CONSEQUENCES***


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THE ABOLITION CRUSADE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Four Periods of American History

by

HILARY A. HERBERT, LL.D.







New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1912

Copyright, 1912, by
Charles Scribner's Sons

Published April, 1912




               TO MY GRANDCHILDREN

   THIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
           IN THE HOPE THAT ITS PERUSAL
  WILL FOSTER IN THEM, AS CITIZENS OF THIS GREAT
   REPUBLIC, A DUE REGARD FOR THE CONSTITUTION
                OF THEIR COUNTRY
         AS THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND




PREFATORY NOTE BY JAMES FORD RHODES


"Livy extolled Pompey in such a panegyric that Augustus called him
Pompeian, and yet this was no obstacle to their friendship." That we
find in Tacitus. We may therefore picture to ourselves Augustus reading
Livy's "History of the Civil Wars" (in which the historian's republican
sympathies were freely expressed), and learning therefrom that there
were two sides to the strife which rent Rome. As we are more than
forty-six years distant from our own Civil War, is it not incumbent on
Northerners to endeavor to see the Southern side? We may be certain that
the historian a hundred years hence, when he contemplates the lining-up
of five and one-half million people against twenty-two millions, their
equal in religion, morals, regard for law, and devotion to the common
Constitution, will, as matter of course, aver that the question over
which they fought for four years had two sides; that all the right was
not on one side and all the wrong on the other. The North should
welcome, therefore, accounts of the conflict written by candid Southern
men.

Mr. Herbert, reared and educated in the South, believing in the moral
and economical right of slavery, served as a Confederate soldier during
the war, but after Appomattox, when thirty-one years old, he told his
father he had arrived at the conviction that slavery was wrong. Twelve
years later, when home-rule was completely restored to the South (1877),
he went into public life as a Member of Congress, sitting in the House
for sixteen years. At the end of his last term, in 1893, he was
appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Cleveland, whom he
faithfully served during his second administration.

Such an experience is an excellent training for the treatment of any
aspect of the Civil War. Mr. Herbert's devotion to the Constitution, the
Union, and the flag now equals that of any soldier of the North who
fought against him. We should expect therefore that his work would be
pervaded by practical knowledge and candor.

After a careful reading of the manuscript I have no hesitation in saying
that the expectation is realized. Naturally unable to agree entirely
with his presentation of the subject, I believe that his work exhibits a
side that entitles it to a large hearing. I hope that it will be placed
before the younger generation, who, unaffected by any memory of the heat
of the conflict, may truly say:

     Tros Tyriusve, mihi nullo discrimine agetur.

                                                    JAMES FORD RHODES.

BOSTON, _November_, 1911.




PREFACE


In 1890 Mr. L. E. Chittenden, who had been United States Treasurer under
President Lincoln, published an interesting account of $10,000,000
United States bonds secretly sent to England, as he said, in 1862, and
he told all about what thereupon took place across the water. It was a
reminiscence. General Charles Francis Adams in his recent instructive
volume, "Studies Military and Diplomatic," takes up this narrative and,
in a chapter entitled "An Historical Residuum," conclusively shows from
contemporaneous evidence that the bonds were sent, not in 1862, but in
1863, but that, as for the rest of the story, the residuum of truth in
it was about like the speck of moisture that is left when a soap bubble
is pricked by a needle.

General Adams did not mean that Mr. Chittenden knew he was drawing on
his imagination. He was only demonstrating that one who intends to
write history cannot rely on his memory.

The author, in the following pages, is undertaking to write a connected
story of events that happened, most of them, in his lifetime, and as to
many of the most important of which he has vivid recollections; but,
save in one respect, he has not relied upon his own memory for any
important fact. The picture he has drawn of the relations between the
slave-holder and non-slave-holder in the South is, much of it, given as
he recollects it. His opportunities for observation were somewhat
extensive, and here he is willing to be considered in part as a witness.
Elsewhere he has relied almost entirely upon contemporaneous written
evidence, memory, however, often indicating to him sources of
information.

Nowhere are there so many valuable lessons for the student of American
history as in the story of the great sectional movement of 1831, and of
its results, which have profoundly affected American conditions through
generation after generation.

An effort is here made to tell that story succinctly, tracing it, step
after step, from cause to effect. The subject divides itself naturally
into four historic periods:

1. The anti-slavery crusade, 1831 to 1860.

2. Secession and four years of war, 1861 to 1865.

3. Reconstruction under the Lincoln-Johnson plan, with the overthrow by
Congress of that plan and the rule of the <DW64> and carpet-bagger, from
1865 to 1876.

4. Restoration of self-government in the South, and the results that
have followed.

The greater part of the book is devoted to the first period--1831 to
1860, the period of causation. The sequences running through the three
remaining periods are more briefly sketched.

Italics, throughout the book, it may be mentioned here, are the
author's.

Now that the country is happily reunited in a Union which all agree is
indissoluble, the South wants the true history of the times here treated
of spread before its children; so does the North. The mistakes that were
committed on both sides during that lamentable and prolonged sectional
quarrel (and they were many) should be known of all, in order that like
mistakes may not be committed in the future. The writer has, with
diffidence, attempted to lay the facts before his readers, and so to
condense the story that it may be within the reach of the ordinary
student. How far he has succeeded will be for his readers to say. The
verdict he ventures to hope for is that he has made an honest effort to
be fair.

The author takes this occasion to thank that accomplished young teacher
of history, Mr. Paul Micou, for valuable suggestions, and his friend,
Mr. Thomas H. Clark, who with his varied attainments has aided him in
many ways.

                                                    HILARY A. HERBERT.

WASHINGTON, D. C., _March_, 1912.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                      PAGE

  INTRODUCTION                                                    3

  I. SECESSION AND ITS DOCTRINE                                  15

  II. EMANCIPATION PRIOR TO 1831                                 37

  III. THE NEW ABOLITIONISTS                                     56

  IV. FEELING IN THE SOUTH--1835                                 77

  V. ANTI-ABOLITION AT THE NORTH                                 84

  VI. A CRISIS AND A COMPROMISE                                  93

  VII. EFFORTS FOR PEACE                                        128

  VIII. INCOMPATIBILITY OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM                  147

  IX. FOUR YEARS OF WAR                                         180

  X. RECONSTRUCTION, LINCOLN-JOHNSON PLAN AND CONGRESSIONAL     208

  XI. THE SOUTH UNDER SELF-GOVERNMENT                           229

  INDEX                                                         245





THE ABOLITION CRUSADE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES




INTRODUCTION


The Constitution of the United States attempts to define and limit the
power of our Federal Government.

Lord Brougham somewhere said that such an instrument was not worth the
parchment it was written on; people would pay no regard to self-imposed
limitations on their own will.

When our fathers by that written Constitution established a government
that was partly national and partly federal, and that had no precedent,
they knew it was an experiment. To-day that government has been in
existence one hundred and twenty-three years, and we proudly claim that
the experiment of 1789 has been the success of the ages.

Happy should we be if we could boast that, during all this period, the
Constitution had never been violated in any respect!

The first palpable infringement of its provisions occurred in the
enactment of the alien and sedition laws of 1798. The people at the
polls indignantly condemned these enactments, and for years thereafter
the government proceeded peacefully; the people were prosperous, and the
Union and the Constitution grew in favor.

Later, there grew up a rancorous sectional controversy about slavery
that lasted many years; that quarrel was followed by a bloody sectional
war; after that war came the reconstruction of the Southern States.
During each of these three trying eras it did sometimes seem as if that
old piece of "parchment," derided by Lord Brougham, had been utterly
forgotten. Nevertheless, and despite all these trying experiences, we
have in the meantime advanced to the very front rank of nations, and our
people have long since turned, not only to the Union, but, we are happy
to think, to the Constitution as well, with more devotion than ever.

It may be further said that, notwithstanding all the bitter animosities
that for long divided our country into two hostile sections, that
wonderful old Constitution, handed down to us by our fathers, was
always, and in all seasons, in the hearts of our people, and that never
for a moment was it out of mind. Even in our sectional war Confederates
and Federals were both fighting for it--one side to maintain it over
themselves as an independent nation; the other to maintain it over the
whole of the old Union. In the very madness of reconstruction the
fundamental idea of the Constitution, the equality of the States,
ultimately prevailed--this idea it was that imperatively demanded the
final restoration of the seceded States, with the right of
self-government unimpaired.

The future is now bright before us. The complex civilization of the
present is, we do not forget, continually presenting new and complex
problems of government, and we are mindful, too, that, for the people
who must deal with these problems, a higher culture is required, but to
all this our national and State governments seem to be fully alive. We
are everywhere erecting memorials to our patriotic dead, we have our
"flag day" and many ceremonies to stimulate patriotism, and, throughout
our whole country, young Americans are being taught more and more of
American history and American traditions.

The essence of these teachings presumably is that time has hallowed our
Constitution, and that experience has fully shown the wisdom of its
provisions. In this land of ours, where there are so much property and
so many voters who want it, and where the honor and emoluments of high
place are so tempting to the demagogue, there can be no such security
for either life, liberty, or property as those safeguards which our
fathers devised in the Constitution of the United States.

Our teachers of history must therefore expose fearlessly every violation
in the past of our Constitution, and point out the penalties that
followed; and, above all, they cannot afford to condone, or to pass by
in silence, the conduct of those who have heretofore advocated, or acted
on, any law which to them was _higher than the American Constitution_.

One of the most serious troubles in the past, many think our greatest,
was our terrible war among ourselves. Perhaps, after the lapse of nearly
fifty years, we can all now agree that if our people and our States had
always, between 1830 and 1860, faithfully observed the Federal
Constitution we should have not had that war. However that may be, the
crusade of the Abolitionists, which began in 1831, was the beginning of
an agitation in the North against the existence of slavery in the South,
which continued, in one form or another, until the outbreak of that war.

The <DW64> is now located, geographically, much as he was then. If
another attempt shall be made to project his personal status into
national politics, the voters of the country ought to know and consider
the mistakes that occurred, North and South, during the unhappy era of
that sectional warfare. This little book is a study of that period of
our history. It concludes with a glance at the war between the North and
South, and the reconstruction that followed.

The story of Cromwell and the Great Revolution it was impossible for any
Englishman to tell correctly for nearly or quite two centuries. The
changes that had been wrought were too profound, too far-reaching; and
English writers were too human. The changes--economic, political, and
social--wrought in our country by the great controversy over slavery and
State-rights, and by the war that ended it, have been quite as profound,
and the revolution in men's ideas and ways of looking at their past
history has been quite as complete as those which followed the downfall
of the government founded by Cromwell. But we are now in the twentieth
century; history is becoming a science, and we ought to succeed better
in writing our past than the Englishmen did.

The culture of this day is very exacting in its demands, and if one is
writing about our own past the need of fairness is all the more
imperative. And why not? The masses of the people, who clashed on the
battlefields of a war in which one side fought for the supremacy of the
Union and the other for the sovereignty of the States, had honest
convictions; they differed in their convictions; they had made honest
mistakes about each other; now they would like their histories to tell
just where those mistakes were; they do not wish these mistakes to be
repeated hereafter. Nor is there any reason why the whole history of
that great controversy should not now be written with absolute fairness;
the two sections of our country have come together in a most wonderful
way. There has been reunion after reunion of the blue and the gray. The
surv