had become enormously in excess, and whenever it chose to act unani-
mously, was capable of any amount of oppression upon the rival section.

Under this sectional domination grew up a system of protections and
bounties to the North without parallel in the history of class legislation
and of unequal laws in a common country, Virginia had accepted the
Constitution in the hoj)e that the General Government, having " power to
regulate commerce," would lift the restrictions from her trade. This
consideration was held out as a bribe for votes in the Coiwention. She
was bitterly disappointed. In the Virginia Convention of 1822, Mr. "Wat-
kins Leigh declared : " Every commercial operation of the Federal
Government, since I attained manhood, has been detrimental to the
Southern Atlantic slaveholding, planting States,"

The South had no protection for her agriculture. At the time of the
adoption of the Constitution, the manufacturing interest was a very
unimportant one in the country. But manufactures soon became a
prominent and special branch of industry in the North ; and a course of
sectional legislation was commenced to exact from the South a large
portion of the proceeds of her industiy, and bestow it upon the North in
the shape of bounties to manufacturers and appropriations hi a thousand
forms. " Protection " was the cry which came up from eveiy jiart of the
North, Massachusetts, although unwilling to be taxed on (he importa-
tion of molasses, wanted protection for tlie rum she made from it, and
contHlded that it should be fenced in by high duties from a competition
with the rum of Jamaica, Pennsylvania souglit protection foi' her man-
ufactures of steel and her paper mills, Connecticut had manufactures
of woollens and manufactures of cordage, which she declared would perish
without protection. New l^ork demanded that every article should be
protected that her people were able to produce. And to su(th clamours
and demands the South had for a long time to submit, so helpless indeed
that she was scarcely treated as a i)arty to common measures of legislation.
The foundation of i\\Q protective tariff of 1828 — " the bill of abominations,"
as it was styled by Mr. Calhoun — was laid in a Convention of Northern
men at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania ; and from this Convention were
excluded all sections of the country intended to be made tributary under
the act of Congress.

Of the tariff of 1828 "Senator Benton remarked : " The South believed



60 THE LOST CAUSE.

itself impoverished to enrich the ]!^orth by this system ; and certainly an
unexpected re9»ilt had been seen in these two sections. In the colonial
state the Southern were the richer part of the colonies, and they expected
to do well in a state of independence. But in the first lialf century aftei
independence this expectation was reversed. The wealth of the North
was enormously aggrandized ; that of the South had declined. Northern
towns had become g^eat cities, Southern cities had decayed or become
stationary ; and Charleston, the principal port of the South, was less
considerable than before the Revolution. The North became a money-
lender to the South, and Southern citizens made pilgrimages to Northeruk
cities to raise money upon their patrimonial estates. The Southern
States attributed this result to the action of the Federal Government^its
double action of levying revenue upon the industry of one section of
the Union and expending it in another — and especially to its protective
tariffs."

Again, contrasting the condition of the South then with what it had
been at the Revolutionary period, the same Senator remarked : " It is a
tradition of the colonies that the South had been the seat of wealth and
happiness, of power and opulence ; that a rich population covered the
land, dispensing a baronial hospitality, and diifusing the felicity which
themselves enjoyed ; that all was life, and joy, and affluence then. And
this tradition was not without similitude to the reality, as tliis writer can
testify ; for he was old enough to have seen (after the Revolution) tlie still
surviving state of Southern colonial manners, when no traveller was
allowed to go to a tavern, but was handed over from family to family
through entire States ; when holidays were days of festivity and expecta-
tion long prepared for, and celebrated by master and slave with music
and feasting, and great concourse of friends and relations ; when gold
was kept in chests, after the downfall of Continental paper, and weighed
in scales, and lent to neighbours for short terms without note, in^-est,
witness, or security ; and when petty litigation was at so low an ebl^Iiat
it required a fine of forty pounds of tobacco to make a man serve as
constable. The reverse of all this was now seen and felt — not to the
whole extent which fancy or policy painted, but to extent enough to
constitute a reverse, and to make a contrast, and to excite the regrets
which the memory of past joys never fixils to awaken."

The early history of the tariff makes a plain exhibition of the stark
outrage perpetrated by it upon the Southern States. The measure of 1816
had originated in the necessities of a public revenue — for the war com-
menced against England four years before had imposed a debt upon the
United States of one hundred and thirty millions of dollars. It was
proposed to introduce into this tariff" the incidental feature of " protec-
tion ; " and it was argued that certain home manufactures liad sprung up



HISTORY OF THE AMKBICAN TAEIFFS. 61

during the exigencies of the war, which were useful and deserving, and
that they were likely to lapse under the sudden return of peace and to
sink under foreign competition. A demand so moderate and ingenious
the South was not disposed to resist. Indeed, it was recommended by
Jolm C. Calhoun himself, who voted for the bill of 1816. Bat the danger
was in the precedent. The principle of protection once admitted main-
tained its hold and enlarged its demands ; it was successively cariied
farther in the tariffs of 1820, '24, and '28. And in 1831, when it was
shown by figures in Congress that the financial exigencies that had first
called the tariflt* into existence had completely passed away, and that the
government was, in fact, collecting about twice as much revenue as its
usual expenditures required, the North still held to its demands for pro-
tection, and strenuously resisted any repeal or reduction of the existing-
tariff.

The demand of the South at this time, so ably enforced by Calhoun,
for the repeal of the tariff', was recommended by the most obvious justice
and the plainest prudence. It was shown that the public debt had been
so far diminished as to render it certain that, at the existing rate of
revenue, in three years the last dollar would be paid, and after three years
there would be an annual surplus in the treasury of twelve or thirteen
millions. But the North was insensible to these arguments, and brazen
in its demands. The result of this celebrated controversy, which shook
the Union to its foundations, was a compromise or a modification of the
tariff', in which however enough was saved of the protective principle to
satisfy for a time the rapacity of the North, and that through the dema-
gogical exertions of Henry Clay of Kentucky, who courted Northern
populapty, and enjoyed in Northern cities indecent feasts and triumphs
for his infidelity to his section.

But the tariff of 1833 was a deceitful compromise, and its terms were
nev^intended by the North to be a final settlement of the question.
In 1842 the settlement was repudiated, and the duties on manufactures
again advanced. From that time until the period of Disunion the fiscal
system of the United States was persistently protective ; the South con-
tinued to decline ; she had no large manufactures, no great cities, no ship-
ping interests ; and although the agricultural productions of the South
were the basis of the foreign commerce of the United States, yet Southern
cities did not carry it on.

Nor was the tariff the only measure of Northern aggrandizement in
the Union. Besides manufactures, the North had another great interest
in navigation, A system of high differential duties gave protection to it ;
Mid this, of course, bore with peculiar hardship on the Southern States,
whose commodities were thus burdened by a new weight put upon them
by the hand of the General Government. In tarifi's, in pensions, in fishing



62 THE LOST CAUSE.

bounties, in tonnage duties, in every measure that the ingenuity of avarice
could devise, the North exacted from the South a tribute, which it could
only pay at the expense and in the character of an inferiour in the Union.

But in opposition to this view of the helplessness of the South and her
inability to resist the exactions of the North, it may be said that the South
had an important political alliance in the North, that she was aided there
by the Democratic jjarty, and that she thus held the reins of government
during the greater portion of the time the tariffs alleged to be so injurious
to her interests existed. And here we touch a remarkable fact in Ameri-
can politics. It is true that a large portion of the Democratic party
resided in the North, and that many of the active politicians there
pretended to give in their adhesion to the States Rights school of politics.
But this Democratic alliance with the South was one only for party pur-
poses. It was extravagant of professions, but it carefully avoided trials
of its fidelity ; it was selfish, cunning, and educated in perfidy. It was a
deceitful combination for party purposes, and never withstood the test of
a practical question. The Northern Democrat was always ready to con-
tend against the Whig, but never against his own pocket, and the peculiar
interests of his section. The moment economical questions arose in Con-
gress, the Northern Democrat was on the side of Northern interests, and
the Southern ranks, very imposing on party questions, broke into a scene
of mutiny and desertion. It was indeed the Aveak confidence which the
South reposed in the Democratic party of the North that more than once
betrayed it on the very brink of the greatest issues in the country, and did
more perhaps to put it at disadvantage in the Union than the party of
open opposition.

It was through such a train of legislation as we have briefly described
that the South rapidly declined in the Union. By the force of a numeri-
cal majority — a thing opposed to the American system, properly under-
stood — a Union, intended to be one of mutual benefits, was nM.de a
conduit of wealth and power to the North, while it drained the South of
nearly every element of material prosperity.

It is true that the numerical majority of the North the South held
long in check by superior and consummate political skill. Party compli-
cations were thrown around the Sectional Animosity. But it was easy to
ste that some time or other that animosity would break the web of party ;
and that whenever on sectional questions the North chose to act in a mass,
its power would be irresistible, and that no resource would be left for the
South than to remain helpless and at mercy in the Union or to essay a
new political destiny. We shall see that in the year 1860 the North did
choose to act in a mass, and that the South was thus and then irresistiblj
impelled to the experiment of Disunion.



CHAPTER lY.



THE SECTIONAL EQUILLBEIUM. — HOW DISTURBED IN 1820. — CONTEST ON THE ADMISSION
OF TEXAS. — COMPROMISE MEASURES OF 1850. — DECLARATION OF A " FINALIT-Y." —

PRESIDENT PIEEOE's ADMINISTRATION. — THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. REPEAL OF " THE

MISSOURI COMPEOMISE." — ORIGIN OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN THE NORTH. — COM-
POSITION AND CHARACTER OF THIS PARTY. — AMAZING PROGRESS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY
SENTIMENT IN THE NORTH. — NEW INTERPRETATION OF THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL BY
SENATOR DOUGLAS. — INTENDED TO COURT THE ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT. — DOCTRINE
OF " NON-INTERVENTION " IN THE TEEEITOEIES. — THE " DRED SCOT^*«ECISION." — THE
KANSAS CONTROVERSY. — THE LECOMPTON CONVENTION.— THE TOPE:^a&|toNSTITUTION.

— PRESIDENT Buchanan's position and arguments. — opposition ^"t&senatob

DOUGLAS. — HIS INSINOEEITY. — THE NORTHERN DEMOCRATIC PARTY DEMOEii'^ED ON
THE SLAVERY QUESTION. — DOUGLAS' DOCTRINE OF " POPULAR SOVEEEIGNTY."— ^'X SHOET
CUT TO ALL THE ENDS OF BLACK EEPUBLICANISM." — DOUGLAS AS A DEMAdHl^E. — THE
TRUE ISSUES IN THE KANSAS CONTROVERSY. IMPORTANT PASSAGES IN THE CONGRES-
SIONAL DEBATE. — SETTLEMENT OF THE KANSAS QUESTION. — DOUGLAs' FOUNDATION OF
A NEW PARTY. — HIS DEMAGOGICAL APPEALS. — THE TRUE SITUATION. — LOSS OF THE
SECTIONAL EQUILIBRIUM. — SERIOUS TEMPER OF THE SOUTH. — THE JOHN BROWN
EAID. — IDENTITY OF JOHN BROWN's "PROVISIONAL CONSTITUTION AND ORDINANCES"
WITH THE SUBSEQUENT POLICY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.— CURIOUS FORESHADOW
OF SOUTHERN SUBJUGATION. — THE DESCENT ON HARPEr's FERRY. — CAPTURE AND EXE-
CUTION OF BROWN. — HIS DECLARATION. — NORTHERN SYMPATHY WITH HIM. — ALARMING
TENDENCY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY TO THE ULTRA ABOLITION SCHOOL. — " THE
HELPER BOOK," — SENTIMENTS OF SIXTY-EIGHT NORTHERN CONGRESSMEN. — THE CONCEIT
AND INSOLENCE OF THE NORTH. — AFFECTATION OF REPUBLICANS THAT THE UNION
WAS A CONCESSION TO THE SOUTH. — HYPOCRISY OF THIS PARTY. — INDICATIONS OF THE
COMING CATASTROPHE OF DISUNION. — THE PRESIDENTIAL CANVASS OF 1860. — DECLARA-
TIONS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. — THE CHARLESTON CONVENTION. — SECESSION OF THE
SOUTHERN DELEGATES. — THE DIFFERENT PRESIDENTIAL TICKETS. — ELECTION OF ABRAHAM
LINCOLN. — ANALYSIS OF THE VOTE. — HOW HIS ELECTION WAS A " SECTIONAL" TRIUMPH.
— OMINOUS IMPORTANCE OF IT IN THAT VIEW. — ARGUMENTS FOE SUSTAINING LINCOLN'S
ELECTION. — SEWAED's ARGUMENT IN THE SENATE. — LINCOLN'S ELECTION A GEOGRAPHI-
cal one. — how these was no longer protection for the south in the union.
— the anti-slaveey power compact and invincible. — another apology for
Lincoln's election. — fallacy of eegaedino it as a teansfee of the adminis-
tbation in equal oiectjmstanoes feom the south to the north. — how the south





64 THE LOST CAUSE.

HAD rSED ITS LEASE OF POLITICAL POWEE. — SENATOR HAMMONd's TRIBUTE. POWER IN

THE HANDS OF THE NORTH EQUIVALENT TO SECTIONAL DESPOTISM. THE NORTH " ACT-
ING IN MASS." THE LOGICAL NECESSITY OF DISUNION.

The wisest statesmen of America were convinced that tlie trne and
intelligent means of continuing the Union was to preserve the sectional
equilihrinm, and to keep a balance of power between North anS South.
That equilibrium had been violently disturbed, in 1820, at the time of the
Missouri Compromise, The relative representations of the North and
South in the United States Senate were then so evenly balanced that it
came to be decisive of a continuance of political power in the South
whether Missouri should be an addition to her ranks or to those of her
adversary. The contest ended, immediately, in favour of the South ; but
not without involving a measure of proscription against slavery.

Another struggle for political power between the two sections occurred
on the admission of Texas. The South gained another State. But tlae
acquisition of Texas brought on the war with Mexico ; and an enormous
addition to Northern territory became rapidly peopled with a population
allured from every quarter of the globe.

On the admission of California into the Union, the South was per-
suaded to let her come in with an anti-slavery Constitution for the
wretched compensation of a reenactment of the fugitive slave law, and
some other paltry measures. The cry was raised that the Union was in
danger. The appeals urged under this cry had the usual effect of recon-
ciling the South to the sacrifice required of her, and embarrassed anything
like resistance on the part of her representatives in Congress to the com-
promise measures of 1850. South Carolina threatened secession ; but
the other Southern States were not prepared to respond to the bold and
adventurous initiative of Southern independence. But it should be stated
that the other States of the South, in agreeing to what was called, in severe
irony, the Compromise of 1850, declared that it was the last concession
they would make to the North ; that they took it as a " finality," and
that the slavery question was thereafter to be excluded from the pale of
Federal discussion.

In 1852 Franklin Pierce was elected President of the United States.
lie was a favourite of the State Bights Democracy of the South ; and it
was hoped that under his administration the compromise measures of 1850
would indeed be realized as a " finality," and the country be put upon
a cai-eer of constitutional and peaceful rule. But a new and violent agita-
tion was to spring up in the first session of the first Congress under hia
administration.

The Territory of Nebraska had applied for admission into the Union.
Mr. Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from Illinois, reported from the Cora-



I



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 65

mittee on Territories a bill which made two Territories — Nebraska aud
Kansas — instead of one, and which declared that the Missouri Compromise
Act was superseded by the compromise measures of 1850, and had thus
become inoperative. It held that the Missouri Compromise act, " being
inconsistent with the principles of non-intervention hy Congress with
slavery in the States and Territories as recognized by the legislation of
1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, is hereby declared
inoperative and void ; it being the true intent and meaning of this act
not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it there-
from, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate
their domestic institutions, subject only to the Constitution of the United
States." The bill passed both houses of Congress in 1854.

The Kansas-Nebraska bill, involving as it did the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise, was taken by the South as a sort of triumph. The
latter measure, being viewed as an act of proscription against the South,
was justly offensive to her ; although indeed the repeal was scarcely more
than a matter of principle or sentiment, as the sagacious statesmen of the
South were well aware that the States in the Northwest were likely, from
the force of circumstances, to be settled by Northern people, and to be
thus dedicated to their institutions.^" But it was then supposed that the
phraseology of the Kansas-Nebraska bill was not liable to misconstruc-
tion ; and that when it was declared that the people of the Territories
were to deteraiine the question of slavery, it meant, of course, that they
were to do so in the act of forming a State Constitution and deciding
upon other institutions of the State as well as that of slavery.

In the North, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was the occasion
of a furious excitement. Mr. Douglas was hung in effigy in some of thei*r
towns, execrated by Northern mobs, and evei; threatened with violence to
his person. The anti-slavery sentiment of the North was rapidly devel-
oped in the excitement ; a new party was organized with reference to the
question of slavery in' the Territories ; and thus originated the famous
Republican party — popularly called the Black Republican party — which
was indeed identical with the Abolition party in its sentiment of hostility
to slavery, and differed from it only as to the degree of indirection by
whicli its purpose might best be accomplished. This party comprised the
great mass of the intellect and wealth of the North. It was also the



* As a general rule the South could not compete with the North in the race of emigration to
new countries. Nor was it her interest, being a sparsely settled and agricultural country, to do so.
A recent English commentator on the American Union (Mr. Spence) well observes : ' It is an
unfortunate result of the complex politics of the Uwon that the political instinct of the South is
driven to oppose its material interest. It mvtst expand while the North expands, or a icciuub.
It cannot seek expansion from choice or interest, but is driven to it by the impulse of politl.-al self
preservation."
V 5



66 THE LOST CAUSE.

Protectionist party. Its leaning was in favour of strong government, and
whatever there might be of aristocracy in the North belonged to it.

The new party sprung at once into an amazing power. In the Presi-
dential canvass of 1852, which had resulted in the election of Mr. Pierce,
John P. Hale, who ran upon what was called the " straight-out " Abolition
ticket, did not receive the vote of a single State, and but 175,296 of the
popular vote of the Union. But upon the repeal of the Missouri Com-
promise, Abolitionism, in the guise of " Republicanism," sv;ept almost
cverytliing before it in the North and Northwest in the elections of 1854
and 1855 ; and in the Thirty-first Congress, Nathaniel Banks, an objec-
tionable Abolitionist of the Massachusetts school, was elected to the
speakership of the House.

In the mean time, the language of the Kansas-Nebraska bill was the
subject of no dispute. No one supposed that from this language there
was to originate an afterthought on the part of Mr. Douglas, and that, by
an ingenious torture of words, this measure was to be converted into one
to conciliate the anti-slavery sentiment of the North, and to betray the
interests of the South. This afterthought was doubtless the consequence
of the rapid growth of the Black Eepublican party, and the convictioi)
that the Democratic party in the North could only recover its power by
some marked concession to the sectional sentiment now rapidly developing
on the subject of slavery.

It should be noticed here that the doctrine of " non-intervention,"
which prohibited Congress from interfering with the question of slavery
in the Territories, had been affirmed by a judicial decision in the Supreme
Court of the United States. In the famous " Dred Scott case," a negro
demanded his freedom on the ground of legal residence beyond the lati-
tude of 36° 30' N. — the line of the Missouri Compromise. The Supreme
Court pronounced that Congress had no power to make that law ; that it
was therefore null and void ; and declared " that the Constitution recog-
nizes the right of property in a slave, and makes no distinction between
that description of property and other property owned by a citizen ; " and
further, that every citizen had the clear right to go into any Territory,
and take with him that which the Constitution recognized as his property.

So far the rights of the South in the Territories were thought to be
plain ; the design of the Black Republican party to exclude slavery there-
from by the Federal authority had been pronounced unconstitutional by
the highest judicial authority in the country ; and the Kansas-Nebraska
bill was thought to be a plain letter, which taught that slavery was the
subject of exclusive legislation by States, or by Territories in the act of
assuming the character of States. But the South only stood on the
threshold of a new controversy — another exhibition of the ingenuity of the
anti-slavery sentiment to assert itself in new methods and on new issues.



THE KANSAS CONTROVERSY. 67



THE KANSAS CONTROVERSY.

What is known as the Kansas Controversj was a marked era in the
p(jlitical history of the Union. It ilhistrated most powerfully the fact that
the slavery question really involved but little of moral sentiment, and
indicated a contest for political power between two rival sections.

When Mr. Buchanan came into the Presidential office, in 1857, he at
once perceived that the great point of his administration wouM be to
effect the admission of Kansas into the Union, and thus terminate a
dispure which was agitating and distracting the countiy. In September,
1857, the people of the Territory had called a Convention at Lecompton
to form a Constitution. The entire Constitution was not submitted to the
popular vote ; but the Convention took care to submit to the vote of the
j^eople, for ratification or rejection, the clause respecting slavery. The
official vote resulted : For the Constitution, with slavery, 6,226 ; for the
Constitution, without slavery, 509. Under this Constitution, Mr. Buchanan
recommended the admission of Kansas into the Union ; and indeed he had
reason to hope for it in view of the principles which had governed in his
election.

The argument on the other side was that the entire Constitution had