The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864. Various
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reveals the fact that the headquarters of the 'peace party' in the Revolutionary and the present war are in precisely the same localities. The 'Copperhead' districts of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are the old Tory districts of the Revolution. The Tories of that day, with the mass of the Southern aristocracy, tried to 'stop the war' which was to lay the foundations of the freedom of all men. The Tories of to-day are engaged in the same infamous enterprise, and their fate will be the same.
Had the Slave Power been united in 1776, we should never have gained our independence. But it was divided. Every State was nominally a Slave State; but slaveholders were divided into two classes. The first was led by Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and other illustrious aristocrats, North and South; and, like the Liberal lords of Great Britain, threw their influence on the side of the people. This party, very strong in Virginia, very weak in the Carolinas, dragged the South through the war by the hair of its head; and compelled it to come into the Union. It also resolved to abolish the Slave Power, and succeeded in consecrating the whole Northwestern territory to freedom as early as 1790. The opposition party had its headquarters at Charleston, was treasonable or luke-warm during the war, and refused to come into the Union without guarantees for slavery.
The result of the whole struggle was, that the people of the thirteen colonies, with the help of a portion of their aristocracy, severed the country from Great Britain, and established a Government by which they, the people, believed themselves able, in time, to control the whole Union, and secure personal liberty in every State. For 'the compromises of the Constitution' mean just this: that our National Government was a great arena on which aristocracy and democracy could have a free fight. If the aristocracy beat, that Government would be made as despotic as South Carolina; if the democracy triumphed, it would become as free as Massachusetts. That was what the people had never before achieved: a free field to work for a Christian democracy. God bless the sturdy people of New England and the Middle States for this! God bless George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and the liberal gentlemen of the Old Dominion, for helping the people do it. They did not win the victory, as many have supposed; but they bravely helped to lead the people of the Free States to this great military and civil achievement. Virginia was richly paid for the service of her aristocracy. But history tells us who did the work, and how nobly it was done.
The republic was now established, with a Constitution which might be made to uphold a democratic or an aristocratic government, as either party should triumph. The Slave Power, forced half reluctantly into the Union, now began to conspire to rule it for its own uses. All that was necessary, it thought, was to unite the aristocracy against the people. And this work was at once well begun. The first census was taken in 1790, and the last in 1860. This period divides itself, historically, into two portions. The thirty years from 1780 may be regarded as the period of the consolidation of the Slave Power, and its first distinct appearance as a great sectional aristocracy in 1820, in the struggle that resulted in the 'Missouri Compromise.' The forty years succeeding 1820 may be called the period of the consolidation of freedom to resist this assault, and the final triumph of democracy in 1860, by the election of a President.
The first thirty years was a period of incessant activity by the slave aristocracy. It incurred a nominal loss in the abolition of slavery in eight Eastern and Middle States, and the consecration of the great Northwestern territory to freedom; out of which three great Free States had already been carved; making, in 1820, eleven Free States. But it had gained by the concentration of its power below the line of the Ohio and Pennsylvania boundary, the division of the territory belonging to the Carolinas, and the Louisiana purchase; whereby it had gained five new Slave States; making the number of Slave States equal to the Free—eleven. It put forward the liberal aristocracy of Virginia to occupy the Presidential chair during thirty-two of the thirty-six years between 1789 and 1825; thus compelling Virginia and Maryland to a firm alliance with itself. It had manœuvred the country through a great political struggle and a foreign war, both of which were chiefly engineered to secure the consolidation of the slave aristocracy. In 1820 its power was extended in eleven States, containing four hundred and twenty-four thousand square miles, with one hundred and seventy-nine thousand square miles of territory sure to come in as Slave States; and the remainder of the Louisiana purchase not secure to liberty. It had a white population only seven hundred thousand less, while its white and black population was a million more than all the Free States.
The North was barely half as large in area of States: two hundred and seventy thousand square miles, with only one hundred thousand square miles in reserve of the territory dedicated to liberty. With an equality of representation in the Senate of the United States, and a firm hold of all the branches of the Government, the prospect of the oligarchy for success was brilliant. In every nation the aristocracy first gets possession, organizes first, and proceeds deliberately to seize and administer the government. The people are always unsuspicious, slow, late in organizing, and seem to blunder into success or be led to it by a Providence higher than themselves. In this Government the slave aristocracy first consolidated, and in 1820 appeared boldly on the arena, claiming the superiority, and threatening ruin to the republic in the event of the failure of their plans. It had managed so well that there was now no division in its ranks, and for the last forty years has moved forward in solid column to repeated assaults on liberty.
The people, as usual, did not suspect the existence of this concentrated power till 1820. They made a brave militia fight then against the aristocracy, and compelled it to acknowledge a drawn battle by the admission of Maine to balance Missouri, and the establishment of a line of compromise, which would leave all territory north of 36° 30' consecrated to freedom. The Slave Power submitted with anger, intending to break the bargain as soon as it was strong enough, and continued on its relentless struggle for power. It determined to gain possession of the Senate of the United States; make it a house of nobles; control through it the foreign policy, the Executive, and the Supreme Court; and, with this advantage, reckoned it could always manage the House of Representatives and govern the nation. The key to all the political policy of the Slave Power through these last forty years is this endeavor to capture the Senate of the United States, and hold it, by bringing in a superior number of Slave States. So well did it play this card that, till 1850, it maintained an equality of senatorial representation, and, by the help of Northern allies and the superior political dexterity of the aristocracy, controlled our foreign policy; kept its own representatives in all the great courts of Europe; made peace or war at will; managed the Executive through a veto on his appointments; and endeavored to fill the Supreme Court with men in favor of its policy, while the House of Representatives never was able to pass a measure without its consent. Under the past forty years' reign of the Slave Power, the Senate of the United States has been a greater farce in the republic than the crown and House of Lords in the British empire. Indeed, so well did this aristocracy play its part, that it was supposed by the whole world to be the American Government; and the news that the people of the United States had refused, in 1860, to register its behests, was received abroad with the same astonishment and indignation as if there had been a revolt of the subjects of any European nation against their anointed rulers.
But spite of these great advantages at the outset—spite of its incredible political activity and admirable concentration, the slave aristocracy was finally defeated by the people. How this was done is the most interesting narrative in modern history. Never has the intrinsic superiority of a democratic over an aristocratic order of society been so magnificently vindicated as during the last forty years of our national career. During that period the free portion of this Union has grown to an overwhelming superiority over the slave portion, and compelled the slaveholders to draw the sword to save themselves from material and providential destruction.
This period of forty years may be regarded as that of the consolidation of the people. The first thirty years of it was the era of their industrial and social consolidation; the last ten years has been the period of their political union against the Slave Power.
An aristocracy always exhibits the uttermost pitch of human policy in its career, and amazes and outwits society by its marvellous display of executive ability. But the people are always moved by great supernatural forces that are beyond their comprehension, often disowned or scorned by them, but which mould their destiny and lead them to a victory spite of themselves. The people always grow without conscious plan or method, and rarely know