The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 | Page 2

against the federal power. Louisiana, with
her great sugar interest, was a tariff State, and advocated protection as
ardently as it was opposed in the greater part of the North-West, and in
extensive districts of the North. She was not even invited to join the
proposed confederacy. Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware were
decided in their support of the protective policy, while Tennessee,
Missouri, and North Carolina were divided on the question. Mr.
Calhoun himself, the very prophet of nullification, could not obliterate
the memory of his own former opinions, and it was difficult to induce
the people to coöperate in overthrowing the Federal Government,
simply for adopting a policy which the very authors of this movement
had themselves so recently thoroughly approved.
Thus, opinion was broken into fragments; and nowhere outside of
South Carolina did it acquire sufficient unanimity and power to impart
any great momentum to the revolutionary design. Besides, in the
absence of clear and deep convictions, the question itself was of such a
nature, that strong passions could not easily spring from it. The
interests involved were not necessarily in conflict; their opposition was
more apparent than real, so that an adjustment could readily be made
without sacrifice of principle. In short, the subject of dispute did not
contain within itself the elements of civil war, capable of development
to that extreme, at the time and under the circumstances when the futile
attempt at separation was made. Doubtless, the sinister exertions of
restless and ambitious men, acting upon ignorant prejudices, might,
under some circumstances, have engendered opinions, even upon the
tariff question, sufficiently strong and violent for the production of civil
commotion. Had the conditions been more favorable to the plot; had
the conspirators of that day been as well prepared as those of 1861; had
they been equally successful in sowing dissatisfaction and hatred in the
minds of the Southern people; had they found in Gen. Jackson the weak
and pliant instrument of treason which James Buchanan afterward
became in the hands of Davis and his coadjutors, the present rebellion
might have been anticipated, and the germ of secession wholly

extirpated and destroyed, in the contest which would then have ensued.
The Union would doubtless have been maintained, and, in the end,
strengthened; the fatal element of discord would scarcely have survived
to work and plot in secret for more than a quarter of a century. It is true,
slavery would have remained; but in the absence of other causes,
slavery would not necessarily have brought the country to the present
crisis. Providence may have so ordered the events of that day as to
leave the revolutionary element in existence, in order that it might
eventually fasten upon slavery as the instrument of its treason, and thus
bring this system, condemned alike by the lessons of experience and by
the moral sense of mankind, to that complete eventual destruction,
which seems to be inevitably approaching.
The idea of an independent Southern confederacy, to be constituted of a
fragment of the Union, survived the contest of 1832, and has been
cherished with zeal and enthusiasm, by a small party of malcontents,
from that day to this. Either from honest conviction or from the syren
seductions of ambition, or perhaps from that combination of both
which so often misleads the judgment of the wisest and best of men,
this party has pursued its end with unrivalled zeal and consummate tact,
never for a single moment abating its efforts to convince the South of
the advantages of separation. But all its ability and all its untiring
labors failed to make any serious impression, until the great and
powerful interest of slavery was enlisted in the cause, and used as the
means of reaching the feelings, and arousing the prejudices of the
Southern people. The theories of nullification and secession, while
accepted by many leading minds in that section, never made any
serious impression upon the mass of the people. Indeed, it may be said
with truth, that the honest instincts of the people invariably rejected
these pernicious and dangerous theories, whenever they were distinctly
involved in the elections. Nevertheless, there was an undercurrent of
opinion in favor of them: the minds of the people were familiarized
with the doctrines, and thus made ready to embrace them, whenever
they should be satisfied it was indispensable to their safety and liberty
to avail themselves of their benefit.
These abstract principles, however industriously and successfully

taught, would not of themselves have availed to urge the people on to
the desperate contest into which they have been madly precipitated.
The dogma of the right of secession was not left a mere barren idea: it
was accompanied with constant teachings respecting the
incompatibility of interests, and the inevitable conflict, between the
North and the South; the