The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 | Page 7

and so far
exceeded that of the Southern States, that there could be no actual
rivalry in the settlement of the territories. The latter already had more
territory than they could possibly occupy and people. While the
Northern population, swollen by European emigration, was taking
possession of the new territories and filling them with industry and
prosperity, slavery was repelling white emigration, and the South, from
sheer want of men, was wholly unable to meet the competition. Yet,
with most unreasonable clamors, intended only to arouse the passions
of the ignorant, Southern statesmen insisted on establishing the law of
slavery where they could not plant the institution itself. They finally
demanded that slavery should be recognized everywhere within the
national domain; and that the Federal power should be pledged for its
protection, even against the votes of the majority of the people. This
was nothing less than an attempt to check the growth of the country, by
the exclusion of free States, when it was impossible to increase it by the
addition of any others.
Upon the failure of this monstrous demand, civil war was to be
inaugurated! A power which had been relatively dwindling and
diminishing from the beginning--which, in the very nature of things,
could not maintain its equality in numbers and in constitutional
weight--this minority demanded the control of the Government, in its
growth, and in all its policy, and, in the event of refusal, threatened to
rend and destroy it. Such pretensions could not have been made with

sincerity. They were but the sinister means of exciting sectional
enmities, and preparing for the final measures of the great conspiracy.
Having discarded the rational and humane views of their own
fathers--Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and others--it was but the
natural sequel that they should signalize their degeneracy by aiming to
overthrow the work in which those sages had embodied their generous
ideas--the Constitution of the United States and the whole fabric of
government resting upon it.
In what manner these mischievous absurdities became acceptable to the
Southern people--by what psychological miracle so great a
transformation was accomplished in so short a time--is only to be
explained by examining some of the delusions which blinded the
authors of the rebellion, and enabled them to mislead the masses who
confided too implicitly in the leadership of their masters.
Weak as were the Southern people in point of numbers and political
power, compared with those of the opposite section, the haughty
slaveholders easily persuaded themselves and their dependents that
they could successfully cope in arms with the Northern adversary,
whom they affected to despise for his cowardly and mercenary
disposition. Wealth, education, and ample leisure gave them the best
opportunity for political studies and public employments. Long
experience imparted skill in all the arts of government, and enabled
them, by superior ability, to control the successive administrations at
Washington. Proud and confident, they indulged the belief that their
great political prestige would continue to serve them among their late
party associates in the North, and that the counsels of the adversary
would be distracted, and his power weakened, by the fatal effects of
dissension. All warlike sentiment and capacity was believed to be
extinct among the traders and manufacturers, 'the shopkeepers and
pedlars,' of the Middle and Eastern States. Hence a vigorous attack in
arms against the Federal Government was expected to be met with no
energetic and effective resistance. A peaceable dissolution of the Union,
and the impossibility of war--at least of any serious and prolonged
hostilities--was a cardinal point in the teachings of the secessionists.
The fraudulent as well as violent measures by which they sought to

disarm the Federal Government and to forestall its action, were only
adopted 'to make assurance doubly sure.'
Beyond all doubt, the system of slavery encourages those habits and
passions which make the soldier, and which instigate and maintain
wars. The military spirit and that of slavery are congenial; for both
belong to an early stage in the progress of civilization, when each is
necessary to the support and continuance of the other. It was therefore
to be expected that the Southern people would be better prepared for
the organization, and also for the manoeuvring of armies. But the
mistake and the fatal delusion cherished by the conspirators, was the
belief that the Northern people were without manly spirit, and
incapable of being aroused by sentiments of patriotism. It was an equal
miscalculation to anticipate that the fabric of Northern free society
would fall to pieces, and be thrown into irremediable disorder, at the
first appearance of civil commotion. This false idea was the offspring
of the slave system, which boasted of the solidity of its own
organization and the impossibility of its overthrow. From their
standpoint, amid the darkness of a social organization, in