THE SOUTHERN IDEA OF THE NORTHERN IDEA.
The negro is made a voter simply to degrade and disgrace the white people of the South. The North cares nothing about the negro as a man, but only enfranchises him in order to humiliate and enfeeble us. Of course, it makes no difference to the people of the North whether he is a voter or not. There are so few colored men there, that there is no fear of one of them being elected to office, going to the Legislature, or sitting on the bench. The whole purpose of the measure is to insult and degrade. But only wait until the States are restored and the "Blue Coats" are out of the way, and we will show them their mistake.
There was just enough of truth in each of these estimates of the other's characteristics to mislead. The South, as a mass, was honest in its belief of the righteousness of slavery, both morally and politically. The North, in like manner, was equally honest in its conviction with regard to the wickedness of slavery, and its inconsistency with republican institutions; yet neither credited the other with honesty. The South was right in believing that the North cared little or nothing for the negro as a man, but wrong in the idea that the theory of political equality and manhood suffrage was invented or imposed from any thought of malice, revenge, or envy toward the South. The wish to degrade did not enter into the Northern mind in this connection. The idea that "of one blood are all the nations of the earth," and that "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," can not be allowed to affect the legal or political rights of any, was a living principle in the Northern mind, as little capable of suppression as the sentiment of race-antagonism by which it was met, and whose intensity it persistently discredited.
There was another thing which the wise men who were rebuilding the citadel of Liberty in such hot haste quite forgot. In judging of the South, and predicting its future course, they pictured it to themselves as the North would be with an infusion, so to speak, of newly-enfranchised blacks amounting to one-third of its aggregate population: in other words, they accounted the result of emancipation as the only differential feature by which the South was distinguishable from the North. They did not estimate aright the effects, upon the white people of the South, of an essentially different civilization and development. They said, "The South has heretofore differed from the North only in the institution of slavery. That is now removed; only the freedmen remain as a sign of its existence: therefore, the South is as the North would be with this element added to its population." It was a strange mistake. The ideas of generations do not perish in an hour. Divergent civilizations can not be made instantly identical by uprooting a single institution.
Among the peculiarities which marked the difference between Northern and Southern society was one so distinct and evident, one which had been so often illustrated in our political history, that it seems almost impossible that shrewd observers of that history should for a moment have overlooked or underestimated it. This is the influence of family position, social rank, or political prominence. Leadership, in the sense of a blind, unquestioning following of a man, without his being the peculiar exponent of an idea, is a thing almost unknown at the North: at the South it is a power. Every family there has its clientage, its followers, who rally to its lead as quickly, and with almost as unreasoning a faith, as the old Scottish clansmen, summoned by the burning cross. By means of this fact slavery had been perpetuated for fifty years. It was through this peculiarity that secession and rebellion became dominant there. This fact seems to have been dimly recognized, though not at all understood or appreciated, by those who originated what are known as the Reconstruction Acts. They seem to have supposed, that, if this class were deprived of actual political position, they would thereby be shorn of political influence: so it was provided that all who had any such prominence as to have been civil or military officers before the war, and had afterwards engaged in rebellion, should not be allowed to vote, or hold office, until relieved from such disability.
It was a fatal mistake. The dead leader has always more followers than his living peer. Every henchman of those lordlings at whom this blow was aimed felt it far more keenly than he would if it had lighted on his own cheek. The king of every village was dethroned; the magnate of every crossroads was degraded. Henceforward, each and every one of their satellites was bound to eternal hostility toward these measures and to all that might result therefrom.
So the line of demarkation was drawn. Upon the one side were found only those who constituted what was termed respectable people, — the bulk of those of the white race who had ruled the South in ante bellum days, who had fostered slavery, and been fattened by it, who had made it the dominant power in the nation, together with the mass of those whose courage and capacity had organized rebellion, and led the South in that marvelous struggle for separation. On the other side were the pariahs of the land, to designate the different classes of which, three words were used: "Niggers," the newly-enfranchised African voters; "Scalawags," the native whites who were willing to accept the reconstruction measures; and "Carpet-baggers," all men of Northern birth, resident in the South, who should elect to speak or act in favor of such reconstruction.
The ban of proscription spared neither age nor sex, and was never relaxed. In business or pleasure, in friendship or religion, in the market or the church, it was omnipotent. Men were excluded from the Lord's Communion for establishing sabbath schools for colored people. Those who did not curse the measure, its authors, and the government by which it was administered, were henceforth shunned as moral and social lepers. The spirit of the dead Confederacy was stronger than the mandate of the nation to which it had succumbed in battle.
The "scalawags" were few. Those who could brave the torrent of proscription poured upon them by that society which had been their boast as the most excellent on earth were not many. For a time, the instincts of what was termed "Unionism" either held some of the former political leaders in the background, or led them to affiliate somewhat coolly with the party of reconstruction. The "Union" of 1861 was, however, a very different thing from that of a half-dozen years later. The advocacy of a simple coherence of the States under one formal government was all that distinguished the "Unionist" of 1861 from his "Secessionist" neighbor, who favored the expurgation of "E pluribus unum," and would write instead, "Ex uno duo." Their views on all other subjects were in thorough harmony. It was only on this point that they differed. It was a stubborn and a radical difference, however, for which thousands of them had laid down their lives, and others suffered untold miseries and persecutions; for the gentlemen of the South were harsh masters, and did not permit dissent from their political views to be entertained or expressed with impunity. Those Union men who really maintained their integrity and devotion to the Federal Union through the war, and embraced the republican view at its close, were, consequently, mostly of that class who are neither rich nor poor, who were land-owners, but not slave-owners. The few who were of the higher class had been so completely shut out from the intellectual movements of the North during those momentous years, that, as a rule, they were utterly confounded at the result which was before them. They had looked for the nation to come back to them, when its power was re-established, absolutely unchanged and unmodified. It came back, instead, with new impetus, a new life, born of the stormy years that had intervened, putting under its feet the old issues which had divided parties, scornful of ancient statesmanship, and mocking the graybeards who had been venerated as sages in "the good, old days of the Republic."
But for those Southern men, who, knowing and realizing all these changes, facing all these dangers and discomforts, recognizing the inexorable logic of events, and believing in and desiring to promote the ultimate good which must flow therefrom, in good faith accepted the arbitrament of war, and staked their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor," in support of this new dispensation of liberty, words enough of praise can not be found! Nor yet words enough of scorn for their associates and affiliates of the North, who not only refused them the meed of due credit for their
self-sacrifice and devotion, but also made haste to visit them with coolness, indignity, and discrediting contempt, because they did not perform the impossible task which the Wise men had imposed upon them. Phariseeism is by no means admirable in its best estate; but the genuine article is far less despicable than the spurious.
Another peculiarity of this remarkable scheme was, that, while it professed to punish one class by excluding them from the ballot (a punishment which had only the effect to enrage), it made no offer of encouragement or reward to those who had stood the fast friends of the nation in the hour of its peril. The ingratitude of republics is the tritest of thoughts, but there never was a more striking illustration of its verity. Perhaps no nation ever before, after the suppression of a rebellion which threatened its life, quite forgot the claims of those who had been its friends in the disaffected region.
There were throughout the South thousands of men who were Unionists pure and simple. As a rule, they had no sympathy with the antislavery idea which had come to permeate the whole mental life of the North. Slavery was to them as much a matter of course as any event of their every-day life. Very many of them were hereditary slave-owners. The inferiority, inherent and fore-ordained, of the colored man, was as much an article of faith with them as any portion of the Sacred Word. Not only this, but they believed with equal sincerity that the normal and proper sphere of the inferior race was slavery. They might regret its abuses, that there should be cruel and ruthless masters and brutal overseers, just as they did when an up-country teamster abused his overloaded horses; but they were no more troubled with qualms of conscience in regard to the enslavement of the one than as to the driving of the other. Such a man was in favor of the Union from a profound conviction of its glory, a traditional patriotism, or a belief that secession and disunion would be ruinous and fatal; but he did not look for or desire the abolition of slavery in bulk or as an institution. His attachment to the Union was an absorbing devotion to an abstract idea. He had no hostility to the ultimate object of secession, — the security and perpetuity of slavery, — but only to the means by which it was accomplished. He worshiped the Union; but it was the Union with slavery, except as the right to hold slaves might be forfeited by rebellion; which forfeiture he believed would be purely personal, and would affect only those actually guilty of rebellious acts. Such was the position of the Southern Unionist at the beginning of the war. Some receded from it as the struggle progressed; but many thousand held to their faith in spite of every persuasion and persecution which could be brought against them. The heroism of many of these men was fully equal to the highest courage and devotion shown upon the field of battle. They dodged, hid, fought, struggled, and in all ways evaded the service of the Confederacy, and were true to the Union of their faith. The close of the war found them just where they had been at its beginning. They had neither gone backward nor forward.
They regarded the abolition of slavery as justifiable solely upon the ground of the master having personally and individually engaged in rebellion, — a punishment for his treason. Upon this ground, and this alone, they regarded it as possible that this idea should be sustained; and with this doctrine they held, as an unavoidable corollary, that they were entitled, either to be excepted from its operation, or to be compensated for such slaves as were taken from them by the Military Proclamation.
When it comes to the application of logic, and the principles of equity on which all such questions of national polity are said to be based, it is difficult to perceive what is the fallacy in the reasoning of these Southern Unionists. It has always been claimed that slavery was abolished as a military necessity, and not because of its inherent wrong, or merely as a humanitarian measure to benefit the enslaved. Almost any one of the wise men who made the laws, and regulated the course of political events at that time, would have affirmed this. Yet, if this were true, there should have been no interference with the slaves of the Southern Unionist, or, if there were, he should have been compensated for the same as well as for his cotton, his corn, his tobacco, his fences, his timber, and cattle, unwittingly destroyed, or needfully appropriated, by the national forces. This was not done, however. The wise men decided that it would not do to attempt it.
So the result was, that, while the open and avowed rebel lost his slave-property by the events of the war, the most ardent and devoted Unionist lost his also. It was hard, very hard, when a man had given the best years of his life to the honest acquisition of a species of property which was not only protected, but seemed to have been peculiarly favored and encouraged, by our laws; and when, the life of the nation being in peril, at the risk of his own he stood by her, espoused her cause against his neighbors, made himself an outcast in his own land, — it was hard indeed, when the struggle was over, to see that nation to which he had been so devotedly attached reaching out its hand, and stripping him of the competence thus acquired, and leaving him to suffer, not only the pangs of poverty, but the jeers of those whose treason he had opposed. That the love of these men should gradually grow cold for the country which measured out to friend and foe alike one even measure of punishment, our Fool thought not a matter to be wondered at; but the wise men of the National Capital were unable to believe that this could be. So time wore on, and wise men and fools played at cross-purposes; and the locks of Samson grew while he wrought at the mill.
CHAPTER XXII
COCK-CROW
Table of Contents
AFTER the Fool's speech at the political meeting, and the events which succeeded it became generally known, he was much sought after by what were known as Union men among the people. His words seemed to have touched a deep chord in their hearts, not so much from what he had said perhaps, as from the fact that he had dared to say it. They came to him with wonderings and warnings upon their lips. How he dared to stand up and maintain ideas at variance with the accepted creed of that class of men who had always formulated and controlled public opinion, they could not understand. They hated secession, always had hated it; they had voted against in 1861; some had been outspoken against it on the stump, in the street, everywhere, and at all times: but in the main the opposition had been a silent one. The terrible suppressive power which slavery had exercised over liberty of thought and speech had grown into a habit of mind. Men who for generations had been unable to express their thoughts above a whisper, as to one of the institutions by which they were surrounded, became cautious to the verge of timidity. Many a time did our Fool listen to the approval of men who would glance cautiously around before addressing him, and then say in a low, hushed tone, —
"That is what we want. I tell you it did me good to hear you; but you must look out! You don't know these people as I do. It don't do to speak out here as you do at the North."
"But why not?" he would query impatiently. "That was my honest conviction: why should I not speak it out?"
"Hush, hush!" his interviewer would say nervously. "Here, let's step aside a little while, and chat."
And then, perhaps, they would pass out of the public way, into that refuge of free thought at the South, the woods (or "the bushes," as the scraggly growth is more generally termed); and he would listen to some tale of heroic endurance by which his companion had evaded conscription in the time of the war, or avoided prosecution in the ante-war era, which elicited his wonder both for the devotion then displayed for principle, and the caution which was born of it.
"Why do you not speak out?" he would ask.
"Oh, it won't do! I could not live here, or not in any peace at least, if I did; and then my family — they would be cut off from all society: nobody would have any thing to do with them. Why, as careful as I have been, my children are insulted every now and then as 'nigger-worshipers,' and — and" —
"And what?"
"Well — 'Yankee-lovers,'" apologetically. "You see, it's got out in my neighborhood that I came to see you a few weeks ago."
"Well, what of that? Haven't you a right to do so? Can't a man speak his opinio
ns, and act his preferences?"
"You will find out that this old pro-slavery, aristocratic element don't allow people to differ from them peaceably and quietly. If I were you, I'd be mighty careful who I talked to. You don't know any thing about what trouble you may get into any day."
"Well, I shall not," the Fool would reply. "I don't care anything particular about the matter. I am no politician, and don't want to be; but I am going to say just what I think, at all proper times and places, when the spirit moves me so to do."
"Of course, of course," would be the reply. "You know best; but you ought to recollect that you are not at the North, where they allow every man to have his own opinions, and rather despise him if he don't have them, as I take it they do."
So the two men would separate, each wondering at the other; the Fool amazed that one could endure so much for the sake of his own opinion, think so well, apprehend so clearly the state of affairs, and yet be so timid about declaring his convictions. He could not call it cowardice; for many of these men had taken their lives in their hands to shelter men on their way to the Union lines. Others, in the ante-war era, had circulated books and pamphlets in regard to slavery, to be found in possession of which was a capital crime. Others had helped fugitive slaves to escape to freedom, with the terrors of Judge Lynch's rope and fagots before their eyes. Others still, upon being conscripted into the Confederate ranks, had refused to bear arms, even when put into the front rank and under the hottest fire of battle.
A Fool's Errand & Bricks without Straw Page 14
