The same opinion had been enunciated4 several years before by John Quincy Adams on the floor of Congress, when, with his accustomed pungency5, he declared, "The union will fall before slavery or slavery will fall before the union."
But before either Adams or Lincoln spoke6 on the subject—away back in 1838—the same idea they expressed had a more elaborate and forcible presentation in the following words:
"The conflict is becoming—has become—not alone of freedom for the blacks, but of freedom for the whites. It has now become absolutely necessary that slavery shall cease in order that freedom may be preserved in any portion of our land. The antagonistic7 principles of liberty and slavery have been roused into action, and one or the other must be victorious8. There will be no cessation of the strife9 until slavery shall be exterminated10 or liberty destroyed."
The author of the words last above quoted was James Gillespie Birney, who was the first Abolitionist, or "Liberty party," candidate for the Presidency, and of whose career a brief sketch12 is elsewhere given.
That the slaveholders reached the same conclusion that Birney and Adams and Lincoln announced, viz., that the country was to be all one thing or all the other thing, is as manifest as any fact in our history. It is equally certain that they had firmly resolved to capture the entire commonwealth13 for their "institution," and had laid their plans to that end. They were unwilling14 to live in a divided house, particularly with an occupant who was stronger in population and wealth than they were.
They saw the danger in such association. Northern sentiment toward slavery was complacent15 enough, even servilely so, but it might change. The South thought it had too much at stake to take the chances when the opportunity for absolute safety and permanent rule was within its reach. It resolved to make the whole country, not only pro-slavery, but slaveholding. If, through any mischance, it failed in its calculation, the next step would be to tear down the house and from its ruins reconstruct so much of it as might be needed for its own occupancy. That it would be able in time to possess itself of the whole country, however, for and in behalf of its industrial policy, it did not for an instant doubt. It was not empty braggadocio16 on the part of the celebrated17 Robert Toombs, of Georgia, when he uttered his famous boast.[1] He voiced the practically unanimous opinion of his section.
[1] See page 13.
Nor was there anything seemingly very presumptuous18 in that anticipation19. So far, the South had been invariably victorious. In what appeared to be a decisive battle in the test case of admitting Missouri into the union as a slave State, it had won. So pronounced was its triumph that whatever Anti-Slavery sentiment survived the conflict appeared to be stunned20 and helpless. All fight was knocked out of it. Its spirit was broken. While the South was not only compact and fully21 alive, but exultingly22 aggressive, the North was divided, fully one half of its population being about as pro-slavery as the slaveholders themselves, and the rest, with rare exceptions, being hopelessly apathetic23. The Northern leaders of both of the old political parties—Whig and Democratic—were what the Abolitionists called "dough-faces," being Northern men with Southern principles. The Church was "a dumb dog," and the press simply drifted with the tide. It was not at all strange that the slaveholders expected to go on from conquest to conquest.
There were two policies they could adopt. One was to attack the enemy's citadel24; or rather, the several citadels25 it possessed26 in its individual States, and force them to open their doors to the master and his human chattels27. The other was to flank and cover, approaching the main point of attack by way of the Territories. These, once in possession of the slaveholders, could be converted into enough slave States to give them the control of the general government, from which coigne of advantage they could proceed in their own time and way to possess themselves of such other free States as they might want.
In the matter of the Territories they had a great advantage. The North was up against a stone wall at the Canadian border. In that direction it could not advance a step, while the South had practically an unlimited28 field on its side from which to carve possessions as they might be wanted, very much as you would cut a pie.
In pursuance of its territorial29 policy—being the line of action it first resolved upon—the first movement of the South was to annex30 Texas—a victory. The next was to make war on Mexico, and (a joke of the day) conquer a "piece" from it large enough to make half a dozen States, all expected to be slaveholding—another victory.
By a curious irony31 the filching32 of land for slavery's uses from a neighbor, and on which the foot of a slave had never pressed, was exultingly spoken of at the time by its supporters as "an extension of the area of freedom." The act was justified33 on the ground that we needed "land for the landless," which led Benjamin F. Wade34 of Ohio to assert on the floor of the United States Senate, with as much truth as wit, that it was not land for the landless that was wanted, but "niggers for the niggerless."
Then came the battle over Kansas. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in Congress, although involving a breach35 of good faith on the part of the South, was hailed as another victory for that section. It was a costly36 victory. It was followed by defeat not only disastrous37 but fatal. The result in Kansas was really the turning-point in the great struggle. It broke the line of Southern victories. It neutralized38 the effect of the whole territorial movement up to that point. It completely spoiled the slaveholders' well-laid plans. We will always give Grant and his men all praise for victories leading up to Appomatox, but, in some respects, the most important victory of the great conflict was won on the plains of Kansas by John Brown of Ossawattomie and his Abolition11 associates.
The most sagacious Southern leaders saw in that result conclusive39 proof that the scale was turned. They realized that they were beaten within the lines of the union, and they began to arrange for going out of it. They helped to elect a Republican President by dividing the Democratic party in 1860 between two candidates—Douglas and Breckenridge—in order that they might have a plausible40 pretext41 for secession.
But the slaveholders had not abandoned the other policy to which reference has been made—that of carrying their institution, by main force, as it were, into some, if not all, of the free States. To that end they had, in sporting parlance42, a card up their sleeves which they proceeded to play. That card was the decision of the United States Supreme43 Court in the Dred Scott case, upon which they relied to give them the legal power to take and hold their slaves in all parts of the land. Up to the date of that decision, the current of judicial44 rulings had been that slavery, being a municipal institution, was local, while freedom was national. Hence, when a master took his slave into a free State, at that instant he became a free man. The Dred Scott decision was intended to reverse the rule. Practically it held that slave ownership, wherever the Constitution prevailed, was both a legal and a natural right. It, as Benton forcibly expressed it, "made slavery the organic law of the land and freedom the exception"; or, as it was jocularly expressed at the time, it left freedom nowhere.
Although at the time of its promulgation45, it was claimed by some of the more conservative pro-slavery leaders that the Dred Scott dictum applied46 only to the Territories, giving the masters the legal authority to enter them with their slaves, that position was clearly deceptive47. The principle involved, as laid down by the Court, was altogether too broad for that construction. In effect it put the proprietorship48 of human beings upon the same footing with other property rights, and claimed for it the same constitutional protection. The bolder men of the South, like Toombs of Georgia, did not hesitate to give that interpretation49 to the Court's pronouncement, and to insist on it with brutal50 frankness. If they were wrong, the Court was putty in their hands and they could easily have had a supplemental ruling that would have gone to any extent.
If the Dred Scott decision had been promulgated51 by our highest court, and the slaveholders had insisted upon the license52 it was intended to give them for taking their slave property into free territory, at the time that Garrison53 was being dragged by a mob through Boston's streets; when Birney's printing-press in Cincinnati was being tumbled into the Ohio River; when Pennsylvania Hall, the Quaker Abolitionists' forty-thousand-dollar construction, was ablaze54 in Philadelphia; when Lovejoy, the Abolition martyr55, was bleeding out his life in one of the streets of Alton, Illinois—when, in fact, the whole land was swayed by a frenzied56 hatred57 of the men and women who dared to question slavery's right to supremacy58, the writer believes the movement would have been successful. Public opinion was so inclined in States like Indiana and Illinois, and even in Ohio, that they might have been easily toppled over to the South. Indeed, at that time it is a problem how Massachusetts would have voted on a proposition to "slaveryize" her soil. The surprising thing, as we look back to that period, is that slavery did not get a foothold in some of the free States, if not in all of them.
But by the time the South was ready to play its trump59 card, it was too late. The game was lost. Public opinion had become revolutionized throughout the North. The leaven60 of Abolitionism had got in its work. The men and women, few in number and weak in purse and worldly position as they were, who had enlisted61 years before in the cause of emancipation62, and had fought for it in the face of almost every conceivable discouragement, had at last won a great preliminary victory. Slavery, through their exertions63, had become impossible, both in the Territories and in the free States of the North, the United States Supreme Court and all the forces of the slave power to the contrary notwithstanding. Then came to the South a not unanticipated, and to many of her leaders a not unwelcome political Waterloo, in the election of Lincoln. This gave the argument for secession that was wanted. The South had then to yield—which she had no idea of doing—or to go into rebellion. She went out of the union very much as she would have gone to a frolic. She had no thought that serious fighting was to follow. She did not believe, as one of the Southern leaders expressed it, that the Northern people would go to war for the sake of the "niggers."
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1
presidency
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| n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期) | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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enunciated
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| v.（清晰地）发音( enunciate的过去式和过去分词 )；确切地说明 | |
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pungency
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| n.（气味等的）刺激性；辣；（言语等的）辛辣；尖刻 | |
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6
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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7
antagonistic
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| adj.敌对的 | |
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victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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exterminated
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| v.消灭，根绝( exterminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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abolition
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| n.废除，取消 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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13
commonwealth
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| n.共和国，联邦，共同体 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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complacent
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| adj.自满的；自鸣得意的 | |
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braggadocio
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| n.吹牛大王 | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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18
presumptuous
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| adj.胆大妄为的，放肆的，冒昧的，冒失的 | |
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anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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21
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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exultingly
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| 兴高采烈地，得意地 | |
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apathetic
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| adj.冷漠的，无动于衷的 | |
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24
citadel
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| n.城堡；堡垒；避难所 | |
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citadels
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| n.城堡，堡垒( citadel的名词复数 ) | |
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26
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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chattels
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| n.动产，奴隶( chattel的名词复数 ) | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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territorial
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| adj.领土的，领地的 | |
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annex
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| vt.兼并，吞并；n.附属建筑物 | |
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31
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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32
filching
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| v.偷（尤指小的或不贵重的物品）( filch的现在分词 ) | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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wade
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| v.跋涉，涉水；n.跋涉 | |
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breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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38
neutralized
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| v.使失效( neutralize的过去式和过去分词 )；抵消；中和；使（一个国家）中立化 | |
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conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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40
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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41
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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42
parlance
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| n.说法；语调 | |
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43
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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44
judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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45
promulgation
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| n.颁布 | |
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46
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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47
deceptive
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| adj.骗人的，造成假象的，靠不住的 | |
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48
proprietorship
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| n.所有（权）；所有权 | |
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49
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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50
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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51
promulgated
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| v.宣扬（某事物）( promulgate的过去式和过去分词 )；传播；公布；颁布（法令、新法律等） | |
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52
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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53
garrison
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| n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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54
ablaze
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| adj.着火的，燃烧的；闪耀的，灯火辉煌的 | |
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55
martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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56
frenzied
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| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
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57
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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58
supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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59
trump
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| n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭 | |
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60
leaven
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| v.使发酵；n.酵母；影响 | |
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61
enlisted
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| adj.应募入伍的v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 )；获得（帮助或支持） | |
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62
emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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63
exertions
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| n.努力( exertion的名词复数 )；费力；（能力、权力等的）运用；行使 | |
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