USA > West Virginia > Pendleton County > A history of Pendleton County, West Virginia > Part 43
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This difference in development came through a difference in social and industrial organization. Society in the South
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had followed the English mode more closely than in the North. English local government is founded upon the ex- istence of a limited class of cultured and leisured people. The South had just such a class. The planters were aristo- cratic, educated, and accomplished, and had full power in social and political matters. The South is a land of varied resources but was settled by a class that looked only to the soil. Being warmer than Britain there was an incorrect idea that it was unsuited to white labor. Negro slavery was ac- cordingly introduced. The planters were the capitalists, and having little use for towns and factories they invested heavily in lands and slaves. For the much larger class of non-slave- holding whites there was little to do except to till the soil. The want of a home market made their farming unremuner- ative, and in acquiring land they had to compete on very un- equal terms with the wealthy planters. They were poor and in large degree unlettered, there was an insufficient outlet for ambition and enterprise, and through force of training they gave the planters a free hand in matters of leadership. These conditions were most in evidence where the slaves were most numerous. Where the population was almost wholly white, the organization of society was much the same as in the North, although the sentiment remained Southern. The almost purely agricultural character of the South ren- dered that section more conservative than the North and it caused Southern life to move at a more leisurely gait.
In a general way society had become democratic at the North while it remained aristocratic at the South. Yet even here it was in the nature of a passing stage in American de- velopment. Such early Southern leaders as Washington and Jefferson were aristocrats by rearing, although they wished to see the masses of the Southern people rise to the highest possible level of citizenship. They perceived the greater vitality and power of the Northern type of civilization, and foresaw that unless the wheels of progress were utterly re- versed democracy would triumph in every corner of the Union. It may be observed in passing that the Southern type of aristocracy was most conspicuous in the lowlands of South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. In nearing and in crossing the Mississippi it became shadowy. That South Carolina took the lead in nullification and secession is because she was the most Southern state of the South.
The North had not outstripped the South as a result of climate or of people, but as a result of the cramping influence of the Southern labor system. The Southern men were of precisely the same stocks as the Northern men. The difference in the growth of population was largely because great numbers of
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the non-slaveholding class had migrated into the free states in search of broader opportunities. There they held their own in intelligence, enterprise, and general accomplishment. In fact the Southern element in the West produced the larger share of the leaders of the West.
We have now outlined the general nature of the tinder box that was to burst into flames in the '60's. It is next in order to point out the nature of the firebrand that was to cause the flame.
Until near 1850 America was still colonial in thought, cus- tom, and action. It was now to become modern. It was likewise to come to a realization of national self-consciousness. In strict accuracy, however, the period from 1830 to 1850 may be called the threshold of the new era. A new spirit was in the air and was exerting an extraordinary influence, yet it did not put forward its full strength until near the middle of the century. In a |preceding paper we sketched the charac- teristics of this modern age. 1
We have seen that the North was more industrial, more radical, and more pushing than the South. To state the matter a little differently, the South was lingering in the colonial period. In reviewing the contrast between the two sections it appears inevitable that the new spirit of the times would work more rapidly and more powerfully upon the North. Being aggressive in its very nature, it proceeded to use the North as an instrument to remold the South. As an essential feature of this process it was demanded of the American Union that it become nationalized in fact as well as in name, and thereby become the more efficient in fulfill- ing its destiny. Being conservative and semi-colonial, the South was itself defensive rather than aggressive and was little inclined to quicken its gait. The general result was the sectional controversy, which took definite form soon after 1830 and became acute 30 years later.
The difference in the economic structure of the two great sections of our republic was thus the tinder-box into which she new spirit of the age fell as a fire-brand, demanding that this structure be harmonized. The war of 1861 was there- fore a trial of strength between a progressive and a con- servative force. To make the issue visible to the popular mind it was shaped into a political question, and the political discussion which followed made up in heat what it lacked in depth. The Constitution being too open to afford a clear answer in either direction and providing no arbiter to sit in judgment on the matter, the problem was fought out to a finish on the field of battle.
The fundamental cause of the war being economic, se-
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cession and slavery were but superficial phases of the matter. Yet slavery after all was the most conspicuous stumbling- block in the way of the nationalization of the Union. The opposition to it on the part of the new age was instinctive and uncompromising. The new age was one of invention, elaborate machinery, and skilled labor, and in performing the work of the hour slave labor was hopelessly out of date. Slavery is also a bulwark of caste, and caste is at utter variance with the spirit of social democracy. The antago- nism of the modern age to slavery sprang even more from social and economic than from moral considerations.
Every new movement appeals to the person of extreme views. A many-sided spirit of freedom being in the air, the crank now came forward in the person of the political aboli- tionist. His denunciation was reckless and intemperate, and without proper knowledge of what he was talking about. He imagined the negro a Caucasian in a black skin. He thus took it for granted that the slave was groaning under a cruel burden. He shut his eyes against the fact that the sudden and uncompensated freeing of one slave to every two whites would be a most dangerous strain to the social structure of the South. To the high-spirited slaveholder the temper of the abolitionist was the temper of anarchy. He ceased to apologize for slavery, closed his anti-slavery societies, en- acted laws on the expression of opinion with regard to slavery, and set up a form of quarantine against the abolitionists. This quarantine had the effect of striking at the Northern people indiscriminately. Few Northern men were radical abolitionists, yet any Northern man visiting the South fell under suspicion. In short the political abolitionist was all the while working against his avowed purpose. It was not he who finally freed the slaves, while his later officious med- dling in the new relations between black and white was fraught with untold mischief.
By 1860 the people of the North had come to feel that so far at least as they were concerned the league of states had become a genuine nation. With them the theory of secession was dead simply and solely because it had been outgrown. To the Northern mind the state and the nation were one, allegiance to the former meaning allegiance to the latter. To the Southern mind citizenship was not single but divided, allegiance to the state being regarded as paramount to allegi- ance to the Union. As the German tongue expresses it, the Union was to the North a Banded-State, while to the South it was a Band of States. From the former style of union a member may withdraw only by general consent, while from the latter it may withdraw at its own discretion. To the
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Northern view withdrawal without consent was intolerable. To the Southern view it was still the assertion of a right which all Americans had held in 1788. To the North such an effort was viewed as rebellion, while to the South it was viewed as revolution. The Northern man would oppose it in the interest of national self-existence, while to the Southern man the idea of restraining a state by force was like denying a person the privilege of withdrawing from a business part- nership.
But the Southern view of state supremacy had been given an artificial lease of life. In still holding to slavery the South was conscious of appearing at a disadvantage in the public opinion of the world. This was a sub-conscious recog- nition of the modern spirit of the times. It caused the South to be sensitive, and from force of habit the feeling still en- dures. To safeguard a slave property that in 1860 had a value of $2,000,000,000, the South had at the start insisted on a balance in the number of free and slave states, so that it might not be outvoted in the national senate. From its ruling planter element it had developed a class of statesmen of ex- ceptional ability. The 8000 large planters had full control within their own states. Through these states they had without interruption controlled the administration of the Union. Until 1860 the South had a controlling interest in every presidential cabinet and in the Supreme Court of the nation. It had also a majority of the places of high political honor belonging to the national government. But
"The world advances and in time outgrows The laws that in our fathers' days were best; And doubtless after us some purer scheme Will be shaped out by wiser men than we."
Thus each generation insists on doing its own thinking. Having opinions of its own, it interprets a law or an institu- tion in the light of its own age, and is neither shifty nor hypo- critical in doing so. To expect the Northern or the Southern man of 1860 to accept as a part of his own being the view which his environment had not moulded for him is like ex- pecting the traveler on the white side of the rock to behold the red side. History was on the side of the South. Present facts, particularly in the case of the North, were on the side of the North. Each side had a case, and each side had the courage of its convictions. Yet after the lapse of fifty years we find an occasional partisan wasting his energies in thresh- ing over the old straw. In effect he is laboring to prove that the red side of the pillar is red or that the white side is white.
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Such arguments have no power to convince because they are not to the point.
That the nature of the federal bond was still an unsettled question in 1860 was because economic forces had worked out its solution only to the North. This unsettled question had all along been a source of national weakness. The fight- ing in the war of the Revolution should have closed in 1777 instead of 1781. Each state exerted itself when its soil was invaded, but was apathetic when danger was remote. The war of 1812 should have been a decisive victory for the United States instead of a little more than a drawn battle. With New York and New England standing almost aloof the country was like a man fighting with one arm in a sling. That the United States had grown and prospered up to 1860 was in spite of the theory of state sovereignty. The country was new and vast and inhabited by an energetic people. As it grew older this unsettled question was certain to put it to a strain more severe than any it had yet undergone.
The organization of the North had placed that section fore- most in population, wealth, and diversified efficiency. Fired with a consciousness of national feeling, it believed itself now entitled to lead the Union, and it organized a new political party for that purpose. To the North it seemed inconsistent with true Republican ideals that the Federal government should be controlled by the small class of large slaveholders. It seemed inequitable also, inasmuch as the planter class did not exist in the North and could not truly be representative of that section. The planters and the slaves were sectional classes of the American people.
The world moves either by evolution or by revolution. The former process is one of peace. The latter is effected through war. By evolution the South like the North would have grown away from its adherence to state sovereignty and would have put aside the institution that was giving artificial life to that theory. In the light of subsequents this result would have come sooner than would have been thought pos- sible in 1860. The industrial America of that year was but an infant as compared with the industrial America of to-day. Comparing the processes of our time with the Southern processes of 1860 is much like comparing the modern cotton- mill with the old-fashioned hand loom. Southern independ- ence with slavery would have completed the impoverishment of the soil and swollen the exodus to the North of its non- slaveholding citizens. It would likewise have given the South the unendurable distinction of being the only slave- holding nation of the white race. Southern writers concede that emancipation would have been a speedy result of South-
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ern independence. Another result would have been the melt- ing away of the distinction between planter and small farmer. Still another result would have been the coming of the South to the same industrial standard as the North. The funda- mental distinctions between North and South being swept away, there would no longer have been any solid ground for a division of nationality within the confines of the United States.
The artificial line between the free and slave states has never divided people of different stocks. In blood the North- ern and Southern people have always been one. The North- ern man settling in the South became a Southerner. The Southern man settling in the North became a Northerner. Owing to the assimilative power of each section there is and always will be some unlikeness in temperament and tend- ency between the men of the North and the men of the South. There is such a difference between Eastern men and Western men. A sameness in the people of different por- tions of the same country would not be a good thing.
Along this very line is another consideration. The Alle- ghanies threatened a separation of the Interior from the Seaboard. This peril being overcome by the speedy methods of modern transportation, geographic law now made it clear that the territory of the United States is the natural abode of but one nation. The West had been furious in 1803 because a foreign nation held it by the throat in holding the mouth of its natural outlet, the Mississippi. A like situation made the West furious in 1861, and while in the East the war be- tween the individualized states of the North and the individ- ualized states of the South was a seesaw, the nationalized West overcame every seceded state except Virginia. A glance at the map shows that every one of the original states of the Confederacy had a coast line and seaports. Of the four slaveholding fresh water states, Tennessee and Arkansas se- ceded with reluctance, and Kentucky and Missouri did not secede at all. The commercial interests of those states were identical with those of the other states of the Mississippi basin, and the same was true of the greater part of what is now West Virginia. Geography was against the Confeder- acy, both on the Mississippi and within the Alleghanies.
In the days of handicraft, slow travel, and intense local feeling, the most vigorous type of nation was the small, inde- pendent country. But in this age of trunkline railways, costly industrial processes, and ten million dollar battleships, the little nation cannot industrially handle itself to advantage, and it preserves its political freedom only so long as its more powerful neighbors consent to keep their hands off. The
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tendency of the modern world, while retaining local self- government, is to blot out the boundary lines between kind- red peoples.
Even a quiet separation between North and South would almost inevitably have been followed by an armed collision. Over the long, artificial boundary line would have hovered a warcloud until one side or the other had crushed its rival. For a different answer we find no warrant in history.
We are thunderstorms along the highway of history. Like the atmospheric thunderstorm they clear the air but leave wreckage behind them. The American war of 1861 was an uprising of the two groups of the American people, each fighting for what it esteemed the most sacred interests of a free nation. When two sections of a common country are arrayed against one another, each thoroughly convinced of the justice of its cause, it is entirely out of the question for either side to have a monopoly of all the citizens of truth, honor, and magnanimity. By the same token it is no less inconceivable that either side should be without some men who bring reproach to its cause by their base, brutal, and sor- did acts. It took a very high motive to inspire the enormous sacrifices of the North, even though the buzzard followed in the rear, just as the jackal follows in the wake of the lion. On the other hand the effort and the sacrifices of the South are unsurpassed in history. They outshine the record of America in 1776. No better soldiers and no more daring leaders ever went into battle than the men who followed the flag of the Southern Confederacy. Yet the determination of the men they fought could not be shaken by repeated reverses. The tribute of a Southern writer is thus given: "That the Army of the Potomac did preserve its cohesion and its fighting power in spite of a secession of leaders impressively demon- strates the high character and intense loyalty of that army."
That war has been called a war for the negro, although it was only the small abolitionists minority of the Northern peo- ple who had any zeal for an abrupt emancipation, and that step was finally taken for military reasons. Lincoln, as the spokesman of his party, was unquestionably sincere when he said he had no wish to interfere with slavery where it al- ready existed. Yet the institution was foredoomed, even without the North using emancipation as a military weapon. In fact the interest of the North in the negro was largely artificial and transparent, and began to wane as soon as the early sentimental feeling toward the black man gave way to more accurate knowledge.
That war has been called a war of the politicians. But the hot-headed congressmen between 1830 and 1860 were not
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speaking merely for themselves. If such had been the case they would never have been sent to congress, neither would three millions of men have gone to the battlefield for four years. As to the South that war has been called a conspir- acy of traitors. But a whole people does not fight to the last extremity simply as the behest of a clique of scheming, treacherous rascals.
The political revolution of 1860, resulting in the overthrow of planter control, was the first grand battle. In the slave states as well as in the free states there was an aggressive and a conservative element. In the North the one element supported Lincoln and the other supported Douglas, both being Northern men. In the South the one element sup- ported Breckenridge and the other supported Bell, both be- ing Southern men. Only one Northern man in forty sup- ported Breckenridge, and only one Southern man in sixty supported Lincoln. Even the conservative candidates, Doug- las and Bell, had but slender support outside of their own sections. The contest was four-sided because each section had its own set of candidates. The Republican party was sectional, because it was the exponent of the national idea. The Breckenridge Democracy was sectional, because it stood for the confederate idea.
The war which followed was a violent effort to compel a disavowal of the doctrine of state sovereignty and to compel a general recognition of the principle of nationality. When Lincoln said the United States could not permanently remain half slave and half free, but that it would have to become one thing or the other, it was one way of saying that the Union could not permanently remain partly a Banded-State and partly a Band of States. It had begun as a band of States, but the Banded-State idea had gained ground until it was now the creed of more than two-thirds of the American citizens. The North had undertaken to lead the Union, and the Republican party was its instrument. The election of Lincoln implied that the North would exert a pressure to com- plete the nationalization of the Union, even if this step led to the remodelling of Southern society. In fact the second result was certain to follow the first. Two contradictory views as to the sphere of a common government and two divergent types of civilization cannot permanently exist in the same country. The stronger type is driven by a force it cannot resist to secure a uniformity of type. This national instinct is one phase of the instinct of national self-preservation. It is a recognition of the proverb that the house divided against itself cannot stand.
Only a general emancipation could avert the clash of arms.
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Though slavery was not at all the primary cause of the war, it was nevertheless the main support of the Southern system. This obstacle put aside, the Northern and Southern systems would draw together and nationalism would permeate the South. Though democratic in form the institution of the planter class was aristocratic in spirit and even oligarchic. Aristocracy is brave but always conservative. It is opposed to change, and it stubbornly resists any curtailment of its privileges. The possession of power makes it proud, exclu- sive, and domineering. Nothing short of very extreme measures will make it let go its hold.
The founders of our Republic looked upon aristocracy and its handmaid slavery as serving a necessary and unavoidable yet temporary purpose. They did not forsee the cotton gin. Through this and other inventions the planter class grew rich and powerful. It sought to make itself a permanent feature of the South and it insisted on leading the Union. It was reactionary and not modern. It was hopelessly out of touch with the new era that was now abroad in the world. Its fall was inevitable. The only question was as to the speed and the manner whereby this result should happen. The planter thus set himself against the rising spirit of the age, and the war of 1861 was the consequence. Being in undisputed power in the South, the planter was thus the bulwark of the Southern resistance. Hence the phrase, so current in that section, that the conflict was "the rich man's war and the poor man's fight."
The war was a trial of strength between a progressive and a conservative force, the North standing for the former and the South for the latter. Right here it should be remembered that while a progressive force always stands for a change, it does not follow that every feature of that change is necessa- rily for the better. Neither is it to the point to affirm that one of the parties in the war of 1861 was wholly and neces- sarily right and the other wholly and necessarily wrong. The real question was whether the Federal or the Confederate view was better fitted to prevail. In a military sense there was an invasion on the part of the North ending in the con- quest of the South. The act was revolutionary, and its justification is to be sought in the general result and not in discussions on the wording of the Federal Constitution. A minority party, being on the defensive, urges the letter of the law. The majority party, being on the aggressive, leans on its own view of the spirit of the law.
In asserting its doctrine of secession the South took a de- fensive step and did this with reluctance. Nevertheless, the North was not in error in viewing this step as in the nature
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of an overthrow of the Union. All America was intensely proud of this great country, and to the North, because of its having become nationalized, a collapse of national glory and the prospect of an America as divided and discordant as Eu- rope seemed an evil to great too bear. That the South was not insensible to this was voiced by Robert E. Lee, when he said that if he owned the four millions of slaves he would not hesitate to sacrifice this property interest in order to preserve the Union. Nationalism was already a stronger force in the South than even the Southern people were aware. Otherwise we would not find four slave states, portions of others, and more than a fourth of the fighting men of the South arrayed against the Confederate cause. As a form of government, the Southern Confederacy of 1861 was incomparably stronger than the Union of 1776. In terms it was a confederation, while in spirit it scarcely fell short of being a federation.
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