded on the spot. When, the other day, this same South Carolina
lowered the colors of the United States, and unfurled the Palmetto flag,
Mr. Buchanan himself proclaimed (how could he do otherwise?) the
flagrant illegality of such an act; it is true, that, after having
declared it illegal, he took care to disavow all intention of putting
the law in force.

And this same conduct of Mr. Buchanan is the precise explanation of the
prodigious haste which the South Carolinians have used in their
proceedings. They knew that the President in power could not, if he
would, act with vigor against his own party. His inaction was assured;
there were two months of interregnum, of which it was important to make
the most; so that Mr. Lincoln, on coming into office, might find himself
checked, or at least harassed, by the power of a deed accomplished.

It seems as though Mr. Buchanan was anxious himself to give the signal
of revolt. The message that was issued by him, after the election of Mr.
Lincoln, is really the most extraordinary document ever written by the
head of a great State; he doubtless declares in it that a regular
election cannot of itself alone furnish sufficient cause for the
violence of the South; he takes care, however, to add that the South has
reason to complain, that reparation and guarantees are due it, and that
if these are refused, (that is, if the North refuses to replace its head
under the yoke, and to decree at once the ruin and the shame of
America,) it will then he time for action.

The Carolinians thought that they might be excused for being a little
less prudent than the first magistrate of the United States, since,
moreover, they saw their pretensions sanctioned by him. Why not attack
the Confederation while it had a chief who was determined to make as
little defence as possible? The weakness of Mr. Buchanan justified the
confidence of Carolina. He refrained to place in the Federal fortresses
troops destined to protect them against an expected assault; when a
brave man, Major Anderson, took measures to defend the post that had
been confided him, this unexpected resistance by which the programme was
deranged, appeared as ill-timed to Mr. Buchanan as insolent to the
people of Charleston; and the despatch of the 30th of December,
addressed to their commissioners, exculpates him from the crime of
having sent the reinforcements, and makes excuses in pitiful terms for
the conduct of Major Anderson, whom they ought to hear before
condemning. In fact, Anderson acted on his own responsibility, and
incurred the blame of the Minister of War, who advised in full council
the surrender of the forts.

The American Government is as timid as the seceded States are resolute.
Our generation, which has witnessed sad spectacles, has never yet,
perhaps, contemplated any more humiliating. Ministers, one of whom,
hardly out of the Cabinet, has gone to preside over the secession
convention at Montgomery, and another of whom has taken care to pave the
way in advance for the revolt of the South, and to secure for it the
resources of money, arms, and munitions, which it was about to need;
ministers who vote openly for the insurgents, whose financial intrigues
have been proved by investigation, and whose electoral manoeuvres,
duplicated by embezzlement of public money, have ended in a sort of
political treason, disavowed only by General Cass; a Cabinet, in the
last extremity, still essaying to continue its former course by killing
with its veto the bill adopted by the Legislature of Nebraska to
prohibit slavery in its Territory; a Government falling apart by
piecemeal, for fear of compromising itself by resisting some part of the
South: do you know of any thing so shameful? Mr. Buchanan will end as he
began: for four years, he has been struggling to obtain an extension of
slavery; for a month, he has been favoring the plans of separation, by
opposing his force of inertia to the growing indignation of the North.

Being unable to prevent every thing, he does at least what he can:
forced to send some reinforcements, he speedily withdraws them in a
manner seemingly designed to render easy the attack on Fort Sumter and
to discourage Major Anderson. In the hands of a President who understood
his duties, things would have gone on very differently. In the first
place, the South would have known on what to rely, and would have been
reminded of the message of General Jackson in 1833, exacting the
_immediate_ disbanding of its troops; next, preliminary measures of
precaution would not have been systematically neglected; lastly, at the
first symptom of revolt, a sufficient number of ships of war would have
been sent to Charleston to insure the regular collection of taxes and
respect for the Federal property. Nothing is so pacific as resolution:
face to face with a strong Government, we look twice before launching
into adventures; but, with Mr. Buchanan, it was almost impossible for
the cotton States to refrain from precipitating themselves headlong into
them. The repression that will come by and by will not repair the evil
that has been done. Explanations will also follow too late; it was for
the President to reply on the spot, and categorically, to the manifestos
issued by the South. To let the violent States know that their
unconstitutional plans would meet a prompt chastisement; to let the
neighboring States know that their sovereignty was by no means menaced,
and that they would continue to regulate their internal institutions as
they pleased; to say to all that the discussion of plans of abolition
was not in question; to say too to all that the majorities of
free-soilers would be protected in the Territories, and that the
conquests of slavery were ended: what language would have been better
fitted than this to isolate the Gulf States--perhaps to check them?

I say _perhaps_, because I know that passions had reached such a pitch
of exasperation that a rupture seemed inevitable. In South Carolina, for
example, the Governor had recommended both Houses in advance to take
measures for seceding if Mr. Lincoln should be elected; a special
commission was nominated, and held permanent session. In Texas, Senator
Wigfall did not fear to say, in supporting Mr. Breckenridge: "If any
other candidate is elected, look for stormy weather. There may be a
Confederation, indeed, but it will not number more than thirty-three
States." Mr. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, and Mr. Benjamin, of
Louisiana, held no less explicit language, announcing that at the first
electoral defeat of the South, it would set about forming a separate
Confederation, long since demanded by its true interests.

What the South called its "interests," what it ended by adopting as a
political platform, outside of which there was no safety, was, as we
have seen, the subjugation of majorities in the Territories, the
restriction of sovereignty in the Northern States, the reform of the
liberty bills, which refused the prisons of these States and the
co-operation of their officers, to the Federal agents charged with
arresting fugitive slaves, the power of transporting slavery over the
whole Confederation, the duty of extending indefinitely the domain of
slavery. Who paid Walker? Who continually recruited bands of adventurers
to launch on Cuba or Central America? Who prepared the well-known lists
of slave States with which the South counted on enriching itself: four
States some day to be carved out of Texas, (the South had caused this to
be authorized in advance,) three States to be created in the Island of
Cuba, an indefinite number of States to be detached one after another
from Central America and Mexico? Who clamorously demanded the
reëstablishment of the African slave trade, alone capable of peopling
this vast extent, and of lowering the excessive price of the negroes
supplied by the producing States? The extreme South, which alone was
concerned in this, saw gigantic vistas opening before it on which it
fastened with ecstasy. Now, already, in spite of the more or less avowed
support of Mr. Buchanan, its success was already checked, it felt itself
provoked and thwarted. Henceforth, all its hopes were concentrated on
the election of 1860: we may judge, therefore, of its disappointment,
and of the furious ardor with which it must have seized upon its last
resource, namely, secession, which might prove in its hands either a
means of terrifying the North, and of bringing it again under the yoke,
or of entering alone into a new destiny, of having elbow-room, and of
devoting itself entirely to the propagation of slavery!

The facts are known; I do not think of recounting them. I content
myself with remarking the enthusiasm, which prevails in the majority of
the cotton States. One could not commit suicide with a better grace. It
is easy to recognize a country hermetically sealed to contradiction,
which is enchanted with itself, and which ends by accomplishing the most
horrible deeds with a sort of conscientious rejoicing. The enthusiasm
which is displayed in proclaiming secession, or in firing on the
American flag, is displayed in freeing the captain of a slaver, a noble
martyr to the popular cause. There is something terrifying in the
enthusiasm of evil passions. When I consider the folly of the South,
which so heedlessly touches the match to the first cannon pointed
against its confederates; when I see it without hesitation give the
signal for a war in which it runs the risk of perishing; when I read its
laws, decreeing the penalty of death against any one who shall attack
the Palmetto State, and its dispatches, in which the removal of Major
Anderson is exacted, in the tone which a master employs toward a
disobedient servant, I ask myself whether the present crisis could
really have been evaded, and whether any thing less than a rude lesson
could have opened eyes so obstinately closed to the light.

People have taken in earnest the plans of the Southern Confederacy.
Nothing could be more imposing, in fact, if they had the least chance of
success. The fifteen Southern States, already immense, joined to Mexico,
Cuba, and Central America--what a power this would be! And, doubtless,
this power would not stop at the Isthmus of Panama: it would be no more
difficult to reëstablish slavery in Bolivia, on the Equator, and in
Peru, than in Mexico. Thus the "patriarchal institution" would advance
to rejoin Brazil, and the dismayed eye would not find a single free spot
upon which to rest between Delaware Bay and the banks of the Uruguay.
Furthermore, this colossal negro jail would be stocked by a no less
colossal slave trade: barracoons would be refilled in Africa, slave
expeditions would be organized on a scale hitherto unknown, and whole
squadrons of slave ships (those "floating hells") would transport their
cargoes under the Southern colors, proudly unfurled; patriotic
indignation would be aroused at the mere name of the right of search,
and the whole world would be challenged to defend the liberty of the
seas.

Such is the project in its majestic unity. Such is the glorious ideal
which the extreme South hoped to attain by its union with the North, and
which it now seeks to attain by its separation. The hearts of men beat
high at the thought, and many are ready to give their lives heroically
in order to secure its realization. Alas! we are thus made; passion
excuses every thing, transfigures every thing.

Each one feels instinctively, moreover, that no part of the plan can be
separated from the whole; that it must be great to be respected; that to
people this vast extent with slaves, the African slave trade is
indispensable; of course, they took care not to avow all this at the
first moment; it was necessary, in the beginning, to delude others, and
perhaps themselves; it was necessary to obtain recognition. On this
account, the prudent politicians who have just drawn up the programme of
the South, have been careful to record in it the prohibition of the
African slave trade, and the disavowal of plans of conquest. But this
does not prevent the necessities of the position from becoming known by
and by. True programmes, adapted to the position of affairs, are not
changed from day to day. I defy the slave States, provided their
Confederation succeeds in existing, to do otherwise than seek to extend
towards the South; hemmed in on all sides by liberty, incessantly
provoked by the impossibility of preventing the flight of their negroes,
they will fall on those of their neighbors who are the least capable of
resistance, and whose territory is most to their convenience. This fact
is obvious, as it is also obvious that they will have recourse to the
African slave trade to people these new possessions. It is in vain to
deny it, on account of Europe, or of the border States; the necessities
will subsist, and, sooner or later, they will be obeyed. If the border
States persist in deluding themselves on this point, and fancy that they
will always keep the monopoly of this infamous supply of negroes sold at
enormous prices, this concerns them. In any case, the illusion will
finally become dispelled. It is not in the nomination of Jefferson Davis
as President of the Confederate States, that we are to look for the
final repudiation of those projects of which this politic man is in some
sort the living representative.

And when they are renewed, we shall see an invincible obstacle rise up
in the way of the realization of a plan so monstrous. As soon as the
African slave trade is established, the domestic slave trade will cease,
the revenues of the producing States will be suppressed, the price of
negroes will fall everywhere, and the fortunes of all the planters will
fall in like proportion. Can it be possible that they will accept the
chances of civil war, of insurrections, and of massacres, in order to
ensure to themselves the risk of ruin in case of success? Can it be
possible, above all, that Europe will lend a hand, as we seem to
imagine, to the most audacious attack ever directed against Christian
civilization?

I know that we must always make allowance for probable perfidy, and I am
far from dreaming, as times go, that chivalric Europe will refuse to
serve her own interests because these interests would cost her
principles something. No, indeed, I imagine nothing of the sort; yet I
think that I should wrong the nineteenth century if I supposed it
capable of certain things. There are sentiments which cannot be provoked
beyond measure with impunity.

Remember the shudder that ran through the world when Texas, a free
country, was transformed into slave territory as the result of the
victory of the United States; multiply the crime of Texas by ten, by
twenty, and you will have a faint image of the impression of disgust
that the Southern republic is about to call forth among us.

It is important that they should know this in advance at Charleston, and
not delude themselves as to the kind of welcome for which the Palmetto
State and its accomplices have to hope. Not only will no one recognize
their pretended independence at this time, for to recognize it would be
to tread under foot the evident rights of the United States, but they
will excite one of those moral repulsions which the least scrupulous
policy is forced to take into account. It is one thing to hold slaves;
it is another to be founded expressly to serve the cause of slavery on
earth; this is a new fact in the history of mankind. If a Southern
Confederacy should ever take rank among nations, it will represent
slavery, and nothing else. I am wrong; it will also represent the
African slave trade, and the fillibustering system. In any case, the
Southern Confederacy will be so far identified with slavery, with its
progress, with the measures designed to propagate and perpetuate it here
below, that a chain and whip seem the only devices to be embroidered on
its flag.

Will this flag cover the human merchandise which it is designed to
protect against the interference of cruisers? Will there be a country,
will there be a heart, forgetful enough of its dignity to tolerate this
insolent challenge flung at our best sympathies? I doubt it, and I
counsel the Carolinians to doubt it also. The representative of England
at Washington is said to have already declared that in presence of the
slave trade thus practised, his government will not hesitate to pursue
slavers into the very ports of the South. France will hold no less firm
a tone; whatever may be the dissent as to the right of search, the
_right of slave ships_, be sure, will be admitted by none; a sea-police
will soon be found to put an end to them; if need be, the punishment
will be inflicted on their crews that is in store for a much less crime,
that of piracy; these wretches will be hung with short shrift at the
yard-arm, without form or figure of law.

The Carolinians deceive themselves strangely. They fancy that they will
be treated with consideration, that they will even be protected, because
they maintain the principle of free trade, and because they hold the
great cotton market. Free trade, cotton, these are the two
recommendations upon which they count to gain a welcome in Europe. Let
us see what we are to think of this.

I shall not be suspected in what I am about to say of free trade--I, who
have always been its declared partisan; I, who sustained it twenty years
ago as candidate in the bosom of one of the electoral colleges of Paris,
and who applauded unreservedly our recent commercial treaty with
England; but man does not live by bread alone, and if ever a school of
commercial liberty should anywhere be found that should carry the
adoration of its principle so far as to sacrifice to it other and
nobler liberties, a school disposed to set the question of cheapness
above that of justice, and to extend a hand to whoever should offer it a
channel of exportation, maledictions enough would not be found for it.
Let England take care; those who have no love for her, take delight in
foretelling that her sympathies will be weighed in the balance with her
interests, and that the protection of the North risks offending her much
more than the slavery of the South. I am convinced that it will amount
to nothing, and that we shall once more see how great is the influence
of Christian sentiment among Englishmen. Should the reverse be true, we
must veil our faces, and give over this vile bargaining, adorned with
the name of free trade, to the full severity of public opinion.

I repeat that it will amount to nothing. Moreover, do not let us
exaggerate either the protective instincts of the North or the free
trade of the South. The new tariff just adopted at Washington (a grave
error, assuredly, which I do not seek to palliate) may be amended in
such a manner as to lose the character of prohibition with which certain
States have sought to invest it. Let us not forget, that by the side of
Pennsylvania, which urges the excessive increase of taxes, the North
counts a considerable number of agricultural States, the interests of
which are very different. Now, these are the States which elected Mr.
Lincoln, and which will henceforth have the most decisive weight on the
destinies of the Union. We may be tranquil, the protective reaction
which has just triumphed in part will not long be victorious. All
liberties cling together: the liberty of commerce will have its day in
the United States.

But if all liberties cling together, all slaveries cling together also,
and cannot be liberal at will, even in commercial matters. The Southern
States plume themselves on being thus liberal, and it is sought to give
them this reputation. However, the facts are little in harmony with
their brilliant programme. Far from, proclaiming free trade, the
"Confederate" States, by a formal act adopted on the 18th of February,
have maintained the tariff of 1857. They have gone further: their
Congress has just established a new and relatively heavy tax, which must
burden the exportation of cotton. This is not commercial liberty as I
understand it.

Notwithstanding, the watchword has been given, the champions of slavery
have skilfully organized their system of manoeuvre in Europe, and it is
developing according to their wishes. To be indignant at the new
tariff, to speak only of the new tariff, to create by means of the new
tariff a sort of popularity for the Southern republic--such is the end
which they sought to attain. I doubt whether they have fully obtained
it, although the South, I say it to our shame, has already succeeded in
procuring friends and praisers among us. The factitious indignation will
fall without doubt; but cotton remains: at the bottom, the South counts
much more upon cotton than free trade to bring the Old World into her
interests. On rushing into a mad enterprise, all the perils of which,
enraged as it was, it could not disguise, it said to itself that its
cotton would protect it. Is it not the principal and almost the only
producer of a raw material, without which the manufactures of the whole
world would stand still? Are there not millions of workmen in England
(one-sixth of the whole population!) who live by the manufacture of
cotton? Is not the wealth of Great Britain founded on cotton, which
alone furnishes four-fifths of its exported manufactures? All this is
true, and they are not ignorant of it at Manchester. Notwithstanding,
what happened there the other day? An immense meeting was convoked for
the purpose of carefully examining the great cotton business, and the
perils created by the present crisis. I do not know that among these
manufacturers, knowing that their interests were menaced, that among
these workmen, knowing that their means of livelihood were at stake,
that from the heart of this country, knowing that want, famine, and
insurrections might come to her door, there arose a voice, a single one,
to address a word of sympathy to the Southern States, and to promise
them the slightest support. It was because there was something
transcending manufacturing supplies, and even the bread of families: the
need, I am glad to state, of protesting against certain crimes. Instead
of extending a hand to the secessionists of Charleston, the English
manufacturers resolutely laid the foundation of a vast society, destined
to develop on the spot the production of cotton by free labor in India,
the Antilles, and Africa. Such was their answer; and if you knew their
most secret thoughts, you would have no difficulty in discovering that
the ambition of the South, its turbulent policy, and its aggressions
without pretext, are far from exciting the gratitude of English
commerce, or of inspiring its confidence.

Every one in England comprehends that, from the standpoint of interest,
the separation of the South is a mortal blow dealt to the cotton
production, which will henceforth have the aid neither of credit nor
entrepôts, and which is advancing towards catastrophes which may involve
a conflict of arms. From another and higher standpoint, the public
opinion of England has not made us wait for its verdict: already its
abolition societies have regained life and begun their movements;
already, under the pressure of the universal feeling, the Court of
Queen's Bench has revised the affair of the negro Anderson, to deliver
into the strong hands of the metropolis a question before which the
judicial authority of Canada hesitated, and to pronounce at length a
verdict of acquittal.

The South has taken account in its calculations neither of man nor God.
God especially seems to have been forgotten, though it placed itself
formally under his protection. Who does not shudder at the enunciation
of these unheard-of plans: we will do this, then we will do that; we
will hold England through cotton, we will entice France through
influence--we will have many negroes, much produce, and much money! And
what will God think of it? Everywhere else but in South Carolina, this
question would appear formidable beyond expression.

If the South has taken its wishes for realities in Europe, it has
committed the same error in America. Its secession has some chance (and
what a chance!) only on condition of drawing in all the glare States
without exception; now it seems by no means probable that such a
unanimity, supposing it to be gained by surprise, could ever be
maintained successfully. The negro-raising States could not possibly
regard the future in the same light as the consuming States. Their
revenues are based on the value of the domestic slave trade, which bears
no resemblance to that of the African slave trade. Ask Virginia or
Maryland long to sustain a policy, the result of which would be to lower
the price of her slaves in one day from a thousand dollars to two cents!
This is so clearly felt in the extreme South, that the provisional
constitution, adopted at Montgomery, is drawn up with an express view to
reassuring the producing States on this point. They are afraid of the
African slave trade! It shall not be reopened. They are anxious to sell
their negroes! They shall be bought only of those States forming part of
the Southern Confederacy. It belongs to them to ask now whether this
Montgomery constitution, adopted for a year, really guarantees any thing
to them, and whether it is possible that an attempt will not be made to
revive the African slave trade, provided the Southern Confederacy
succeeds in enduring. However this may be, they are held apart by so
many causes, that they would only unite to-day to separate to-morrow. I
know well that the passions of slavery rule in many of the border
States, especially in Virginia, as violently as in the extreme South. I
do not disguise from myself that the habit of sustaining a deplorable
cause in common has created between the border and the cotton States a
bond of long standing and difficult to break. But I say this: the
impulses of the first hour will have their morrow; when the frontier
States witness the commencement of those territorial invasions which
must necessarily bring the African slave trade in their train; when they
know what reliance to place on the fine promises made to-day to attract
them; when they perceive that in separating from the North, they
themselves have removed the sole obstacle in the way of the flight of
all their slaves; when, in fine, they feel weighing upon them, and them
first, the perils of an armed struggle and a negro insurrection, they
will listen perhaps to those of their citizens who, even now, are urging
them to turn to the side of justice--of justice and of safety. By the
fewness of their slaves, by the nature of their climate, which resembles
that of Marseilles and Montpellier, by the kind of cultivation to which
their country is adapted, by the number of manufactures which are
beginning to be established among them, it seems as if they must be led,
or, at least, some day led back, to the policy of union. This is no
discovery: the _seceded States_ know it already; they form a separate
band. America has not forgotten the retreat of the seven, which, a few
months ago, dismembered the Democratic Convention assembled at
Charleston. These seven were South Carolina, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana; in other words, all those
States which were the first to vote for secession. The same list, with
the addition of Georgia and North Carolina, appeared again on the day of
the Presidential election: these nine States alone adopted Mr.
Breckenridge as their candidate.

Here, then, is a profound distinction, which attaches to interests and
tendencies, which has manifested itself already, which will manifest
itself more and more, and which will work, sooner or later, the
salvation of the United States. The border States cannot unite with the
cotton States definitively. They gave proofs of this in the last
election. Five among them, Tennessee, Kentucky, Delaware, Virginia, and
Maryland, at that time took an intermediate position by making an
intermediate choice: Mr. Bell. Without going so far, Missouri protested
at least against the nomination of Mr. Breckenridge by casting its vote
for Mr. Douglas. Better than this, a declared adversary of slavery, Mr.
Blair, was elected representative by this same slave State, Missouri, on
the day before the balloting for the presidency; and on the next day his
friends voted openly for Mr. Lincoln, while no one dared-annul their
votes, as had been done four years before. Mr. Lincoln thus obtained
fifteen thousand votes in Missouri, four thousand in Delaware, fifteen
hundred in Maryland, a thousand in Kentucky, and as many in Virginia.
The figures are nothing; the symptom is significant. The slave States of
this intermediate region contain in their bosom, therefore, men who do
not fear to attack the "patriarchal institution." Have we not just seen
a Republican committee acting at Baltimore, in the midst of Maryland?
Has not this same Maryland just rejected, by the popular vote, the
infamous law which its legislature had adopted, and by virtue of which
free negroes who should not quit the State would be reduced by right to
slavery? When I remember these facts, so important and so recent, I
comprehend how it is that a Kentuckian holds the South at bay behind the
menaced walls of Fort Sumter, and how the cabinet of Mr. Lincoln has
ministers in its midst, who belong to the border States.

People take the peculiar situation, of the border States too little into
account in looking into the future which is preparing for America. They
persist in presenting to us two great confederacies, and, in some sort,
two United States, called to divide the continent. If any thing like
this could occur, it could not endure. Doubtless, there are hours of
vertigo from which we may look for every thing, even the impossible;
and, who knows? perhaps the impossible most of all; nevertheless, the
border States cannot attach themselves forever to a cause which is not
their own. By the side of the manifestations which have taken place in
Virginia and South Carolina, we have already a right to cite
demonstrations of a different kind. Has not Missouri just decided
prudently, that, in the matter of separation, the decisions of her
legislature shall not be valid until ratified by the whole people? This
little resembles the eagerness with which States elsewhere rush into
secession. It is therefore probable that the United States will keep or
soon bring back into their bosom a considerable number of the border
States. By their side, the gulf States will attempt to form a rival
nation, aspiring to grow towards the South. Such is the true extent of
the separation that is preparing.

Suppose these projects to become, some day, realities, we may ask
whether a real weakening of the United States would be the result.
Suppose even that another secession, based on different motives, which
nothing foretells at present, should take place beyond the Rocky
Mountains; suppose that a Pacific republic should some day be founded,
would the American Confederation have reason to be greatly troubled at
witnessing the formation on her sides of the association of the gulf
States, California, and Oregon? Look at a map, and you will see that the
valley of the Mississippi, and of the lakes, and the shores of the
Atlantic, are not necessarily connected either with the Gulf of Mexico,
(save the indispensable outlet at New Orleans,) or the regions beyond
the great desert and the Rocky Mountains, the land of the Mormons and
the gold-diggers. Unity is not always the absolute good, and it may be
that progress must come through disruption. Who knows whether
instantaneous secession would not perform the mission of resolving
certain problems otherwise insoluble? Who knows whether slavery must
not disappear in this wise in the very effort that it makes to
strengthen itself through isolation? Who knows whether it is not
important to the prosperity and real power of the United States to
escape from theories of territorial monopoly, those evil counsellors but
too much heeded? Who knows, in fine, whether the day will not come,
when, the questions of slavery once settled, new federal ties will again
bind to the centre the parts that stray from it to-day?

I put these questions; I make no pretensions to resolve them. In any
case, the imagination has had full scope for some time past. People have
not been satisfied with the Southern Confederacy; have they not invented
both the pretended Pacific Confederacy which I have just mentioned, and
the central Confederacy, in which the border States will take shelter in
common with two or three free States, as Pennsylvania and Indiana? Have
they not supposed, in the bargain, (for they seem to find it necessary
to discover the dissolution of the Union every where at all costs,) that
the agricultural population of the West, discontented with the tariff
recently adopted, and putting in practice the new maxim, according to
which they are to have recourse to separation, instead of pursuing
reforms, will seek an asylum in Canada? I need not discuss such fables.
I am convinced, for my part, that the principle of American unity is
much more solid than people affirm; I see in the United States a single
race, and almost a single family: they may divide, they will not cease
to be related. The relationship will take back its rights. For the time,
however, secession seems to have a providential part to enact. It
facilitates, in certain respects, the first steps of Mr. Lincoln; thanks
to it, the hostile majority in the Senate is blotted out, the
uncertainty of the House of Representatives is decided, the Government
becomes possible. In the face of the senators and representatives of the
gulf States, I do not see how Mr. Lincoln could have succeeded in
acting. Did not the Senate, last year, adopt the proposition of Mr.
Jefferson Davis in opposition to the liberty of the Territories?
Congress would have trammelled, one after another, all the measures of
the new administration. Now, on the contrary, the rôle of the victorious
party will be easy; its preponderance is assured in both Houses; the
Supreme Court will cease, ere long, to represent the doctrines of the
extreme South, and to issue Dred Scott decrees. This is a vast change.
General Cass, in truth, comprehended the interests of slavery better
than Mr. Buchanan, when he demanded that the Government should arrest
with vigor from the beginning the faintest wish of separation.




CHAPTER VIII.

PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS.


General Cass was nearer right than he himself imagined. In arresting
from the beginning the development of the plans of the South, by a
vigorous attitude, and by the blockade, then easy, of Charleston, the
Government would not only have rendered it the trifling service of
maintaining its means of opposition in Congress, but also the
inappreciable boon of averting the dangers of war. What has happened, on
the contrary? Precisely what must have happened, the human heart being
such as it is. When on one side is found all the ardor, all the
activity, all the resolution, and, into the bargain, all the apparent
success, while on the other is found languor, hesitation, inaction, and
disgraceful delays, it happens almost infallibly that the undecided are
hurried away by the fanatics.

Let the United States take care! the chances of the future incur the
risk, at this moment, of becoming more grave. To-day, the border States
are on the point of declaring themselves; to-day, in consequence, it is
important to offer to their natural irresolution the support of a policy
as firm as moderate. Given over without defence to the ardent
solicitations of the extreme South, they are only too likely to yield,
particularly if the Federal Government give them reason to believe that
the separation will encounter no serious obstacle.

We must remember that ignorant communities are here in question, who are
ruled by their prejudices, and who have never tolerated the slightest
show of discussion upon questions connected with the subject of slavery.
Such communities are capable of committing the most egregious follies;
panics, sudden resolutions, mistaken unanimities, are common among them.
Formerly, kings were pitied who lived surrounded by flatterers, it was
said (we have provided against that) that the truth never reached them;
the, planters are the only men I see to-day that can be likened to these
monarchs of olden time; neither books, nor journals, nor preachers, are
permitted to point out to them their duties or their interests in the
matter of slavery.

The slightest symptom of inertia or of feebleness in the Federal
Government at this time, will, therefore, expose the border States to
great perils, and, through them, the whole Confederation. As easy as it
would have been, with a little energy, to prevent the evil, to confine
secession within its natural limits, and to weaken the chances of civil
war, so difficult has it become, at present, to attain the same end.
Painful duties, perhaps, will be imposed on Mr. Lincoln. I wonder, in
truth, at the politicians who advise him to a "masterly inactivity,"
that is, who urge him to continue Mr. Buchanan! Doubtless he does right
to leave to the insurgents all the odium of acting on the offensive, but
his moderation should detract nothing from his firmness, and it is even
of importance that the means of action which he is about to prepare,
should manifest so clearly the overwhelming superiority of the North,
that the resistance of the South will be thereby discouraged.

Adversaries of slavery are not wanting, who are almost indignant at the
adoption of such measures by the new President. Did they fancy then that
a formidable question could be resolved without risking the repression
of the assaults of force by force? Away with childishness! In electing
Mr. Lincoln, it was known that the cotton States were ready to protest
with arms in their hands; he was not elected to receive orders from the
cotton States, or to sign the dissolution of the United States on the
first requisition. Who wills the end, wills the means. No one,
certainly, desires, more than myself, the peaceful repression of the
rebellion. May the success of the blockade render the employment of the
army useless! May the resolute attitude of the Confederation arrest the
majority of the intermediate States on the dangerous declivity upon
which they are standing! Once let them be drawn into the circle of
influence of the extreme South, and little chance will remain of
confining the civil war within the limits beyond which it is so
important that it should not spread.

Then will appear the _irrepressible conflict_ of Mr. Seward. Whether
desired or not, if the two Confederations are placed side by side, the
one representing all the slavery, the other representing all the
liberty, the conflict will take place. It will take place perhaps now,
perhaps a little later; however this may be, no one will have the power
to hinder it. Suppose the South, thus completed, relinquish (and nothing
is less certain) the opening by itself of a war in which it must perish,
and its great plans of attack, against Washington, for instance, be
abandoned; suppose the United States, on their side, avoid a direct
attack, which might give the signal for insurrections; suppose they
limit themselves to purely maritime repression of the revolt; that,
after striking off the Southern harbors from the list of seaports, and
declaring that custom-house duties cannot be legally paid there, they
maintain this blockade, which Europe ought to applaud; would they have
averted all chances of conflict? No; alas! However temporary such a
situation might be, complaints, recriminations, and, ere long, violent
reprisals, would be seen everywhere arising. Rivalries of principles,
rivalries of interests, bitter memories of past injuries, such are the
rocks on which peaceful policy would be in continual danger of
shipwreck.

We must not cherish illusions; the chances, of civil war have been
increasing for a few weeks past with fearful rapidity. If Mr. Lincoln
has confined himself scrupulously to conservative and defensive
measures, there has been, on the contrary, in the actions of the South,
a violent precipitation which has surpassed all expectancy. It is the
haste of skilful men, who attempt by a bold stroke to carry off the
advantages of a deed accomplished; it is at the same time, and chiefly,
perhaps, the haste of men who have nothing to lose, the ringleaders of
the present hour. At the end of resources, the insurgent South has
already increased its taxes inordinately; it has killed public and
private credit; it has created a disturbed revolutionary condition,
intolerable in the end, which no longer permits deliberation, or even
reflection. Will the South pause on such a road? It is difficult to hope
it. As to the North, its plan of action is very simple, and easily
maintained: suppose even that through impossibility it should give over
forcing the rebels back to their duty, who can ever imagine that it
would suffer itself to be deprived of the mouths of the Mississippi, or
that it would abandon to the rival Confederacy the capital itself of the
Union, inclosed within the slave States? Let us see things as they are:
the maintenance and development of slavery in the South will render the
abolitionist proceedings of its neighbor intolerable in its eyes; if it
has not been able to endure a contradiction accompanied with infinite
circumspection, and tempered by many prudent disclaimers, how will it
support this daily torture, a unanimous and well-founded censure, a
perpetual denunciation of the infamies which accompany and constitute
the "patriarchal institution"? The North, on its side, will be unable
to forget that, by the act of the South, without reason or pretext, the
glorious unity of the nation has been broken; that the star-spangled
banner has been rent in twain; that the commercial prosperity of America
has been shaken at the same time with its greatness. Let one of those
incidents then occur, that are constantly arising, a Southern slave ship
stopped on the high seas by the North, a negotiation of the South
threatening to introduce Europe into the affairs of the New World, and
directly hostilities will break out.

What they will be in the end, I scarcely dare imagine. If the planters
are forced, at present, to mount guard day and night, to prevent the
insurrectionary movements that are constantly ready to break out on
their estates; if many families are already sending their women and
children into safer countries; what will it be when the arrival of the
forces of the North shall announce to the slaves that the hour of
deliverance has sounded? It will be in vain to deny it; their arrival
will always signify this in the sight of the South. There are certain
facts, the popular interpretation of which ends by being the true
interpretation. I have no doubt that the generals of the United States,
before attacking the Southern Confederacy, will recommend to the
negroes to remain at peace, and will disavow and condemn acts of
violence; but what is a manifesto against the reality of things and the
necessity of situations? There is a word that I see written in large
letters everywhere in the projects of the South--yes, the word
_catastrophe_ is to be read there in every line. The first successes of
the South are a catastrophe; the greatness of the South will be a
catastrophe; and, if the South ever realize in part the iniquitous hopes
towards which it is rushing, the catastrophe will acquire unheard-of
proportions; it will be a St. Domingo carried to the tenth power.

One cannot, with impunity, give full scope to his imagination, and, in
the year of our Lord 1861, set to work to contrive the plan of a
Confederacy designed to protect and to propagate slavery. These things
will be avenged sooner or later. Ah! if the South knew how important it
is that it should not succeed, if it comprehended that the North has
been hitherto its great, its only guarantee! This is literally true; a
slave country, above all, to-day, needs to be backed up by a free
country to ensure the subsistence of an institution contrary to nature;
otherwise the first accident, the first war, gives it over to perils
that make us shudder. Thanks to their metropolises, our colonies were
able first to keep, and afterwards to enfranchise their slaves, without
succumbing to the task. But let a Southern Confederacy come, in which
the immigration of the whites will be naught, while the increase of the
blacks will be pursued in all ways, and, in case of success, the moment
will soon arrive when many States will see themselves placed, as is the
case already with South Carolina, in presence of a number of slaves
exceeding that of free men. Such a social monstrosity never existed
under the sun; even in Greece, even in Rome, even among the Mussulmans,
the total number of free men remained superior; the colonies alone,
through the effect of the slave trade, presented an inverse phenomenon,
and the colonies were consolidated with their metropolises in the same
manner that the States of the South are consolidated with those of the
North.

In this will be found, I repeat, a most important guarantee. The South
in rejecting it, and imagining itself able alone to maintain a situation
which will become graver day by day, deludes itself most strangely. At
the hour of peril, when servile insurrection perhaps shall ravage its
territory, it will be astonished to find itself left alone in the
presence of its enemy.

And this enemy is not one that can be conquered once for all. Even
after the victory, even in times of peace, the threat of servile
insurrection will ever remain suspended over the head of the Southern
Confederacy; it will be necessary always to watch, always to be on the
guard, always to repress, and, to tell the truth, always to tremble. The
planters, whether they know it or not, are not preparing to sleep on a
bed of roses. To labor to accomplish an iniquitous work amidst the
maledictions of the universe, to increase their estates and their slaves
under penalty of death, and to feel instinctively that they will die for
having increased them, to tremble because of European hostility, to
tremble because of American hostility, to tremble because of hostility
from without and within--what a life! That one might accept it in the
service of a noble cause, I can comprehend; but the cause of the South!
In truth, this would be taking great pains for small wages.

The South inspires me with profound compassion. We have told it, much
too often, that its Confederacy was easy to found. To found, yes; to
make lasting, no. Here, it is not the first step that costs--it is the
second, it is the third. The Southern Confederacy is not viable. Let us
suppose that, to its misfortune, it has succeeded in all that it has
just undertaken: Charleston is free, the border States are drawn in,
there is a new federal compact and a new President, the Northern States
have of necessity abandoned the suppression of the insurrection by
force, Europe has surmounted its repugnance and received the envoys of
the great Slave republic. All questions seem resolved; but no, not a
single one has attained its solution.

The policy of the South must have its application. Its first article,
whether it declares it or not, exacts conquests, the absorption of
Mexico, for example. The fillibusters of Walker are still ready to set
out, and the first moment past, when the question is to appear discreet,
it is scarcely probable that they will meet with much restraint, now
that the prudence of the North is no longer at hand to counterbalance
the passions of Slavery.

Admit that this enterprise bring no difficult complications. For these
new territories, the question will be to procure negroes. The second
article of the Southern policy will find then _nolens volens,_ its
inevitable application: the African slave trade will be re-established.
The richest planter of Georgia, Mr. Goulden, has taken care to set forth
its necessity; mark the language which he held lately: "You have hardly
negroes enough for the existing States; obtain the opening of the slave
trade, then you can undertake to increase the number of slave States."

Will the official re-opening of the slave trade be some day effected
without bringing on a storm which will destroy the new Confederacy? I
cannot say. In any case, I know one thing: that the value of the slaves,
and consequently that of Southern property, will experience a decline
greatly exceeding that by which it is now threatened, as it is said, by
the abolition tendencies of the North. Already, through the mere fact of
secession, the price of negroes has diminished one-half; and more than
one intelligent planter foresees the time when this price shall have
diminished three-fourths, perhaps nine-tenths. Southern fortunes are
falling off, therefore, with extreme rapidity, and this arises not only
from the anticipated effects of the slave trade, but also from the
certainty of being unable henceforth to put a stop to the escape of the
slaves. These escapes, taken all in all, remained insignificant, so long
as the Union was maintained; there are not more than fifty thousand free
negroes in Canada. But henceforth the Southern Confederacy will have a
Canada everywhere on its frontiers. How retain that slavery that will
escape simultaneously on the North, and the South? The Southern republic
will be as it were the common enemy, and no one assuredly will aid it to
keep its slaves.

It must not be believed, moreover, that it will succeed long in
preserving itself from intestine divisions--divisions among the whites.
If, at the first moment, when every thing is easy, unanimity is far from
appearing as complete as had been foretold, it will, later, be much
worse. We shall then perceive how prophetic, if I may dare say so, were
the often-quoted words of Washington's farewell address: "It is
necessary that you should accustom yourselves to regard the Union as the
palladium of your happiness and your security; that you should watch
over it with a jealous eye; that you should impose silence on any who
shall ever dare counsel you to renounce it; that you should give vent to
all your indignation on the first effort that shall be attempted to
detach from the whole any part of the Confederation."

A very different voice, that of Jefferson, spoke the same language. A
Southern man, addressing himself to the South, which talked already of
seceding he described in thrilling words the inevitable consequences of
such an act: "If, to rid ourselves of the present supremacy of
Massachusetts and Connecticut, we were to break up the Union, would the
trouble stop there?... We should soon see a Pennsylvanian party and a
Virginian party forming, in what remained of the Confederation, and the
same party spirit would agitate public opinion. By what new weapons
would these parties be armed, if they had power to threaten each other
continually with joining their Northern neighbors, in case things did
not go on in such or such a manner! If we were to reduce our Union to
North Carolina and Virginia, the conflict would break out again directly
between the representatives of these two States; we should end by being
reduced to simple unities."

Is not this the anticipated history of what is about to happen in the
Southern Confederacy, supposing it to succeed in uniting with a part of
the border States? The opening programme will last as long as programmes
usually do. When the true plan of the South, veiled for a moment, shall
reappear, (and it must indeed reappear, unless it perishes before it has
begun to exist;) when the question shall be to increase and be peopled,
to make conquests and to reëstablish the African slave trade; when the
serious purpose, in a word, shall have replaced the purpose of
circumstance, what will take place between the border States and the
cotton States? The profound distinction which exists between them will
then manifest itself, even if it does not break forth before. A new
South and a new North will be formed, as hostile perhaps as the old, and
less forgiving towards each other of their mutual faults, inasmuch as
they will be embittered by misfortune. Nothing divides people like a bad
cause that turns out badly. They think themselves united, they call
themselves united, until the moment when they discover that they have
neither the same end nor the same mind. I do not see why the victory of
Mr. Lincoln will have transformed the South, and suppressed the
divergencies which separated it into two groups: that of the Gulf States
voting for Mr. Breckenridge, that of the border States voting for Mr.
Douglas or Mr. Bell, and even casting ballots for Mr. Lincoln.

Not only will the Gulf States, the only true secessionists, never act in
concert with the border States, but they will not be long in seeing
parties spring up in their own bosom, which will be little disposed to
come to terms. A sort of feudal question, as is well known, is near
obtaining a position in the South; the _poor whites_ there are two or
three times as numerous as the planters. The struggle of classes may,
therefore, break out as soon as the effected secession shall have
banished to the second rank the struggle against the adversaries of
slavery.

The impoverishment of the South will not aid in calming its intestine
quarrels. European immigration, already so meagre in the slave States,
(Charleston is the only large American city whose population has
decreased, according to the last census,) European immigration, I say,
will evidently diminish still more when the South shall have taken an
independent and hostile position opposite the Northern States. Who will
go then to expose himself lightly to the fearful chances which the first
war with any country, American or European, may bring in its train? And
credit will go the same way as immigration: to lend money to planters,
whose entire property is continually menaced with destruction, is one of
those hazardous operations from which commerce is accustomed to recoil.
Deprived of the capital furnished it by New York, obtaining only with
great difficulty a few onerous and precarious advances in Europe, the
South will see itself smitten at once in all its means of production;
and, after the harvest of 1860, which secures our supplies for a year,
after that of 1861, which it will succeed, probably, in gathering, but
which it will be more difficult to sell, it is not easy to divine how it
will set to work to continue its crops. While the South produces less
cotton, and we lose the habit of buying of it, the cotton culture will
become acclimated elsewhere; the future will thus be destroyed like the
present; final ruin will approach with hasty strides.

They tell us of a loan that the new Confederacy designs to contract!
Unless it be transformed into a forced loan, I have little faith in its
chance. They add that it will be only necessary to establish on exported
cotton a duty of a few cents per pound, and the coffers of the South
will be filled. But, in the first place, to export cotton, they must
produce it--they must have money; it is almost impossible that the State
should be rich when all its citizens are in distress; then the
exportation itself will be exposed to some difficulties if the United
States organize a blockade. And I say nothing of the bad effect that
will be produced by this tax _à la Turque_--this tax on exportation in
the very midst of plans of commercial freedom. Neither do I speak of the
effect which this extra charge, which is termed trifling, but which is,
in fact, considerable, will have on the sale of American cotton,
already so defective, when compared with the average price of other
cottons.

Poor country, which blind passion, and, above all, indomitable pride,
precipitates into the path of crime and misery! Poor, excommunicated
nation, whose touch will be dreaded, whose flag will be suspected, whose
continually increasing humiliations will not even be compensated by a
few meagre profits! The heart is oppressed at the thought of the clear,
certain, inevitable future, which awaits so many men, less guilty than
erring. Between them and the rest of the world there will be nothing
longer in common; they will establish on their frontier a police over
books and journals, essaying to prevent the fatal introduction of an
idea of liberty: the rest of the world will have for them neither
political sympathies, nor moral sympathies, nor religious sympathies.

Will they at least have the consolation of having killed the United
States? Will a glorious confederation have perished by their retreat?
No, a thousand times no. Even though they should succeed in drawing the
border States into the Southern Confederacy, the United States, thank
God! will keep their rank among nations. Where will the United States
be after secession? Where they were before; for a long time the
gravitation of their power has been tending towards the Northwest. The
true America is there, that of ancient traditions, and that of present
reality. If any serious fears might have been conceived as to its
duration, they disappeared on the day of the election of Mr. Lincoln. On
that day, we all learned that the United States would subsist, and that
their malady was not mortal.

Great news was this! Did you ever ask yourself how much would be missing
here on earth if such a people should disappear? It lives and it will
live. Look at the calm and confident air of the North, and compare it
with the noisy violence of the South. The North is so sure of itself
that it does not deign either to become angered, or to hasten; it even
carries this last to extremes. It has the air of knowing that, in spite
of the apparent successes which may mark the first efforts of the South,
the final success must be elsewhere. Let the South take care! to have
against it both right and might is twice as much as is needed to be
beaten. The North supported Mr. Buchanan because it was awaiting Mr.
Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln came, the North still has patience, but will end
by falling into line, and the serious struggle will begin, in case of
need.

The final issue of this struggle can scarcely be doubtful. On one side,
I see a confederacy divided, impoverished, bending under the weight of a
crushing social problem, seeing constantly on its horizon the menace of
insurrections and of massacres, unable either to negotiate, or to draw
the sword, or to resolve any of the difficulties from without, without
thinking of the still more formidable difficulties from within; on the
other side, I see the United States, masters of themselves, unanimous,
knowing what they want, and placing at the service of a noble cause, a
power which is continually increasing.

The match will not be equal. I cannot help believing, therefore, that
the triumph of the North will be even much more complete than we imagine
to-day. I do not know what is to happen, but this I know: the North is
more populous, richer, more united; European immigration goes only to
the North, European capital goes only to the North. Of what elements is
the population of the South composed? The first six States that
proclaimed their separation number exactly as many slaves as freemen.
What a position! Is it probable indeed that this confederation contrary
to nature, in which each white will be charged with guarding a black,
can afford a long career? The South, divided, weakened, bearing in its
side the continually bleeding wound of slavery, reduced to choose in the
end between the direful plans which must destroy after having dishonored
it, and the Union which consolidates its interests while thwarting its
passions--is it possible that the South will not return to the Union?

Something tells me that if the Union be dissolved, it will be formed
again. A lasting separation is more difficult than is imagined. Face to
face with Europe, face to face with the United States, the great
republic of the South would find it too difficult to live. To live at
peace is impossible; to live without peace is not to be thought of. The
great Southern republic must perish surely by its failure, and still
more surely by its success, for this monstrous success will draw down
its destruction. There is in America a necessity, as it were, of union.
Unity is at the foundation, diversity is only on the surface; unity is
bound up with the national life itself, with race, origin, belief,
common destiny, a like degree of civilization, in a word, with profound
and permanent causes; diversity proceeds from the accidents of
institutions.

Looking only at the province of interests, is it easy to imagine an
irremediable rupture between New York and Charleston, between the valley
of the Mississippi and New Orleans? What would the valley of the
Mississippi be without New Orleans, and New Orleans, isolated from the
vast country of which it is the natural market? Can you fancy New York
renouncing half her commerce, ceasing to be the broker of cotton, the
necessary medium between the South and Europe? Can you fancy the South
deprived of the intervention and credit which New York assures her? The
dependence of the North and the South is reciprocal; if the South
produces the cotton, it is the North which furnishes the advances, then
purchases on its own account or on commission, and expedites the traffic
with Europe. In the United States, every part has need of the whole;
agricultural States, manufacturing States, commercial States, they form
together one of the most homogeneous countries of which I know. I should
be surprised if such a country were destined to become forever
dismembered, and that, too, at an epoch less favorable to the
dismemberment of great nations than to the absorption of small ones.

Shall I say all that I think? When Anglo-Saxons are in question, we
Latins are apt to deceive ourselves terribly; one would not risk much,
perhaps, in supposing that events would take place precisely in the
reverse of our hypothesis. We have loudly predicted in Europe the end of
the United States, the birth and progress of a rival Confederacy, an
irremediable separation: is not this a reason for supposing that there
will be ultimately neither a prolonged separation, nor a rival
Confederacy worthy of consideration? Free countries, especially those of
the English race, have a habit of which we know little: their words are
exceedingly violent, and their actions exceedingly circumspect. They
make a great noise: one would say that every thing was going to
destruction; but it is prudent to look at them more closely, for these
countries of discussion are also countries of compromise, the victors
are accustomed to terminate political crises by yielding something of
their victory; in appearance, it is true, rather than in reality. Fully
decided at heart, they consent willingly to appear less positive in
form.

Here, I know that the extreme violence of the South renders a compromise
very difficult, at least a present compromise. As it is accustomed to
rule, and will be content with no less, as it knows that the North,
decidedly emancipated, will not replace its head beneath the yoke, it
seems resolved to incur all risks rather than renounce its fixed idea.
For two months, the probabilities of compromise have been becoming
constantly weaker. But if we have scarcely a right to count on them now,
so far as the Gulf States are concerned, we must remember that the
border States are at hand, that they are hesitating between the North
and the South, and that certain concessions may be made to them, to
prevent their separation.

Such is the true character of the discussions relating to compromise.
Confined to these limits, they nevertheless possess a vast interest, for
the party which the border States are about to choose, and that to which
they will perhaps attach themselves afterwards, will have a great
influence over the general course of the crisis. The point in question
is no longer, doubtless, to retain Virginia, whose well-known passions
impel her to the side of Charleston, but to induce the other States to
take an attitude in conformity with their interests and their duties. It
will not, therefore, be useless to give an account of the disposition
that prevails among many Americans with respect to compromise.

What was produced by that Peace Conference, convoked with so much noise
by Virginia, the ancient political State, the country of Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe? Nothing worth the trouble of mentioning.
A considerable number of States refused to be present at this
conference, which, had it been general, would have become transformed
into a convention, and have annulled Congress, in point of fact, then in
session in the same city? Its plan, accepted with great difficulty by a
factitious majority, never appeared to have much chance of adoption. The
point in question, above all, was to decide that, below a fixed
latitude, the majority of the inhabitants of a Territory could not
prohibit the introduction of slavery, (disguised, it is true, under the
euphuistic expression, "involuntary servitude;") this measure was to be
declared irrevocable, unless by the unanimous consent of the States.
Despite the support of Mr. Buchanan, and that of the higher branches of
trade in New York, seconded, as usual, by some fashionable circles of
Boston, the almost unanimous public opinion of the North forbade all
belief in the success of such an amendment to the Constitution, which,
in accordance with the Constitution itself, could be adopted only on
condition of uniting two-thirds of the votes of Congress to the
affirmative votes of three-fourths of the States composing the
Confederation.

Another project was put forward: all the members of Congress were to
tender their resignation, and the new elections were to manifest the
definitive will of the country on the question of slavery. That is, from
the intense excitement of the country, were to be demanded some final
elements of reaction, some means of disavowing the election of Mr.
Lincoln. In either case, it would have been thus proved by an
exceptional act that an election which is not ratified by the South may
rightfully demand extraordinary measures. Now, there is nothing but what
is customary, simple, and right, in the conduct of the North; it knows
it, and will not, I think, permit such an advantage to be gained over
it. To allow talking, to allow propositions, and to go its own way, this
is the programme to which it is bound to remain faithful. What makes its
honor makes also its strength: this is the privilege of good causes.

The North has not to seek bases for a compromise. They are all laid
down, and I dare affirm, whatever may happen, that to these bases,
constantly the same, it will not fail to return, provided, at least,
that the era of compromises shall not be closed, and that the South
shall not have succeeded in imposing on the North a decidedly abolition
policy. To speak truly, it has but one declaration to make: to proclaim
anew the constitutional law, by virtue of which each State sovereignly
decides its own affairs, and consequently excludes all interference of
Congress in the matter of slavery. Perhaps, alas! it will join, if need
be, to this declaration, which it has never refused, the promise to
respect to the utmost of its power, the principle of the restitution of
fugitive slaves, which, unhappily, is also based upon the Constitution.
But, on this point, promises are worth what they will fetch, for
doubtless no one will imagine that it is easier to constrain the free
States to accomplish an odious deed which is revolting to their
conscience since they have verified their strength by electing Mr.
Lincoln. Lastly, upon the ruling question, that of the Territories, the
theory of the North evinces justice and clearness; between the ultra
abolitionists, who wish Congress to interfere to close by force all the
Territories to slavery, and the South, which wishes Congress to
interfere to open by force all the Territories to slavery, it adopts
this middle position: all the inhabitants of the Territories shall open
or close them to slavery, according to their will. It is the right of
the majority, recognized there as elsewhere.

I am not ignorant that Mr. Seward has gone much farther in the path of
concession, and it is not absolutely impossible that these counsels of
weakness may prevail. We must be prepared for any thing in this respect.
Nevertheless, the President has by no means continued the imprudent
words of his future prime minister. The language of Mr. Lincoln was
remarkably clear in his inaugural speech, to go no further back,
indicating on the spot the true, the great concession which, till new
orders, may be made to the South: "Those who elected me placed in the
platform presented for my acceptance, as a law for them and for me, the
clear and explicit resolution which I am about to read to you: 'The
maintenance intact of the right of the States, and especially of the
right which each State possesses to regulate and exclusively control its
institutions according to its own views, is essential to that balance of
power, on which depend the perfection and duration of our political
structure; and we denounce the invasion in contempt of the law by an
armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, upon whatever pretext
it may be, as the greatest of crimes.'" Mr. Lincoln adds further:
"Congress has adopted an amendment to the Constitution, which, however,
I have not seen, the purpose of which is to provide that the Federal
Government shall never interfere in the domestic institutions of the
States, including those which relate to persons held in service. In
order to avoid all misunderstanding concerning what I have said, I
depart from my intention of not speaking of any amendment in particular,
to say that, considering this clause henceforth as a constitutional law,
I have no objection that it be rendered explicit and irrevocable."

Concerning fugitive slaves, the inaugural discourse cites the text of
the federal Constitution, which decides the question for the present;
but he does not ignore the fact that this constitutional decision is as
well executed as it can be, "the moral sense of the people lending only
an imperfect support to the law."

As to the Territories, Mr. Lincoln declares clearly that the minority
must submit to the majority, under penalty of falling into complete
anarchy. Neither does he hesitate on the subject of the decisions of the
Supreme Court; these decrees, in his eyes, are merely special decisions
rendered in particular cases, and detracting nothing from the right
which the Confederation possesses to regulate its institutions and its
policy.

All this is very firm, without being provoking. The limit of
concessions is marked out, and a conciliatory spirit is maintained. It
is above all in disclosing his line of conduct towards the rebellious
States, that Mr. Lincoln happily resolves the problem of abandoning none
of the rights of the Confederation, while manifesting the most pacific
disposition, and leaving to others the odium of aggression. His doctrine
on this point may be summed up in this wise: in the first place, the
separation is unconstitutional, it should be, it will be combated,
nothing on earth can bring the President to accede to the destruction of
the Union; in the second place, he will not be the aggressor, he will
endeavor to shun a war which exposes the South to fearful perils; in the
third place, he will fulfill the duty of preserving federal property and
collecting federal taxes in the South. In other terms, he will employ
the means which should have been employed on the first day, and which
would have then been more efficacious. He will attempt the establishment
of a maritime blockade, in order to reduce the rebellion of the whites
without provoking the insurrection of the negroes. Already, the vessels
of war have been recalled from distant stations. Alas! I have little
hope that the precautions dictated to Mr. Lincoln by prudence and
humanity will bear their fruits. The South raises an army and is about
to attack Fort Sumter, knowing that it will thus expose itself to a
formidable retribution. Mr. Lincoln, in fact, has not left it in
ignorance of this: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-citizens, in
yours and not mine, is found the terrible question of civil war. The
Government will not attack you; you will have no conflict, if you are
not the aggressors. You have not, on your part, an oath registered in
heaven to destroy the Government; whilst I, on my side, am about to take
the most solemn oath to maintain, to protect and defend it."

Such is the respective position. Men will agitate, are agitating
already, about the new President, to take away from his thoughts and
designs this resolute character which makes their force. They attempt to
demonstrate to him, not only that Fort Sumter, so easy to revictual
under Mr. Buchanan, has now become inaccessible to aid, and that no
other course remains than to authorize its surrender; but that Fort
Pickens itself should be surrendered to the South, in order to reserve
every chance of reconciliation and in no degree to assume the
responsibility of civil war! I hope that Mr. Lincoln will know how to
resist these enfeebling influences. After having demonstrated to him
that it is necessary to deliver up the forts, they will demonstrate to
him that it is necessary to renounce the blockade, which is not tenable
without the forts; then, who knows? they will demonstrate to him finally
that it is necessary to sign some disgraceful compromise, and submit
almost to the law of the rebels.

Once more, it is prudent to foresee every thing, and it is for this that
I mention such things. I count, moreover, on their not being realized.
In electing Mr. Lincoln, the United States decided thus: Slavery will
make no more conquests. What they have decided, they will ultimately
maintain, even though they should have the air of abandoning it. They
have respected and they will respect the sovereignty of the States; upon
this point they will give all the guarantees that may be desired, and
Congress, we have seen, has already voted an amendment to the
Constitution, designed to offer this basis of compromise. But they will
go no further than this; the North must feel that, of all ways of
terminating the present crisis, the most fatal would be the disavowal of
principles and the desertion of the flag.

The compromises that promise any thing more than respect for the
sovereignty of the States in the matter of slavery, promise more than
they could perform; every one feels this, in the South as in the North.
The policy of the South forms a whole of which nothing subsists if any
thing be retrenched, and above all if the complicity of the Government
ceases to be assured to it. On the day that the South accepts any
compromise whatever, it will have renounced, not the maintenance
doubtless, but the propagation of slavery; it will have renounced its
rule. Compromises, (there will be such, perhaps, let us swear to
nothing; before or after the war, with the entire South, or with a part
of it,) compromises will be signed henceforth without any delusion. The
South knows, marvellously well, that these compromises will bear little
resemblance to those signed in former times. Those marked, by their
constantly increasing pretension, the upward march of the South; these
will mark the phases of its decline. How many changes which can never be
retraced! No more conquests to promote slavery, no more reopening of the
African slave trade, no more impunity secured to those numerous
slave-ships which daily, to the knowledge and in the sight of all, for
years past, have quitted the ports of the Confederation; no more chance
of equalling, by the creation and population of new States, the rapid
development of the North; henceforth the question is ended, the South
must be resigned to it: the majority of the free States will become such
that it can be contested neither in the House of Representatives, nor in
the Senate, nor in the presidential election; the supremacy resides at
the North, the programme of the South is rent in a thousand pieces.

Against this, all the compromises in the world can do nothing. If Mr.
Lincoln is the first President opposed to slavery, Mr. Buchanan is the
last President favorable to slavery; the American policy is henceforth
fixed. Reflect, in fact, on what these four years of government will
produce. The result is so enormous, that, unhappily, one might be
tempted to say at Washington: "We will do all that is wished, provided
we preserve the handling of affairs."

The power of a President is doubtless inconsiderable, but his advent is
that of a party. This party is about to renew all administrations, great
and small; the same majority which has elected him will modify before
long the tendencies of the courts; in fine, the general affairs of the
Union will be managed in a new spirit. It was advancing in one
direction, it is about to move in the opposite. Mr. Lincoln is not one
to shut his eyes on filibustering attempts to strive to take Cuba for
the slavery party, to permit States to be carved out of Mexico, and
others to be made ready by subdividing Texas. The process which is about
to be accomplished reminds me of the measures taken to combat a vast
conflagration: the first thing done is to circumscribe its locality.

At the end of the four years of Mr. Lincoln's administration, the flames
which threatened to devour the Union will be completely hemmed in.
Considering the United States as a whole, and independently of the
incidents of separation, we are justified in believing that the
respective number of free and of slave States will leave no chance for
the ulterior extension of a great scourge. Do we delude ourselves by
thinking that the progress already begun in the border States will have
been accelerated in its course, and that many of them will have freely
passed over to the side of liberty? Is it certain, moreover, that the
hesitation of some of the churches will have ceased, and that the
influence of the Gospel, so decisive in America, will have finally
placed itself entire at the service of the good cause?

Let there be a compromise or not, let the great secession of the South
be prevented or not, let civil war break forth or not, let it give or
not give to the South the fleeting eclat of first successes, one fact
remains settled henceforth: the United States were tottering on their
base, they have regained their equilibrium; the deadly perils which they
lately incurred from the plans of conquest of the South and the
indefinite extension of slavery, are at length conjured down; they have
no longer to ask whether, some day, the South having grown beyond
measure, secession must not be effected by the North, leaving in the
hands of the slaveholders the glorious name and the starry banner of the
Union.

I think that I have gone over the whole series of hypotheses which offer
any probability. I have been careful to adopt none of them, for I make
no pretension, thank God, to read the future. It would be puerile to
prognosticate what will happen, and not less puerile, perhaps, to
describe it from what has happened. In the face of the accidents in
different directions which are attracting public attention and filling
the columns of newspapers, I have attempted to make a distinction
between what may happen and what must endure. The lasting consequences
of the present crisis are what I proposed to investigate faithfully. The
reader knows what are my conclusions. It may be that it will end in the
adoption of some blamable compromise; but whatever may be inscribed in
it, the election of Mr. Lincoln has just written in the margin a note
that will annul the text. The time for certain concessions is past, and
the South has no more doubts of it than the North. It may be that the
slave States will succeed in founding their deplorable Confederacy, but
it is impossible that they should succeed in making it live; they will
perceive that it is easier to adopt a compact or to elect a President,
than to create, in truth, in the face of the nineteenth century, the
nationality of slavery.

I have, therefore, the right to affirm that, whatever may be the
appearances and incidents of the moment, one fact has been accomplished
and will subsist: the United States were perishing, and are saved. Yes,
whatever may be the hypothesis on which we pause, three new and decisive
facts appear to our eyes: we know that the North henceforth has the
mastery; we know that the perils which threaten the Union came from the
South and not from the North; we know that the days of the "patriarchal
institution" are numbered. Beneath these three facts, it is not
difficult to perceive the uprising of a great people.

The victory of the North, the consciousness which it has of its
strength and of its fixed resolution, whatever may be the appearances to
the contrary, to circumscribe an evil which was ready to overflow on
every side, is the first fact; there is no need to return to it.

As to the second, Carolina and Georgia have charged themselves with
bringing it to light. They have proved by their acts that abolitionism
had been calumniated in accusing it of menacing the unity of the United
States. The secessionist passions have shown themselves in the other
camp; there, upon the mere news of a regular election, have been
sacrificed unhesitatingly the greatness, and, it would seem, the very
existence of the country. The proclamations from Charleston, and the
shots fired on the Federal flag, have apprised us of what intelligent
observers suspected already: that the States for which slavery had
become a passion and almost a mission, must some day experience the need
of procuring to such a cause the security of isolation.

And in acting in this wise, these States, strange to say, have
themselves stated the problem of abolition. No one thought of it, it may
be said; every one respected the constitutional limits of their
sovereignty. They would not have it thus; they carried the question
into the territory of Federal right and Federal relations; they
exclaimed: "Secure the extension of slavery, and perish the United
States!" If the United States had perished, there would not have been
maledictions deep enough for those who had committed such a crime. The
United States will not perish; but they will long remember with
gratitude what they owe to the secessionists of 1860. When the hour of
emancipation shall have struck, and it will strike some day, the
secessionists of 1860 will not probably speak of their rights to
indemnity; they have just given a quittance of it in cannon balls.

The third fact remains: Is it true that, in all the hypotheses, the
cause of the negroes has just realized such progress that the ultimate
issue of the contention can no longer be doubtful? This is most obvious.
Let there be separation or not, slavery has just entered upon the road
which leads to abolition, more or less rapid, but infallible. If there
be no separation, this immense progress will he effected with more
wisdom and slowness; violent means will be averted, the benevolent
influence of the Gospel will pave the way for progressive and peaceful
transformation by preaching, to the slaves as to the masters, more of
their duties than of their rights. If there be separation, emancipation
will be accomplished much more quickly and more calamitously. Servile
war will break out; ultra abolitionism, to which hitherto the prudence
of the North has refused all real credit, will be no longer restrained
by the prudence of a people desirous of shunning bloody catastrophes;
sustained by the increasing animosity which will inflame the two
Confederacies against each other, it will find means of introducing into
the South appeals to revolt, and will multiply expeditions like that of
John Brown.

But let us leave these generalities, and examine nearer by, from the
stand-point of emancipation, the four or five hypotheses which we have
signalled out most plainly, and between which seem to lie the chances of
the future.

I shall examine first of all the one whose realization is evidently
pursued by the able men of the extreme South. The question is, after
having speedily gained over the North, thanks to Mr. Buchanan, to arrive
as quickly as possible at something which shall have the appearance and
authority of a fact accomplished. Audacity, and again audacity; upon
this point, the politic and the violent meet in unison to-day. It has
seceded, it has invaded the Federal property, it has trumped up a
government, it has given itself a President, it is about to have an
army, it is already attempting to represent itself officially at the
courts of the great powers.

By the side of audacity, prudence has played its part. It has taken good
care not to unfurl its flag, it has made itself small, modest, moderate,
as much so, at least, as the passions of the mob would permit; it asked
nothing, in truth, but to live honestly in a corner of the globe. Who
speaks, then, of conquests? Who would wish to re-establish the African
slave trade on a large scale? Far from being retrogrades, the men of the
South are champions of progress; witness their programme of commercial
freedom! Are there no honest men to be found in the North, to restrain
Mr. Lincoln, and to prevent him from oppressing them? Are there no
governments in Europe that can interpose, and recommend the maintenance
of peace? Is not this peace, which prevents the insurrections of
negroes, and the destruction of cotton, for the interest of all? Why
should there not be two Confederacies, living side by side, as good
friends?

It is evident that the able party tend to this, and that the violent
have allowed them to give, for the common interest, this subdued tone to
the insurrectionary movement. The able party know too well what a
prolonged war would be to desire it. They prepare for it in the hope, if
not to avoid it entirely, at least to prevent its duration, and to
obtain at once, in behalf of Southern secession, that species of
security which is conferred in our times by the deed accomplished.
Perhaps the United States, yielding to a sentiment which certainly has
something honourable in it, will allow the Confederacy of the Gulf
States to subsist, rather than crush it, which would be but too easy, by
bringing upon it a war which would be accompanied by slave
insurrections. Let us not be in haste to blame such a course; let us
remember that the whole world is prompting in this direction, that all
the counsels given to Mr. Lincoln, in the Old World as in the New, begin
invariably with the words: "Strive to avoid civil war;" let us remember
also that, to solve the American problem, much more time will be needed
than we imagine in Europe; let us endeavor to put ourselves in the place
of those who see things as they are, and who find themselves in a
struggle with the difficulties.

Patience will doubtless have here its great inconveniencies; the
Confederacy of the cotton States, if combated without vigor, will seem
the living proof of the right of separation; it will be an asylum all
prepared, in which the discontented border States can take refuge at
need. Nevertheless the question is to tolerate this Confederacy, but by
no means to recognize the legitimacy of the act which gave it birth; the
question is to make use of a generous forbearance, to which new threats
of secession will necessarily put an end. Then, is it nothing to
manifest a spirit of peace fitted to touch the most prejudiced, to bind
the majority of the border States to the destinies of the Union, to give
evidence of the distinction which exists between them and the extreme
South, to force them, in fine, to declare themselves? If they surmount
the present temptation, (and they will never encounter a stronger one,)
if they consent to sacrifice their immediate interests, and to renounce
the traffic in slaves, which is in danger of ceasing from day to day in
case they do not join the "Confederate States;" is such a resolution
nothing? does it contain no guarantees for the future? We do not set
foot in the right path with impunity; honorable resolves always carry us
further, thank God! than we counted on going. Suppose even that the
border States which refuse to unite with the South design to impose on
the North certain vexatious conditions, they will be none the less
turned from their former alliances, they will have none the less begun
to move in a new direction. We should do wrong if we did not recognize
how honorable is the conduct of several among them; in watching over
their legislatures, in enacting that the vote of secession shall be
submitted to the ratification of the whole people, certain frontier
States seem to have already shown themselves resolved to foil the
intrigues at Charleston.

The cause of emancipation takes, therefore, a very important step in
advance, in the hypothesis of a Southern Confederacy reduced, or nearly
so, to the Gulf States alone. Limited secession is perhaps of all
combinations, the one most favorable to the suppression of slavery.
Picture to yourself, in fact, what this Southern Confederacy will he. It
will be an impossible, short-lived republic, the separation of which
will one day cease, and which, meanwhile, will be incapable of realizing
any of its favorite projects. From the first hour, the extreme South
found itself brought to face a dilemma: either to draw in all the slave
States, and then to await the moment favorable to the execution of its
grandiloquent plans, to hasten towards its destiny, its ideal, to
conquer territories, to people them with negroes, and to perish through
the accomplishment of an impious work; or, to remain alone and undertake
nothing, and still perish, but this time through impotence to exist.
What is to be done when there is only the miserable Confederacy of some
thousand whites, the owners and keepers of some hundred thousand blacks?
Make conquests? They dare not. Open the slave trade? It would draw down
destruction upon them.

Now, mark that, in the bosom of a Confederacy morally isolated from the
entire world, receiving aid neither from immigrants nor capital,
deprived, in a large part at least, of the fresh supply of negroes which
it formerly drew from the North, unable even to incur the risk of
imitating Spain, which buys _free_ negroes from the slave-hunters of the
African continent, not in a condition to stop the escapes which will
take place on all her frontiers, the question of slavery will proceed
necessarily towards its solution. The extreme South, strange to say,
will find itself placed providentially as an obstacle between the United
States and the countries of which it lately meditated the acquisition.
The United States will have the advantage of being unable even to think
of Cuba, or Central America, or Mexico; they will be delivered for a
time from these baleful temptations, and from the States in which they
met the warmest support. And, during this time, the extreme South will
be forced, in some sort, to look at the problem of slavery under an
aspect before unknown to it.

Later will come the shock, the postponed but inevitable conflict.
Blockaded at the South, blockaded at the North, blockaded on the African
side, undermined and torn by its intestine divisions, the extreme South
will have to face, at one time or another, the irresistible power of the
United States. Does any one imagine by chance that the latter will
forever relinquish New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico? The more they
become elevated and strengthened, the more they will be led, say rather,
forced, to absorb again the portions of their former domain which have
attempted to exist without them.

From this time, the discussion relative to slavery will assume in the
United States a simple and decided bearing. The extreme South, in
quitting them, will have given them every facility; it will have endowed
them with political homogeneousness and liberal majorities. By the mere
effect of the departure of the senators and representatives of the
extreme South, the party opposed to slavery will have acquired, at the
outset, the numerical majority which it lacked in Congress; it will be
in a position to ensure the passage of its bills, to form its
administration, to constitute by degrees courts in every respect
favorable to its principles. Next, the border States who shall not have
followed the fortunes of the extreme South will find themselves bound to
those of the North, associated with its interests, open to its ideas;
and it is a fixed fact that several will not be long in completing the
work of liberty already begun among them, and thus becoming, with their
rich and extensive Territories, of the number of those fortunate States
in which the suppression of slavery gives the signal for the fruitful
invasion of immigrants, for agricultural progress, for wealth, and for
credit. In this manner the "patriarchal institution" will disappear
peaceably from the intermediate region, while it will be threatened by
more terrible shocks in the tropical region.

This is a chance which is common to limited and to total secession, but
which is still more unavoidable in the last. Face to face with the
miserable Confederacy of the extreme South, the United States can afford
to be patient; face to face with the Confederacy comprising all the
slave States, (or, which means the same, face to face with two distinct
Confederacies, comprising, the one the cotton States, the other the
border States, yet united against the North through an old instinct of
complicity,) the attitude of the United States, as every one foresees,
will inevitably be more hostile. Total secession itself can be born only
from a sentiment of declared hostility; it amounts to a declaration of
war. Suppose that Mr. Lincoln rejects the advice of those of his cabinet
who would incline to accept the fact of separation; suppose that, while
treating the South with gentleness, and striving to spare it the horrors
of an armed strife, he persists in protecting the rights of the
Confederation, and securing to it, by a maritime blockade, the
collection of taxes; suppose that the blockade is organized from South
Carolina to the Rio Grande, supported by Forts Pickens, Jefferson, and
Taylor, which will have been revictualled at all costs after the forced
evacuation of Fort Sumter; suppose that, in this manner, watch is kept
over the ports of Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans, may it
not happen that the insurrectional government at Montgomery will decide
to effect a march on Washington? Is it not probable that North Carolina,
Virginia, and Maryland will allow themselves to be crossed without
saying a word? More than this, are we not justified in believing that
these States, and with them a considerable number of the central ones,
rallied around their ancient banner by the very approach of peril, will
make common cause with the slave Confederacy? In such a case, how avert
the chances of a direful conflict? Will the United States carry patience
with respect to the aggressors, the fear of giving a signal of ruin,
deference to the counsels lavished on them perhaps, so far as to refuse
to return a violent attack, and to consent to the ravishment of their
capital? It is hard to believe. If the South make the attack, the war
will break out, and the border States will be exposed to the first blow.

But admit that they succeed in preventing an immediate explosion, the
mere fact of a total secession, and of the formation of two
Confederacies, almost equal, (in appearance at least,) will permit no
one to count on the prolonged preservation of peace. What repulsion,
what grievances will be found in all relations, in all questions! And
from a grievance to war, from war to negro insurrections, what will be
the distance, I ask? The South will be then an immense powder magazine,
to which the first spark will set fire. And the South will not lose its
habits of arrogance, it will be quarrelsome as always. Has it not
already announced in its journals that, on the first encouragement
given to its fugitive slaves, it will draw the sword? Now, such
encouragement certainly will not be wanting. The South does not know at
the present time how much the North, of which it complains, contributes
to prevent the escapes which it fears. The Federal Government is at hand
to oppose them, in some measure at least. When the preventive obstacle
shall have disappeared, the South will see with what rapidity its
slavery will glide away on every point of its frontier; it will see its
_happy_ negroes ready to brave a thousand perils rather than remain
under its law. Alas! it will see many other proofs of their devotion to
servitude. I do not like to bring bloody images, at which I shudder, too
often before the eyes of the reader; it must be said, notwithstanding,
while it is yet time, that the general Confederacy of the South,
intoxicated with its projects, resolved to increase its possessions,
forced to demand from the African slave trade the means of repeopling
its States, depopulated by escape, and to install slavery into new
territories, will draw upon it, not only the wrath of the United States,
but the indignation of the entire world. And what misery, what ruin will
ensue from the first conflict!

I like better to fix my thoughts on the third hypothesis--that of a
return to the now broken Union. Taught by experience, recognizing how
little weight it has in the world since its separation from the United
States, poor, weak, divided, comprehending the impossibility of
realizing its true plans without exposing itself to calamities, losing
its resources, one after another, even to the cultivation of cotton,
which also demands credit and security, incapable of preventing the
flight of its slaves, and not daring to brave that great power of public
opinion which will interdict it the African trade, the Southern
Confederacy, exhausted and dismayed, will perhaps one day prefer
returning to the bosom of the Union, to plunging into the extremity of
misfortune. In this case, again, the question of affranchisement will
have made vast strides. The United States will have taken a decided
position in the absence of the South, which its return cannot destroy;
convictions will be fixed, the final impulse will have been given, and
to this impulse, the South, come to repentance, will know that nothing
is left it but to submit.

Finally comes a last hypothesis, which I mention because it is necessary
to foresee every possibility. Under the combined influence of the border
States and the States of the North, equally desirous of maintaining the
Union, the attempts of the extreme South will have failed, its secession
will have lasted only a few months, and a compromise will have served to
cover its retreat. But what compromise could compensate for a fact so
important as the election of Mr. Lincoln? It has a deep significance
which no compromise will remove; it signifies that the conquests of
slavery are ended. This proven, the future is easy to foresee:
increasing majorities in the North, increasing disproportion of the two
parts of the Confederation. At the end of the four years of a Lincoln
administration, the slave States will have lost all hope of struggling,
with their eight thousand whites charged with keeping four millions of
blacks, against the twenty millions of citizens that inhabit the free
States. Let us add that, the future once fixed and the question of
preponderance once resolved, many passions will moderate by degrees. The
number of free States will increase, not only by the settling of new
territories, but also by the affranchisement of the thinly scattered
slaves, becoming continually more thinly scattered, of Maryland, of
Delaware, or of Missouri. We can even now describe this affranchisement,
so well is the _American method_ known. It consists, as every one knows,
in emancipating the children that are to be born. This is the method
which has been uniformly applied in the Northern States, and which will
be doubtless applied some day in the border States, provided, however,
civil war does not come to accomplish a very different emancipation
--emancipation by the rising of the slaves. There will be nothing
of this, I hope; pacific progress will have its way. We shall
then see these intermediate States, one after the other, regaining life
in the same time as liberty: they will become transformed as if touched
by the wand of a fairy.

Such are the future prospects which offer themselves to us. If we
remember, besides, the movement which is beginning to be wrought in the
religious societies and the churches--a movement which cannot fail to be
soon complete, we shall know on what to rely concerning the fate which
awaits a social iniquity against which are at once conspiring the
follies of its friends; and the indignation of its foes.




CHAPTER IX.

COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO RACES AFTER EMANCIPATION.


Something more difficult to foresee than the suppression, henceforth
certain, of slavery, is the consequence of this suppression. The problem
of the coexistence of the two races rests at the present hour with a
crushing weight on the thoughts of all; it mingles poignant doubts with
the hopes of some, it exasperates the resistance of others. Is it true
that emancipation would be the signal of a struggle for extermination?
Is there not room upon American soil for free blacks by the side of free
whites? I do not conceal from myself that there is here an accredited
prejudice, an admitted opinion which, perhaps more than any thing else,
trammels the progress of the United States. Let us attempt to estimate
it.

M. de Tocqueville, who has judged America with so sure an eye, has been,
notwithstanding, mistaken upon some points; his warmest admirers must
admit it. Writing at an epoch when the great results of English
emancipation had not yet been produced, he was led to frame that
formidable judgment of which so much advantage has been taken:
"Hitherto, wherever the whites have been the more powerful, they have
held the negroes in degradation and slavery; wherever the negroes have
been the more powerful, they have destroyed the whites. This is the only
account which can ever be opened between the two races."

Another account is opened, thank God, and no one will rejoice at it more
sincerely than M. de Tocqueville--he who is so generous, and whose
abolition sentiments are certainly no mystery to any of his colleagues
of the Chamber. But his opinion remains in his book, and every one
repeats after him, that the blacks and the whites cannot live together
on the same soil, unless the latter be subject to the former.

I repeat, that at the time at which he wrote, he had reason, or at least
known facts gave him reason, to say this; the liberty of the blacks had
then but one name--St. Domingo. To-day, the victories of Christian
emancipation have come, to contrast with the catastrophes provoked by
impenitent despotism.

The English Colonies bear a striking analogy to the Southern States of
the Union. The blacks there are numerous, more numerous even in
proportion to the whites than in the Carolinas or Florida. The climate
is even more scorching, and the cultures demand still more imperiously
the labor of the blacks. As to the prejudices of the masters, I dare
affirm that the planters of the Continent and those of the Antilles have
not long had any thing with which to reproach each other.
Notwithstanding, what has happened in the Antilles? Not only has liberty
been proclaimed--this was the act of the metropolis--but the coexistence
of races has subsisted. It is to this point that I claim attention.
They, the whites and the blacks, alike free, invested with the same
privileges, exercising the same rights, encountering each other in the
ranks of the militia, in the magistracy, and even in the seats of the
colonial assemblies, admirably accept this life in common. And the
whites there, observe, are Anglo-Saxons; that is, they belong to that
race which is declared incapable of enduring free blacks in its
neighborhood.

It is necessary to appeal sometimes from those axioms so boldly laid
down, which serve us to make inflexible laws for that which must be
subject in an infinite measure to the mobility of circumstances and
influences. The influence of the Gospel, especially, is a fact, the
scope of which is never sufficiently measured. It has created in the
Antilles a negro population which maintains its equality face to face
with the whites, yet which does not entirely reject their patronage; a
dependent population which is also a free population, free in the most
absolute sense of the word. The blacks of the Antilles labor on the
plantations, and secure the success of large plantations; but, at the
same time, they themselves become landholders, forming by degrees one of
the happiest and most remarkable classes of peasants that ever existed.
Their little fields, their pretty villages, manifest real prosperity;
and there is something among them that is worth more than prosperity,
there is moral progress, the development of intellect, and the elevation
of souls.

It will be demanded of us if, in the midst of so much progress, the
production of sugar has not suffered. I answer that, on the contrary, it
has increased. It had been predicted that emancipation would be a
death-blow to the British colonies. I suspect that many people are even
yet persuaded of it; now, in spite of the faults committed by the
planters, who have neglected nothing to disgust the negroes with labor
and to drive them from their old mills, they are found to return to
them, contenting themselves with wages that scarcely rise above an
average of a shilling a day. If we compare the two last censuses of
liberty with the two last years of slavery, we shall discover that the
total production of sugar has increased in the colonies in which
emancipation was effected in 1834. And they have not only had to endure
this crisis of emancipation, but also another crisis still more
formidable, that of the sudden introduction of free trade in 1834. The
colonial sugars, exposed to competition with the sugar produced at
Havana and elsewhere by slave labor, experienced a prodigious decline.
There was cause to believe that the production was about to be
destroyed; it has risen again, notwithstanding, and the English
Antilles, with their free negroes and their unprotected sugar, forced to
face entire liberty in all its forms, import to-day into the metropolis
nearly a million more hogsheads than at the moment when the crisis of
free trade broke forth.

Liberty works miracles. We always distrust her, and she replies to our
suspicions by benefits. The English Antilles, which, during the last
thirty years, have had to surmount, besides the two crises of
emancipation and free trade, the earthquake of 1840 and six consecutive
years of drought; the English Antilles, which have had to liquidate
their old debts, and to repair the ruin accruing from the failure of the
bank of Jamaica, are now in an attitude which proves that they have no
fears for the future and scarcely regret the past.

Under slavery, the Antilles were hastening to their ruin; with liberty,
they have become one of the richest channels of exportation which
England possesses; under slavery, they could not have supported the
shock of free trade; with liberty, they have gained this new battle:
such are the net proceeds of experience. If we still have doubts, let us
compare Dutch Guiana, which holds slaves, to English Guiana, which has
emancipated them. The resources of these two countries are almost equal;
English Guiana is progressing, while the cultures of Surinam are
forsaken; three-fourths of its plantations are already abandoned, and
the rest will follow.

But the question of profits and losses is not the only one here, I
think, and after having computed the proceeds of sugar, after having
shown that in this respect English emancipation is in rule, it is
allowable to mention also another kind of result. Look at these pretty
cottages, this neat and almost elegant furniture, these gardens, this
general air of comfort and civilization; question these blacks, whose
physical appearance has become modified already under the influence of
liberty, these blacks, who decreased rapidly in numbers during the epoch
of slavery, and who have begun to increase, on the contrary, since their
affranchisement; they will tell us that they are happy. Some have become
landowners, and labor on their own account, (this is not a crime, I
imagine;) others unite to strengthen large plantations, or perhaps to
carry to the works of rich planters the canes gathered by them on their
own grounds; some are merchants, many hire themselves out as farmers.
Whatever may be the faults of some individuals, the ensemble of free
negroes has merited the testimony rendered in 1857 by the Governor of
Tobago: "I deny that our blacks of the country are of indolent habits.
So industrious a class of inhabitants does not exist in the world."

An admirable spectacle, and one which the history of mankind presents to
us too rarely, is that of a degraded population elevating itself more
and more, and placing itself on a level with those who before despised
it. Concubinage, so general in times of servitude as to give rise to
the famous axiom, "Negroes abhor marriage," is now replaced by regular
unions. In becoming free, the negroes have learned to respect
themselves: the unanimous reports of the governors mark the progress of
their habits of sobriety. Crimes have greatly diminished among them.
They are polite and well brought up, falling even into the excess of
exaggerated courtesy. They respect the aged: if an old man passes
through the streets, the children rise and cease their play.

These children are assiduously sent to schools, the support of which
depends, in a great part, upon the voluntary gifts of the negroes.
Grateful to the Gospel which has set them free, the former slaves have
become passionately attached to their pastors; their first resources are
consecrated to churches, to schools, and sometimes, also, to distant
missions, to the evangelization of that Africa which they remember to do
it good. We should be at once surprised and humiliated, were we to
compare the much-vaunted gifts of our charity with those of these poor
people, these freed men of yesterday, whom we think that we may
rightfully treat with disdain.

Thanks to the Gospel, and it is to this that I return, the problem of
the coexistence of races is resolved in the most pacific manner in the
Antilles. Among freemen, however little these freemen may be
Christianized, specific inequalities become speedily effaced, and the
prejudice of skin is not found to be ultimately as insurmountable as we
have been told. In these English colonies, which are true republics,
governing themselves, and which also remind us, through this feature, of
the Southern States, the blacks have come to be accepted as
fellow-citizens. They practise the liberal professions; they are
electors and often elected, for they form of themselves alone one-fifth
of the Colonial Assembly at Jamaica; they are officers of the police and
the militia, and their authority never fails to be recognized by all. I
named Jamaica just now. Some may seek to bring it as an argument against
me. The fact is, that this great island has seemed to form an exception
to the general prosperity; considerable fortunes have been sunk there,
and the transformation has been slower and more painful there than
elsewhere. But, when they arm themselves with these circumstances, they
forget two things: first, that the causes of the malady were anterior to
emancipation; next, that the cure has come from emancipation itself.
Before emancipation, Jamaica was insolvent, her plantations were
mortgaged beyond their value, and its planting was threatened in other
ways far more than now. Do you know what has since happened?
Difficulties which appeared insoluble have been resolved; to-day, the
cape is doubled, and men navigate in peace. At the present time, Jamaica
comprises two or three hundred villages, inhabited by free negroes; the
latter are willing to work; for, according to the latest information,
(February, 1861,) the price of daily labor decreases instead of rising.
Among these free negroes, there are not less than ten thousand
landholders, and three-eighths of the cultivated soil is in their hands.
They have established sugar-mills everywhere, imperfect, rude, yet
working in a passable manner; and mills of this sort are numbered by
thousands. The middle class of color thus grows richer day by day; the
families that compose it all own a horse or a mule; they have their
bank-books and their accounts with the savings banks. Lastly, which is
of more value than all else, the free negroes of Jamaica have built more
than two hundred chapels, and as many schools. At the very moment when I
write these lines, an enthusiastic religious movement is prevailing
among them; the rum-shops are abandoned, the most degraded classes
enter in their turn the path of reformation.

I should have been glad to cite our own colonies instead of confining
myself to the English islands. I have been prevented from this, not only
by the memory of the conflagrations of 1859 at Martinique, and of the
state of siege which it became necessary to proclaim there, but, above
all, by the circumstance that the liberty of our former slaves has been
too often restrained by means of the vagabond regulations, that labor
has continued to be imposed on them to a certain point; that the
parcelling out of property has been trammelled by fiscal measures; that,
moreover, it is less the labor of our former slaves than of the Coolies
and others employed, which has secured the success of our experiment;
whence it follows that this success is far from being as conclusive as
that which has been obtained elsewhere under the system of full liberty.
Nevertheless, our success, which is no less real, signifies something
also. If we have not yet those little free villages, that class of small
negro landholders of which I just spoke, we have, like the English, free
negroes in our militia and in our marine; like them, we have had our
elections, and all classes of the population have taken part in them;
like them, and perhaps in a greater degree, we have increased our sugar
production since emancipation. It is true that the crisis of free trade
has not yet passed among us, and that we cannot know how this would be
supported by our colonial sugars. But it will not be long before we
shall be informed on this point: by an act which we cannot but applaud,
and which continues the work it has undertaken, the French government
has just suppressed the protection continued hitherto to our planters.
If, ere long, as it is justifiable to hope, they are delivered from the
charges of the colonial system, whose advantages they have lost, we
shall see them struggle, and successfully, I am convinced, against the
Spanish sugars produced by slave labor.

It will be, perhaps, maintained, that the antipathy of race is stronger
in the United States than elsewhere, and that the Americans, in this
respect, are inferior to the English. I am as conscious as any one else
of those infamous proceedings towards free negroes which are the crime
of the North, a crime no less odious than that of the South. What
conscience is not aroused at the thought of those prejudices of skin
which do not permit blacks to sit by the side of whites, in schools,
churches, or public vehicles? Only the other day, nothing less than a
denunciation in open parliament was needed to begin the destruction, by
a public rebuke, of the classification which is being made on the
English steamers themselves between Liverpool and New York. There are
some new States which purely and simply exclude free negroes from their
Territory; those which do not exclude them from the Territory, repulse
them from the ballot-box. The injustice, in fine, is as gross, as
crying, as it is possible to imagine.

Must we conclude from this that the coexistence of races, possible
elsewhere, is impossible in the United States? I distrust those sweeping
assertions which resolve problems at one stroke; I refuse, above all, to
admit so easily that iniquity must be maintained for the sole reason
that it exists, and that it suffices to say: "I am thus made; what would
you have? I cannot change myself," to abstract one's self from the
accomplishment of the most elementary duty. To endure negroes at one's
side, to respect their independence, to abstain from wrongs towards
them, to consent to the full exercise of their rights, is an elementary
duty; Christian duty, I need not say, demands something better.

Does this mean that we are to set ourselves up as judges, and brand as
wretches all those who thus mistake the laws of charity and justice? I
fear much that, in their place, we would do precisely as they. Living in
the South, we would have slaves, and would defend slavery to the last;
living in the North, we would tread under foot the free colored class.
Is there then neither the true, nor the false, nor justice, nor
injustice? God forbid! The just and the true remain; iniquity should be
condemned without pity; but we are bound to be more indulgent towards
men than, towards things. We are bound to remember that the influence of
surroundings is enormous, and that, if crimes are always without excuse,
there are many excusable criminals. When we examine men by the prejudice
of skin, such as prevails in the United States, we are not long in
discovering that it rests in great part on a misunderstanding: men
mistake coexistence for amalgamation. I do not fear to affirm that the
second would be as undesirable as the first would be desirable. Why
dream of blending or of assimilating the two races? Why pursue as an
ideal frequent marriages between them, and the formation of a third
race: that of mulattoes? America does right to resist such ideas, and to
inscribe her testimony against such a future, evidently very little in
conformity with the designs of God.

But coexistence by no means draws amalgamation in its train. On this
point, also, experience has spoken. In the English colonies, the liberty
of the blacks is entire, the legal equality of the two races is not
contested, public manners have shaped themselves to that mutual
consideration without which they could not live together; yet neither
amalgamation nor assimilation is in question, and the aristocracy of
skin remains what it should be, a lasting distinction, accepted on both
sides, between races which are not designed to mingle together. I do not
know that many marriages are contracted between the whites and the
negresses of Jamaica, and I believe that the class of mulattoes
increases much more rapidly under slavery than with liberty. Look in
this respect at what takes place even now in the United States: as
quadroons sell better than blacks, mixtures, of white or almost white
slaves abound there, and the unhappy women who refuse to lend themselves
to certain combinations are often whipped in punishment.

With liberty, each race can at least remain by itself; with it, there
can be coexistence without amalgamation; both mingling and hostility can
be prevented. This is the more easy, inasmuch as the negroes, with the
gentleness of their race, willingly accept the second place, and by no
means demand what we insist on refusing them. Let their liberty be
complete, let legal equality and friendly relations be maintained, and
they will ask no more.

But they will ask no less, and they are right. I do not understand, in
truth, why so harmless a co-existence should be so long repulsed by the
enlightened people of the United States. There are negroes in Spanish
America who have reached the highest grades of the army, and who show as
much intelligence, decorum, and dignity in command as white men could
do. I myself have seen at Paris, a clergyman of ebony blackness, who was
really the most distinguished, unexceptionable man that it was possible
to meet; he was a remarkable scholar, and had received the title of
doctor from several European universities.

In fact, the negroes are our fellows and our equals much more than we
imagine; they adapt themselves better than the Indians to our
civilization. They seek to be instructed, and not only do the free
blacks of the English islands hasten, as we have seen, to provide
themselves with teachers, but even those of the United States, crushed
as they are by contemptuous treatment, neglect no means of introducing
their children into the schools, where is found one-ninth of their
total number. In Liberia, they have shown themselves hitherto very
capable of ruling. In Hayti, since their deliverance from the ridiculous
and odious yoke of Soulouque, they have advanced rapidly, it is
affirmed, in the way of true progress; legal marriages increase, popular
instruction is becoming established, religious liberty is respected.
Lastly, in the negro colony of Buxton, in Canada, the fugitive slaves
have become industrious landholders, and are respected by all.

Let us not say that prejudice of skin is indestructible; the suppression
of slavery may modify it profoundly. What degrades the free negro
to-day, is the existence of the negro slave. To be respectable, we all
need to be respected. The poor, free negro is ashamed of himself; he
dares not aspire to any thing noble and great; he preserves, besides, as
the legacy of slavery, the idea that labor is dishonoring, that idleness
is a sign of independence. This is enough to make him remain a stranger
to honorable occupations, and confine himself to the practice of vile
trades. When slavery shall have disappeared, the situation of the free
blacks will become quite different: they will be numerous; they will
have an appreciable share in the regulation of national affairs; their
vote will count, and, thenceforth, we may be tranquil, no one will be
afraid to treat them with respect, and perhaps to pay court to them.

The law of New York, as well as the Supreme Court of that State, has
already admitted that color exercises no influence over the rights of
citizens. The time draws near when the North will no longer contest the
intervention of free negroes at the ballot-box. This will be a great
step in advance. Let us remark, moreover, that, after general
emancipation, the black population, while exercising its share of
influence, will never be able, through the number of suffrages at its
disposal, to alarm the jealous susceptibility of the whites; the latter,
in fact, will be continually recruited by European immigration, and the
day will come when the few negroes of the United States will be scarcely
perceptible in the heart of a gigantic nation.

The honor of the North is at stake; it belongs to it to give an example
at this time, and to show, by the reform of its own habits, that it has
the right to combat the crime of the South. It must set to work
seriously, resolutely, to resolve the problem of the coexistence of
races, while the South resolves, willing or unwilling, the problem of
emancipation. Liberty in the South, equality in the North; the one is
no less necessary than the other; it may even be said that one great
obstacle to the idea of emancipation is this other idea that blacks and
whites cannot live together, but that one must some day exterminate the
other.

Why suffer the establishment of this lying axiom which checks all
progress? Why not cast our eyes on the neighboring colonies where the
prejudice of color reigned supremely before emancipation, and where it
has since become rapidly effaced. The United States have a lofty end to
attain; let them beware how they take too low an aim! They will not have
more than they need, with the efforts of all, the charity of all, the
sacrifices of all, the earnest endeavors by which all can elevate
themselves above vulgar prejudices, to accomplish a task at once the
most difficult and most glorious that has ever been proposed to a great
people.

The North, I repeat, is bound to give a noble example by obtaining a
shining victory over itself. Let it say to itself that coexistence is
not amalgamation; the question is not to marry negroes, but to treat
them with justice. The fear of amalgamation once vanished, many things
will change in appearance. Why, in fact, is the prejudice of race
stronger in the free States than in the slave States? Because the latter
know that slavery is a sufficient line of demarcation, and because they
have not to dread amalgamation. Now, this is and will be nowhere to be
dreaded; the instinct of both races will prevent such mingling, and the
blacks are as anxious to remain separate from the whites as the whites
are to avoid alliance with the blacks. As I have said, nothing but
slavery, and the perverse habits that it engenders, could have succeeded
in some sort in breaking down this barrier. If the class of mullattoes
thus formed rule in some republics of South America, it proceeds from
the absence of a numerous and powerful white race, like that which is
covering the United States with its continually increasing population.

Decidedly, fears of amalgamation are puerile in such a country; and
decidedly also, any other solution than the coexistence of races would
be wrong. Doubtless, a natural concentration of the emancipated negroes
will be some day effected; they will flock to those States where their
relative number will ensure to them the most influence. Perhaps we may
even obtain a glimpse of the time when, by the result of a providential
compensation, the countries which have been the witnesses of their
sufferings, and which they have watered with their tears, these
countries where they, better than any others, can devote themselves to
labor, will belong to them in great part. Are the Antilles and the
regions of the Gulf of Mexico destined to become the refuge and almost
the empire of Africans torn from their own continent? It is possible,
but not certain. In any case, this geographical repartition of the races
would be wrought peaceably; the effort to effect it by violent measures
would justly arouse the conscience of the human race. So long as we talk
of transporting the blacks to Africa, to St. Domingo, or elsewhere, so
long as the peaceable coexistence of the races be not accepted, the
barbarous proceedings which dishonor America will not cease, the
Northern States will maltreat their free negroes, and the South will
cling to slavery as to the only means of preventing a struggle for
extermination.

At the North as well as the South, men need to accustom themselves in
fine to the idea of coexistence. Yes, there will be whites and free
blacks in various parts of the Union; yes, it is certain that in some
parts, the black population will be possessed of influence; it may even
happen that, in one or two points of the extreme South, it will come to
rule. If this hypothesis, improbable in my opinion, should ever be
realized, it would not be a cause of shame, but of glory, to the Union.
It is said that the great Indian tribes of the Southwest think of
forming a State, which will demand admission into the Union, and which
has a chance to obtain it. Why should there not be, at need, a negro
State by the side of an Indian State? This reparation would be fully due
to the oppressed race, and America would be honored in treading her
repugnance under foot, and in showing to the whole world that her so
much vaunted liberty is not a vain word.

She would show, at the same time, that her Christian faith is not a vain
formality. If the desire of avoiding amalgamation has legitimate
grounds, the antipathy of race is simply abominable. Words cannot be
found severe enough to censure the conduct of those _Christians_ who,
pursuing with their indignation the slavery of the South, refuse to
fulfil the simplest duties of kindness, or even of common equity,
towards the free negroes of the North.

But I hope that the Gospel, accustomed to work miracles, will also work
this. Let us be just; we have already seen the pious ladies of
Philadelphia lavishing their cares on black and white without
distinction at the time of the cholera invasion. They washed and
dressed with their own hands, in the hospital which they had founded,
the children rendered orphans by the scourge, without taking account of
the differences of color. This is a sign of progress, and I could cite
several others; I could name cities, Chicago, for instance, where the
schools are opened by law to the blacks as well as the whites. There is
a power in the United States which will overthrow the obstacle of the
North as well as that of the South, which will abolish both slavery and
prejudice of skin.

This power has shown in the Antilles what it can do. There, pastors and
missionaries, schools, works of charity pursued in common, have placed
on a level the blacks and the whites, devoted to the same cause, and
ransomed by the same Saviour. In the United States; likewise, the
Christian faith will raise up the one, and will teach the others to
humble themselves; it will destroy the vices of the negro, and will
break the detestable pride of the Anglo-Saxon. The real influence of
faith on both--this is the true solution, this is the true bond of the
races. Through this, will be established relations of mutual love and
respect. What a mission is reserved for the churches of the United
States! Checked hitherto by enormous difficulties, which it would be
unjust not to take into account, they have not acted the part in the
recent struggle against slavery which reverted to them of right. They
have done a great deal, whatever may be said; they are disposed to do
still more, and their attitude has improved visibly within a year. But
this cannot suffice; there are two problems to resolve instead of one;
the question is now, to approach both face to face. True equality is
founded, under the eye of God, through the community of hopes and of
repentance, through close association in worship, in prayer, in action;
and this equality has nothing in common with the jealous spirit of
levelling which suffers old grievances to subsist, and continually
invents new; it is peaceable, forgetful of evil, confiding, truly
fraternal. I do not dream, of course, of the universal conversion of the
population of the United States, both black and white; I know only that
the Gospel, though it deeply penetrates comparatively few hearts,
extends its influence much further, and acts on those that it has not
won. Let the Christians of America set to work, let them reject, for it
is time, the scandals still presented here and there by their apologists
for slavery, let them forbear to spare that which is culpable, to call
good evil, or evil good, and they will render to their country a
service which they alone can render it, and to which nothing on earth
can be compared.

The United States do not know how great will be the transformation of
their internal condition, and the increase of their good renown abroad,
when their churches, their schools, their public vehicles, their
ballot-boxes, shall be widely accessible to persons of color, when
equality and liberty shall have become realities on their soil; they do
not know how great will be their peace and their prosperity. Let the two
inseparable problems of slavery and the coexistence of races be resolved
among them under the ruling influence of the Gospel, and they will
witness the birth of a future far better than the past. No more fears,
no more rivalries, no more separations in perspective, their conquests
will become accomplished of themselves; and, no longer destined to swell
the domain of servitude, they will win the applause of the entire world.

And all this will not be purchased, as men seem to believe, by the
sacrifice of the cotton culture. At the present time, this culture
incurs but one serious risk: the momentary triumph of a party that
dreams of a slavery propaganda; it will be saved alone by the progress
of liberty. On the day when emancipation shall be achieved, if wrought
by the action of moral agents and social necessities, instead of by that
of civil wars and insurrections, the cultivation of cotton in the
Southern States will receive the impetus to a magnificent development.
The emancipated negroes make large quantities of sugar in the Antilles;
why should they not make cotton on firm ground? If affranchisement
produced the destruction of planting in St. Domingo, we know now the
reason. It is a proved fact that negroes who do not owe their liberty to
insurrection, remain disposed to devote themselves to labor in the
fields.

With slavery, observe, disappear, one after the other, the obstacles in
the way of agricultural progress. The capital which no one dares risk
to-day in the Southern States, will flow into them emulously as soon as
slavery shall be abolished; I say more: as soon as its progressive
abolition shall be no longer doubtful in the sight of all. European
immigration, the current of which turns aside with so much
circumspection, avoiding a territory accursed and given over to
calamities, will flock towards those countries more beautiful, more
fertile, and broader than those of the Far West. Machinery will come, to
more than fill up the void caused by the passing diminution of the
number of laborers. The slaves can be intrusted with none but the
simplest implements: every one knows that the plough, introduced
originally into our French colonies, disappeared to make room for the
hoe as soon as Colbert had authorized the slave trade. Ploughs have
reappeared there since emancipation. Their agricultural and industrial
progress date from the same epoch: to-day, our colonists understand the
use of manures, and make improvements in manufacture. A new era is
dawning, in fine; what will it be in the United States, among that
people which seems destined to surpass all others in the application of
mechanics to agriculture?

Still, I have made one concession too much in admitting the diminution
of the number of laborers. Supposing that a few negroes quit the field,
many whites will come to take their place. White labor is fully possible
in the majority of the slave States, and immigrants from Europe will not
hesitate to engage in it. Wherever slavery reigns, it is that, and not
the climate, that must be arraigned if the whites fold their hands;
labor has become there a servile act--it is blighted, as it were, in its
essence. A competent writer said the other day: "If Algeria had been
subjected to the sway of slavery, cultivation there would have been
reputed impracticable for the French, and examples of mortality would
not have been wanting." The whites have labored in the Antilles; the
whites can labor, not only in all the slave States of the intermediate
region, but in Louisiana. Cotton is already produced in Texas, thanks to
its German settlers. The question is only, to go on in this way. Slavery
once abolished, the small proprietors, who at present carry all the
criminal extravagancies of the South further than any others, will be
compelled to set their hands to work. This will be an advantage both to
the country and themselves. Who will not pray for the coming of the time
when so considerable a part of the population will cease to possess
slaves which it is incapable of feeding, when it will be transformed
into the middle class, and thus escape the real servitude which
embitters it?

Moreover, let us not forget new cultures, that of the vine among others,
which are fitted to become introduced into these new countries, or to
develop there, and which lack nothing but liberty in order to flourish.
The arts and manufactures also have their place; independently of the
tillers of the soil, properly called, the Southern States will have need
of workmen in manufactories, and of managers of agricultural machines;
large plantations will often, become divided, as has happened in the
Antilles, and we shall witness the appearance of the small estate, that
essential basis of social order. There will be employment for all, and
the rich Southern cultures will be less neglected than before.

Whoever has descended the Ohio has involuntarily compared its two banks:
here, the State of Ohio, whose prosperity advances with rapid strides;
there, the State of Kentucky, no less favored by Nature, yet which
languishes as if abandoned. Why? Because slavery blights all that it
touches. Could not the whites of Kentucky and Virginia labor as well as
those of Ohio? The comparative poverty of these slave States reminds me
of the destitution of our colonies and those of England before
emancipation: mortgaged estates, plantations burdened with expenses, the
complete destruction of credit--such was their position. We must read
American statistics to form an idea of the truly unheard-of extent of
this fact--impoverishment by slavery. With a larger extent and much
richer lands, the slave States possess neither agricultural growth, nor
industrial growth, nor advance of population, which can be compared far
or near with that which is found in the free States. A book by Mr.
Hinton Rowan Helper, _The Impending Crisis of the South_, expresses
these differences in figures so significant that it is impossible to
contest them.

The Southern States, therefore, are certain to increase their cultures,
and to found their lasting prosperity by entering the path that leads to
emancipation. But if they take the contrary road, they will hasten to
their destruction, and with strange rapidity. Already, their violent
acts of secession, and the monstrous plans which are necessarily
attached to them, have had the first effect, easily foreseen, of dealing
a most dangerous blow to American cotton. In a few weeks, they have done
themselves more harm than the North, supposing its hostility as great as
it is little, could have done them in twenty years. The meeting of
Manchester has replied to the manifestoes of Charleston; England has
said to herself, that, from men so determined to destroy themselves, she
should count on nothing; and, having taken her resolution, she will
proceed with it speedily; let the Southern States take care. English
India can produce as much cotton as America; before long, if the
Carolinians persist, they will have obtained the glorious result of
despoiling their country of its chief resource; they will have killed
the hen that laid the golden eggs. The matter is serious; I ask them to
reflect on it. As England, under pain of falling into want and riots,
cannot dispense with cotton for a single day, she will act
energetically. Cotton grows marvellously in many countries; in the
Antilles, where it has been produced already; in Algeria, where the
plantations are about to be increased; on the whole continent of Africa,
in fine, where it enters perhaps into the plans of God thus to make a
breach in indigenous slavery by the faults committed by slaveholders in
America.




CHAPTER X.

THE PRESENT CRISIS WILL REGENERATE THE INSTITUTIONS
OF THE UNITED STATES.


It remains for me to inquire what influence the present crisis may exert
on the institutions of the United States. It is at the expense of these
institutions that the slave States, inferior in strength, in numbers, in
progress of every kind, would reëstablish their fatal and growing
preponderance. Here again, therefore, my thesis subsists: the victories
of the South had compromised every thing, the resistance of the North is
about to save every thing; the election of Mr. Lincoln is a painful but
salutary crisis, it is the first effort of a great people rising.

The party of slavery had introduced into the heart of American
democracy, a permanent cause of debasement and corruption. In this
respect, also, it was leading the Confederation to its death by the most
direct and speedy way. I wish to show how it developed the worst sides
of the democratic system. I hope to be impartial towards this system;
although persuaded that the government of which England offers us the
model is better suited to guaranty public liberties and to second true
progress in every thing, I am not of those who place the shadow before
the substance, and who condemn democracy without appeal. Are we destined
some day to pass into its hands? Have we already begun to glide down the
descent that leads to it? It is possible. In any case, it would be
unjust to hate America on account of it, as is too often done. America
has had no choice; in virtue of its origin and its history, it could be
nothing else than a democracy. If it has the faults of democracy, the
unamiable rudeness, the violent proceedings, the levelling passions, I
am scarcely surprised at it. I ask myself rather if it has known how to
find a basis of support against the temptations of such a system, if it
has prevented the subjugation of individuals by the mass, the absorption
of consciences by the State, the substitution of the sovereignty of the
end for that of the people. These are the shoals of democracy; have they
been shunned by the United States? Have they been able to avoid
transforming it either into tyranny or socialism? We shall see that, if
it has not succumbed to the temptation, this has not been the fault of
the party of slavery. Thanks to it, the corruption of democratic
institutions was rapidly advancing; a single adversary, constantly the
same, has combated the progress of this work of destruction. We shall
encounter again, upon the ground of political institutions, the
fundamental antagonism of the Gospel and slavery.

I say first, that it is rarely that names are altogether fortuitous, and
do not correspond to things. It has often given rise to astonishment
that the party of slavery should have taken the name of the democratic
party; notwithstanding, nothing was more natural. How could slavery have
been defended if not by exaggerating democracy? It was necessary, in
such a cause, to deny the notions of right, of truth, and of justice; it
was necessary that the greater number should become right, truth, and
justice.

Something more even was needed. The _sovereignty of the end_ must yield,
if necessary, before the sovereignty of numbers. A cause like that of
slavery is only defended in the heart of a democratic nation, by
teaching it contempt of scruples, and the stifling of the conscience.
Every thing is allowable, every thing is good, provided that we succeed
in our ends! This is the rule which it designs shall prevail in
political contests. A single question, seeing nothing but itself,
determined to spare nothing, offering itself to parties, whoever they
may be, who seek a change, creating factitious majorities to effect the
ends of base ambition, taking account neither of honor nor country, and
attaining its end through every thing--this is enough to vitiate
profoundly institutions and morals. The sovereignty of the idea, when it
has laid hands on the sovereignty of the people, is in a position to go
to great lengths, and to sink very low. Moral maxims and written laws
are trodden under foot, a struggle without pity or remorse begins, a
struggle of life and death. Social passions easily acquire a degree of
perversity which political passions do not possess; the former are
without conscience and without compassion; they will be satisfied, cost
what it may; triumph is in their eyes an absolute, an inexorable
necessity. Rather than not conquer, they will rend the country.

What the regular working of institutions becomes under such a pressure,
every one can divine. For some years past, in proportion as the
pretensions of the slavery party had increased, we had seen public
morals become tainted in the United States. Indifference to means had
made alarming progress, and had been felt even in the habits of
commerce, and the relations of private life. The spirit of enterprise
had come to be exalted even in its most dishonorable acts; respect for
bankrupts seemed almost to be propagated. It is a fact, that men like
Mr. Jefferson Davis, the present President of the revolted South, were
not afraid to recommend the repudiation of debts. In the school of
slavery, a disembarrassed and unscrupulous manner of acting had given
its stamp to the general manner of the nation. Affairs were going on
rapidly, the liberties of America were on the high road to ruin; it was
time that the reaction of liberal and honorable sentiments should make
itself felt. The election of 1860 marked the stopping-place.

I wonder that they could have stopped; such a fact demands an
explanation, for ordinarily the declivities of democratic decline are
never remounted. The natural tendency there being to deny the right of
the minority, (the most precious of all,) to sink the man entire in the
ballot, to lay violent hands on the private portion of his life, and to
force even his conscience into the social contract, it follows that
governments arise in which the question of limitation becomes effaced by
the question of origin. In the face of such a power, nothing is left
standing; no more rights, no more principles, no more of those solid and
resisting blocks which serve to stem the popular current; the province
of the State becomes indefinite.

And how much more irresistible and more perverse is this tendency, when
a profound cause of corruption, such as slavery, adds its action to the
strength of such democracies! It is no longer, in such cases, the
sovereign majority alone before which the right may be forced to bow, it
is a party determined to attain its ends, which penetrates with violence
into that domain of conscience where human laws should not enter; a
party which sets about regulating sometimes the belief, sometimes the
thought, sometimes the speech. Such has been the influence exercised in
the United States by the institution of slavery; it has forbidden
authors to write, clergymen to preach, and almost individuals to think
any thing that displeased it; it has invented the right of secession, in
order to have at its disposal a formidable means of intimidation, and to
place a threat behind each of its demands. To yield, to descend, to
descend still further, to obey a continued impulse of democratic
debasement, such is the course to which it has impelled the whole
Confederation.

Notwithstanding, the United States have resisted. I shall tell why; I
shall show by virtue of what marvellous force Americans have escaped the
absolute levelling which seemed destined to be produced by a complicated
democracy of slavery. But I wish first to finish depicting the natural
effects of such a system.

Suppose for a moment a nation (and such are not wanting) modelled after
the antique. The Pagan principle reigns there supremely, the State
absorbs every thing, souls are banded together and governed; a
centralized power, a visible Providence, is substituted for individual
action; creeds have essentially the hereditary and national form; each
one believes what the rest believe, each one does what the rest do, each
one holds the opinions which are found in the ancient traditions of the
country; truth is no longer a personal conviction, acquired at the price
of earnest struggles, and worth much because it has cost much; it
descends to the rank of customs to which it is fitting to conform, it
has its marked place among social obligations, and forms part of the
duties of the citizen.

Let democracy come to establish its empire in the heart of such a
nation, and you will see with what rapidity every thing will disappear
that bears the slightest resemblance to individual independence. The
more effectual the levelling, the greater will seem the community; and
the smaller the individual, the more, too, in face of the privileges of
the whole, will the very idea of personal rights become effaced. The
majority is held infallible, and the minority appears criminal if it
takes the liberty of refusing to subject its thoughts (yes, its very
thoughts) to that of the majority. In this innumerable host of like
beings, no one is authorized to possess any thing in private; of all
aristocracies, that of the conscience appears then least endurable. Men
believe in the majority, in the mass, in the nation. We have no idea of
the intellectual despotism of a democracy which fails to encounter on
its road the obstacle of personal convictions; it disposes of the human
soul, it creates an unlimited confidence in the judgment of public
opinion, it heads a school of popular courtiers, and teaches each one
the art of setting his watch by the clock of the market-place.

Intelligence, conscience, convictions--all bend, and what does not bend
is broken. This happens, above all, we repeat without wearying, when a
detestable cause like that of slavery perverts the working of democratic
institutions. Then, the tyranny of the majorities has no bounds; the
majorities themselves are formed by means of ignoble contracts and
monstrous alliances. In the midst of lower passions let loose, through
banded parties, imperative mandates, and factitious organizations, which
no longer leave the smallest outlet for the flight of the least
independent wish, the perversities of corrupt and misled democracy have
full scope.

In writing these pages, have I described American democracy? Yes and no.
Yes, for such are really the temptations to which America has been
exposed, such are really the vices with which it might have often been
reproached; no, for a principle of resistance has always revealed itself
in the darkest moments, an irrepressible something has always remained.
In vain the heavy roller has passed and repassed over the ground; it has
always encountered blocks of granite that would not be broken. This is
the point which I had at heart to signal out in closing this study,
knowing that it forms its most essential part, and that whoever has not
given it his attention cannot comprehend the United States. The
extraordinary fact, much more extraordinary than is supposed, that,
under the system of democracy ruled by slavery, men have been able to
pause and retrace their steps, is only explained by the peculiar form
which religious belief has put on in the United States. We have not
before our eyes a Latin nation, a nation clad in the vestments of Greece
or Rome, a nation having, according to the ancient mode, its religion
and its usages universally but indolently admitted. This republic of the
New World is by no means one of those slave republics of ancient times,
in which the citizens took delight in conversing on public affairs, but
in which no one had the bad taste to question his conscience with
respect to the public creeds. The pagan life, with its obligatory
worship, its common education, its suppression of the family and the
individual in behalf of the State, its existence transported to the
Forum; the pagan life, in which the citizen absorbs the individual, and
in which the calm and serene uniformity of indifferent centuries ends,
by giving to each one the national physiognomy, bears no resemblance to
the moral and social life of the United States.

Among them, not the smallest trace is found of that system which seeks
to make nations, and which forgets to make men. They were born, as we
may say, of a protestation of the human conscience. A noble origin,
which explains many things! It is, in fact, the revindication of
religious independence against religious uniformity, and the established
church which created it two hundred years ago. Of course, I have not to
examine here the intrinsic value of the Puritan doctrines. I content
myself with affirming that they landed in America in the name of
liberty, that they were destined to establish liberty there, that they
were destined to build there the true rampart against democratic
tyranny.

From the first day, the State was deprived of the direction of the
intellectual and moral man. Despite that inevitable mixture of
inconsistencies and hesitation which marks our first efforts in all
things, the Puritan colonies, destined one day to become the United
States, set out on the road which led to liberty of belief, of thoughts,
of speech, of the press, of assemblage, of instruction. The most
considerable, most important rights were abstracted at the outset from
the domain of democratic deliberations; insuperable bounds were set to
the sovereignty of numbers; the right of minorities, that of the
individual, the right of remaining alone against all others, the right
of being of one's own opinion, was reserved. Furthermore, they did not
delay to break the bonds between the Church and the State entirely, in
such a manner as to deprive the official superintendence of belief of
its last pretext. Self-government was founded, that is, the most formal
negation of subjugation by the democracy. While the latter tends to the
maximum of government, the American Government tends to the minimum of
government, that form _par excellence_ of liberalism. And it does not
tend thither, as in the Middle Ages, by anarchy, by the absence of
national ties, and moreover by despoiling the individual of his rights
of conscience and thought, confiscated then more entirely for the
benefit of a sovereign church than they have been since for the benefit
of the State; no, American individualism proceeds differently: if it
restrains with salutary vigor the province of governments, it is to
enlarge that of the human soul.

This is a great conquest; the whole future of the modern world is
contained in it. Destined as we are to submit, in a measure at least, to
the action of democracy, the question whether we shall he slaves or free
men is resolved in this: shall we, after the example of America, have
our reserved tribunal, our closed domain in which the public power shall
be permitted to see nothing? Shall there be things among us (the most
important of all) which shall not be put to the vote? Shall our
democracy have its boundaries, and beyond these boundaries shall a vast
country be seen to extend--that of free belief, of free worship, of free
thought, of the free home?

It is because American democracy has boundaries that its worst excesses
have finally found chastisement. It is not installed alone in the United
States; opposite it, another power which knows no fear, is occupied with
resisting it. The entire history of America is explained by this double
fact: the falling and the rising again, the servitudes and the
liberties, the too long triumph of the slavery party, and the recent
victory of Mr. Lincoln, the deadly peril so lately incurred, and the
noble future that opens to-day.

Individualism is not isolation, individual convictions are not sectarian
convictions; they found on the contrary the most powerful of the
unities, moral unity. The thing which most actively dissolves societies
while seeming to unite them, is the uniformity of national dogmas which,
accepted as an inheritance, remain without action over the heart. What
are, in fact, the great bonds on earth, if not duty and affection? Now,
nothing but personal convictions, earnestly acquired by the sweat of our
brow, can destroy selfishness in us. Without this strong cement of
convictions at once individual and common, you will build nothing that
will endure. The United States have in their heart strong convictions,
which are also common convictions; through external diversities, we
have seen that fundamental conformity is real, and all earnest appeal to
Christian truths agitates this country, so divided in appearance, from
one end to the other. National life is here a reality. I do not think
that Socialism, which excuses us from believing ourselves, which places
our soul under responsible administration, and preserves us, it is said,
from the baleful disruptions engendered by individualism, succeeds as
well in destroying selfishness and in diffusing ideas of devotion and
duty. When democracy becomes socialistic, (and it never has been able to
become so in the United States,) it grinds down and reduces souls to
such a degree that nothing is left but a fine dust, a sort of
intellectual and moral powder which, it is true, is an obstacle to
nothing, but which creates nothing either. To build an edifice, stones
are needed, sand will not suffice.

Christian individualism makes the stones, and the democratic party has
just perceived it. In a country where independence of soul has
acclimated independence in all its forms, men may indeed bow the head
sometimes to democracy allied to slavery; but this debasement has a
limit, and the time is coming when they will raise their heads. Strong
beliefs are a strong rampart, the slaves of truth are free men, and
true independence begins in the heart. To have convictions in order to
have characters, to have believers in order to have citizens, to have
energetic minds in order to have powerful nations, to have resistance in
order to have support--such is the programme of individualism. Show me
a country where men are proud enough not to bow before the majority,
where they do not think themselves lost when they depart from, the
beaten track, and jostle of received opinions; and I will admit that
there it will be possible to practise democracy without falling into
servitude.

There is but one country of individual belief, that could attempt the
alliance, hitherto deemed impossible, of democracy and liberty. The
theory in accordance with which the public liberties of England have the
aristocracy for their essential basis, is admitted as an axiom; without
contemning this element of social organization, it is advisable to mine
deeper than this to discover the true foundation of liberty. Individual
belief--this is the foundation. The more we reflect, the more we
discover that the essential thing is not the forms of government, or
even the relations of the different classes, but the moral state of the
community. Are men there? Have souls become masters of themselves? Are
characters formed? Has the force of resistance appeared? Whoever shall
have replied to these questions will have decided, knowingly or
unknowingly, whether liberty be possible.

I do not know that any people should be excluded from liberty; only all
are bound to pursue it by the path that leads to it, by earnestness of
convictions, by internal affranchisement, which signifies by the Gospel.
We may seek in vain, we shall find no means comparable to this (I speak
in the political point of view) when the question is to make citizens.
To place one's self under the absolute authority of God and his word, is
to acquire in the face of mere parties, majorities, general opinions, an
independence that nothing can supply. The independence within is always
translated without; he who is independent of men, in the domain of
beliefs and of thoughts, will be equally so in the domain of public
affairs. Thus democracy itself will not degenerate into socialism. No
one has been able to point out the slightest symptom of socialism in the
United States. Notwithstanding, democracy is fully complete there, and
the election of Mr. Lincoln, once drover, once flatboatman, once
rail-splitter, once clerk--of Mr. Lincoln, the son of his works, who has
succeeded by his own powers in becoming a well-informed man and an
orator, this election proves certainly that American equality is not
menaced by the success of the republican party. It menaces only the evil
democracy, which, under the guidance of the slavery party, sought to
force the nation into the path of socialism. But it will not succeed in
this; the question has just been decided. Between these two systems,
which are to contend for contemporaneous communities, between socialism
and individualism, the choice of the United States is made.

Before witnessing the affranchisement of the slaves, we shall,
therefore, witness the affranchisement of American politics. They have
endured a shameful yoke, and received sad lessons. Since Jefferson, the
born enemy of true liberalism, founded the Democratic party, the United
States had continued to descend the declivity of radicalism; a work of
relentless levelling was thenceforth pursued, and the domain of the
conscience became gradually invaded. The democratic party found its
fulcrum in the South. The slave States forced the enclosure of the
private tribunal, and confiscated in behalf of the State the inviolable
rights of the individual: neither thought, the press, nor the pulpit,
were free among them; the fundamental maxims of Puritan tradition were
sacrificed by them one after the other. They did more: thanks to them,
men were beginning to learn in the free States how to set to work to
pervert their own consciences, and to substitute for it respect for
sovereign majorities. Every day, crying iniquities were covered by the
pretext: "If we were just, we should compromise the national unity, or
we should risk losing the votes secured to our party." Violence, menace,
brutality, and corruption, were boldly introduced into political
struggles. Men became habituated to evil: the most odious crimes, the
Southern laws reducing to legal slavery every free negro who should not
quit the soil of the States, hardly raised a murmur of disapprobation;
the United States seemed on the point of losing that faculty which
nothing can survive--the faculty of indignation.

Behold in what school the democratic party had placed the American
people--that noble people which, despite the grave faults with which it
may be reproached, represents in the main many of the lofty principles
which are allied to the future of modern communities. The reign of the
Democratic party would form the subject of an inglorious history; in it
we should see figure the glorification of servitude, piracy applied to
international right, and, in conclusion, those facts of corruption and
waste which served to crown its last Presidency. The most consistent
champions of the doctrines and practices of the democratic party, are
those men who have just declared that votes are valid only on condition
of giving the majority to slavery, and that a regular election is a
sufficient cause for separation.




CONCLUSION.


I have not sought to recount events, but to attempt a study, which I
believe to be useful to us, and which may, also, not be useless to the
United States. We owe them the support of our sympathy. It is more
important than people imagine to let them hear words of encouragement
from us at this decisive moment. Let us not hasten to declare that the
Union is destroyed, that, henceforth and forever, there will be two
Confederacies existing on the same footing, that the United States of
slavery will have their great _rôle_ to perform here below, like the
United States of liberty. This would be, in any case, immense
exaggeration. Let us not forget that the Union has often before seemed
lost, that the Confederation has often before seemed ready to perish.
Are the men who are terrified at the present perils, ignorant of those
which surrounded the cradle of the United States: mutinous troops,
contending ambitions, threats of separation, anarchy, ruin? This
America, then so weak, is the same that has since become so strong, in
spite of its own faults. At the moment when it rebelled against England,
it had neither arts and manufactures, nor commerce, nor marine; and its
two or three millions of inhabitants were far from agreeing among
themselves. Yet such is the vigor of its genius, such is its
carelessness of every kind of danger, such is the impetuosity with which
it affronts and surmounts obstacles, such is the power of its national
motto; "Go ahead!" that through internal struggles, crises, and
momentary exhaustion, it has attained the stature of a great people.
Count the steamboats on its rivers, estimate the tonnage of its vessels,
compute the amount of its internal trade, measure the length of its
canals and railroads, and you will still have but a faint idea of what
it is capable of undertaking and accomplishing.

We must remember these things, and not imitate those enemies of America
who sometimes feign to put on mourning for her, sometimes jest at her
distress, and find in the present situation of the _disunited States_
(for thus they style them) an agreeable subject for pleasantry,
forgetting that this disunion has a serious cause, which is certainly of
importance enough to make itself understood; forgetting, too, that
generous struggles for humanity and the country are worthy to obtain our
fullest respect. And let us beware how we say that this crisis does not
concern us--that we can do nothing in it. The selfish isolation of
nations is henceforth impossible. The question to be decided here
involves our own affairs, not only because a portion of our fortune is
pledged to the United States, but, above all, because our principles and
our liberties are concerned. The victories of justice, wherever they may
be won, are the victories of the human race.

We can aid this one in some measure. America, which affects sometimes to
declare itself indifferent to our opinions, gathers them up, however,
with jealous care. I have seen respectable Americans blush at
encountering that instinctive blame which, among us, is addressed to the
progress of slavery; they suffered at seeing their country thus fallen
from the esteem which it formerly enjoyed. Proud nations like America
always avenge themselves by noble impulses for the reprobation which
they are conscious of having deserved. The moral intervention of Europe
is not, therefore, superfluous; it is the less so, in that the South
insults us by counting on us. The ringleaders of Charleston and New
Orleans affect to say that England is ready to open her arms to them,
and that France promises a sympathizing reception to her envoys! These
envoys themselves have been selected with care, honorable, having
friends among us,--capable, in a word, of presenting the cause of
slavery in an almost seductive light. It is important, therefore, that
we should not keep silence.

Let governments be reserved; let them avoid every thing that would
resemble direct action in the internal affairs of the United States, let
them have recourse to the commonplaces of speech employed by diplomacy
to escape pledging their policy--this is well. But to imagine that these
commonplaces promise alliance or protection, is to be credulous indeed!
A rebellion under cover of the flag of slavery, be sure, will find it
difficult to make partisans among us French, whatever may be our
indolent indifference in other respects in this matter, an indifference
so great that at the present time the American question _does not exist_
to the most of us. Moreover, we shall shake off this inertia; and, as to
the English, they will not suffer their brightest title to glory in
modern times to be tarnished by any latent complicity with the Gulf
States. The brutal doctrines of interest, so often professed publicly in
Parliament by Mr. Bright, may indeed find organs; and Great Britain
will be counselled to remember cotton and forget justice. The measure
already taken by her at Washington, and which appears to have been
supported by France, a measure designed to declare that the blockade of
the Southern ports must be effectual to be recognized, is perhaps a
concession wrested from her by this detestable school of selfishness.
Happily, there is another school face to face with this; the Christian
sentiment, the sentiment of abolition, will arise and enforce obedience.
Never was a more important work in store for it. To unveil every
suspicious act of the British Government, to keep public opinion
aroused, to maintain, in fine, that noble moral agitation which makes
the success of good causes and the safety of free nations, such is the
mission proffered in England to the defenders of humanity and the
Gospel. If they could forget it, the populace of Mobile or Savannah
pursuing English consuls, would remind them to what principle the name
of Great Britain is inevitably pledged, for the sake of its honor.
France and England, I am confident, will act in unison, here as
elsewhere; their alliance which comprises within itself the germs of all
true progress, will be found as useful and as fruitful in the New World
as it has proved in the Old.

This is of such importance that I beg leave to dwell on it; evidently
our influence has not yet been exercised as it should have been, and if
Mr. Lincoln now bends somewhat before counsels devoid of energy and
dignity, it proceeds in part from our reserve, our silence, our apparent
neutrality--who knows? even from the discouraging language that has
been sometimes held in our name. The publication of the unlucky Morrill
Tariff, (signed, we may say in passing, by Mr. Buchanan, and the
revocation of which, I am convinced, will be signed some day by Mr.
Lincoln,) has given the signal for political demonstrations, all of
which are very far from being to the credit of Europe. Our _Moniteur_
has published articles to be regretted, but it is above all among the
English that the cotton party has had full scope.

Let England beware! it were better for her to lose Malta, Corfu, and
Gibraltar, than the glorious position which her struggle against slavery
and the slave trade has secured her in the esteem of nations. Even in
our age of armed frigates and rifled cannon, the chief of all powers,
thank God! is moral power. Woe to the nation that disregards it, and
consents to immolate its principles to its interests! From the beginning
of the present conflict, the enemies of England, and they are numerous,
have predicted that the cause of cotton will weigh heavier in her scales
than the cause of justice and liberty. They are preparing to judge her
by her conduct in the American crisis. Once more, let her beware!

And under what pretexts do we chaffer with the government of Mr. Lincoln
for those energetic, persevering sympathies on which it has a right to
count? Let us examine.

We hear, in the first place, of the vigor of the South and the weakness
of the North. It is not the first time that a bad cause has shown itself
more ardent, more daring, less preoccupied by consequences, than a good
one. Good causes have scruples, and every scruple is an obstacle.

I am assuredly as sorry as any one to see Mr. Lincoln struck with a sort
of paralysis. To my mind, the dangers of inactivity are considerable; I
believe that it discourages friends and encourages adversaries; I
believe that it sanctions more or less the baleful and erroneous
principle of secession, a principle more contagious than any other; I
believe, in fine, that, by postponing civil war, it probably risks
increasing its gravity. Nevertheless, shall we not take into account the
exceptional difficulties with which Mr. Lincoln is surrounded?

The preceding Administration took care to leave no resource in his
hands: he found the forts either surrendered or indefensible, the
arsenals invaded, the army scattered, the navy despatched to distant
parts of the seas. Is it strange that he should have yielded in some
degree to the entreaties of so many able men, all urging in the same
direction? If to-morrow he should yield entirely, if he should recognize
the Southern Confederacy, would it be great cause for astonishment?

Let us not forget, moreover, that the border States are at hand, forming
a rampart, as it were, to protect the extreme South. Several of these
States, I am convinced, incline sincerely towards the North, and will
remain united with it; but are there not others, Virginia, for instance,
which perhaps only refrain from seceding for the better protection of
those that have done so, and whose present rôle consists in preventing
all repression, while its future rôle will be to trammel all progress by
the continued threat of joining the Southern Confederacy?

These are serious obstacles; yet I have not pointed out the most serious
of all--the intense and sincere repugnance which many Northern people,
though declared adversaries of slavery, experience towards measures
that are calculated to provoke slave insurrections, and endanger the
safety of the planters. I must acknowledge that the patience of the
strong seems here rather more laudable than the so much vaunted audacity
of the weak, who count on this patience, and know that they can be
arrogant without much risk.

The second pretext that is audaciously brought forward to solicit our
good will towards the South, is that it has just ameliorated the Federal
institutions. Let us ask in what consists this pretended amelioration?
The South has not feared to write in set terms, in its fundamental law,
what none before it ever dared write, _the constitutional guarantee of
slavery_. Slavery, in accordance with the Constitution of the South, can
neither be suppressed nor assailed. Slavery will be the holy ark to be
regarded with respect from afar off, the corner-stone which all are
forbidden to touch. By the side of this, the South ostentatiously
proclaims freedom of speech, of the press, of discussion in every form!
Men shall be free to speak, but on condition of not touching, nearly or
remotely, on any subject connected with slavery, (and every thing is
connected with it in the South.) They shall be free to print, but on
condition of giving no writing whatever to the public from which may be
inferred the unity of mankind, the sanctity of family ties, the great
principles, in fact, which the "patriarchal system" throws overboard.
They shall be free to discuss, but on condition of not disturbing this
institution, impatient by nature, and still more so in future, now that
it feels itself hemmed in and threatened on all sides. It will be by
itself alone the whole Constitution of the South; this one article will
devour the rest; in default of legislatures and courts, the Southern
populace know how to give force to the guarantee of slavery, and to
restrain freedom of speech, of the press, and of discussion.

It is true that adroit patrons of the South Carolinian rebellion have a
third argument at their service which is no less specious. "All is
over," they exclaim, "there is nobody now to sustain, there are no
sympathies now to testify; in four days, peace will be made, the new
Confederation will be recognized by Lincoln in person, a commercial
treaty will even ally it to the United States: the affair is ended."

The affair is scarcely begun, we answer; one must be blind not to see
it. What is ended, is only the first skirmish. As to the war, it will be
as long, believe me, as the life of the two principles which are
struggling in America. Let Mr. Lincoln assure himself, and let the
European adversaries of slavery remember as well, that it will be
necessary to combat and to persevere. Never was a more obstinate and
more colossal strife commenced on earth. Many of the border States will
not be long in raising pretensions to which they will join threats of
new secessions; they will again bring up the question of the
Territories, and will propose compromises. Who knows? they will aspire
perhaps to establish, in the interests of the extreme South, the
extradition of slaves escaped from the rival Confederacy. Who knows
again? they will perhaps attempt to restore their domestic slave trade
with Charleston and New Orleans.

This is not all. The time will come when the extreme South, incapable of
enduring the life that it has just created for itself, will demand to
return to the bosom of the Union. It will then insist on dictating its
conditions; it will propose the election of a general convention charged
with reconstructing the Constitution of the United States; it will
appeal to the selfishness of some, and to the ambition or even the
patriotism of others, presenting to their sight the re-establishment of
the common greatness which separation had compromised. What a motive to
veil principles for a moment! what a temptation to return to the fatal
path so lately forsaken!

I know very well that it will be henceforth impossible to return to it
completely; nevertheless, the vigilance of Mr. Lincoln will not cease to
be necessary, and what will be no less necessary, is the moral support
which we are bound to lend him in the hour of success and in the hour of
discouragement, in good and in bad reputation. Where do we find a more
glorious cause than this? despite the impure alloy which is mingled with
it, of course, as with all glorious causes, is it not fitted to stir up
generous hearts? Already, thanks to the defeat of the democratic party,
the United States that we once knew, those of the last ten years, those
that the South governed with its wand, those whose institutions were
corrupted and debased by slavery, those who numbered in the North as in
the South so many fortunes based openly on the slave traffic, those who
had seen among their Presidents a slave merchant, carrying on his
speculations in public view--these United States have just ended their
career, they have entered the domain of history, their disappearance has
been verified by the retreat of the extreme South.

The American people are now striving to rise. Enterprise as difficult
as glorious! Whatever may be the issue of the first conflict, it will be
only the first conflict. There will be many others; the uprising of a
great people is not the work of a day. Sometimes at peace, sometimes
perhaps at war with the States that take in hand the cause of slavery,
the American Confederation will witness the development, one after
another, of the consequences necessarily produced by that decisive
event, the election of Mr. Lincoln. Having broken with the past, it will
be forced to enter further and further into the path of the future. We
have already seen that, whichever hypothesis is realized of those which
we are permitted to foresee, the cause of slavery is destined to
experience defeat after defeat. It has ceased to grow, it is about to
decrease, to decrease by separation, to decrease by union, to decrease
by peace, to decrease by war. As surely as there will be obstacles
without number to surmount in order to accomplish this work, so surely
will this work be accomplished. Certainly, it deserves to be loved and
sustained, without discouragement and hesitation. Europe will comprehend
it.

On seeing her attitude, the angry champions of slavery will doubtless
perceive that they are mistaken, and that it is time to make new
calculations. As for the brave men of the North, they will he glad to
learn what is thought of them on this side of the Atlantic. This may
aid, and greatly, in the more or less distant re-establishment of the
Union. If the Gulf States knew what insurmountable disgust will be
aroused here by their Confederacy, founded to secure the duration and
prosperity of slavery; if the border States knew what sympathies they
will gain by siding with liberty, and what maledictions they will incur
by declaring themselves for slavery; if the Northern States knew what
support is secured to them by that power, the chief of all others,
public opinion, we are justified in believing that the present crisis
would come to a prompt and peaceful solution.

It is a fixed fact that the nineteenth century will see the end of
slavery in all its forms; and woe to him who opposes the march of such a
progress! Who is not deeply impressed by the thought that, on the 4th of
March, at the very hour when Mr. Lincoln, in taking possession of the
Presidency at Washington, signified to the attentive world the will of a
great republic, determined to arrest the conquests of slavery, the
generous head of a great empire signified to his ministers his
immutable resolve to prepare for the emancipation of the serfs. In such
coincidences, who does not recognize the finger of God. I am, therefore,
tranquil: Russian opposition has failed, American opposition will fail.
There will be American opposition; there will be, there is such already,
in the very surroundings and cabinet of the President. We have just seen
how it seeks to enervate his resolutions, to pledge him irrevocably to
that wavering policy, more to be dreaded for him than the projects of
assassination about which, right or wrong, so much noise has been made.
Nevertheless, this evil has its bounds marked out in advance; he whom
God guards is well guarded. If you wish to know what the Presidency of
Mr. Lincoln will be in the end, see in what manner and under what
auspices it was inaugurated; listen to the words that fell from the lips
of the new President as he quitted his native town: "The task that
devolves upon me is greater, perhaps, than that which has devolved on
any other man since the days of Washington. I hope that you, my friends,
will all pray that I may receive that assistance from on high, without
which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain." "Yes, yes;
we will pray for you!" Such was the response of the inhabitants of
Springfield, who, weeping, and with uncovered heads, witnessed the
departure of their fellow-citizen. What a _debut_ for a government! Have
there been many inaugurations here below of such thrilling solemnity? Do
uniforms and plumes, the roar of cannon, triumphal arches, and vague
appeals to Providence, equal these simple words: "Pray for me!" "We will
pray for you"! Ah! courage, Lincoln! the friends of freedom and of
America are with you. Courage! you hold in your hands the destinies of a
great principle and a great people. Courage! You have to resist your
friends and to face your foes; it is the fate of all who seek to do good
on earth. Courage! You will have need of it to-morrow, in a year, to the
end; you will have need of it in peace and in war; you will have need of
it to avert the compromise in peace or war of that noble progress which
it is your charge to accomplish, more than in conquests of slavery.
Courage! your rôle, as you have said, may be inferior to no other, not
even to that of Washington: to raise up the United States will not be
less glorious than to have founded them.

It is doubtless from a distance that we express these sympathies, but
there are things which are judged better from a distance than near at
hand. Europe is well situated to estimate the present crisis. The
opinion of France, especially, should have some weight with the United
States: independently of our old alliances, we are, of all nations,
perhaps, the most interested in the success of the Confederation. They
are friendly voices which, here and elsewhere, in our reviews and our
journals, bear to it the cordial expression of our wishes. In wishing
the final triumph of the North, we wish the salvation of the North and
South, their common greatness and their lasting prosperity.

But the South disquiets us; we cannot disguise it. It is in bad hands. A
sort of terror reigns there; important but moderate men are forced to
bow the head, or to feel that it will be necessary to do so ere long.
The planters must see already that, in seeking to put away what they
call the yoke of the North, they are preparing for themselves other
masters. Business is suspended, money for cultivation is lacking, credit
is everywhere refused, the ensuing harvest is mortgaged, the loans which
it is sought to issue find no takers outside the extreme South. The
resources of revolution remain, and they will be used unsparingly.

What a position! Under the Constitution voted scarcely a month ago, we
already hear the deep rumbling of the quarrels of classes, of the
planters and the poor whites, of the aristocracy and the numerical
majority, of the prudent adversaries of the slave trade and its
headstrong partisans, of the statesmen who are tolerated for appearances
and those who count on replacing them, of the present and the future.

People will some day see clearly, even in Charleston. The separation
which was to establish the prosperity of the South by permitting it at
last to live to its liking, to obey its genius, and to serve its
interests, has hitherto resulted in little, save the singing of the
_Marseillaise, (the Marseillaise of Slavery!)_ and the striking down of
the Federal colors before the flag of the pelican and the rattlesnake. A
great many blue ribbons and Colt's revolvers are sold; and busts of
Calhoun, the first theorist of secession, axe carried about
ostentatiously. Next, to present a good mien to the eyes of Europe, a
Constitution is voted in haste, a government is formed, an army is
decreed; but the revolutionary basis is remaining, and we perceive but
too quickly how great disorder prevails in minds and things.

At the present hour, the democracy of the South is about to degenerate
into demagogism and dictatorship. But the North presents quite a
different spectacle. Mark what is passing there; pierce beneath
appearances, beneath inevitable mistakes, beneath the no less inevitable
wavering of a _debut_ so well prepared for by the preceding
Administration, and you will find the firm resolution of a people
uprising. Who speaks of the end of the United States? This end seemed
approaching but lately, in the hour of prosperity; then, honor was
compromised, esteem for the country was lowered, institutions were
becoming corrupted apace; the moment seemed approaching when the
Confederation, tainted by slavery, could not but perish with it. Now,
every thing has changed aspect; the friends of America should take
confidence, for its greatness is inseparable, thank God! from the cause
of justice.

_Justice cannot do wrong_; I like to recall this maxim when I consider
the present state of America. In escaping a sudden and shameful death,
it will not, assuredly, escape struggles and difficulties; in returning
to life, it will encounter battle and danger longer than it imagines;
life is composed of this. To live is a laborious vocation, and nations
who wish to keep their place here below, who wish to act and not to
sleep, must know that they will have their share of suffering. Perhaps
it enters into the plans of God that the United States should endure for
a time some diminution of their greatness; let them be sure,
notwithstanding, that their flag will be neither less respected nor less
glorious, if it shall thus lose a few of its stars. Those which it loses
will reappear on it some day, and how many others, meanwhile, will come
to increase the Federal Constellation! With what acclamations will
Europe salute the future progress of the United States, as soon as their
progress shall have ceased to be that of slavery!

At present, the point in question is to liquidate a bad debt. The moment
of liquidation is always painful; but when it is over, credit revives.
So will it be in America. She has often boasted of the energetic
sang-froid of her merchants; when ruined, they neither lament, nor are
discouraged; there is a fortune to make again. In the same manner,
putting things at the worst, supposing the present crisis to be
comparable to ruin; there is a nation to make again, it will be re-made.
"Gentlemen," said Mr. Seward lately, in concluding his great speech in
Congress, "if this Union were shattered to-day by the spirit of faction,
it would reconstruct itself to-morrow with the former majestic
proportions."




A WORD OF PEACE

ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLAND AND
THE UNITED STATES.

BY COUNT AGÉNOR DE GASPARIN.




A WORD OF PEACE.


       *       *       *       *       *


Between the meetings of Liverpool and the ovations of New York, is there
not room for a word of peace? A word of peace, I know well, must be a
word of impartiality. The speaker must resign himself to be treated as
an American in England, and as an Englishman in America; but what does
this matter if truth make its way, and if an obstacle the more be raised
in the way of this horrible war, this war contrary to nature, which
would begin by ensuring the triumph of the champions of negro slavery,
and would end by exposing the cause of free institutions to more than
one perilous hazard?

There is one fundamental rule to follow in questions arising out of the
right of search: to distrust first impressions. These, are always very
vivid. An insult to the honor of the flag is always in question.
Patriotic sensibilities, which I comprehend and which I respect, are
always brought into play. It is impossible that these officers, these
stranger sailors, who have given commands and exacted obedience, who
have stopped the ship on its way, who have set foot on the sacred deck
where floats the banner of the country, who have interrogated, who have
searched, who have had recourse, perhaps, to graver measures--it is
impossible that they should not have called forth many sentiments of
anger and indignation. Even when practised with the most rigid
formalities, even when confined within the limits of the strictest
legality, the right of search cannot fail to produce a feeling of
annoyance. The recent search of the _Jules et Marie_, the yards of which
were carried away and the barricadings driven in, seems to me the
faithful type of all visits of search on the high seas--every one of
them brings damages in its train.

Notwithstanding, the right of search is disputed by no one, and will be
exercised in time of war, until the moment when the American
proposition, reproduced again the other day by General Scott, shall be
welcomed by our Old World.

I have just written the name of General Scott, and I did so with a
feeling of pleasure. Whoever has read his letter, must have said to
himself with me, that there exists in the United States a class of
intelligent and moderate men--patriots, who have given proof of their
capacity and are capable of examining dispassionately the demands of the
English Government. These men know how much the maintenance of friendly
relations with England is worth in the present position of America.
Whatever opinion they may form on the question of right growing out of
the action of Captain Wilkes, they comprehend that no consideration can
weigh in the balance against the danger of bringing about the
recognition of the Southern Confederacy, the breaking of the blockade,
war, in short, with a powerful and friendly nation, a sister nation,
sprung from the same blood, speaking the same language, devoted to the
same mission of civilization and liberty. No honorable sacrifice would
cost them too dear in order to avert this fearful catastrophe.

Would that they could see with their own eyes, were it but for a moment,
what is passing to-day in Europe! Their enemies triumph, and their
friends are struck with consternation. We, who have always loved
America, and who love her better now that she is suffering for a noble
cause; we who have defended her, we who have never ceased to believe in
her final success, despite mistakes and repulses, feel all our hopes
threatened at once; the ground seems sinking beneath our feet. No, we
cannot suppose that America, in recklessness of heart, will destroy with
her own hands the fruit of so many efforts and sacrifices. This would
not be patriotism, it would not be dignity, it would be an act of
madness and suicide.

If the _Trent_ has violated the rules of neutrality, it remains none the
less certain that other rules have been violated by the _San Jacinto_.
The duty of naval officers is limited to visiting ships and stopping
them, if need be, to carry them before a prize court. They cannot
exercise the office of judge. In substituting the arrest of individuals
for the seizure of ships, and a military act for a judicial decree,
Captain Wilkes has given ground for the well-founded protests of
England, at the same time that he has left the way open, thank God! for
measures of reparation to be adopted by the United States.

I know very well that there would have been no less indignation at
Liverpool and London in case that the _Trent_ had been stopped on her
way and carried before American courts. Perhaps, indeed, the regular and
correct procedure would have been more deeply wounding than that of
which England complains. We may be permitted to doubt with General
Scott that "the injury would have been less, had it been greater." But
this is not the practical question, the only one that now concerns us.
The point is to get out of embarrassment; and the error committed by the
commander of the _San Jacinto_ furnishes a reasonable ground for
consenting to the liberation of the prisoners.

Far from being a humiliation to the Government at Washington, this act
of wisdom would be one of its brightest titles to glory. It would prove
that it is not wanting in moral power, that men calumniate it in
representing it as the slave of a bad democracy, incapable of resisting
the clamor of the streets, and of accepting, for the safety of the
country, an hour of unpopularity.

Let it believe us, its true friends, that in arresting Messrs. Mason and
Slidell, it has done more for the cause of the South than Generals
Beauregard or Price would have done by winning two great victories on
the Potomac and in Missouri. Messrs. Mason and Slidell are a hundred
times more dangerous under the bolts of Fort Warren than in the streets
of Paris or London; what their diplomacy would not certainly have
obtained for them in many months, Captain Wilkes has procured for them
in an hour. See what rejoicing is taking place in the camps of the
Southern partisans! They were beginning to despair; recognition, that
only chance of the defenders of slavery, seemed farther off than ever;
the recent successes of the Federal army announced the commencement of a
great change in affairs. The war was carried from the suburbs of
Washington to the heart of South Carolina itself; the only resources of
consequence remaining, were those that might spring up during the winter
from the discontent of our industrial centres. Yet behold, suddenly, the
state of affairs transformed; recognition becomes possible, the blockade
is threatened, the United States are in danger of being forced to turn
from the South to face a more redoubtable foe!

Really, what has Mr. Jefferson Davis done for you, that you should
render him such a service!

Let us now turn to England, and tell her also the truth.

So long as England shall not treat the affair of the _Trent_ on its own
merits and with coolness, so long as she shall give ear to those
falsehoods invented by passion, which envenom questions of this sort,
and exclude conciliatory measures and pacific hopes, she will labor
actively to destroy all that she has gloriously built upon earth. It is
impossible to imagine the consequences, fatal to every form of liberty,
which such a policy would comprise within itself.

It was at first supposed that Captain Wilkes had acted by virtue of
instructions, and that Mr. Lincoln's Government had expressly ordered
him to seize the Southern Commissioners on board the English vessel. Now
it is found that Captain Wilkes, returning from Africa, had no
instructions of any sort. He acted, to use his expression, "at his own
risk and peril" like a true Yankee.

It was next supposed that Mr. Lincoln's Government had conceived the
ingenious project (such things are gravely printed and find men to
believe them!) of seeking of itself a rupture with England. It was in
need of new enemies! It hoped, by this means, to rally to itself its
present adversaries! It was about to give over combating them, and to
seek compensation through the conquest of Canada! I have followed the
progress of events in America as attentively as any one, I have read the
American newspapers, I have received letters, I have studied documents,
among others the famous circular of Mr. Seward; I have seen there more
than one sign of discontent with the un-sympathizing attitude of
England; I have also seen there the symptoms of the somewhat natural
fear which the intervention of Europe in Mexico excites in men attached
to the Monroe doctrine; but as to these incredible plans, I have never
discovered the slightest trace of them. I add, that a marked return
towards friendly relations with England will be manifested the moment
that the latter shows herself more amicable towards America.

If there is any quality for which credit cannot be refused to the
Government of Mr. Lincoln, it is precisely that of moderation and good
sense. He has not taken very high ground--he has abstained, far too
much, in my opinion, from laying down those principles, from uttering
those words which create sympathies, and make the conscience of the
human race vibrate in unison. Say that he is a little prosaic, a little
of the earth, earthy; do not say that he blusters, and that the best
thing that England can do is to attack him without waiting to be first
attacked.

In order to support, right or wrong, a fable which has found but too
ready belief, another story was invented: the Government of Mr. Lincoln
was at the end of its strength; despairing henceforth of conquering the
South, it wished at any price to procure a diversion. Those who hold
such language have doubtless never heard either of the Beaufort
expedition, or of the evacuation of Missouri by the Confederate troops,
or of the victory recently gained in Kentucky. They do not know that the
United States have accomplished the prodigy of putting half a million of
men under arms, that acts of insubordination have nearly ceased, that
volunteers for three years have everywhere replaced the three months'
volunteers. They do not know that the finances of the country are
prosperous, and that Mr. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, has just
negotiated, under favorable conditions, the last part of his loan. I
recommend them to read the last letters of Mr. Russell, the
correspondent of the _Times_; they will see there what an impartial
witness thought lately of the respective chances of the North and South.

Yes, before the intervention of the _San Jacinto_,--that involuntary
ally of the South, to whom the inhabitants of Charleston themselves
ought to vote swords of honor--before the _San Jacinto_, the situation
of the United States presented the most favorable aspect. Since that
time, I admit, it has changed. Let us see now whether English
indignation has not given to the act of Captain Wilkes greatly
exaggerated proportions.

English indignation has omitted one side of the affair, I mean the
conduct of the packet _Trent_. If, by chance, it should have violated
the principles of neutrality, this question would wear quite a different
aspect. This, doubtless, would not prevent the demand for reparation
from being well founded; it would prevent the negotiations relating to
it from assuming an air of harshness, which would suffice to render
their success doubtful. Let us therefore examine the conduct of the
_Trent_.

Some have thought to justify it, by observing that the vessel was going
from America. What does this matter? Neutrals are bound to act as
neutrals when they are going from a place as well as when they are
coming towards it. They might as easily take sides with one of the
belligerents by carrying despatches, for instance, designed to secure to
it aid, as by bringing it other despatches announcing that this aid was
forthcoming.

Others have based their arguments on the fact that the _Trent_ had
quitted a neutral port to repair to a neutral port. Again, a distinction
which proclamations of neutrality have never admitted, and which no
jurisprudence has endorsed to my knowledge. What does plain good sense
tell us, in fact? That your departure from a neutral port and your
destination to a neutral port do not hinder you in any way from serving
the belligerent whose despatches you have received, especially if these
despatches are on the way to solicit from a neutral country an alliance
or supplies of munitions of war.

The rights of neutrals demand to be preserved, in my opinion, and France
is interested in it more than any other nation. But these rights, let us
not fear to acknowledge, have for their fundamental condition, a _real_
neutrality. Now, you take it upon yourself, knowingly and willingly, to
carry despatches destined for a country to which it is a notorious fact
that one of the belligerents is looking for its only serious chances of
success. These despatches are drawn up, it may be, in this wise: "Let
vessels loaded with arms and ammunition leave Southampton or Liverpool
as quickly as possible and come to Charleston, where the cruisers are
now few in number; let expeditions be combined in such a manner as to
force the blockade; we are in need of their arrival in order to push our
army forward." Or else the despatches read: "Buy up the newspapers and
work on public opinion in the manufacturing districts. Let maritime
powers know that we will consent, if necessary, to cessions of territory
or protectorates; that, in any case, we will grant them exceptional
advantages if they protest against the blockade, if they disquiet our
enemy, if they seek a quarrel with him and draw off his attention to fix
it on, an eventual struggle with Europe. At the first step of this kind,
we will attempt an offensive movement. The least menace against the
blockade is worth as much to us as the despatch of an army." Is it not
to mock at people, in the face of so new a position, of a war in which
one of the parties, though he does not fail to boast of his strength and
his resources, counts in fact, before every thing, upon European
support, to propound fine theories in accordance with which the
transportation of despatches sent from a neutral port and destined for a
neutral country, would not be contrary to neutrality, _because these
despatches could not increase the military advantages of either of the
belligerents?_

It has been sought to assimilate mail packets to vessels of war, and
consequently to except them from the exercise of the right of search.
The pretence is so ill-founded that it falls to the ground upon
examination. Who does not feel that the presence of a lieutenant of the
royal navy or the color of a uniform is not sufficient to constitute a
vessel of war or a transport?

It is asked whether other packets, which have carried ministers sent by
the United States to Europe, have not also infringed the rules of
neutrality? It is possible, but this does not concern us. Supposing that
the mission of these ministers in Europe, where they are regularly
accredited like their predecessors to the different governments, and
where they have no support, no new act, no violation of the blockade to
demand, may be assimilated to the mission of the Southern delegates;
supposing that their letters of credit bear some analogy to the
despatches intrusted to Messrs. Mason and Slidell, it belonged in any
case to the Southern cruisers to stop and search the packets in which
they had taken passage. The powerlessness of one of the belligerents
could not impose on the other the duty of abstaining in like manner.

Resting next on the diplomatic quality of the Southern envoys, it has
been attempted to insinuate that their mission was purely a civil one.
Not only did the diplomatic character not exist, since it had had no
recognition, but the Southern Commissioners were expressly charged
with, procuring to the armies of slavery the most essential assistance
which they could receive in view of military success and strategy. Their
success, by ensuring the breaking of the blockade, would alone have been
worth more to them than the winning of several battles. I say nothing,
moreover, of the shipments of arms and ammunition which they would have
doubtless organized in Europe.

Can it be that mail packets have the singular privilege of facilitating
such operations without failing in the duties of neutrality? If this be
true, it is worth while to have it understood, and so long as it is not
understood, we must make some allowance for belligerents who do not
consider it self-evident. It is clear that when the exercise of the
right of search was defined by precedents and treaties, mail packets did
not exist. Perhaps it would be well to lay down special regulations
concerning them. This agreement might be profitably negotiated at
present between the United States and the maritime powers of Europe. Why
should not the conflict which occupies our attention, instead of ending
in war, result in a useful negotiation? I have no doubt that the noble
overtures, the initiative of which has just been taken by General
Scott, would be approved by Mr. Lincoln. To enlarge the scope of the
present question, by causing an international progress, an emancipation
of the commerce of the world to grow out of it, would be somewhat
better, it seems to me, than to cut each other's throats and to ensure
the triumph in the middle of the nineteenth century of the most shameful
revolt that has ever broken out on earth--a revolt in favor of slavery.
England and America, these two great countries, are worthy of giving to
the world the spectacle of a generous and fruitful mutual understanding
in which a deplorable disagreement shall be swallowed up, as it were,
and disappear. Who does not see that, combined with the promulgation of
a more liberal regulation of the right of search, the satisfaction
demanded of the United States would assume a new character, and would
have many more chances of being accorded?

It is the less difficult for the English to take this ground, since the
act of the _San Jacinto_, in which the design of offending England in
particular might at first have been suspected, appears to-day under a
very different aspect. In proportion as we learn all the exploits of
this terrible vessel, its impartiality becomes less dubious. French,
Danish, and other vessels were visited by it within a few days; it is
certain that if the French instead of the English mail packet had been
carrying the commissioners and their papers, the former would have been
boarded by Captain Wilkes.

His mode of procedure was rough, and on this point apologies ought to be
made. Not indeed that England, who has just sustained in Prussia the
famous MacDonald negotiation, is in a very good position to show herself
difficult in points of courtesy; nevertheless, the errors of Great
Britain in Germany do not excuse those of the United States on the
ocean. It appears that Captain Wilkes fired shot to enforce his first
order to stop. The remainder was in keeping. Nevertheless, to give every
one his due, it is just to remember that he offered to take on board the
families of the commissioners and to give them his best cabins. It is
just also to add that, after the arrest, the intercourse between the
officers of the _San Jacinto_ and the prisoners never ceased to be full
of decorum and courtesy.

Let us now approach more closely the question of right. It was well in
the first place to rid ourselves of secondary questions which hinder us
from seeing it, and above all from seeing it as it is.

They seem to have been afraid in England to look this question of right
boldly in the face. There is no subterfuge that they have not tried in
order to avoid its serious investigation.

Have they not gone so far as to object to the United States that,
considering the Southern States as rebellious and refusing them the
quality of belligerents, they could not exercise the right of search,
which is reserved to belligerents? From this point of view they add,
Messrs. Mason and Slidell would simply be rebels taking refuge under the
English flag; and what country would consent to give up political
refugees? The answer is simple: no country more than England has
recognized, in this instance, the quality of belligerents which her
partisans are seeking to contest in her name. Moreover, the Southern
blockade is admitted by her and by the other powers; now, blockade is as
impossible as right of search apart from a state of war.

Another subterfuge: the United States have always opposed the right of
search--it ill becomes them to exercise it. England has always exercised
the right of search; it ill becomes her to oppose it. Let us be honest;
rights of this kind are always odious to those who submit to them and
always dear to those who profit by them. Alas! this is not the only
instance in which, a change in our position works a change in our mode
of viewing things. Let us take the human heart as it is, and not demand
under penalty of war, that the Americans, in the midst of one of the
most terrible social crises (and also of the most glorious) of which
history makes mention, should hesitate to seize a weapon which was
formerly used against them and which they feel the need of using in
return. In neglecting to seize it, they would fail perhaps in their duty
to themselves and to the noble cause of which they are the
representatives.

There is finally a last and more simple manner of avoiding an
embarrassing examination: "What is the use of examining precedents?" we
hear on every side, "This is not a matter for legal advisers." It
appears to me, however, that it is something of the kind, since Great
Britain has begun by interrogating the lawyers of the Crown, and since
she has made peace or war depend on the decision which they might
render. It would be too convenient, truly, to take exception to
precedents made by one's self, and to say to those who act as he has not
ceased to do: "I permit no one to imitate me; what I practised in times
past, I authorize no one to practise to-day. I have not apprised you of
this, but you ought to have divined it, and for not having divined it,
you shall have war."

Precedents keep then their full value. What are they?

The enemies of America have cited one which has nothing to do here; the
letter written by King Louis Philippe to Queen Victoria to express his
regret that a pilot under the protection of the British flag had been
carried away by the expedition bound to Mexico. A very different thing
is an abduction of this kind, having nothing in common with the right of
search or the maintenance of neutrality, and the capture of the Southern
Commissioners.

It is in the familiar history of the right of search that precedents
must he sought, and they abound there.

In quoting some of them, I impose on myself a double law: first, I will
not confound acts of violence with precedents, and from the abuse which
the English made in times past of their maritime preponderance, I will
not conclude that every one is at liberty to do to-day as they have
done; secondly, among the grave and weighty authors who have made a
special study of these questions in the quiet of their retirement, I
will confine myself to consulting none but English authorities.
Doubtless, they will not think of challenging these in England.

Chancellor Kent writes: "If, on making the search, it be discovered that
the vessel is employed hi contraband trade, that it transports the
enemy's property, troops, or _despatches_, it may be rightfully seized
and carried for adjudication before a prize court."

Mr. Phillimore, an English author and an authority on these questions,
and one of the judges in the Admiralty, expresses himself thus: "The
carrying of official despatches written by official personages on the
public affairs of one of the belligerents, _impresses a hostile
character on those bearing them_."

Sir William Scott is no less precise: "The transportation of two or
three shiploads of ammunition is necessarily a limited assistance; _but,
by despatches, the whole plan of the campaign may be transmitted in such
a manner as to destroy all the plans of the other belligerent in that
part of the world."_ And he dwells at length on this idea, insisting on
the incompatibility which exists between veritable neutrality and the
bearing of despatches, "which is an act of the most prejudicial and
hostile nature."

Let us also cite Mr. Jenkinson, afterwards Lord Liverpool. He
establishes in clear terms the fundamental principle of the matter by
putting this question, which plain good sense must answer: "Can it be
lawful for you to extend this right (that of the free navigation of
neutral vessels) in such a way as to injure me and to serve my enemy?"

Observe that the Queen, in her proclamation of neutrality, has been
careful not to omit the interdiction of the transport of despatches. She
therein declares that those who transport "officers, soldiers,
_despatches_, arms, ammunition, or any other article considered by law
and modern usage as contraband of war, for either of the contenders,
will do it at his own risk and peril, and will incur the high
displeasure of her Majesty."

Nothing can be more explicit, more consistent, and at the same time more
reasonable than these declarations. Sir William Scott is right in
saying, that, in undertaking to carry despatches, persons cease to be
neutrals and become enemies; this is evident, above all, in the present
conflict. As the serious chances of success of the South are all in
Europe, as it would not have revolted had it not counted on Europe, as
it would lay down its arms to-morrow if it were proved to it that never,
for cotton or any thing else, would Europe come to its aid, it follows,
thenceforth, that the despatches forwarded from the South to Europe
greatly surpass in military importance the sending of soldiers or
supplies.

This being so, what ought the commander of the packet _Trent_ to have
done? I do not impugn his intentions, he may have acted very innocently;
but if this excuse of ignorance of the rules of the law be valid for
him, I think that it should also be so for Captain Wilkes, and that
there would be little justice in treating with extreme rigor a first
offence which evidently has taken every one by surprise, and has found
nowhere a very complete understanding of the conditions of the right of
search.

The commander of the _Trent_ saw men come to him, whose quality as
Southern Commissioners challenged his attention. He knew what anxiety
and trouble were pervading the North concerning their mission and
despatches, the contents of which excited grave suspicions; there had
even been talk, exaggerated, doubtless, of a proposition of a
protectorate and other offers, designed to gain at any price the support
of one or more maritime powers. The enthusiastic welcome which the
people of Havana, enemies of the United States, and ardent friends of
slavery, had just given to Messrs. Mason and Slidell, permits no doubt
of the especial gravity of the hostile mandate with which they were
charged. Then or never was the occasion to say that messengers and
messages of this nature must travel under their own flag, and that
neutrals were bound not to facilitate their mission in any manner. In
circumstances so grave, and with such a responsibility, commanders of
packets could not take refuge behind their innocence, or argue that the
consul of the United States had not taken pains to forewarn them. I
should like to know what reception a neutral would find in England, who
should take it into his head to say to her: "I thought myself at liberty
to carry hostile despatches and those bearing them, because the English
consul did not come to bind me to do nothing of the sort."

Is it true, as has been maintained, that the fault was divided, the
message having been carried by one packet and the messengers by another?
This appears doubtful, and matters little, moreover, in the eyes of
impartial judges. The fact is, that voluminous papers were seized on the
_Trent_, at the same time with the rebel commissioners.

Now, and to have done with the question of right, shall I say a few
words of what it is permissible to call the hackneyed rhetoric and
declamation of the subject?

Men have talked, of course, of an insult to the flag; they have called
to mind that the deck of an English vessel is the same as the soil of
the country; they have invoked the rights of British hospitality, and
demanded whether she could consent to see her guests taken from her by
force. So many phrases for effect, which unhappily never fail to arouse
implacable passions! But what is there behind these phrases?

The flag is not insulted when the search is exercised in conformity with
the law of nations. It is in vain that the deck of an English merchant
vessel is the soil of the country; a belligerent is authorized to seize
it, if it is carrying men employed in behalf of the enemy; officers, for
example. The rights of hospitality are bounded by the duties of
neutrality, and the vessel which would claim to protect its guests at
any price, when its guests serve the war, would simply be guilty of a
culpable action.

In brief, there are wrongs on both sides, and if ever difference
admitted of discussion, interpretation, if necessary, arbitration even,
it is certainly this. Be sure, therefore, that Europe, attentive to all
that is passing, and desirous of averting war, will find it inexplicable
if the question be put in insulting terms, of a nature to render
hostilities almost inevitable.

If, in fine, Captain Wilkes had seized the vessel instead of seizing the
Commissioners, and if the vessel had been duly condemned by an American
court, the proceeding would have been irreproachably regular. This being
so, by the acknowledgment of the English themselves, who will be willing
to admit that any will be found bold enough to cause an irretrievably
fatal rupture to grow out of a quarrel of this kind, concerning the mode
of procedure. England has consulted her legal advisers; America will
consult hers also. Do disputes in which the national honor is involved
admit of consultations of this sort? Are lawyers or judges ever asked
whether the country is insulted or attacked when it really is so?

Let England assure herself that the first condition of the demand for
reparation is, that she shall make the reparation _possible_. Time is
needed. Patience is needed--patience which will not pause before the
first difficulty, and take as final the first refusal. Courtesy is
needed--courtesy, which, in the stronger, agrees so well with dignity,
and avoids rendering the form of satisfaction unnecessarily wounding and
consequently almost inadmissible. It is clear that if she contents
herself with signifying to Washington an absolute demand, if she gives a
single week, if she exacts (let us foresee the impossible) not only the
setting at liberty of the Commissioners themselves, but their
transportation on an American vessel charged to trail its repentant flag
across the seas, if she accepts no more easy mode, if she hearkens to no
mediation, it is clear that Mr. Lincoln will need superhuman courage to
grant what she thus demands.

This superhuman courage I wish for him, I ask of him; in displaying it,
he will have deserved much of America and of humanity. But I hope little
for such marvels, nor do I believe that it is fitting to exact miracles
in serious affairs.

The English were full of condescension and generosity towards America
while she was strong. If they should be so unfortunate as no longer to
have condescension and generosity towards America, when she is weak,
they would warrant suppositions much more fatal to their honor than is
the grave error (yet easily reparable with the good will of both
parties) just committed by Captain Wilkes.

I have the right to hold this language to them, for I am of the number
of those who lore England and have proved it. In my first parliamentary
speech, which was on occasion of this very right of search, I exposed
myself to much animosity in defending her. Later, in the Pritchard
affair, I did not draw back. Even from the depths of my retreat, it has
rarely happened to me to take up my pen without rendering homage to a
country and government which are not popular among us. I have reason,
therefore, to hope that my words will have some weight. Nothing is more
antipathetic to me than a coarse and ignorant anglophobia.

But it is important for England to know all the phases of the debate in
which she has entered. It has a European phase. This is not a discussion
between two powers; a third, the first of all, public opinion, must also
have its say. It wishes peace, and will not let it be sacrificed for an
error easily repaired and voluntarily exaggerated. Public opinion
strongly repudiates the cause of the South, which is that of slavery;
(the speeches of Mr. Stephens, Vice-President of the Southern
Confederacy, give proof of this.) At the announcement of the heinous
fact that England recognizes the Confederacy expressly founded to
maintain, glorify, and extend slavery, public opinion, believe me,
would give vent to an outburst of wrath which would cast the indignation
meetings of Liverpool wholly in the shade.

England has maintained her neutrality in the New World for the year
past, and she deserves well for this, for angry instincts dictated to
her another policy. However, if she has been neutral, she has not been
sympathizing. This vast social revolution, which, began with the
election of Mr. Lincoln, which had inscribed on its banner, "No
extension of slavery," and which thus entered in the way leading one day
to emancipation; this generous revolution which deserved to be
encouraged, has met with little in England but distrust and hostility.
Upon other points, while preserving her neutrality, England knows very
well how to give her moral support to causes which she loves--the
support of journals, of parliamentary speeches, and of public meetings.
Here, there is nothing of the sort. I know not what fatal
misunderstanding has kept down the generous sentiments which should have
made themselves felt. From the beginning, the principal English
journals, especially those reputed to express the views of Lord
Palmerston, have not ceased to proclaim openly that the South was right
in seceding, that the separation was without remedy, that it was just
and in conformity with the wishes of England. Again and again has the
recognition of the South been presented as an act to be expected and for
which we must be prepared.

From all this, if care be not taken, the inference will be drawn that,
in the excessive eagerness with which the affair of the _Trent_ has been
seized upon, in the peremptory terms of the demand for redress, in the
form adopted in order to render the reparation difficult, may be seen
the intention of reaching the end which England proposes; of effecting
the recognition, breaking the blockade, obtaining cotton, and
substituting a parcelled-out America for the too powerful Republic of
the United States.

Liverpool has, this time, given the signal, Lancashire urges on the
rupture; behind the national honor, there may be something else. Take
care! if this must not be thought, it must not be true.

And it will be true if you declare the question closed at the very
moment when it begins to attract public attention; if you exact a
reparation without admitting an explanation; if, in short, you reject in
advance all idea of negotiation, mediation, or arbitration.

War, instead of negotiation, mediation, or arbitration; war, at the
first word, for a question which has been submitted to legal advisers,
and which offers facilities assuredly for several equally sincere
interpretations; _war at, any price_ does not belong to our times.

What I say here, others will make it their business to say on the other
side of the channel; there have been, there will be, liberal and
Christian voices there, who will not fear to protest against the
incitements of passion. We have heard little yet except the bells of the
manufactories; other sounds will soon make themselves heard; the great
party which, in abolishing slavery and combating the slave trade, has
won the chief title of honor in England--this great party, I think, is
not dead. It is time for it to give signs of life.

As to America, its friends are awaiting its final resolutions with an
anxiety which I scarcely dare depict. Never was graver question placed
before a government. The whole future is contained in it. If she be
sufficiently mistress of herself to grant what is asked and to admit a
reparation, even though it be excessive, of the fault evidently
committed in her name, she will have the approbation and esteem of all
true hearts. Her ship--the ship which brings, back the Commissioners
--will be welcomed with acclamations to our shores, and it will
be plainly seen that the United States in yielding much is neither
weakened nor humiliated.

Ah! the affair would he so easily arranged, if both sides desired it! On
both sides are men so worthy to effect a reconciliation for the glory of
our times and the happiness of humanity! On both sides are nations so
well fitted to understand and to love each other! Must we despair then
of the progress of the spirit of peace? Must we look with our own eyes
upon English vessels employed in ensuring the success of the champions
of slavery? Must we veil our head with our mantle?

A. DE GASPARIN.

VALLEYRES, (SWITZERLAND,) _December_ 5, 1861.

P.S.--I wish to add here a single observation: I have not pretended to
exhaust, in this rapid study, the decisions which might be borrowed from
English authors, and which would be of a kind to be appealed to by
America. Sir William Scott, for example, (see C. Robinson, p. 467,) says
in express terms: "_You may stop the ambassador of your enemy."_ I have
been careful not to draw the conclusion from this, on my part, that
Captain Wilkes was right in acting as he did; I simply infer from it
that the case is by no means a hanging one, and that in stopping the
Commissioners and their papers without stopping the ship and turning her
from her course, he yielded perhaps (let us be just to all) to the
desire of not exposing the packet and passengers to serious
inconveniences. Let us say that he was unfortunate, since his courtesy
on this point seems to have become the blackest of his misdeeds. In
truth, to see in the affair of the _Trent_, all that England has seen in
it, it is necessary to commence by supposing that the United States,
which have already a sufficiently heavy task on their hands, it seems to
me, have been tempted, besides, to procure a quarrel with Great Britain.
Hypotheses of this kind will be welcomed only by those who feel
themselves unconquerably impelled to praise the messages of Mr.
Jefferson Davis, and to stretch their hand decidedly to the brave South,
which has so much to complain of, and which is defending so just a
cause![C]


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote C: This article, with the exception of a few changes and
additions, was inserted in the _Journal des Débats_, December 11, 12,
and 18.]





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