Abraham Lincoln and the Union | Page 6

has so much
to say, is at work in us all, subtly making us into illusions, first to
ourselves and later to the historian. It is the business of history, as of
analytic fiction, both to feel the power of these illusions and to work
through them in imagination to the dim but potent motives on which
they rest. We are prone to forget that we act from subconscious quite as
often as from conscious influences, from motives that arise out of the
dim parts of our being, from the midst of shadows that psychology has
only recently begun to lift, where senses subtler than the obvious make
use of fear, intuition, prejudice, habit, and illusion, and too often play
with us as the wind with blown leaves.
True as this is of man individually, it is even more fundamentally true
of man collectively, of parties, of peoples. It is a strikingly accurate
description of the relation of the two American nations that now found
themselves opposed within the Republic. Neither fully understood the
other. Each had a social ideal that was deeper laid than any theory of
government or than any commercial or humanitarian interest. Both
knew vaguely but with sure instinct that their interests and ideals were
irreconcilable. Each felt in its heart the deadly passion of
self-preservation. It was because, in both North and South, men were
subtly conscious that a whole social system was the issue at stake, and
because on each side they believed in their own ideals with their whole
souls, that, when the time came for their trial by fire, they went to their
deaths singing.

In the South there still obtained the ancient ideal of territorial
aristocracy. Those long traditions of the Western European peoples
which had made of the great landholder a petty prince lay beneath the
plantation life of the Southern States. The feudal spirit, revived in a
softer world and under brighter skies, gave to those who participated in
it the same graces and somewhat the same capacities which it gave to
the knightly class in the days of Roland--courage, frankness, generosity,
ability in affairs, a sense of responsibility, the consciousness of caste.
The mode of life which the planters enjoyed and which the inferior
whites regarded as a social paradise was a life of complete deliverance
from toil, of disinterested participation in local government, of absolute
personal freedom--a life in which the mechanical action of law was less
important than the more human compulsion of social opinion, and in
which private differences were settled under the code of honor.
This Southern life was carried on in the most appropriate environment.
On a landed estate, often larger than many of Europe's baronies, stood
the great house of the planter, usually a graceful example of colonial
architecture, surrounded by stately gardens. This mansion was the
center of a boundless hospitality; guests were always coming and going;
the hostess and her daughters were the very symbols of kindliness and
ease. To think of such houses was to think of innumerable joyous days;
of gentlemen galloping across country after the hounds; of coaches
lumbering along avenues of noble oaks, bringing handsome women to
visit the mansion; of great feastings; of nights of music and dancing;
above all, of the great festival of Christmas, celebrated much as had
been the custom in "Merrie England" centuries before.
Below the surface of this bright world lay the enslaved black race. In
the minds of many Southerners--it was always a secret burden from
which they saw no means of freeing themselves. To emancipate the
slaves, and thereby to create a population of free blacks, was generally
considered, from the white point of view, an impossible solution of the
problem. The Southerners usually believed that the African could be
tamed only in small groups and when constantly surrounded by white
influence, as in the case of house servants. Though a few great
capitalists had taken up the idea that the deliberate exploitation of the

blacks was the high prerogative of the whites, the general sentiment of
the Southern people was more truly expressed by Toombs when he said:
"The question is not whether we could be more prosperous and happy
with these three and a half million slaves in Africa, and their places
filled with an equal number of hardy, intelligent, and enterprising
citizens of the superior race; but it is simply whether, while we have
them among us, we would be most prosperous with them in freedom or
in bondage."
The Southern people, in the majority of instances, had no hatred of the
blacks. In the main they led their free, spirited, and gracious life,
convinced that the maintenance of slavery was but making the best of
circumstances which were beyond their control. It was these Southern
people