Jefferson,
Who Has Been Regarded As The Leader Of The Southern Or Democratic
Party, Has Left Ample Testimony That He
Regarded slavery as an evil.
It is, I think, true that he gave such testimony much more freely
when he
Was speaking or writing as a private individual than he ever
allowed himself to do when his words were armed with the weight of
public authority. But it is clear that on the whole he was opposed
to slavery, and I think there can be little doubt that he and his
party looked forward to a natural death for that evil. Calculation
was made that slavery when not recruited afresh from Africa could
not maintain its numbers, and that gradually the negro population
would become extinct. This was the error made. It was easier to
look forward to such a result and hope for such an end of the
difficulty, than to extinguish slavery by a great political
movement, which must doubtless have been difficult and costly. The
Northern States got rid of slavery by the operation of their
separate legislatures, some at one date and some at others. The
slaves were less numerous in the North than in the South, and the
feeling adverse to slaves was stronger in the North than in the
South. Mason and Dixon's line, which now separates slave soil from
free soil, merely indicates the position in the country at which the
balance turned. Maryland and Virginia were not inclined to make
great immediate sacrifices for the manumission of their slaves; but
the gentlemen of those States did not think that slavery was a
divine institution destined to flourish forever as a blessing in
their land.
The maintenance of slavery was, I think, a political mistake - a
political mistake, not because slavery is politically wrong, but
because the politicians of the day made erroneous calculations as to
the probability of its termination. So the income tax may be a
political blunder with us - not because it is in itself a bad tax,
but because those who imposed it conceived that they were imposing
it for a year or two, whereas, now, men do not expect to see the end
of it. The maintenance of slavery was a political mistake; and I
cannot think that the Americans in any way lessen the weight of
their own error by protesting, as they occasionally do, that slavery
was a legacy made over to them from England. They might as well say
that traveling in carts without springs, at the rate of three miles
an hour, was a legacy made over to them by England. On that matter
of traveling they have not been contented with the old habits left
to them, but have gone ahead and made railroads. In creating those
railways the merit is due to them; and so also is the demerit of
maintaining those slaves.
That demerit and that mistake have doubtless brought upon the
Americans the grievances of their present position; and will, as I
think, so far be accompanied by ultimate punishment that they will
be the immediate means of causing the first disintegration of their
nation. I will leave it to the Americans themselves to say whether
such disintegration must necessarily imply that they have failed in
their political undertaking. The most loyal citizens of the
Northern States would have declared a month or two since - and for
aught I know would declare now - that any disintegration of the
States implied absolute failure. One stripe erased from the banner,
one star lost from the firmament, would entail upon them all the
disgrace of national defeat! It had been their boast that they
would always advance, never retreat. They had looked forward to add
ever State upon State, and Territory to Territory, till the whole
continent should be bound together in the same union. To go back
from that now, to fall into pieces and be divided, to become smaller
in the eyes of the nations, to be absolutely halfed, as some would
say of such division, would be national disgrace, and would amount
to political failure. "Let us fight for the whole," such men said,
and probably do say. "To lose anything is to lose all!"
But the citizens of the States who speak and think thus, though they
may be the most loyal, are perhaps not politically the most wise.
And I am inclined to think that that defiant claim of every star,
that resolve to possess every stripe upon the banner, had become
somewhat less general when I was leaving the country than I had
found it to be at the time of my arrival there. While things were
going badly with the North, while there was no tale of any battle to
be told except of those at Bull's Run and Springfield, no Northern
man would admit a hint that secession might ultimately prevail in
Georgia or Alabama. But the rebels had been driven out of Missouri
when I was leaving the States, they had retreated altogether from
Kentucky, having been beaten in one engagement there, and from a
great portion of Tennessee, having been twice beaten in that State.
The coast of North Carolina, and many points of the Southern coast,
were in the hands of the Northern army, while the army of the South
was retreating from all points into the center of their country.
Whatever may have been the strategetical merits or demerits of the
Northern generals, it is at any rate certain that their apparent
successes were greedily welcomed by the people, and created an idea
that things were going well with the cause. And as all this took
place, it seemed to me that I heard less about the necessary
integrity of the old flag. While as yet they were altogether
unsuccessful, they were minded to make no surrender. But with their
successes came the feeling, that in taking much they might perhaps
allow themselves to yield something. This was clearly indicated by
the message sent to Congress by the President, in February, 1862, in
which he suggested that Congress should make arrangements for the
purchase of the slaves in the border States; so that in the event of
secession - accomplished secession - in the Gulf States, the course of
those border States might be made clear for them.
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