The Continental Monthly | Page 4

from our hands.' But what does this involve? The admission of the right of secession, which, as has been proved, is fatal to all national unity and preservation. Even if this arrogant demand was complied with, would peace be thus possible? Would not the breaking up of the Union involve the people in calamities that no patience, or wisdom upon the part of the North could avert? Remember a long border in an open country, stretching from the Atlantic, possibly even to the Pacific, is to be defended. Will the bordering people sink down from war, and all its exasperations, and become as peaceful as lambs? Constituted as human nature now is, will the dissolution of the Union create with the great North and South the experience of millennium prediction, 'The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and fatling together; and a little child shall lead them'? Here is a line crossed by great rivers; we are to shut up the mouth of the Chesapeake bay, on Ohio and Western Virginia; we are to ask the Western States to give up the mouth of the Mississippi to a foreign power. Is it reasonable to suppose that no provocation will occur on this long frontier? Will no slaves run away? What is to be gained by a dissolution of the Union? Not peace; for if, when united, there exists such cause of dissension, the evil will be tenfold greater when separated. Not national aggrandizement, for division brings weakness, imbecility, and a loss of self-respect; it invites aggressions from foreign powers, and compels to submission to insults that otherwise would not be given. Not general competence, for the South is quite as dependent upon the North as the North upon the South.
Disunion is a violent disruption of great material interests that now are wedded together. The dream of separate State sovereignty, our great Union split into two or more confederacies, prosperous and peaceable, is Utopian. So far from the secession doctrine carried out leading to peace and prosperity, it can only lead to perpetual war and adversity. The request to be 'let alone,' is simply a request that the nation should consent to see the Constitution and Union overthrown, slavery triumphant, and the great problem that a free people can not choose its own rulers against the will of a minority prove a disgraceful failure. It is a request that a nation should purchase a temporary peace at the price of all that is dear to its liberty and self-respect. The arrogance of the demand 'to be let alone,' is only equaled by the iniquity of the means resorted to, to break up the best Government under the sun. The question of disunion, of separate State sovereignty, was fully discussed by our fathers. Thus Hamilton, whose foresight history has proved to be prophetic, says:
'If these States should be either wholly disunited, or only united in partial Confederacies, a man must be far gone in Utopian speculations, who can seriously doubt that the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests, as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties, situated in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.'
From a consideration of the true import of the Constitution, in relation to slavery and the fallacy and wickedness of the doctrine of Secession, we are now prepared to deduce, from what has been said, the following reflections: First, the war in which the nation is now plunged should have strictly for its great end, the restoration of the Constitution and the Union to its original integrity; all side issues, all mere party questions should be now merged in one mighty effort, one persevering and self-sacrificing aim to maintain the Constitution and the Union. As essential for this purpose, it is indispensable that all the rights guaranteed to loyal citizens in the slave States should be respected. The reason is two-fold. First, this war, upon the part of the North, is for the maintenance of the Constitution as our fathers gave it to us. Its object is not a crusade against slavery. What may be the results of the war in relation to slavery is one thing; what should be the simple purpose of the North is another. That this war, however it may turn, will be disastrous to slavery, is evident from a great variety of considerations. But that we should pretend to