The Future of the Colored Race in America - William Aikman (e book reader .TXT) 📗

In whatever way the present civil war in America shall result, it is certain that the future condition of the colored race in this country will be the question over-mastering all others for many years to come. It has already pushed itself into the foremost place. However it may be true, that slavery and the negro were not the proximate causes of this war, no one who gives any candid thought to the matter can fail to recognize the fact, that back of all, this stands as the grand first occasion of it. Had there been no slavery, there would have been no war. General Jackson was only partly right when he said, that while in his day the tariff was made the pretext of secession, and that by and by slavery would take its place, but that neither would be the true motive of disunion; that a desire for a separate confederacy was the final cause. This was evidently correct, yet had slavery not stood in this country there would not have come into being that peculiar state of society which now lives in the Southern States, and which demands for its very existence that it should rule alone. Slavery has created an aristocracy, not of numbers, but of wealth and power, which bears with all the social forces. While the slave-holder are but a very small minority of the whole people, yet by the force of their wealth and the fact of their being slave owners, they hold all the political power, and indeed, sweep out of existence any opposition. There are, with very rare exceptions throughout the whole South, but two classes--free and slave, or we may say, slave-holders and slaves, for the non slave-holders are completely lost and absorbed in the all-controlling element which is above them; they work in with it, and are indeed a part of it. As slavery called this aristocracy into being, and created its power, so it holds it in being; anything which strikes at slavery strikes at the root of this power; to destroy slavery would be to blot it out of existence.

Around this point the whole contest is waged, and from it alone every movement is to be interpreted. In the days of South Carolina nulification the tariff was indeed the pretext of rebellion, and the true motive was a separate government and the perpetuation of the power of the dominant class, but this power depended wholly upon the status of slavery, and so, back of all slavery was even then the thought, and to strengthen slavery the great end. In this we find the accurate explanation of the studied and persistent efforts to extend and perpetuate it, not because it is admired in itself, or because it is seen to be politically or socially beneficial, but because it is the cornerstone of a valued social state. A friend, some years ago sailing down the Potomac, was engaged in conversation with the captain of the boat, a blunt, bluff Southerner, and looking over the beautiful scenery on either side of the river, said, "Why do you Virginians hold on to slavery? it is a thousand pities that such a country as this should be so poorly used." "I know it," replied the captain, "slavery does ruin the state; but the fact is, we like it; a man feels good when he owns twenty or fifty negroes, and can say to one go, and he goes, and to another come and he comes." Here the whole philosophy of the social state of the South is in a nut-shell. To abandon slavery is to abandon a position which has been held as a tenure of nobility for two hundred years. Nothing but the direst necessity will bring it about. It will never be given voluntarily up; the whole force of human nature is against it relinquishment. As well might the nobility of England be expected to throw up their titles and their coronets on persuasion. Here is a case where argument has no power. You may exhaust it, you may prove slavery to be wrong morally, wrong socially, wrong politically, you may prove it to a demonstration that it is an economic blunder of the most gigantic proportions, you may make it clear as sunlight that it is demoralizing and ruinous, but you have done absolutely nothing toward its abolishment. Here and there a truly conscientious man or woman, under the great pressure of duty, will consent to the liberation of their slaves; but the public conscience is so ethereal a thing that it can be touched by no appeals of duty or obligation, and will never force a community up to any great work, least of all to such a work as this.

The effect of emancipating one's slaves upon the social position of the master, has been seen over and over again; the hour when the bonds are broken and freedom is given is the hour when all the former associations are given up; expatriation and banishment are the inevitable results. The generous, or the conscientious emancipator at once becomes an exile; he has sunk at once out of an aristocracy whose titular power he gave up the moment he ceased to be a slave-holder, and he cannot comfortably abide in even his old home. Here is the explanation of the vast and unexpected power put forth by this rebellion, of the unconquered will, of the enormous sacrifices endured; here is the explanation of the seeming insanity of the struggle, of the unwarrantableness of its acts, of the demoniac fierceness of its rage, and the diabolical malignity and cruelty of its method of war; it is the death struggle of a great social element, for which to be conquered is to be ruined and swept out of existence.

No man understood this so well or so soon as the great Nullifier. He was a thinker and a philosopher, and so with great logical consistency he became the early author of the doctrine of slavery as now almost universally held at the South. He startled and shocked the men of his time by his bold positions in respect to that institution, and was far in advance of his time in his assertions of its inherent rightfulness, and the determination not only to terminate, but to extend, strengthen and perpetuate it. He was a nullifier because a slave-holder in principle. The one grew out of, and was a part of the other. The maintenance of an oligarchy was the ultimate end, that rested on slavery, and so "state rights" so called, and the divine right of slavery went hand in hand.

This is strikingly evident in the history of the present war. The rapid rise, and the culmination of rebellion in act, was preceded by the new annunciation of these doctrines of Calhoun on slavery. We remember well how strange it sounded, and how startling in the General Assembly of only 1856, when slavery was declared an institution not needing to be defended or apologized for, but to be praised and justified as truly an ordinance of God as marriage, or the filial relation. The church had known no such doctrine before, and then spued it out of her mouth, but it was gravely held and fiercely and impudently avowed. It was followed by secession as a logical consequence. It is very remarkable how rapid was the change in public sentiment. This new doctrine of the rightfulness of slavery swept over the whole Southern States in a few months, politicans philanthropists, ministers, suddenly starting up to find that they had been all along in error in thinking that slavery was an evil, and hoping that some day it would be removed, that they had been wrong in speaking of being "opposed to slavery in the abstract," it was abstractly not wrong, but right; they had been mistaken when regretting the circumstances which made emancipation ought not to be desire. This change of sentiment an doctrine was not gradual, but sudden; it went with telegraphic speed. The reason was that events were pressing upon the aristocracy of the South and threatening its destruction. Slavery had ceased to be a dominant power in the Federal legislation, and the social state which rested upon it was trembling to its foundation. There was but one thing to be done, and that was the setting up of a new government, the corner stone of which should be slavery. And this was not accidental or capricious, but simply a necessity The state of society which was sought to be maintained had its origin in slavery, and slavery could not but be put in the foremost place. Alexander Stephens understood both himself and the matter which he had in hand when he told the people, and the world that they had hitherto understand this thing. Before, they had sought to maintain their social state and only tolerate slavery, they had not seen that all depended on it; here was the true corner-stone which former builders had rejected, but which they were now making the head of the corner. The secession was a foregone conclusion long enough before it actually occurred: it was so understood throughout the South by thinking men, and the sudden spread of the new doctrine on slavery was the necessary preparation for it.

He, then who does not take slavery into the account in his thinking on this war, has not begun to get a glimpse of what it means; he who leaves it out in the settlement of it, will not advance a step. Its origin was in slavery, its issue is to be found only as it is connected with slavery. There may be, as there has been, through the tremendous power of a vast prejudice, a thousand endeavours to avoid the issue, but events will sooner or later compel every man, whether he will or not, to look it in the face. We say prejudice for in this thing, as in all history has been the case, a name has become a well nigh boundless power. The interest of slavery has for a long course of years, and by a persistent endeavor, created a term of terrible significance, and has wielded it with prodigious force,--we mean the word "Abolitionist." History has known before a term made a watch word and changing a dynasty, but never was a word brandished with such effect upon a nations well being as this. Time was when South as well as North, to be an" abolitionist," a member of the Abolition Society," was not only no strange thing, but a position held by the the foremost men, and without a thought that they were amendable to even the slightest censure of their associates. Jefferson and Pickney, as well as Jay and Adams, were abolitionists in name, as well as in fact. Delaware, and Maryland, and Virginia had their Abolition Societies, and the best and greatest men were members of them. But in the course of years Slavery changed all that. The oligarchy awakened to the danger which threatened it, and at first gradually, and them by more and more open effort, these societies were assailed or suppressed, till they with the death of the great men who founded them, passed out of existence, no one perhaps knowing precisely how. Then began the storm of abuse and anathematizing directed against all who dared to hold, or at least utter sentiments opposed to slavery. "Abolition" and "abolitionist" was echoed and howled till men became pale at the bare sound, and considered it the last and most dreaded terror to be called by the hated name.

But a change vastly more rapid in its movement is now taking place in an