The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 55, May, 1862

For rising in that cadence low,
With "Now I lay me down to sleep,"
Her mother rocked her to and fro,
And prayed the Lord her soul to keep.

And still her prayer was humbly raised,
Held up in two cold hands to God,
That, white as some old pine-tree blazed,
Gleamed far o'er that dark frozen sod.

The storm stole out beyond the wood,
She grew the vision of a cloud,
Her dark hair was a misty hood,
Her stark face shone as from a shroud.

Still sped the wild storm's rustling feet
To martial music of the pines,
And to her cold heart's muffled beat
Wheeled grandly into solemn lines.

And still, as if her secret's woe
No mortal words had ever found,
This dying sinner draped in snow
Held up her prayer without a sound.

But when the holy angel bands
Saw this lone vigil, lowly kept,
They gathered from her frozen hands
The prayer thus folded, and they wept.

Some snow-flakes—wiser than the rest—
Soon faltered o'er a thing of clay,
First read this secret of her breast,
Then gently robed her where she lay.

The dead dark hair, made white with snow,
A still stark face, two folded palms,
And (mothers, breathe her secret low!)
An unborn infant—asking alms.

God kept her counsel; cold and mute
His steadfast mourners closed her eyes,
Her head-stone was an old tree's root,
Be mine to utter,—"Here she lies."

SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS

Within the memory of men still in the vigor of life, American Slavery was considered by a vast majority of the North, and by a large minority of the South, as an evil which should, at best, be tolerated, and not a good which deserved to be extended and protected. A kind of lazy acquiescence in it as a local matter, to be managed by local legislation, was the feeling of the Free States. In both the Slave and the Free States, the discussion of the essential principles on which Slavery rests was confined to a few disappointed Nullifiers and a few uncompromising Abolitionists, and we can recollect the time when Calhoun and Garrison were both classed by practical statesmen of the South and North in one category of pestilent "abstractionists." Negro Slavery was considered simply as a fact; and general irritation among most politicians of all sections was sure to follow any attempt to explore the principles on which the fact reposed. That these principles had the mischievous vitality which events have proved them to possess, few of our wisest statesmen then dreamed, and we have drifted by degrees into the present war without any clear perception of its animating causes.

The future historian will trace the steps by which the subject of Slavery was forced on the reluctant attention of the citizens of the Free States, so that at last the most cautious conservative could not ignore its intrusive presence, could not banish its reality from his eyes, or its image from his mind. He will show why Slavery, disdaining its old argument from expediency, challenged discussion on its principles. He will explain the process by which it became discontented with toleration within its old limits, and demanded the championship or connivance of the National Government in a plan for its limitless extension. He will indicate the means by which it corrupted the Southern heart and Southern brain, so that at last the elemental principles of morals and religion were boldly denied, and the people came to "believe a lie." He will, not unnaturally, indulge in a little sarcasm, when he comes to consider the occupation of Southern professors of ethics, compelled by their position to scoff at the "rights" of man, and Southern professors of theology, compelled by their position to teach that Christ came into the world, not so much to save sinners, as to enslave negroes. He will be forced to class these among the meanest and most abject slaves that the planters owned. In treating of the subserviency of the North, he will be constrained to write many a page which will flush the cheeks of our descendants with indignation and shame. He will show the method by which Slavery, after vitiating the conscience and intelligence of the South, contrived to vitiate in part, and for a time, the conscience and intelligence of the North. It will be his ungrateful task to point to many instances of compliance and concession on the part of able Northern statesmen which will deeply affect their fame with posterity, though he will doubtless refuse to adopt to the full the contemporary clamor against their motives. He will understand, better than we, the amount of patriotism which entered into their "concessions," and the amount of fraternal good-will which prompted their fatal "compromises." But he will also declare that the object of the Slave Power was not attained. Vacillating statesmen and corrupt politicians it might address, the first through their fears, the second through their interests; but the intrepid and incorruptible "people" were but superficially affected. A few elections were gained, but the victories were barren of results. From political defeat the free people of the North came forth more earnest and more united than ever.

The insolent pretensions of the Slavocracy were repudiated; its political and ethical maxims were disowned; and after having stirred the noblest impulses of the human heart by the spectacle of its tyranny, its attempt to extend that tyranny only roused an insurrection of the human understanding against the impudence of its logic. The historian can then only say, that the Slave Power "seceded," being determined to form a part of no government which it could not control. The present war is to decide whether its real force corresponds to the political force it has exerted heretofore in our affairs.

That this war has been forced upon the Free States by the "aggressions" of the Slave Power is so plain that no argument is necessary to sustain the proposition. It is not so universally understood that the Slave Power is aggressive by the necessities of the wretched system of labor on which its existence is based. By a short exposition of the principles of Slavery, and the expedients it has practised during the last twenty or thirty years, we think that this proposition can be established.

And first it must be always borne in mind, that Slavery, as a system, is based on the most audacious, inhuman, and self-evident of lies,—the assertion, namely, that property can be held in men. Property applies to things. There is a meta-physical impossibility implied in the attempt to extend its application to persons. It is possible, we admit, to ordain by local law that four and four make ten, but such an exercise of legislative wisdom could not overcome certain arithmetical prejudices innate in our minds, or dethrone the stubborn eight from its accustomed position in our thoughts. But you might as well ordain that four and four make ten as ordain that a man has no right to himself, but can properly be held as the chattel of another. Yet this arrogant falsehood of property in men has been organized into a colossal institution. The South calls it a "peculiar" institution; and herein perhaps consists its peculiarity, that it is an absurdity which has lied itself into a substantial form, and now argues its right to exist from the fact of its existence. Doubtless, the fact that a thing exists proves that it has its roots in human nature; but before we accept this as decisive of its right to exist, it may be well to explore those qualities in human nature, "peculiar" and perverse as itself, from which it derives its poisonous vitality and strength. It is plain, we think, that an institution embodying an essential falsity, which equally affronts the common sense and the moral sense of mankind, and which, as respects chronology, was as repugnant to the instincts of Homer as it is to the instincts of Whittier, must have sprung from the unblessed union of wilfulness and avarice, of avarice which knows no conscience, and of wilfulness that tramples on reason; and the marks of this parentage, the signs of these its boasted roots in human nature, are, we are constrained to concede, visible in every stage of its growth, in every argument for its existence, in every motive for its extension.

It is not, perhaps, surprising that some of the advocates of Slavery do not relish the analysis which reveals the origin of their institution in those dispositions which connect man with the tiger and the wolf. Accordingly they discourage, with true democratic humility, all genealogical inquiries into the ancestry of their system, substitute generalization for analysis, and, twisting the maxims of religion into a philosophy of servitude, bear down all arguments with the sounding proposition, that Slavery is included in the plan of God's providence, and therefore cannot be wrong. Certain thinkers of our day have asserted the universality of the religious element in human nature: and it must be admitted that men become very pious when their minds are illuminated by the discernment of a Providential sanction for their darling sins, and by the discovery that God is on the side of their interests and passions. Napoleon's religious perceptions were somewhat obtuse, as tried by the standards of the Church, yet nothing could exceed the depth of his belief that God "was with the heaviest column"; and the most obdurate jobber in human flesh may well glow with apostolic fervor, as, from the height of philosophic contemplation to which this principle lifts him, he discerns the sublime import of his Providential mission. It is true, he is now willing to concede, that a man's right to himself, being given by God, can only by God be taken away. "But," he exultingly exclaims, "it has been taken away by God. The negro, having always been a slave, must have been so by divine appointment; and I, the mark of obloquy to a few fanatical enthusiasts, am really an humble agent in carrying out the designs of a higher law even than that of the State, of a higher will even than my own." This mode of baptizing man's sin and calling it God's providence has not altogether lacked the aid of certain Southern clergymen, who ostentatiously profess to preach Christ and Him crucified, and by such arguments, we may fear, crucified by them. Here is Slavery's abhorred riot of vices and crimes, from whose soul-sickening details the human imagination shrinks aghast,—and over all, to complete the picture, these theologians bring in the seraphic countenance of the Saviour of mankind, smiling celestial approval of the multitudinous miseries and infamies it serenely beholds!

It may be presumptuous to proffer counsel to such authorized expositors of religion, but one can hardly help insinuating the humble suggestion, that it would be as well, if they must give up the principles of liberty, not to throw Christianity in. We may be permitted to doubt the theory of Providence which teaches that a man never so much serves God as when he serves the Devil. Doubtless, Slavery, though opposed to God's laws, is included in the plan of God's providence, but, in the long run, the providence most terribly confirms the laws. The stream of events, having its fountains in iniquity, has its end in retribution. It is because God's laws are immutable that God's providence can be foreseen as well as seen. The mere fact that a thing exists, and persists in existing, is of little importance in determining its right to exist, or its eventual destiny. These must be found in an inspection of the principles by which it exists; and from the nature of its principles, we can predict its future history. The confidence of bad men and the despair of good men proceed equally from a too fixed attention to the facts and events before their eyes, to the exclusion of the principles which underlie and animate them; for no insight of principles, and of the moral laws which govern human events, could ever cause tyrants to exult or philanthropists to despond.

If we go farther into this question, we shall commonly find that the facts and events to which we give the name of Providence are the acts of human wills divinely overruled. There is iniquity and wrong in these facts and events, because they are the work of free human wills. But when these free human wills organize falsehood, institute injustice, and establish oppression, they have passed into that mental state where will has been perverted into wilfulness, and self-direction has been exaggerated into self-worship. It is the essence of wilfulness that it exalts the impulses of its pride above the intuitions of conscience and intelligence, and puts force in the place of reason and right. The person has thus emancipated himself from all restraints of a law higher than his personality, and acts from self, for self, and in sole obedience to self. But this is personality in its Satanic form; yet it is just here that some of our theologians have discovered in a person's actions the purposes of Providence, and discerned the Divine intention in the fact of guilt instead of in the certainty of retribution. The tyrant element in man is found in this Satanic form of his individuality. His will, self-released from restraint, preys upon and crushes other wills. He asserts himself by enslaving others, and mimics Divinity on the stilts of diabolism. Like the barbarian who thought himself enriched by the powers and gifts of the enemy he slew, he aggrandizes his own personality, and heightens his own sense of freedom, through the subjection of feebler natures. Ruthless, rapacious, greedy of power, greedy of gain, it is in Slavery that he wantons in all the luxury of injustice, for it is here that he tastes the exquisite pleasure of depriving others of that which he most values in himself.

Thus, whether we examine this system in the light of conscience and intelligence, or in the light of history and experience, we come to but one result,—that it has its source and sustenance in Satanic energy, in Satanic pride, and in Satanic greed. This is Slavery in itself, detached from the ameliorations it may receive from individual slaveholders. Now a bad system is not continued or extended by the virtues of any individuals who are but partially corrupted by it, but by those who work in the spirit and with the implements of its originators. Every amelioration is a confession of the essential injustice of the thing ameliorated, and a step towards its abolition; and the humane and Christian slaveholders owe their safety, and the security of what they are pleased to call their property, to the vices of the hard and stern spirits whom they profess to abhor. If they invest in stock of the Devil's corporation, they ought not to be severe on those who look out that they punctually receive their dividends. The true slaveholder feels that he is encamped among his slaves, that he holds them by the right of conquest, that the relation is one of war, and that there is no crime he may not be compelled to commit in self-defence. Disdaining all cant, he clearly perceives that the system, in its practical working, must conform to the principles on which it is based. He accordingly believes in the lash and the fear of the lash. If he is cruel and brutal, it may as often be from policy as from disposition, for brutality and cruelty are the means by which weaker races are best kept "subordinated" to stronger races; and the influence of his brutality and cruelty is felt as restraint and terror on the plantation of his less resolute neighbor. And when we speak of brutality and cruelty, we do not limit the application of the words to those who scourge, but extend it to some of those who preach,—who hold up heaven as the reward of those slaves who are sufficiently abject on earth, and threaten damnation in the next world to all who dare to assert their manhood in this.

If, however, any one still doubts that this system develops itself logically and naturally, and tramples down the resistance offered by the better sentiments of human nature, let him look at the legislation which defines and protects it,—a legislation which, as expressing the average sense and purpose of the community, is to be quoted as conclusive against the testimony of any of its individual members. This legislation evinces the dominion of a malignant principle. You can hear the crack of the whip and the clank of the chain in all its enactments. Yet these laws, which cannot be read in any civilized country without mingled horror and derision, indicate a mastery of the whole theory and practice of oppression, are admirably adapted to the end they have in view, and bear the unmistakable marks of being the work of practical men,—of men who know their sin, and "knowing, dare maintain." They do not, it is true, enrich the science of jurisprudence with any large or wise additions, but we do not look for such luxuries as justice, reason, and beneficence in ordinances devised to prop up iniquity, falsehood, and tyranny. Ghastly caricatures of justice as these offshoots of Slavery are, they are still dictated by the nature and necessities of the system. They have the flavor of the rank soil whence they spring.

If we desire any stronger evidence that slaveholders constitute a general Slave Power, that this Slave Power acts as a unit, the unity of a great interest impelled by powerful passions, and that the virtues of individual slaveholders have little effect in checking the vices of the system, we can find that evidence in the zeal and audacity with which this power engaged in extending its dominion. Seemingly aggressive in this, it was really acting on the defensive,—on the defensive, however, not against the assaults of men, but against the immutable decrees of God. The world is so constituted, that wrong and oppression are not, in a large view, politic. They heavily mortgage the future, when they glut the avarice of the present. The avenging Providence, which the slaveholder cannot find in the New Testament, or in the teachings of conscience, he is at last compelled to find in political economy; and however indifferent to the Gospel according to Saint John, he must give heed to the gospel according to Adam Smith and Malthus. He discovers, no doubt to his surprise, and somewhat to his indignation, that there is an intimate relation between industrial success and justice; and however much, as a practical man, he may despise the abstract principles which declare Slavery a nonsensical enormity, he cannot fail to read its nature, when it slowly, but legibly, writes itself out in curses on the land. He finds how true is the old proverb, that, "if God moves with leaden feet, He strikes with iron hands." The law of Slavery is, that, to be lucrative, it must have a scanty population diffused over large areas. To limit it is therefore to doom it to come to an end by the laws of population. To limit it is to force the planters, in the end, to free their slaves, from an inability to support them, and to force the slaves into more energy and intelligence in labor, in order that they may subsist as freemen. People prattle about the necessity of compulsory labor; but the true compulsory labor, the labor which has produced the miracles of modern industry, is the labor to which a man is compelled by the necessity of saving himself, and those who are dearer to him than self, from ignominy and want. It was by this policy of territorial limitation, that Henry Clay, before the annexation of Texas, declared that Slavery must eventually expire. The way was gradual, it was prudent, it was safe, it was distant, it was sure, it was according to the nature of things. It would have been accepted, had there been any general truth in the assertion that the slaveholders were honestly desirous of reconverting, at any time, and on any practicable plan, their chattels into men. But true to the malignant principles of their system, they accepted the law of its existence, but determined to evade the law of its extinction. As Slavery required large areas and scanty population, large areas and scanty population it should at all times have. New markets should be opened for the surplus slave-population; to open new markets was to acquire new territory; and to acquire new territory was to gain additional political strength. The expansive tendencies of freedom would thus be checked by the tendencies no less expansive of bondage. To acquire Texas was not merely to acquire an additional Slave State, but it was to keep up a demand for slaves which would prevent Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Kentucky from becoming Free States. As soon as old soils were worn out, new soils were to be ready to receive the curse; and where slave-labor ceased to be profitable, slave-breeding was to take its place.

This purpose was so diabolical, that, when first announced, it was treated as a caprice of certain hot spirits, irritated by the declamations of the Abolitionists. But it is idle to refer to transient heat thoughts which bear all the signs of cool atrocity; and needless to seek for the causes of actions in extraneous sources, when they are plainly but steps in the development of principles already known. Slave-breeding and Slavery-extension are necessities of the system. Like Romulus and Remus, "they are both suckled from one wolf."

But it was just here that the question became to the Free States a practical question. There could be no "fanaticism" in meeting it at this stage. What usually goes under the name of fanaticism is the habit of uncompromising assault on a thing because its principles are absurd or wicked; what usually goes under the name of common sense is the disposition to assail it at that point where, in the development of its principles, it has become immediately and pressingly dangerous. Now by no sophistry could we of the Free States evade the responsibility of being the extenders of Slavery, if we allowed Slavery to be extended. If we did not oppose it from a sense of right, we were bound to oppose it from a sense of decency. It may be said that we had nothing to do with Slavery at the South; but we had something to do with rescuing the national character from infamy, and unhappily we could not have anything to do with rescuing the national character from infamy without having something to do with Slavery at the South. The question with us was, whether we would allow the whole force of the National Government to be employed in upholding, extending, and perpetuating this detestable and nonsensical enormity?—especially, whether we would be guilty of that last and foulest atheism to free principles, the deliberate planting of slave institutions on virgin soil? If this question had been put to any despot of Europe,—we had almost said, to any despot of Asia,—his answer would undoubtedly have been an indignant negative. Yet the South confidently expected so to wheedle or bully us into dragging our common sense through the mud and mire of momentary expedients, that we should connive at the commission of this execrable crime!

There can be no doubt, that, if the question had been fairly put to the inhabitants of the Free States, their answer would have been at once decisive for freedom. Even the strongest conservatives would have been "Free-Soilers,"—not only those who are conservatives in virtue of their prudence, moderation, sagacity, and temper, but prejudiced conservatives, conservatives who are tolerant of all iniquity which is decorous, inert, long-established, and disposed to die when its time comes, conservatives as thorough in their hatred of change as Lamennais himself. "What a noise," says Paul Louis Courier, "Lamennais would have made on the day of creation, could he have witnessed it. His first cry to the Divinity would have been to respect that ancient chaos." But even to conservatives of this class, the attempt to extend Slavery, though really in the order of its natural development, must still have appeared a monstrous innovation, and they were bound to oppose the Marats and Robespierres of despotism who were busy in the bad work. Indeed, in our country, conservatism, through the presence of Slavery, has inverted its usual order. In other countries, the radical of one century is the conservative of the next; in ours, the conservative of one generation is the radical of the next. The American conservative of 1790 is the so-called fanatic of 1820; the conservative of 1820 is the fanatic of 1856. The American conservative, indeed, descended the stairs of compromise until his descent into utter abnegation of all that civilized humanity holds dear was arrested by the Rebellion. And the reason of this strange inversion of conservative principles was, that the movement of Slavery is towards barbarism, while the movement of all countries in which labor is not positively chattellized is towards freedom and civilization. True conservatism, it must never be forgotten, is the refusal to give up a positive, though imperfect good, for a possible, but uncertain improvement: in the United States it has been misused to denote the cowardly surrender of a positive good from a fear to resist the innovations of an advancing evil and wrong.

There was, therefore, little danger that Slavery would be extended through the conscious thought and will of the people, but there was danger that its extension might, somehow or other, occur. Misconception of the question, devotion to party or the memory of party, prejudice against the men who more immediately represented the Anti-Slavery principle, might make the people unconsciously slide into this crime. And it must be said that for the divisions in the Free States as to the mode in which the free sentiment of the people should operate the strictly Anti-Slavery men were to some extent responsible. It is difficult to convince an ardent reformer that the principle for which he contends, being impersonal, should be purified from the passions and whims of his own personality. The more fervid he is, the more he is identified in the public mind with his cause; and, in a large view, he is bound not merely to defend his cause, but to see that the cause, through him, does not become offensive. Men are ever ready to dodge disagreeable duties by converting questions of principles into criticisms on the men who represent principles; and the men who represent principles should therefore look to it that they make no needless enemies and give no needless shock to public opinion for the purpose of pushing pet opinions, wreaking personal grudges, or gratifying individual antipathies. The artillery of the North has heretofore played altogether too much on Northerners.

But to return. The South expected to fool the North into a compliance with its designs, by availing itself of the divisions among its professed opponents, and by dazzling away the attention of the people from the real nature of the wickedness to be perpetrated. Slavery was to be extended, and the North was to be an accomplice in the business; but the Slave Power did not expect that we should be active and enthusiastic in this work of self-degradation. It did not ask us to extend Slavery, but simply to allow its extension to occur; and in this appeal to our moral timidity and moral laziness, it contemptuously tossed us a few fig-leaves of fallacy and false statement to save appearances.

We were informed, for instance, that by the equality of men is meant the equality of those whom Providence has made equal. But this is exactly the sense in which no sane man ever understood the doctrine of equality; for Providence has palpably made men unequal, white men as well as black.

Then we were told that the white and black races could dwell together only in the relation of masters and slaves,—and, in the same breath, that in this relation the slaves were steadily advancing in civilization and Christianity. But, if steadily advancing in civilization and Christianity, the time must inevitably come when they would not submit to be slaves; and then what becomes of the statement that the white and black races cannot dwell together as freemen? Why boast of their improvement, when you are improving them only that you may exterminate them, or they you?

Then, with a composure of face which touches the exquisite in effrontery, we were assured that this antithesis of master and slave, of tyrant and abject natures, is really a perfect harmony. Slavery—so said these logicians of liberticide—has solved the great social problem of the working-classes, comfortably for capital, happily for labor; and has effected this by an ingenious expedient which could have occurred only to minds of the greatest depth and comprehension, the expedient, namely, of enslaving labor. Now doubtless there has always been a struggle between employers and employed, and this struggle will probably continue until the relations between the two are more humane and Christian. But Slavery exhibits this struggle in its earliest and most savage stage, a stage answering to the rude energies and still ruder conceptions of barbarians. The issue of the struggle, it is plain, will not be that capital will own labor, but that labor will own capital, and no man be owned.

Still we were vehemently told, that, though the slaves, for their own good, were deprived of their rights as men, they were in a fine state of physical comfort. This was not and could not be true; but even if it were, it only represented the slaveholder as addressing his slave in some such words of derisive scorn as Byron hurls at Duke Alphonso,—

"Thou! born to eat, and be despised, and die, Even as the brutes that perish,"– though we doubt if he could truly add,—

"save that thou Hast a more splendid trough and wider sty."

Then we were solemnly warned of our patriotic duty to "know no North and no South." This was the very impudence of ingratitude; for we had long known no North, and unhappily had known altogether too much South.

Then we were most plaintively adjured to to comply with the demands of the Slave Power, in order to save the Union. But how save the Union? Why, by violating the principles on which the Union was formed, and scouting the objects it was intended to serve.

But lastly came the question, on which the South confidently relied as a decisive argument, "What could we do with our slaves, provided we emancipated them?" The peculiarity which distinguished this question from all other interrogatories ever addressed to human beings was this, that it was asked for the purpose of not being answered. The moment a reply was begun, the ground was swiftly shifted, and we were overwhelmed with a torrent of words about State Rights and the duty of minding our own business.

But it is needless to continue the examination of these substitutes and apologies for fact and reason, especially as their chief characteristic consisted in their having nothing to do with the practical question before the people. They were thrown out by the interested defenders of Slavery, North and South, to divert attention from the main issue. In the fine felicity of their in appropriateness to the actual condition of the struggle between the Free and Slave States, they were almost a match for that renowned sermon, preached by a metropolitan bishop before an asylum for the blind, the halt, and the legless, on "The Moral Dangers of Foreign Travel." But still they were infinitely mischievous, considered as pretences under which Northern men could skulk from their duties, and as sophistries to lull into a sleepy acquiescence the consciences of those political adventurers who are always seeking occasions for being tempted and reasons for being rogues. They were all the more influential from the circumstance that their show of argument was backed by the solid substance of patronage. These false facts and bad reasons were the keys to many fat offices. The South had succeeded in instituting a new political test, namely, that no man is qualified serve the United States unless he is the champion or the sycophant of the Slave Power. Proscription to the friends of American freedom, honors and emoluments to the friends of American slavery,—adopt that creed, or you did not belong to any "healthy" political organization! Now we have heard of civil disabilities for opinion's sake before. In some countries no Catholics are allowed to hold office, in others no Protestants, in others no Jews. But it is not, we believe, in Protestant countries that Protestants are proscribed; it is not in Catholic countries that Catholics are incompetent to serve the State. It was left for a free country to establish, practically, civil disabilities against freemen,—for Republican America to proscribe Republicans! Think of it,—that no American, whatever his worth, talents, or patriotism,—could two years ago serve his country in any branch of its executive administration, unless he was unfortunate enough to agree with the slaveholders, or base enough to sham an agreement with them! The test, at Washington, of political orthodoxy was modelled on the pattern of the test of religious orthodoxy established by Napoleon's minister of police. "You are not orthodox," he said to a priest "In what," inquired the astonished ecclesiastic, "have I sinned against orthodoxy?" "You have not pronounced the eulogium of the Emperor, or proved the righteousness of the conscription."