USA > North Carolina > North Carolina in the War Between the States > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
-
3
19
INTRODUCTORY.
lution favoring the introduction of slavery into that territory. These resolutions, with a letter of Governor Harrison, were laid before the House of Representatives the 20th of January. 1807. On the acquisition of the Louisiana territory, in 1803, slavery existed there. Yet this fact was not then made a pre- text for the threats which New England made on that occa- sion, to dissolve the Union. Massachusetts statesmen alleged their grievance to be. not slavery, but that " the influence of one part of the Union must be diminished, by the acquisition of more weight at the other extremity."
Mr. Stephens appropriately and justly remarks, in his War between the States, that "it is a postulate with many writers of this day, that the late war was the result of two opposing ideas, or principles, upon the subject of African slav- ery. Between these, according to their theory, sprung the irrepressible conflict in principle, which ended in the terrible conflict of arms. Those who assume this postulate, and so theorize upon it, are but superficial observers." Mr. Ste- phens might have added that no popular delusion is more diffused, unless it be the twin error, that the South owed her decline to the institution of slavery instead of to sectional leg- islation. At the adoption of the Constitution New England was interested in the continuation of the African slave trade. as was the South in having slaves counted as part of the basis of representation. The controversy resulted in a com- promise. The slave trade was to continue for a limited time, and the South was to secure representation for three-fifths of her slave population.
It is an established fact in history, and it stands forth in clear and bold relief, that at the adoption of the Federal Con- stitution, in 1789, the slavery question, as such, was not a point of controversy, and the right of a State to withdraw from the compact-without any power in the General Government to coerce her-was not denied. Congress expressly recognized the independence of the two States of Rhode Island and
* Life and Letters of George Cabot, p. 334.
20
INTRODUCTORY.
North Carolina, in a number of acts relating to the revenue, and passed July 4th. July 20th, September 16th, 1789, and February 8th. 1790.
It is curious and interesting to note the origin, to trace the course of the slavery controversy, and to inquire into the causes which have at last resulted in a consolidation of the Govern- ment. The spirit of sectional animosity was contemporary with the earliest colonization. The line between the North and the South was drawn with the settlement of the Puri- tans in New England and the Cavaliers in Virginia. They represented two distinct and incongruous types of civiliza- tion. Their political opinions, their religious views, their social manners, their pursuits and avocations, were radi- cally and diametrically opposed.
The settlers of New England were a proscribed race at home. Their ambitious dream, that the saints should govern England, had been rudely dissipated. These high-flown hopes had given place to an intense hatred of all that sympa- thized with English loyalty. The council had even refused to grant their request to settle in Virginia, and they were compelled to take up their abode on the bleak and inhospi- table shores of Massachusetts Bay. They were sullen, morose, and revengeful, and these evil passions expressed them- selves in the extremest forms. Their whole civil polity was grounded upon them ; their religious establishment took deep root in them. They lashed the backs, cut off the ears, and hanged by the neck all those who dissented from their form of government or religion. They banished or killed the Baptists and Quakers, and the so-called witchcraft "delusion" was. but a pretext to kill, or to strike terror into those who were suspected of being opposed to their peculiar institutions. The poor Indians were the especial victims of their avarice and ferocity. They murdered them by wholesale, and re- duced them to slavery, while under the pretense of convert- ing them to Christianity, they sold them rum and stole their lands. The treatment they had received in England,
21
INTRODUCTORY.
even as alleged by themselves, was magnanimous in com- parison with that which they measured out to those who dif- fered with them.
The pursuits and avocations of the New Englander and Virginian were radically and essentially different. Soil and climate determined this. The New Englander, with painful toil. wrung a scanty subsistence from a reluctant earth, and was only able to subsist by dint of the most rigid thrift and economy. Nature soon taught them that they were not to be an agricultural people. They built ships, hunted whales, fished for eod, and engaged in the African slave trade. They collected into towns, which were governed by their churches, and on every Sunday they heard their own laudations and the most scathing denunciations of all who differed with them in opinion. Under such ministrations their self-pride was in- fated and strengthened, and they believed more firmly than ever that " they were God's chosen people," that all without their pale were sinners, who deserved God's wrath and curse, and that they were to be the instruments to execute His vengeance.
This communal system of church government has contrib- uted more than all other causes to fan the fires of their animosity towards the South. These people, with few ex- ceptions, led hard lives of laborious toil, and they looked over into Maryland and Virginia, and saw, with envy, the descendants of the Cavaliers in their baronial halls, surround- ed by vast landed estates, cultivated by thrifty tenants, and contented negroes : where the bountiful soil yielded abundant harvests to comparatively little labor; and where peace and plenty, ease and prosperity prevailed among all classes of society. Contrasting this quiet happiness with their own hard lot they brooded and they hated. True to the instincts of Puritanism. they longed for a time to come when they could lay waste these fair fields of their hereditary enemies with fire and sword .*
* Sherman's March to the Sea.
22
INTRODUCTORY.
Ben. Franklin is the best exponent of the New England civilization, and Poor Richard's Almanac is its highest gospel. The two chief articles of this gospel are, "Don't pay too much for your whistle; " and "Don't bolt a door with a boiled carrot." Dr. Channing, of Boston, admitted the sup- eriority of Southern statesmen, and frankly confessed that with the North, " Property is the good for which they toil perseveringly from morning to night." He says further : " Even the political partisan among us has an eye to property, and seeks office as the best, perhaps the only, way of subsist- ence." Their civilization was grossly materialistic. To drive a shrewd bargain in trade or polities was their highest ambition. " As sharp as a Yankee" has long been a proverb- ial expression. They discarded sentiment as a weakness, and asked " Can honor set to a leg ?" There was one great real- ity-wealth ! Here was something tangible and substantial. Wealth gave the means to that ostentatious display which is their characteristic, and it also gave power, which in turn could be employed to further increase their riches. Their aristocracy smelt of whale oil and cod-fish, not unmixed with the odors of rum and African slaves. The New Englander felt this; " hine illae lacrimae!"
General Washington, in a private letter to Richard Henry Lee, dated at his camp at Cambridge, 1775, and first pub- lished during the late civil war, gives his opinion of the want of honor and the greed of gain that prevailed among these people General Washington writes : " I have made a pretty good slam among such kind of officers as the Massachusetts government abounds in, since I came to this camp, having broken one colonel and two captains for cowardly behavior in the action on Bunker's Hill, two captains for drawing more pro. visions and pay than they had men in their company, and one for being absent from his post when the enemy appeared there and burned a house just by it. Besides these, I have at this time one colonel, one major, one captain, and two subalterns under arrest for trial. In short, I spare none, and yet fear it will not all do, as these people seem to be too in- attentive to everything but their interest."
23
INTRODUCTORY.
What a different picture the civilization of the South pre- sented! If a whistle would add to his enjoyment, the Southern planter bought it, regardlessof cost. As to boiled carrots, he did not need to bolt his door at all. While the Northern man was engrossed in the pursuit of wealth, the Southern man enjoyed his leisure, devoted his time to thought and reflection, to the chase, and to the charming duties of hospitality. His home, though destitute of garish ornament, was the seat of elegance, refinement. and mental culture. The conduct of his life was regulated by those rules of honor which he had derived from his English ancestors. and his religion was humane and char- itable. Mr. Benton said, " he was old enough to have seen (after the Revolution) the still surviving state of Southern colo- nial manners, when no traveller was allowed to go to a tavern, but was handed over from family to family through entire States; when holidays were days of festivity and expectation long prepared for, and celebrated by master and slave with music and feasting, and great concourse of friends and rela- tions; when gold was kept in chests, after the downfall of continental paper, and weighed in scales, and lent to neigh- bors for short terms, without note, interest or security ; and when petty litigation was at so low an ebb that it required a fine of forty pounds of tobacco to make a man serve as con- stable."
These two different peoples, existing under such opposing civilizations, were brought together in the contest for inde- pendence. Independence was achieved, the Federal Consti- tution was adopted, and now begins the contest which was to end, in one respect at least, with the war between the States.
New England, true to her Puritan instincts, having failed to hold power in England, was bent on acquiring it here. Were not the Puritans " God's chosen people ?" They had two well-defined objects in view. The first was to obtain control of the Federal Government. The second was to make the South tributary to them, in the payment of bounties and
-
24
INTRODUCTORY.
protective tariffs for their manufactured articles. Slavery happened to be an incident which attached to the South. Here was a pretext. The political power of the North would be increased if slavery could be kept out of the terri- tories, and with this increase of power would come bounty, navigation laws, and protective tariff legislation. That the Constitution must be subverted. the Supreme Court set at defiance. and untold wrongs be heaped upon the South to accomplish these objects, made no difference to the descend- ants of these Puritans. It is remarkable to observe how the lines of the anti-slavery agitation and of protective tariff legislation coincide.
The first principal tariff for protection was in 1816, two years after the famous Hartford convention. The war with England had entailed a debt which must be met by an increase of the public revenues. It was urged with great modesty and caution by the Northern manufacturer, that this tariff should contain the feature of incidental protection, and the reason urged was that these manufactures had been called into exist- ence by the war. and had rendered efficient aid to the country, and that they would be utterly destroyed by foreign compe- tition. Upon these grounds Mr. Calhoun, in the honesty of his heart, voted for the bill. Fatal concession ! This princi- ple of protection was incorporated in the tariff of 1820, and passed the same year with the Missouri compromise. In 1824 it was still further carried out, and in 1828 was passed the "bill of abominations."
The necessities of the revenues had passed away, and in 1831 it was shown that the receipts of the Government were twice as much as was required for current expenses. The South remonstrated, but the avarice of the North was in- satiable. The controversy shook the Union to its centre, and the result was, as usual, a compromise, in which the South, as usual, was the loser. In 1842 the compromise was repudiated by the North, and from 1842 down to 1860 the protective tariff kept its fangs in the heart of the South.
25
INTRODUCTORY.
Mr. Benton remarked on the tariff of 1828: "The South believed itself impoverished to enrich the North by this sys- tem; and certainly an unexpected result had been seen in these two sections. In the colonial States the Southern were the richer part of the colonies, and they expected to do well in a state of independence. But in the first half century after independence this expectation was reversed. The wealth of the North was enormously aggrandized ; that of the South had declined: Northern towns had become great cities; Southern cities had decaved." He says further: " Under Federal legislation the exports of the South had been the basis of the Federal revenue. Virginia, the two Caro- linas, and Georgia may be said to defray three-fourths of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government, and of this great sum annually furnished by them, nothing, or next to nothing, is returned to them in the shape of Government expenditures. That expenditure flows in an opposite direc- tion-it flows northwardly in one uniform, uninterrupted and perennial stream. This is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North. Federal legisla- tion does all this. It does it by the simple process of eternally taking from the South and returning nothing to it." Mr. Benton, in answering the question, "to what cause is the de- cay of the South to be attributed ?" replies, " One universal answer, from all ranks and ages, that it is Federal legislation which has worked all this ruin."
Mr. Toombs said in his speech before the Georgia Legis- lature in November, 1860 : *
"The instant the Government was organized, at the very first Congress. the Northern States evinced a general desire and purpose to use it for their own benefit, and to pervert its powers for sectional advantage, and they have steadily pur- sued that policy to this day. They demanded a monopoly of the business of ship-building, and got a prohibition against the sale of foreign ships to citizens of the United States, which
* Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. 1, Sup. Doc. 45.
26
INTRODUCTORY.
exists to this day. They demanded a monopoly of the coast- ing trade, in order to get higher freights than they could get in open competition with the carriers of the world. Congress gave it to them, and they vet hold this monopoly. * This same shipping interest, with cormorant rapacity, have steadily burrowed their way through your legislative halls, until they have saddled the agricultural classes with a large portion of the legitimate expenses of their own business. We pay a million of dollars per annum for the lights which guide them in and out of your ports. We built and kept up. at the cost of at least another million a year, hospitals for their sick and disabled seamen, when they wear them out and cast them ashore. We pay half a million per annum to support and bring home those they cast away in foreign lands. They demand, and have received, millions of the public money to increase the safety of harbors, and lessen the danger of navi- gating our rivers. All of which expenses legitimately fall upon their business, and should come out of their own pock- ets, instead of a common treasury.
"Even the fishermen of Massachusetts and New England demand and receive from the public treasury about half a million of dollars per annum as a pure bounty in their busi- ness of catching cod-fish. The North, at the very first Con- gress, demanded and received bounties under the name of protection, for every trade, craft and calling which they pur- sue, and there is not an artisan in brass, or iron, or wood, or weaver or spinner in wool or cotton, or a calico-maker, or iron master, or a coal owner. in all the Northern or Middle States, who has not received what he calls the protection of his Gov- ernment on his industry to the extent of from fifteen to two hundred per cent. from the year 1791 to this day. They will not strike a blow, or stretch a muscle, without bounties from the Government. No wonder they ery aloud for the glorious Union! They have the same reason for praising it that craftsmen of Ephesus had for shouting 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians" By it they get their wealth, by it they levy tribute on honest labor."
27
INTRODUCTORY.
Gen. Dabney Maury says in his Vindication of the South: " Fifteen years before the war, it was stated officially, from the Treasury Department in Washington, that under the taritf then in force the self-sustaining industry of the country was taxed $80,000,000 annually, none of which went into the coffers of the Government, but all into the pocket of the pro- tected manufacture." *
The following from the Rev. R. L. Dabney, D. D., is in- teresting in this connection. He says:+
" The great State of Virginia made one last effort to save the Union. The convention appointed a commission, con- sisting of Wm. B. Preston, Alex. H. H. Stuart, and George W. Randolph. as an embassy to the Lincoln government, to communicate to that government the views of Virginia, and demand those of Mr. Lincoln.
"Meanwhile, however, before these embassadors were dis- patched, Mr. Seward sent Allen B. Magruder, as a confiden- tial messenger, to Richmond, to hold an interview with Mr. Jaumey (the president of the convention), Mr. Stuart and other influential members, and to urge that one of them should come to Washington, as promptly as possible, to con- fer with Mr. Lincoln.
" Mr. Magruder stated that he was authorized by Mr. Sew- ard to say that Fort Sumter would be evacuated on the Fri- day of the ensuing week, and that the Pawnee would sail on the following Monday for Charleston, to effect the evacuation. These gentlemen after hearing Mr. Magruder's communi- cation, held a consultation and fixed upon Colonel Baldwin, member of the convention, and an original Union man, who did not regard the election of Lincoln in itself as a cause of war, as the proper person to send on this mission.
". Colonel Baldwin and Mr. Magruder set out on the night following, and arrived in Washington early next morning.
* So. His. Papers, vol. 1, p 55.
+ So. His. Papers, June, 1876.
28
INTRODUCTORY.
Immediately after breakfast they drove to Mr. Seward's, when the latter took charge of Mr. Baldwin, and the two went directly to the White House, where they arrived about nine o'clock. They found Mr. Lincoln engaged, but upon Mr. Seward's whispering in his ear, he exeused himself and con- dueted Mr. Seward and Colonel Baldwin into a sleeping apartment, and locked the door."
. After the usual formalities. Colonel Baldwin presented his credentials, After Lincoln had read the credentials, Colonel Baldwin proceeded to state to him what was the opinion of the great body of Virginia, both in the convention and out of it. This opinion was as follows, to wit: "That although opposed to a presidential election upon a sectional, free-soil platform, which they deplored as most dangerous and unwise, Virginia did not approve of making that, evil as it was, a casus belli, or a ground for disrupting the Union. That much as Virginia disapproved it, if Mr. Lincoln would only adhere faithfully to the Constitution and the laws, she would sup- port him just as faithfully as though he was the man of her choice, and would wield her whole moral force to keep the border States in the Union, and to bring back the seven se- ceded States. But that while much difference of opinion ex- isted on the question. whether the right of secession was a con- stitutional one, all Virginians were unanimous in believing that no right existed in the Federal Government to coerce a State by force of arms."
To this Mr. Lincoln replied: "You are too late, sir, too late ! "
Colonel Baldwin understood this as a clear intimation that the policy of coercion had been determined upon, and within the last four days. In the latter part of his conclu- sion he was probably mistaken. It is more probable that this policy had been determined upon from the first, and that Lincoln's message to the president of the Virginia con- vention was a cunning falsehood, in keeping with the dupli- city and treachery of the administration, designed to gain
-
29
INTRODUCTORY.
time to put the South in the apparent attitude of becoming the aggressor, and thereby working up and inflaming the war feeling of the North, and giving color to the pretext that the war. on their part, was a defensive one.
Impressed with the deep solemnity of the occasion, Colo- nel Baldwin made a final appeal. " He endeavored to make the President feel that Providence had placed the destiny of the country in his hands, so that he might be forever blessed and venerated as the second Washington-the savior of his country, or exeerated as its destroyer." The President then asked, " What policy did the Union men of Virginia advise?" Colonel Baldwin replied, " that one single step would be sufficient to paralyze the secession movement and to make the true friends of the Union masters of the situation." Un- just as was the claim of free-soil, it was not that which was the cause of alarm to the border States, but it was the claim of the right of coercion. The attempt to exercise coercion would be the death-knell of constitutional union, and so a thorough revolution of the Federal Government. If, then, the President "would only give the public assurance, in a proclamation of five lines," pledging his administration to respect the Constitution and laws and the rights of the States, to repudiate the power of coercing seceded States by force of arms, to rely upon conciliation and enlightened self-inter- est in the latter to bring them back into the Union, and meantime to leave all questions at issue to be adjudicated by the constitutional tribunals, that then, " we pledge our- selves," said Colonel Baldwin. "that Virginia (and with her the border States) will stand by you as though you were our own Washington."
Lincoln asked a few questions, the last of which was, " What, then, would become of my tariff ?" He put this question with such force of emphasis, as clearly indicated that this consid- eration should decide the whole matter. Hereupon Colonel Baldwin was dismissed, and the interview was at an end.
The embassadors above referred to proceeded to Washing-
30
INTRODUCTORY.
ton upon the return of Colonel Baldwin. They saw Mr. Lin- coln ; the tariff was still the burden of his complaint. But his declarations were distinctly pacific, and he expressly dis- claimed all purposes of war. The embassadors left the next day, and the same train which carried them to Virginia car- ried also Lincoln's proclamation for seventy-five thousand troops?
It may be that Seward was sincere in promising the com- missioners from Montgomery, through Judge Campbell, that Sumter should be evacuated. It may be that Lincoln, in the meanwhile, had abandoned the policy of Seward, and embraced that of Thad. Stevens. If he did it is only a super- numerary evidence that the war was made in the interest of protective tariffs, and Thad. Stevens carried coercion for the benefit of the iron manufacturers of Pennsylvania.
Under the bounty, navigation and protective tariff laws. the South paid millions of tribute money to the North. Her commercial subjugation was as complete as her political subjection under the District generals in 1865. The amount of money thus extorted from the South far surpasses the cost of prosecuting the late war on both sides; it is greater than the combined national debts of England and the United States. Human imagination staggers in the effort to contem- plate it.
Under this fatal drain of life-blood. Southern cities fell into decay, Southern ships no longer ploughed the sea, and grass grew upon the wharves of Southern ports. The South ceased to export her own products and to import her own goods. She had no surplus capital for manufacturing estab- lishments, nor for building railroads and canals. Her sub- stance was emptied into the capacious maw of Northern greed. Her glory had departed, and only her enormous re- sources saved her from utter bankruptcy and ruin.
The South, which at the adoption of the Constitution was universally regarded as the seat of future empire, had been reduced to the condition of a tributary Turkish province. he South declined, the North advanced. Her enormous
31
INTRODUCTORY.
robberies made her rich. She multiplied manufactures, built more ships, constructed immense lines of railroad and canals, built new cities with amazing rapidity, and did the carrying trade for all the States.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.