The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863

Among all the subjects of human cognizance, the least understood, and therefore the most difficult of anticipation, are those which concern the acts of men, as individuals or in society. Presumptuous, indeed, would be that man who should undertake to foretell the exact results of pending political or military operations, complicated as they must be by innumerable unknown and undiscoverable contingencies, which lie hidden in the circumstances of the actual situation. The difficulty of this investigation does not arise, however, from the absence of fixed laws controlling such events, but solely from our ignorance of those laws, and the extreme complexity of the conditions in which they act. The issue of existing causes is as certain as this moment, as it will be after it shall have become unalterable in history. No accident can disturb or thwart it; for, in truth, there can be no such thing as accident, except in our imaginations, and by reason of our incapacity to trace the continuous thread of inevitable sequence, or causation, which connects together all events whatever, in their inception, through their continuance, and to their end. All enlightened thinkers of the present age have recognized this great truth; and yet none have been able to apply to social and political affairs the sole admitted test of genuine philosophy, the prediction of future results from known antecedents. Indeed, the wisest and most competent of political observers have always been the most cautious in their indulgence of the prophetic spirit, and the most ready to acknowledge their ignorance of what the future will bring forth in the great field of political and social affairs. Gasparin, in his late admirable book, 'America before Europe' (according to his American translator), has this very modest passage on this subject:

'Not feeling any vocation for the character of prophet, I shall take care not to recount here, in advance, events that are about to happen. I marvel at people who are so sure of their facts. The future has not the least obscurity for them; it has much for me. I confine myself to protesting against the positive assertions which have contributed but too greatly to mislead the opinion of Europe. My humbles theory is this: the defeat of the South is probable; the return of the conquered South to the Union is possible.'

But while 'political or military vaticination' is proverbially unsafe, and therefore to be carefully avoided by all judicious inquirers, and especially by practical statesmen, it must at the same time be admitted that some of the general laws controlling such events are well understood; and whenever all the facts of a case are known and appreciated, and the laws applicable fully comprehended, then it is possible to anticipate the results of that particular combination with absolute certainty. Other causes may interfere, and modify these results—may accelerate of postpone them, or entirely absorb and conceal them in the general issue of complicated affairs. Yet the particular results themselves are not, and cannot be defeated or annulled. They are merely transformed by a sort of 'composition and resolution' of social and political causes, exactly similar to that which takes place in mechanics, when two or more forces not concurrent in direction, impel a body in a line altogether different from that in which either of the forces may have acted. Every physical impulse, it is said, which is initiated anywhere on the earth, is felt to the extremities of our solar system—every motion of the smallest particle of matter communicating its effect, however inappreciable, to the most distant planet, and as far beyond as the power of gravitation may extend. It is precisely so with all social events, even those of the most insignificant character. Every one of them has its appropriate influence, which is indestructible; and they all combine to make up the great whole of human action, the results of which at any specific period are only the necessary and inevitable consequences of all antecedent facts.

It was the opinion of that most accomplished political philosopher, Burke, that 'politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings, but to human nature, of which reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part,'—the meaning of which is, simply, that the reasonings do not comprehend, as premises, all the complicated facts which enter into any important political problem, and hence the conclusion in such cases cannot be absolutely certain, and ought not to be implicitly received. It would be extremely difficult to explain how politics could be adjusted to human nature without the exercise of reason, which alone can regulate the process of adjustment. But we may certainly claim that, in the lapse of nearly a century since Burke wrote, the reason has been considerably enlightened, and something more has been learned of human nature itself, its apparently capricious and irregular phenomena having been ascertained to be the subjects of systematic order, as complete as that which prevails in all other departments of nature. The laws of social existence and development have been to some extent discovered, and recognized as being uniform in their operation, so that the natural and necessary course of human events may be anticipated, though as yet in a dim and imperfect way. The present age is fruitful of many wonders; but the greatest of them all is this important truth, which has just begun fairly to dawn upon mankind. It is already so firmly established, that no intelligent man who is fully up with the knowledge of his epoch, can admit the least doubt that all events, however complicated, whether social, political, military, or of any other kind, are controlled by general laws, as uniform and certain in their operation as the laws of astronomy, of physics, or of chemistry. The complexity of conditions under which they operate, makes these laws extremely difficult of discovery and of application. But the infinite combinations of influences which press on minds of individual members of society, and make the acts of each one of them apparently uncertain and arbitrary, exhibit a truly wonderful degree of uniformity, when considered in their operation on the whole mass of a nation. It is by the investigation of these wide and general effects, that the great laws of human action and development are ascertained. Their actual existence is absolutely certain. But after all, in the present state of our knowledge, with all the light afforded by such history as we have of the past, and with all the experience of the present generation, the sum and substance of what we can claim is no more than this: that some influences of a social and political nature may be traced to their certain results, though, from the intricacy of all social facts, their vast extent in a great nation, and especially when international interests are concerned, and from our necessarily imperfect acquaintance with all these varied, multiplex, and powerful conditions, we cannot always foresee what conflicting causes will intervene to counteract, modify, and control the actual issue. It is therefore only in the most general way that anything can be said with reference to the future in social or political affairs.

In two former articles contributed to The Continental, we have endeavored to point out 'the causes of the rebellion,' finding them in events and conditions contemporaneous with the birth of our institutions, and in the necessary antagonism of social and political principles naturally developed in the progress of our country, and embodied in appropriate but conflicting forms. If we have been successful in designating the real causes, and tracing their operation through successive stages, down to the tremendous and calamitous events of the present day, we may hope to follow these causes, to some extent, in their further development, and in their necessary action on the destiny of the nation. We can at least mark the direction of the stream of affairs as it rolls grandly before us; and while we may not know precisely through what regions it will take its course, or by what rapids and over what cataracts it will be hurried and precipitated with furious and destructive force, we can nevertheless pronounce with confidence that it will finally make its way, in spite of all obstructions, to the broad and peaceful ocean of amelioration, into which all the currents of human action, however turbid, and filled with wrecks of human work and genius, eventually pour their inevitable tribute. We can even look through the mists of time which limit mortal vision, and catch some glimpses of the bloody current, observing where it disappears in gloom and shadow, only to come forth again in the distance as a shining river, glistening in the sunlight of peace and prosperity, and bearing on its bosom the full-freighted ark of a mighty nation, resting from war, reunited, and reawakened to the animating sense of a glorious destiny. Though the present generation should be compelled to struggle and labor, through its whole term of existence, with immense sacrifice and suffering, such are the elements involved in the contest, that nothing but good to the nation, which is surely destined to survive, can come out of it in the end.

The whole history of our country, its origin, the peculiar organization of our institutions, and their gradual growth and development down to the present day, seem to have been arranged and ordered for the very purpose of engendering this contest between slavery and freedom. If this statement be too strong, we may at least assert that no better conditions for that purpose could have been devised, by human wisdom at all events, than those which existed at every stage of our progress, from the beginning of our existence as a people, to the culmination of this long-smouldering strife. The germs of freedom and slavery, which we know were planted in the infancy of our republic, found in the circumstances surrounding them the most favorable conditions for their respective growth and expansion. Each found ample opportunity to flourish according to its nature and necessities, modified, it may be, but not destroyed, by the unfavorable institutions which coexisted with it. The organization of separate colonies, and afterward of separate States, measurably independent, afforded these two irreconcilable systems full opportunity for complete development, and rendered it possible for them to maintain, each, a distinct existence in different localities, and to unfold their respective natures and tendencies, with comparatively little interference of the one with the other. Thus slavery soon became extinct in Massachusetts, and died out rather more slowly in the other Free States of the original thirteen. It flourished in Maryland and Virginia, and later, from peculiar circumstances, it grew rank, with unexampled fecundity, in the Carolinas and Georgia. Had the Government of the United States been consolidated, the conditions of slavery and free labor would have been wholly different; and it is reasonable to infer that the course of development of the respective systems would have been materially modified, if not altogether changed. We may pronounce with certainty that the institution would not have become extinct in the whole country as soon as it did in Massachusetts, or, indeed, in any one of the present Free States; but we cannot assert that the converse of this proposition would have been true, and that the Government, as a centralized power, would have abolished slavery more certainly, and sooner, than the most backward of the separate States may now be expected to do, under the complex forms of our present Constitution. In a consolidated government, the power of the majority would have been competent to effect fundamental and universal changes, even to the extent of abolishing slavery; but without the existence of separate States, with their independent local legislation and administrations, the gradual undermining and destruction of the old system would have been a process of extreme procrastination and difficulty. It would have been a gigantic undertaking, convulsing the whole nation whenever attempted, and yet demanding the exercise of its united authority for its accomplishment. We should not have had the effective antagonism of the Free against the Slave States, nor the demonstration which results from the striking contrasts between the two systems in their effects on civilization, in all its forms of intelligence, enterprise, wealth, and improvement. Contiguous States, with separate jurisdictions, admitted a divergence of customs, laws, and institutions, remarkable in its character, and fraught with momentous consequences to the whole sisterhood. Nothing like this could have occurred under the consolidated form. It is true, according to the principles we have heretofore enounced as having been established by universal history and experience, slavery must have disappeared eventually, alike in a consolidated or a federal form of government; for it is now well understood by all enlightened thinkers, that different forms of polity may either facilitate or embarrass the natural development of society, but cannot actually create or altogether destroy the tendency to improvement. This tendency is innate in man, and independent of all forms of government, though not wholly unaffected by them. But in our vast country, under a centralized system, however democratic, it would have been far more difficult to initiate the work of emancipation, on account of the magnitude and unity of the power to be moved, and for want of those points d'appui afforded by the local organization and independent authority of the states in a confederacy. Our own experience, and the recent example of Russia, may serve to convince us that a consolidated representative republic would probably have been less favorable to the abolition of slavery than an imperial and despotic government. The serf-owners of Russia, had the question been submitted to them, would have been as little disposed to vote for the destruction of their system, as the slave-holders of America have shown themselves inclined to submit to the voice of the majority under our republican institutions.

Thus, it was characteristic of our peculiar political forms, that they gave opportunity for the complete trial of each of the two plans of social organization which grew out of the early introduction of African slaves into the colonies. For while it seems to be clear that the federal system was most favorable to the disappearance of slavery from those localities where circumstances made emancipation easy and advantageous, it is equally plain that it afforded full scope to the growth and influence of the system of servile labor, wherever, from climatic conditions, it was peculiarly profitable, and otherwise adapted to the productions of the region, and to the prevailing sentiments of the people. The confederated form of government, therefore, almost of necessity originated the antagonism of Free States against Slave States; while, at the same time, and from the same cause, it enabled the opposite sections to give infinitely greater force and effect to this antagonism, than would have been possible under any other constitutional conditions. Rebellion might possibly have been initiated within the bosom of a consolidated republic, and such a government might well have been broken into two or more fragments; but this would have been far less likely to happen in that case than in existing circumstances. At all events, there would have been no room for the dangerous doctrine of secession, and that plausible pretext would have been wanting to the incipient rebellion; nor would there have been anything equivalent to the State organizations which unfortunately afforded the ready means of immediate and most effective combination. The inestimable advantages of our complex political system in avoiding the necessary despotism of consolidated government, by establishing local legislation and administration in a number of partially independent States, were in some measure counterbalanced by a natural tendency to discord among the parts, and a capacity for independent action in support and perpetuation of dangerous divergencies of opinion and policy. If some States could repudiate slave labor, and gradually build the fabric of their prosperity on the safer basis of universal education, others could, with equal disregard of everything but their own will and fancied interests, cherish and encourage the original system of servile subordination and compulsory ignorance of the laboring class, with which all the States started into their career of independence at the commencement of the Revolution. And, unhappily, both parties to this discordant social action were unrestrained by any constitutional obligation, or by any common authority whatever, in the indulgence, within their respective limits, of mutual hatred and vituperation, with all those numberless and exasperating injuries which no law can either notice or redress. These conflicting capabilities, with their attendant dangers, lurked in the body of our political organization from the very beginning. They were born with it; they grew with its growth, and strengthened with its strength, until the fatal hour when rebellion undertook the wicked work of its destruction. Whatever may be the actual issue of the struggle—whether the attempted dismemberment shall prove a success or a disastrous failure—the effect of the civil war on the character of our institutions must be commensurate with the organic character of the causes out of which it arose. So profound a disturbance of the existing social order, so vast an upheaval of the very foundations of the whole political fabric, must either rend it into fragments, and make necessary a complete reconstruction, or must cause it to settle down upon a basis firmer and more lasting than that on which it has hitherto rested. We think it almost absolutely certain that the latter result will be brought out in the end. It cannot be possible that our system will be utterly destroyed; and if, against all human probabilities, it should be momentarily overthrown, it will rise again hereafter in greater splendor and power, by reason of the very calamity through which it will have passed.

The federative system, on this continent, will never be abandoned; it will be far more likely to be extended much beyond its present limits, even including that immense territory which has been the theatre of its origin and glorious progress down to the present day. Its superiority over any system of consolidated power on a large scale, is beyond all doubt, inasmuch as it provides effectually for the perfect freedom of local legislation and administration, and for the full participation of all the parts in the government of the whole, as to those questions which concern the general interests. But in this very distribution of powers always consisted the greatest difficulty and the most threatening peril; for nothing but actual experience, long continued, could adjust to each other with perfect accuracy the nicely balanced parts of this complicated political machinery. The principle of local independence is naturally liable to exaggeration and abuse. The State authorities have ever shown a tendency to claim absolute sovereignty, and to array their will against the authority of the Federal Government. This troublesome question, forever recurring in the important exigencies of our national life, has never been definitely settled, and perhaps it could not be, except under the pressure of a great and critical emergency like the present. One of the most important consequences of the rebellion will therefore be to dispose of this question forever—to settle the boundaries of the local and general authorities, and to fix them permanently and unalterably. This might possibly have been accomplished in the appointed way, by conventions and explanatory amendments to the Constitution. But such proceedings would have been subject to all the uncertain contingencies and delays involved in partisan struggles and popular elections, and to all the imperfections of halfway measures and expedients of compromise, born amid angry contentions, and bartered for by ambitious aspirants to place and power. By no other means could a complete and adequate arrangement of the difficulty be brought about so effectually as by the terrible lessons of this lamentable civil war. Nothing else would have been so well calculated to clear the eyes of the people of all illusions, and to give them an accurate insight into the character and demands of the crisis. Great disasters, which destroy the fortunes of men, and disturb the prosperity of nations, never fail to awaken the human soul, and impart to it some new and important truths. The sufferings and calamities of the war are indeed great and overwhelming; yet there will be some compensation for them all, in the sad experience we shall gain, and in the stability which will result to our sorely tried institutions in the future. Even if, against all apparent possibilities, the rebellious States should finally conquer their independence, not only the old Government, but even the new one itself, or the batch of new ones that will spring up, will have learned the most salutary lessons from the whole course of this sanguinary struggle. No sundering of such ties as have always heretofore existed among these States can ever take place peaceably. Both we and our enemies will have been taught the never-to-be-forgotten truth that secession is civil war. And we should probably have reason thereafter to add to this sad lesson the still more solemn and portentous one, that permanent separation of these States is nothing more or less than perpetual war, with the accompaniments of large standing armies, vast public debts, oppressive taxes, loss of liberty, and progressive decline of civilization. This state of things would, however, eventually cure itself. What is called the balance of power in Europe has been brought to its present condition of imperfect stability only through centuries of war. What bloody commotions should we experience before the conditions of stable equilibrium could be attained by the warring States of our broken Union? Each petty fragment of the discordant mass would contain within itself the germs of precisely such a struggle as we are now passing through. For though the Confederate Government may have ostensibly recognized the actual sovereignty of the separate States composing it, and thereby pretended to establish the principle of secession as a right, the war will not have reached its termination before that doctrine will be practically and effectually destroyed in the very contest for its assertion. At the moment of its apparent triumph, secession itself would expire; for so strong a government will be indispensable to this achievement, and to the maintenance of the new power, that the very principle which presided at its birth will be suspended and destroyed by the paramount necessities of its existence and condition. Any one of the deluded States which might in that case attempt to assert this right, would soon find, in renewed calamities, the folly and danger of the theory on which it is founded.

Nothing but the hope of foreign intervention has sustained the cause of the rebellion until the present time; and the realization of that hope can alone keep up its vitality, and give it success in the future. The disparity of strength and numbers in the two sections is decisive of the whole case, if they be left to conclude the fight themselves. The question is one of means and men, of resources and endurance; and when we consider the effects of the blockade, and of the probably action of the slaves under the policy of the President, or even under the ordinary progress of the war, no great length of time can be required to bring the contest to an issue, even if the armies of the Union should not at once succeed in overwhelming the enemy and taking possession of his country. In spite of discouraging delays and military blunders, and of all the waste of life and means which have hitherto marked the conduct of the war, the great struggle is still progressing rapidly, though silently, in other fields than those of battle, and with other weapons than bayonets and artillery. The sinews of war are gradually becoming shrivelled in the arm of the rebellion. Every bale of cotton locked up in the ports of the South, or hidden in its thickets and ravines, or given to the flames by ruthless hands of the guerillas, is so much strength withheld from the enemy, and, in the vast aggregate, will eventually be equivalent to the overthrow of his armies and the capture of his cities. The large number of slaves rushing to our lines, and the still greater number rendered restless under restraint, and preparing to escape, may be expected, in any other year, to make even his supply of bread precarious, and still further to paralyze his strength and destroy his means of resistance. But in addition to these accumulating difficulties and misfortunes, our armies are everywhere moving down upon him apparently with irresistible force, and threaten to anticipate the slower, but not less certain work of physical exhaustion. He is hard pressed in Virginia, where his pretended capital is again menaced; he is driven out of Kentucky and Missouri, and is fast receding before our victorious forces in Tennessee. We have penetrated into Mississippi, and await only the swelling of the waters to capture its last stronghold, Vicksburg, when the great valley from Cairo to New Orleans will be in our possession, and the rebel confederacy will be sundered through its very spine. We hold important points on the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf, including the great metropolis of the South, New Orleans, and the whole coast of Texas.