This Difference Has Come Of Slavery.

A slave country, which has progressed far in slavery, must be aristocratic in its nature - aristocratic and patriarchal.

A large slaveowner from Georgia may call himself a democrat, may think that he reveres republican institutions, and may talk with American horror of the thrones of Europe; but he must in his heart be an aristocrat. We, in England, are apt to speak of republican institutions, and of universal suffrage, which is perhaps the chief of them, as belonging equally to all the States. In South Carolina there is not and has not been any such thing. The electors for the President there are chosen not by the people, but by the legislature; and the votes for the legislature are limited by a high property qualification. A high property qualification is required for a member of the House of Representatives in South Carolina; four hundred freehold acres of land and ten negroes is one qualification. Five hundred pounds clear of debt is another qualification; for, where a sum of money is thus named, it is given in English money. Russia and England are not more unlike in their political and social feelings than are the real slave States and the real free-soil States. The gentlemen from one and from the other side of the line have met together on neutral ground, and have discussed political matters without flying frequently at each other's throats, while the great question on which they differed was allowed to slumber. But the awakening has been coming by degrees, and now the South had felt that it was come. Old John Brown, who did his best to create a servile insurrection at Harper's Ferry, has been canonized through the North and West, to the amazement and horror of the South. The decision in the "Dred Scott" case, given by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, has been received with shouts of execration through the North and West. The Southern gentry have been Uncle-Tommed into madness. It is no light thing to be told daily by your fellow- citizens, by your fellow-representatives, by your fellow-senators, that you are guilty of the one damning sin that cannot be forgiven. All this they could partly moderate, partly rebuke, and partly bear as long as political power remained in their hands; but they have gradually felt that that was going, and were prepared to cut the rope and run as soon as it was gone.

Such, according to my ideas, have been the causes of the war. But I cannot defend the South. As long as they could be successful in their schemes for holding the political power of the nation, they were prepared to hold by the nation. Immediately those schemes failed, they were prepared to throw the nation overboard. In this there has undoubtedly been treachery as well as rebellion. Had these politicians been honest - though the political growth of Washington has hardly admitted of political honesty - but had these politicians been even ordinarily respectable in their dishonesty, they would have claimed secession openly before Congress, while yet their own President was at the White House.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 48 of 275
Words from 24242 to 24773 of 142339