CHAPTER V.
PATRIOTIC MEN DELIBERATING.
At the hour of 3 p. m., in the early autumn of 186--, severalrepresentative gentlemen met by previous agreement in the library ofColonel Seymour. This congress of Southern leaders of the old school,after the interchange of the usual courtesies, resolved themselves into"A Committee of the Whole upon the state of the Union," with JudgeBonham in the chair, and was addressed at length by Governor Ainsworth.This gentleman had honored his state as one of its Senators in theFederal Congress; again as Secretary of the Navy, and had filled bysuccessive elections the office of Governor for three terms. He hadreached that mellow age when the intellect becomes largelyretrospective. The manner of this distinguished statesman was singularlyindividual. In early life strongly inclined to the contemplation ofperplexing political questions, he possessed a graphic, nervous force--akind of untamed vigor--a raciness of flavor in speech that belonged onlyto the individual who thought for himself. There were few men morerichly endowed; his intellect was of the highest order--clear, rapid andcomprehensive--combined with an extraordinary facility of expressing andillustrating his ideas, both in conversation and debate. He possessed arich imagination, a rare and delicate taste, a gentle and sportive wit,and an uninterrupted flow of humor, that made him the delight of everycircle. Nor were his moral qualities less deserving of respect andadmiration. He was generous, brave, patriotic and independent. He wasthe slave of no ambitious or selfish policy; the hunter of nofactitious or delusive popularity; he spoke the language of truth,justice and wisdom. A "throb of gratitude beat in the hearts of thepeople," and the sentiment of an affectionate respect glowed in theirbosoms for the "old man eloquent." His speeches, too, were essentiallycharacteristic, abounding in keen satire, humor, and frequently in themost direct and idiomatic language. Given to intense conviction ratherthan to subtle discernment, and devoting his unusual ability to studiedeffort, he could, whenever he felt so inclined, "strip the mask from thehypocrite, and the cowl from the bigot."
This was the man toward whom the patriotic sentiment of the country wasdirected; the man who might, by possibility, lash the raging Hellespontinto submission. "But what avail," said he as he leaned heavily upon hisstaff, "are arguments and protests? Can we charm the serpent intoharmlessness by the feeble chirping of the wren? Can we tranquilize thecountry by indignant declamation?" Then with an effort he assumed apoise still more dignified and serious, as he continued:
"Gentlemen, when the seas are lashed into a rage, no matter who are themad spirits of the storm, they cannot say to their tumultuous waters,'thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, and here shalt thy proud wavesbe stayed.' There are other powers in motion beneath its surface, whichthey wist not of, and whose might they can neither direct or control. Ihave stood upon the shores of the mighty ocean, and observed theforerunners of the coming storm. I have heard the moan of its restlesswaters in the caverns of the great deep, and have seen the upheaving ofthe billows, which rose, and raged and tossed as foam from their bosoms,the wild spirits that gendered the tempest. I envy not the triumph ofthose who have troubled the waters; who have laid waste the South, whohave beggared her proud people. I had rather stand with my countrymenpowerless, but brave and unyielding, than to wield the thunderbolts ofJove, if I must employ their power and resource in wrong and oppression.When the last spark of Roman liberty was extinguished; when no voice butthat of Augustus was heard, and no power but that of Augustus was felt,his venal flatterers vied with each other in deifying their god, anddegrading those firm, defiant spirits who stood for their country andits tranquility. Caesar had subjugated the world, all but the darkunbending soul of Cato. In a catastrophe, such as this, let that band ofpatriots to which it is my pride to belong, share in the spirit of thelast of the Romans; that spirit which scorns to bow before any earthlypower, save that of their beleaguered country.
The reconstruction government has purposely demoralized the economicconditions which contributed to the prosperity of the South. Full wellit knew that the wealth of the people depended upon their labor. Therewas a time when plunder was the great resource of the nations of theearth. The first kingdom was sustained by pillage and conquest, andgreat Babylon, the glory of the Chaldean empire, was adorned by thespoils of all Asia; the Assyrian was plundered by the Persian, thePersian by the Macedonian, and it at last devoured by the Roman power.The wolf which nursed its founder, gave a hunger for prey insatiable tothe whole world. There was not a temple nor a shrine between theEuphrates and the salted sea that was not pillaged by these marauders.The tide of ages, century after century, had rolled over the lastfragment of Roman power; the light of science had broken upon the world,before mankind seemed to realize that our Creator, dead aeons ago hadsaid: 'By the sweat of his brow man should eat his bread all the days ofhis life.'
Wealth is power, and the wealth of a nation is its labor, its abundantcontrol of all the great agencies of nature employed in production. Theproducts of human labor, its food and clothing, like the fruits of theearth are annual, and God in his wisdom has adjusted human wants totheir power of production. Like the bread from heaven the dews of everynight produce the crops, and the labors of every day gather the harvest.What, but an almost boundless power of consumption and reproduction hasgiven to the South its athletic vigor, and yet the enfranchisement ofthe negroes has been a fatal blow to every industrial interest. It hasleft our plows to rot in the furrow, and our plantations to grow up inbriers and brambles.
That liberty, which ranks in our organic law next to life, is subjectedto the caprice of those who happen in the ever varying conditions ofhuman affairs to be placed over us as masters. The South believed thatthe theory of the government derived its chiefest captivation from itsregard to the equal rights of all its citizens and from its pledge tomaintain and preserve those rights. It assumed to proclaim the happinessof the people to have been the object of its institution, and toguarantee to each and to all without limitation the enjoyment of life,liberty, and property.
It has been reserved for the power of oppression, in its active anddiffused state, to give effect to the unhallowed innovation upon therights of the South.
Reconstruction is the Gethsemane of southern life. God's law is higherthan man's law. Man's feeble statutes cannot annul the immutableordinances of the Almighty. Those whom God has put asunder, let no manjoin together.
Who could have foreseen that in the first century of our existenceAfrican freedmen would rule sovereign commonwealths, and become thejudges of the rights and property of a race who had ruled the destiniesof the world since governments--patriarchal, monarchical orconstitutional--was known to man?
The true, sincere and rational humanitarian looks with sorrow upon thefuture state of the misguided negroes; for when this institutional ageshall have passed away, he sees the exodus or extirpation of thisdisturbing element in the social and political conditions of the morepowerful sovereign race. The authors of the infamous policy have writtentheir _hic jacet_ against our civilization.
No where can there be found in the history of any country where thecivil and military policy have been so basely prostituted, or where thesafeguards of liberty, life and property were ever entrusted to freedslaves--human chattels; slaves who never for a moment have been in astate of pupilage. It is an epoch that marks the decadence of themanhood and civilization of a great nation--homogeneous, prosperous,enlightened and happy. The nearest approximation to this era of ruin--ofsocial degradation--was when the slaves in Rome were enfranchised byorder of the emperor, and conditions there were totally dissimilar.Whilst they enjoyed certain rights and prerogatives of manumission, theywere still held to duties of obedience and gratitude. Whatever were thefruits of their toil and industry, their patrons shared or inherited thethird part, or even the whole of their acquisitions. In the decline ofthis great empire, the proud mistress of the world, we are told thathereditary distinctions were gradually abolished, and the reason orinstinct of Justinian completed the simple form of an abs
olute monarchy.In the eye of the law all Romans were equal and all subjects werecitizens. The inestimable character was degraded to an obsolete andempty name. The voice of a Roman could no longer enact laws or createthe annual ministers of his power.
"It may take many generations perhaps, for moral changes are slow, toput out all our lights of knowledge that are now beaming from everycottage in the South; but one after another they will be extinguished,and with them the beacon torch of liberty. When the white men of theSouth shall come to see how things are, and to realize the downwardtendency, physical, intellectual manhood will make a throe to regain theheight it has lost, and if it fails, a storm will arise from theelements they are compounding, that will break somewhere and spenditself with desolating fury. They cannot degrade a people who have beenenlightened and free, prosperous and happy, without igniting a masswhich they can no more control, than they can the central fires ofVesuvius.
"Up to the commencement of hostilities between the North and the South,there were in the South millions of people employed directly orindirectly in the honest and wholesome avocation of agriculture, and byits great encouraging system, sustained in a condition of existence,both moral and physical, equally as prosperous and independent as anyother agricultural people in any other region of the earth. They werewhite men who piece by piece built up the whole superstructure, andthereby reinforced the country with so much labor and skill; furnishedso much mutual employment for that skill and labor, aided as they wereby so many instrumentalities of toil and agents of production. What acountry it was--supplied by this system from the labor of our own handsand workshops, with all the machinery, fruits of the earth, and all theneedful fabrics of human skill. This great system comprehended everyclass and every source of material wealth. Under this system our peopleprospered. The white population of the South came by descent from aparent stock, that from the foundation of society had governed in wisdomand moderation the most enlightened countries of the world; who hadwritten every constitution, fought every battle, endowed every charity,established every government, introduced every reform that has given tothe world its christian development and progress.
"When these extra-hazardous reconstruction acts were submitted to theLegislature of the South, they refused to "chop logic" with theReconstruction party. It would have been contrary to the experience ofmankind, and an exception to all the teachings of history, if in thehigh excitement then prevailing--the exasperation of the people--theoutrages threatened and inflicted, the South had yielded one jot ortittle or swerved from its honest, patriotic convictions. The transitionwas from a state in which the integrity and intelligence of the whiterace, ennobled by centuries of meritorious service, had ruled; to agovernment by a black race that less than five generations before hadbeen hunted like wild beasts in the jungles of the dark continent; whowere handcuffed and decoyed into slave ships, and who had been slavesuntil the proclamation of President Lincoln emancipated them in theterritory protected by the U. S. Army. The transition was to a conditionof things in which white men to the number of three hundred thousandwere disfranchised and deprived of the right to vote and to hold office,and the enfranchisement of more than a corresponding number of benightednegroes with the right to vote and hold office. The transition of theslave, was too sudden--too alarming--too degrading. No people who wereproud of their traditions, their institutions, could have looked uponsuch a change with complacency; nor seen their local government passinto the hands of their slaves--irresponsible, illiterate, brutish,rapacious, without being goaded into violent resistance.
"It has been remarked 'Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thyname.' If the gift of the elective franchise enabled the negro toprotect himself in his rights of person and property, the denial of itto the white man took away from him that protection and that right. Theywent even to lower depths, and by the election and registration lawsbasely surrendered into the hands of the carpet-baggers all power. Thejudiciary, the last refuge of the unfortunate and oppressed is strickendown and stripped of both ermine and respectability. The ballot box--thesanctuary of freedom--the ballot box--the only secure refuge ofliberty--the ballot box, the armory where freedom's weapons are wont toterrify tyrants, is made the charnel house in which the assassinatedliberties of a defenceless, prostrated people are buried; is made thedice box in which are staked and played for by the freedmen of the Souththe revenues of plundered commonwealths. What wonder in this lust forpower men should become strangers to the people they govern, outlaws tohonesty and patriotism.
"They know no law but that of force, and no God but Mammon. They plytheir theft upon every citizen, enthrall him with taxation, deny him theright to be seen or heard or felt at the ballot box or before the court.In the train of these outrages and indignities came a flood ofunwholesome oppressive laws, creating new offices, increasing thesalaries of incompetent and truculent officials, multiplying the costand expenditures of government, and correspondingly increasing theburdens of taxation. Then came martial law, militia campaigns, loyalleagues, murders, arsons, burglaries, rapes, and a reign of terror andintimidation to make the way for the easy perpetration of the mostmonstrous and unparallelled wrongs, frauds and outrages that ever cursedthe earth. The South, like a beautiful captive, was turned over to bedeflowered and defiled. She could only cry in her desperation--"I amwithin your brutal power, and gagged and pinioned must submit."
"Our elective judiciary has contributed immeasurably to the vicious,demoralizing spirit of the age." The intelligent and upright judge isthe representative of the law in its simplicity, sufficiency andlearning. He is the living exponent of its justice. Whatever the law iswill appear in him, and whatever it does will be done through him. Thedifferent departments of industrial activity center in him. The plowmanin the field, the smith at his anvil, the miner in the earth, theoperative in the factory, the banker at his desk, are all a vital partof his being. He is the foremost agent of providence in keeping up thenatural distinction of race and position. His creed is that men are notto be antagonists, but friends. Differ they must in usages andinstitutions, in habits and pursuits; but in his opinion they differ,not that they may be separated, but for a truer sympathy and a compacterunion. Mountains and seas insulate, language and religion differentiatemen, but the law in its economical administration corrects these thingsinto the elements of a genuine brotherhood. The fortunes of the world,so far as they are delegated to human care, are in his hands. Thepeaceful progress of society is blended with his personal integrity.Commonwealths, corporations and individuals vest their wealth, theirreputation, their security in him, and if any one man more than anotheris under the most sacred of earthly obligations to be an example of thehighest integrity, the most exact justice, the noblest virtue ofthought, word and action, it is the judge of our courts of record. Nofeudal baron--no courtly knight--ever had the power that may now beexercised by him.
"Our civilization pledges us to the sway of moral principles; its ruleis imperative, because we have assumed the title of men, domesticatedour hearts, and accepted the religion of Jesus Christ. Judicial life, bythe earnestness with which it has acted in the past crisis of our stateand national history, by the patriotic devotion and interpretation ofthe constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof, by itsconservative temper in resisting fanaticism, vice, corruption and fraudhas shown itself a watchful guardian of the momentous trusts confided toits keeping. The honest, learned judge has pledged himself for the faithof contracts and treaties; he has jealously guarded the institutions ofthe country and bravely upheld them as the embodiment of our doctrinesand our hopes. The traditions, laws and customs of the country have beencommitted to him, and with the ever active jealousy of encroachment, hehas not disguised his fears of centralization or oppression. Hitherto,irrespective of all party relations, the judicial system was slowly butsurely working out the great problems of domestic prosperity. Times havechanged, however, and we have changed with them. Our present electivejudiciary is indeed the black vomit of reconstru
ction.
"It may be seriously questioned whether under any circumstances theelective system is adequate for the purpose designed. All classes, highand low, sooner or later come before the tribunal of justice. Itsjudgments and decrees affect the humblest, as well as the most powerfulindividual and control the strongest combinations of men. We know thatit is utterly impossible to keep the nomination and election clear ofmere political influences and those of the worst kind. It is said thatrevolutions never go backward; nevertheless in the teeth of the adage Iconfess that I can see no better way of selecting judges than the modepointed out by the unamended constitutions and the laws and by thegeneral good sense of mankind. I believe that this method is wise andconservative, in harmony with our institutions and sufficientlydemocratic to satisfy the people. All the rest is faction, demagogismand cabal. The judge should represent no interest, no party, only thelaw; he is an umpire between man and man, between the individual and thebody social.
"What is required in the judge is ability, learning, integrity. Inpublic station it is as necessary to be thought honest as to be so, andthe moment the popular mind once takes in the true position of theelective judge, the moment that it perceives the magistrate to bepossessed of neither true power nor real dignity, and exposedperpetually to temptation, that moment the influence and usefulness ofthe judge will be destroyed. Their judgments in such cases will bereceived without respect and obeyed only so far as they can be enforced,and if the people shall ever break down and trample under foot thedefences of unpopular power; the Judiciary will be scouted from theirseats, their filthy and tattered ermine will be torn from their backs,and they will be driven out into hopeless ignominy as the meanest ofsycophants, and the most truculent of demagogues.... A hundred andeighty years ago the English parliament, sick of the miseries resultingfrom a corrupt judiciary, changed the tenure of the office, abolishedtheir dependence on the sovereign and made the tenure of theirexistence dependent on their good behavior alone. From that time to thisthe English judiciary has risen in character and influence. With us thesystem is elective. The judicial candidate, like a fish monger, goeswith his wares into a market overt. He advertises his opinions--hispromises, he makes his pledges, he puts a premium upon the ballot, heweighs to a nicety the purchasable value of negro electors. The rivalcandidate does the same, and hence the office is purchasable at theprice of manhood, integrity, learning and capacity. Thus the wholemachinery of the courts is run with an eye single to making politicalcapital for the radical party and intensifying their hatred toward theSouth.
"And now gentlemen," the governor said in conclusion, "our meeting hereto-day will be without its influence upon a power that can 'kill andmake alive.'"
At the conclusion of the speech of the governor, it was resolved thatmessengers should be sent to the president with full power to enter intoany treaty or compact for the maintenance of peace and order, and thatGovernor Ainsworth and Colonel Seymour shall be charged with theexecution of the mission.
The Broken Sword; Or, A Pictorial Page in Reconstruction Page 7
