The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Uprising of a Great People by Count Agénor de Gasparin This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org 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 Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UPRISING OF A GREAT PEOPLE *** Produced by Virginia Paque and PG Distributed Proofreaders 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,...