Palmetto Studies
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THE ORIGIN OF THE LATE WAR
By Albert T. Bledsoe
From The Southern Review, April, 1867
Every great revolution has had its writers as well as its warriors. The Rebellion of 1641, for example, had its Harrington, its Hobbes, and its Milton, not to mention innumerable other writers of less note. In like manner, the Revolution of 1688 produced a Sidney, a Locke, a Hoadley, a Gordon, and a Plato Redivivus; all of whom discuss some of the great questions pertaining to the social condition and destiny of man. And the first French Revolution, as everyone knows, was accompanied by an infinity of publications respecting the origin of society, the foundations and forms of government, and the causes of revolutions. No convulsion of society, however, has ever surpassed, in this respect, the War of 1861; which scattered, in all directions, innumerable books and pamphlets of all sorts and sizes; reminding one of the motley deluge of literature vomited forth by Error in the "Faerie Queene" of Spenser. Russel's 'Catalogue of the Literature of the Rebellion,' though by no means complete, fills no less than 767 royal octavo pages. In this huge catalogue, there are, perhaps, the titles of some eight or ten books which deserve to be read.
Those writers who, first of all, grappled with the problem of the French Revolution, took an exceedingly one-sided, partial, and superficial view of the subject. Time was necessary for the development and diffusion of a knowledge of the real causes of that event. It was finally perceived, that in order to comprehend its causes, an intimate acquaintance with the history of the century which preceded it was indispensably necessary; and that it resulted from "a multitude of converging causes." The opinion of Bonaparte, that “If there had been no Rousseau, there would have been no Revolution,” came to be regarded by everyone as puerile, as everyone acquired a deeper insight into the causes of the Revolution of '89. Alison's analysis of the manifold causes of French Revolution is well known. The late Sir G. C. Lewis, in his work on "Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics,” generalizes the fact at which history has arrived in regard to the French Revolution; and asserts that every great revolution is produced by "a multitude of converging causes,” all of which terminate in the one grand result. This is certainly true in relation to the Revolution of 1861. No one can comprehend that event, or its causes, who is not familiar with the whole political history of the United States, from the origin of that voluntary association of free States to the subjugation of a portion of them by the others: a history which shows that those causes were numerous as well as powerful.
The history of the literature of the French Revolution has repeated itself on this side of the Atlantic. The secession of the Southern States was not caused by "the failure to elect a President," nor by "the legitimate loss of political power;" a contemporary slander which is already obsolete. The real causes were far other and deeper than these. Springing from numerous sources, and concurring in one tendency, the real causes swelled into a mighty torrent, by which the Union as a voluntary association of States was gradually undermined; so that, when the appointed time came, it furiously rushed to destruction. It is now no more.
Different writers have placed a very different estimate on the relative force and importance of these causes; even when they have not, as is usually the case, laid the whole stress on some to the exclusion of the others. One considers the too great predominance of the democratic element in the Constitution of '87, or bond of Union, as the chief source of destruction. A second regards the dislocating friction between Federal and the State Governments, or the incessant collisions between the parts of the very complex system, as most powerful of all the causes of its transformation from an association of free States into an absolute despotism. A third, with equal confidence, pronounces the Presidential elections the prime cause of that strange transformation, by which the other causes were developed or called into fatal activity; while a fourth lays the principal stress on the antagonism between the two great sections of the Union, the North and the South, as the source of its original weakness and its final ruin. A fifth class, by far the largest and most superficial of all, insist that the institution of slavery alone was the cause of the War of 1861.
All these causes, no doubt, operated at the same time, and each increased the disorganizing force of the others. But no one, so far as we know, has ever attempted, as yet, to consider them all in one group, to weigh the force and estimate the bearing of each, so as to determine their relative effects among themselves, as well as their influence in the production of the final result. Indeed, such an attempt would have been quite premature on the part of most writers on the American conflict; for if the political history of the United States has been written, it has certainly never been read by them. Even in regard to the great crisis, or terrible turning points of that history, their works are replete with blunders, which necessarily preclude them from a view of the real causes of the explosion of 1861. They not only fail to look beneath the surface of "The American Conflict"; but even upon that surface they see everything distorted and discolored by the violence of passions too strong for their judgments. Mr. Horace Greely, as we shall hereafter see, is a conspicuous and shining specimen of this class of writers. For, however honest his intentions, his huge tome (of which it is said, sixty thousand copies were sold in three months) is, from beginning to end, little more than a gross libel on the South.
It is our design, at present, merely to exhibit a general view of the origin of the late war, as an introduction to the future discussion of some of its most deep-seated and powerful causes. These causes, considered under the most general point of view, have their roots in the legislation of 1787. That legislation undertook to provide the solution of a vast and complicated problem, or rather the solutions of a series of vast and complicated problems; and the failure of these solutions was the War of 1861. If we consider the nature of those problems and their solutions, it will not be difficult, it is believed, to discover how it was that those who made the new union, sowed, at the same time, the seeds of all its mighty convulsions and revolutions; or, more properly speaking how it was that time and the passions of men developed the seeds of discord, and brought forth the late war, in spite of the legislation of 1787.
The problems, which the Convention of 1787 undertook to solve, were exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Indeed, under the then existing state of things, they appear to have been beyond the reach of any practical solution whatever. It undertook to establish: 1. An equilibrium of power between the few and the many, between those who held the reins of government, and those who created the government and who held its destinies in their own hands; 2. An equilibrium between the several departments of the Federal Government, between its executive, judiciary, and legislative departments; so that each might be able to protect itself against the encroachments of the other two, and to move, without serious disturbance, in its appointed sphere; 3. An equilibrium between the Federal Government and the State governments, or between the Union and the States; 4. An equilibrium between the large and the small states; and 5. An equilibrium between the North and the South. Thus, each of these five problems relates to the balance of power between antagonistic, or opposite interests, either real or imaginary; and in only one instance did the labors of the Convention succeed in the establishment of a stable equilibrium. The conflict between the large and the small states, by which the Convention was more violently shaken than by any other, was the only one permanently adjusted by its labors. Hence, while this ceased to disturb the Union, the others continued to rage and to distract its counsels. They were, indeed, among the great elements of discord, by which the angry passions of men were kindled into the flames of the late war.
In regard to the first problem above mentioned, Mr. Madison says in The Federalist: Among the difficulties encountered by the Convention, a very important one must have lain in considering the requisite stability and energy in government, with the inviolable attention due to the republican form. Without substantially accomplishing this part of their undertaking, they would have very imperfectly fulfilled the object of their appointment, or the expectations of the public; yet that it could not be easily accomplished; will be denied by no one who is unwilling to betray his ignorance of the subject." …"The genius of republican liberty,” he continues, "seems to demand on one side, not only that all power should be derived from the people, but that those entrusted with it should be kept in dependence on the people, by a short duration of their appointment.” How, then, shall these short-lived creatures of the multitude preserve their independence, their integrity? How keep their allegiance to truth and justice? How impart dignity, order, and decency to the government? How resist the gusts and whirlwinds of popular passion, and stand, like men erect before the multitude in the breath of whose nostrils they live and move and have their being? If any made such an attempt, indeed, they soon found that there is such a thing as “rotation in office;" a rotation which carries truth loving men to the bottom and demagogues to the top. Now why is this? Is it in the very nature of "republican liberty,” as it is called, to breed such creeping things? Or is it a peculiarity, an accident in the working of the democracy in America?
In the Convention of 1787, it was said by Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, that in considering the evils under which the country then labored, all had concurred in “tracing them to the violence and follies of democracy.” Hence they sought, by a system of checks and balances, to restrain the power" of the majority, and keep it within due bounds. But, as Hamilton predicted, the checks and barriers of the Constitution were "too feeble for the amazing violence and turbulence of the democratic spirit;" and consequently they have, one after another, disappeared before the overbearing despotism of the majority. The history of the majority in this country shows, indeed, that it is a tyrant which for seventy long years had continually grown in the gigantic magnitude of its proportions, and in the ungovernable fierceness of its temper, until, at last, it became a monster too grievous to be borne. Hence, one great cause of the movement of 1861, was the profound dissatisfaction of the minority, that is, of one section reduced to a permanent and hopeless minority.
Under the circumstances, it was, perhaps, impossible to establish a permanent equilibrium of power between the one, the few, and the many. It is certain that the legislators of 1787 loaded the last end of the beam too heavily, and consequently the equilibrium was not stable or enduring. The power of the many, or the democratic element of the new system, swallowed up all the others, and degenerated into the despotism of mere numbers. Nor should this have surprised us. For more than two thousand years ago, it was said by the prince of political philosophers, that governments had usually perished in one way; that is, by the characteristic or predominant element in them gaining the complete ascendency over the others. It was in conformity with this principle, or law, that the democratic republic in this country perished, or lost its legitimate form; becoming the remorseless despotism of a lawless multitude.
The manner in which this transformation took place, and the causes by which it was brought about, constitute a curious and profoundly interesting chapter in the history of this country, as well as in the history of mankind in general. Hence, in some future article, this transformation will be exhibited, and traced to its natural causes, revealing, in bold relief, the dark mysteries of popular sovereignty. No subject more richly deserves the study of the historian, the philosopher, and the statesman; yet no subject seems to have been more superficially considered. Even the 'Democracy in America' by M' de Tocqueville, is replete with the deceitful shows and splendid shams of a hollow political philosophy. That such a work should have been so highly praised by all the principal reviews of Europe shows, as we shall hereafter see, how very little attention has been given to the great subject of which it treats; for not one of them has displayed sufficient critical acumen, or insight, to penetrate the veil of glittering generalities with which it hides the real features of the Demos. We shall, in the article just referred to, rend that veil, and show, in the combined lights of history and philosophy, the insufferable tyranny of all numerical majorities, and also the grounds and reasons of its existence.
The causes of the late war had their roots in the passions of the human heart. Under the influence of these causes almost everything in the new system worked differently from what was generally anticipated. Hamilton, it is true, predicted that the checks of the Constitution would prove too feeble for the passions of the masses. But the majority at that time, or soon after, agreed with Franklin, that the sovereignty of the people was laid under too many restrictions by the Constitution, and that a despotism was most likely to result from the undue ascendency of the few. Hamilton was the true prophet. The Convention deeply impressed with the evils flowing from the democratic republics of the several states, sought to remedy those evils by erecting one grand democratic republic over the whole. But the grand democratic republic was not without dangers of its own. The storms and agitations on the lakes of a continent would no doubt, be remedied, if an ocean were made to embrace and include them all; but then how could the storms and agitations on the ocean itself be prevented? And if a storm should happen to arise on the ocean, might not the ship-wreck, the ruin, the desolation, and the misery be on a proportionately grander and more terrific scale? The storm which actually arose, and swept everything, from centre to circumference, into its all-devouring vortex, had its source in the antagonism between the two great sections of the Union; an antagonism which resulted from various causes, and grew in depth and bitterness till war became inevitable.
The equilibrium of power between the several departments of the Federal Government was also, as time has shown, but imperfectly adjusted. By the encroachments of Congress, that equilibrium was, from time to time, violently disturbed, and finally overthrown. The law-making power absorbed or controlled the others. The Executive became its tool, and the Judiciary, which was intended to limit its authority, gradually yielded to its unconstitutional sway or was moulded into a subserviency to its designs. It was thus that the Federal Government, originally intended to be a well-balanced equilibrium between the three co-ordinate departments, each possessing sufficient power to protect itself against encroachments of the other two, degenerated into a frightful oligarchy of demagogues; the worst possible corruption that ever destroyed a free government. Is it not, indeed, more like anarchy than the reign of law and order, or any form of government properly so-called?
The conflict between the Federal and the State governments continued under the new Union, and ended only with the subjugation of the Southern States. The phenomena of this struggle between the Union and its members, as exhibited in history, were not foreseen by any one of the legislators of 1787. Some supposed that in the working of this complex system, there would be too great "a tendency to tyranny in the head," as the Union was called; and others that the more dangerous tendency would be toward "anarchy among the members," or the states. Some deemed "the centripetal," and others "the centrifugal," force of the new system too great for its stability. Hence, the first class feared the consolidation of the States into one great central power; and the last, with Hamilton and Madison at their head, dreaded the destruction of that power, and a resolution of the Union into the units of which it was originally composed. Neither anticipation has been verified. That is, neither tendency has prevailed to the exclusion of the other; on the contrary, both tendencies have prevailed at the same time, but in different portions of the Union; and the one as the consequence of the other. Tyranny in the head begat independence in the members, and independence in the members augmented the tyranny of the head. Each tendency aggravated and increased the other. The "rebellion" of the members, as it was called, was pleaded in justification of all the usurpations of the head. Or, in other words, usurpation of power by the majority in possession of the Federal Government, produced resistance in the minority, or in those states which had no share in the control of its powers. Precisely the same phenomena were exhibited, in this respect, whether the powers of the Federal Government were wielded by the Northern or the Southern States. No state, believing itself to be in a hopeless minority and out of power, ever rejoiced in the bonds of "the glorious Union"; just as no man "e'er felt the halter draw, with good opinion of the law." It was, indeed, under such circumstances, that the States of New England conceived the design of breaking these bonds asunder and scattering them to the winds; while the Southern States looked with a favorable eye on the transcendent beauties of the Union. Thus, the new government worked, not according to physical analogies, or illustrations, drawn from the solar system, but according to the principles of human nature. The weak looked to the Constitution, as the great charter of their rights; and the powerful looked to their own power. The minority held up the shield of State rights; the majority laid its hand on the sword of the Union. The only difference is, that in thus passing from the creed and the attitude of the minority, to those of the majority and back again, according to her change of position and power in the Union, New England seems to have been more bold and unblushing than any other portion of the United States; and, at the same time, more lofty in her pretensions to a purely disinterested patriotism and loyalty.
The great problem, of which the Convention of 1787 undertook to furnish the practical solution, was to establish equilibrium of power between the North and the South. This was admitted by its members to be the greatest of all the difficulties they had to encounter. It was also admitted, nay, positively asserted by the Convention, that neither section could remain free, or safe, or happy in the Union, unless each should hold a constitutional and efficient check on the power of the other. Hence, if we may believe their own statements, they intended to give each section the control of one branch of Congress, so that no law could be passed without the consent of both sections. The design was good, but the execution bad. The equilibrium in question, which all conceded to be so essential to the order, tranquility, and happiness of the Union, proved as unstable as water, and as treacherous as the sea. The North acquired the control of both branches of Congress. Nor was this all. The North, in contemptuous defiance of the South, elected a sectional President; and at the same time, avowed its fixed determination to mould the Supreme Court to its own sovereign will and pleasure. Thus, the equipoise of power between the two sections, which, from the first, was so unstable and insecure, settled beyond all hope of a re-adjustment, in favor of the North. The South, then, had lost forever the least chance of gaining the ascendency in either branch of Congress; and consequently, she held all her dearest rights and interests at the mercy of her ancient rival and enemy; the very state of things which, according to the founders of the Republic, would be an intolerable despotism.
The failure to adjust, or settle on any solid basis, the balance of power between the North and the South, was the great defect of the Constitution of 1787. The means employed to establish that balance of power, was the weak point in the new system; and it was precisely the point on which all the causes of discord and disruption fell with united force and ferocity. No wonder, then, that it gave way, and let in the overwhelming flood of 1861.
Hence, if we are not greatly mistaken, the antagonism between the North and the South, so imperfectly adjusted by the labors of. 1787, is the true stand-point from which to contemplate the origin of the late war. This antagonism, this cause of discord, stamped, in fact, its image on all the other causes of the late war. It drew into itself all other causes, and raged with the violence of them all. The struggle between the Union and the States, between the "head and the members" of the new system, was developed and determined by the antagonism between the two great sections of which it was composed. In like manner, the contest between the majority and the minority, always sufficiently fierce and violent, became a desperate struggle between the same parties, the North and the South; a struggle greatly intensified and embittered by the consideration that the majority had become sectional and permanent, leaving the minority without hope in the Union. The great quarrel about slavery, too, inflamed the mutual animosity of the two sections, and helped to kindle the war between them. And the system of tariffs, by which a large party at the South believed she had been systematically plundered to enrich the North, was, at one time, the apple of discord between the sections; and at all times a source of profound dissatisfaction and alienation. Nor was this all. For, in addition to all these causes, the creation of a great Republic, whose vast powers, instead of having been properly divided between the sections, and the constitutional portion of each permanently settled, were left open to be contended for by them. Nothing could, indeed, have been more admirably adapted to inflame the angry passions of the two great rivals, that the introduction of a prize of such unparalleled magnitude into the arena of strife between them. It produced, on both sides, a series of partisan and corrupting legislative measures, which disgrace the annals of the United States. The conflict of 1861 was, indeed, a war of races, of ideas, of interests, of passions, of institutions, and of words, long before it became a war of deeds and of blood. The manner in which this war arose and progressed, till, in the end, it produced the earthquake and volcano of 1861, yet remains to be described by the pen of the historian.
This history consists of seven great crises. The first of these convulsed the Union, and threatened its dissolution before the new Constitution was formed, or conceived. For how little soever its history may be know, the North and the South, like Jacob and Esau, struggled together, and that, too, with almost fatal desperation, in the womb of the old Union. Slavery had nothing at all to do, with that struggle between the North and the South, the dramatis personae in the tragedy of 1861. It was solely and simply a contest for power.
The second great crisis was the formation and adoption the new Constitution. Much has been said about that event; as the most wonderful revolution in the history of the world; because the government of a great people was then radically changed by purely peaceable means, and without a drop of blood. But if that was a bloodless revolution in itself, no one, who has maturely considered it in all its bearings, can deny that it was, in the end, the occasion of the most sanguinary strife in the annals of a fallen world.
The revolution of 1801, by which the radical notions and doctrines of the infidel philosophers of the Eighteenth Century gained the ascendency in this country, never more to abate in their onward march, constituted the third great crisis in the political history of the United States. In passing through this crisis, the Republic of 1787 became in practice the Democracy of the following generation; and, finally, the rabid radicalism of 1861. It was then that the democratic, or predominant, element in the Republic, began to swallow up the others, and so became the most odious of all the forms of absolute power or despotism. It was then that the reign of 'King Demos,’ the unchecked and the unlimited power of mere numbers was inaugurated, and his throne established on the ruins of American freedom. But, while history will show this, it will also administer the consoling reflection, that American freedom was doomed, from the first, by the operation of other causes, and that the revolution of 1801 only precipitated its fall. If so, then the sooner its fall the better for the world; as in that case its destruction would involve a smaller portion of the human family in its ruins.
The desperate struggle of 1820-21, between the North and the South, relative to the admission of Missouri into the Union; the equally fierce contest respecting the Tariff in 1832-33; the Mexican War, and the acquisition of vast territories, by the dismemberment of a foreign empire, which led to the most violent and angry of all the quarrels between the two sections; constitute the fourth, fifth, and sixth crises in the stormy history of the United Sections. The seventh and last great crisis grew out of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the rise of the Republican party, as it is called; and consisted in the secession of the Southern States, and the war of coercion. Each of these seven crises had, of course, its prelude and its sequel, without which it cannot be comprehended, or seen how it followed the preceding, and how it led to the succeeding, crisis in the chain of events. Now some of these crises are most imperfectly understood by the public, and, in some respects, most perfectly misunderstood, such as the first two for example; others, and especially the fourth, or the great Compromise of 1820, are overlaid with a mass of lying traditions such as the world has seldom seen; traditions invented by politicians, and industriously propagated by the press and the pulpit. If these traditions were cleared away, and the facts which lie beneath them in the silent records of the country brought to view, the revelation would be sufficient to teach both sections of the Union the profoundest lessons of humiliation and sorrow. If patiently and properly studied, the history of the United States is, perhaps, fraught with as many valuable lessons for the warning and instructions of mankind, as that of any other age or nation since the fall of Rome, since the Flood, or since the fall of man.
We shall, in conclusion, briefly glance at one of these great lessons; the one which underlies all the others, and is absolutely necessary to their true interpretation. It is this: All constitutions which, like that of 1787, assume that man is better than he is, are doomed to perish. If the great truth of the eternal word of God, that man is a fallen being, be overlooked by human legislators, their constitutions and laws are all in vain. “Man is free by nature," says Locke; but, according to the infinitely more profound aphorism of Aristotle, “man is a tyrant by nature.” Hence he cannot be entrusted with supreme power. The most striking passage, perhaps, in the political writings of Aristotle, “the arch-philosopher," as he is called by Hooker, relates to this very subject of the infirmity of human nature, and the consequent unfitness of man to wield “the supreme power.”
If you give the supreme power to the majority, says he, they will oppress the minority. If you give it to the minority they will fleece the majority; which is the very height of injustice. If thou give it to one man, unchecked by the power of any other magistracy, he will tyrannize over all; or as the same truth is expressed by his disciple Hooker, “one man’s rule is all men’s misery. What shall be done then? The supreme power shall be given neither to the one, nor to the few, nor to the many; but it shall be divided, and be so distributed among the one, the few, and the many, that neither shall be able to oppress the other two. Thus, the supreme power is not entrusted to man at all, but is seated on a system of checks and balances, by which the petty tyrant man is prevented from having his own way. It is on this equilibrium of forces, on this tripod of justice, that Freedom must sit enthroned; or else she must grovel in the dust beneath the tyranny of man. On no other condition, at least in the present stage of man's development, can law and order be made to reign, or Freedom maintain her position amid the disturbing forces of a fallen world. How striking the utterance of “the arch-philosopher": "He who bids the law to be supreme, makes God supreme; but he who entrusts man with the supreme power, gives it to a wild beast." Or, we may add, to one who is sure to become a wild beast, in the possession of supreme and irresponsible power.
The great fundamental error of the legislation of 1787 is that, instead of making the law to be supreme, they clothed man with the supreme power. Hence, in the estimation of those who managed the Republic, "the sovereignty of the people” became everything, and the sovereignty of God nothing. The will of the people ruled, not the law; and hence Freedom was trampled in the dust. It is an aphorism of Montesquieu, which can never be too often repeated or too profoundly meditated, that “In democracies, the power of the people is confounded with their liberty." Indeed, if the supreme power be entrusted to man at all, it had better be lodged with one man, than with the multitude. For then, the supreme power de jure being opposed by an actual power greater than itself, the physical power of the whole people might stand in awe of that power, and be checked by it. But when the supreme power de jure is conferred on the people, or, in other words, on the majority; then it is in the same hands with the greatest actual power, and consequently there is nothing to check or control its exercise. Hence, in the words of the poet quoted by Aristotle, and so fearfully confirmed by history:
"Ill fares it, where the multitude hath sway'"
The legislators of 1787 did not know that man is a fallen being; or, if they did, they failed to comprehend the deep significance of this awful fact. They indulged, too freely in the dream of the French philosophers of the Eighteenth century respecting "the inherent virtue and the indefinite perfectibility of man." Hence they fondly imagined, that in order to render the people free, happy, and prosperous, it was only necessary to entrust them with the supreme power.
But all such dreams and illusions, however pleasant in themselves, are unutterably awful in their consequences. Witness the War of 1861.
The nature of man, as revealed by history, is in marvelous accordance with the word of God. Hence, as historians, the legislators of 1787 should have shunned, as worse than the plague, all the pleasant theories and dreams of the infidelity of the century in which they lived. The heathen, instructed by history alone, could say "the mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind to powder." The more shallow the theory of human nature on which our politics are based, the sooner will they be ground to powder, and scattered before the angry winds.
Philosophy, by a profound and searching analysis, such as may be found in the immortal discourses of Bishop Butler, arrives at the same view of human nature as that exhibited in the double revelation of Scripture and history. Hence, as philosophers, the legislators of 1787 should have regarded that nature as it is in itself, and not at all as it is presented in the roseate theories and dreams of self-idolizing reformers. Having failed to do so, at least to some considerable extent, they sowed the wind, and we have reaped the whirlwind.
The new Republic of 1787, being founded in a presumptuous confidence in man, was doomed to fall, or undergo sad changes and transformations. For all sophisms, however elaborately constructed, or however magnificently wrought into institutions, must, sooner or later, disappear before the eternal logic which reigns and rules in the affairs of men. And all constitutions, however grand and imposing in appearance, if merely the offspring of human wisdom or folly, must, in due time, burst like bubbles on the troubled billows of time. Woe betide all the proud polities of self-idolizing man! For, since they are not adjusted to the great facts and laws of the moral world, the wheels of Divine Providence into which they do not work as lesser wheels, shall just crush them into atoms, and then move on without further notice. This was the great lesson of the French Revolution, and of all its short-lived constitutions. This is, indeed, the great lesson which God has, in all time, spoken to a fallen world, and spoken, too, in the crashing thunder of falling empires.