The Negro and the Nation : A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement (Illustrated) by George S. Merriam

Author:George S. Merriam [Merriam, George S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXIII.

WHY THEY FOUGHT

Now, when the issue was about to be joined, let it be noted that Secession based itself, in profession and in reality, wholly on the question of slavery. There lay the grievance, and for that alone a remedy was to be had even at the price of sundering the Union. Later, when actual war broke out, other considerations than slavery came into play. To unite and animate the South came the doctrine of State rights, the sympathy of neighborhood, and the primal human impulse of self-defense. But the critical movement, the action which first sundered the Union and so led to war,—was inspired wholly and solely by the defense and maintenance of slavery. The proposition is almost too plain for argument. But it receives illustration from the great debate in the Georgia Legislature, when Toombs advocated Secession and Stephens opposed it. Toombs, evidently unwilling to rest the case wholly on slavery, alleged three other grievances at the hands of the North—the fishery bounties, the navigation laws, and the protective tariff. Stephens easily brushed aside the bounties and navigation laws as bygone or unimportant. As to the tariff, he showed that the last tariff law, enacted in 1857, was supported by every Massachusetts member of Congress and every Georgia member, including Toombs himself. What further he said belongs to a later chapter. But he was unquestionably right, and all rational history confirms it, that the one force impelling the South to Secession was the imperilled interest of slavery.

But the resistance which Secession encountered from the North was from the outset other and wider than hostility to slavery. Anti-slavery feeling was indeed strong in the Northern heart; the restriction of slavery was the supreme principle of the Republican party; the resentment that the national bond should be menaced in the interest of slavery gave force to the opposition which Secession instantly aroused. But, on the one hand, the extreme opponents of slavery, Garrison and his followers, were now, as they had always been, willing and more than willing that the South should go off and take slavery with it. And on the other hand, the anti-secessionists of the nation included a multitude, North and South, who were either friendly to slavery or indifferent to it. Even of the Republican party the mass were more concerned for the rights of the white man than of the black man. They were impatient of the dominance of the government by the South, and meant to unseat the Southern oligarchy from the place of power at Washington.

They intended that the territories should be kept for the free immigrant, who should not be degraded by slaves at work in the next field. Only a minority of the party,—though a minority likely in the long run to lead it—looked with hope and purpose to ultimate emancipation. And when the question of Secession was at issue by the people's votes and voice, and had not yet come to the clash of arms, the rights and interests of the slave fell into the background.

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