T CHAPTER XXI Political Writing Since 1850 HE year 1850 was a landmark in American political history. In September the Great Compromise was enacted. It tempered the slavery controversy and checked impending secession. To abide by the measure or to reject it was the issue in state campaigns, especially in the cotton states, during 1851. There, and also in the North and the West, the Whigs worked intensely for popular support of the compromise. In fact, they seem to have spent their strength in the cause, and when the country accepted "the finality of the compromise" they were unable to raise a new issue, and their organization rapidly went to pieces after 1852. In the meantime a change was taking place in the personnel of political leadership. Calhoun1 died before the compromise bill became a law, Clay' and Webster3 in 1852. A number of men of less distinction but of invaluable service retired from politics about the same time: Van Buren in 1848, likewise Benton, Winthrop of Massachusetts, Ewing of Ohio, Foote of Mississippi, and Berrien of Georgia in 1851. With the death or retirement of these men the sentiment for union which they had fostered, declined. Among those who took their places partizanship was supreme, and until the advent of Lincoln originality and sincerity were almost totally lacking. It is not surprising, therefore, that for two decades after 1850 political thought and discussion centred around inherited issues relating to sectionalism and nationality. In the South the philosophy and defence of slavery and of a society based on inequalities among its members became the dominating theme. The discussion had begun a generation earlier with the memorable debates in the Virginia Legislature 1 See Book II, Chap. xv. 3 See Book II, Chap. xvi. 2 Ibid. of 1831. To a committee was referred a number of petitions and memorials requesting emancipation or colonization of slaves and the removal of free negroes from the state. These furnished the cue for one of the really notable books in the history of American political thought, Thomas R. Dew's Review of the Debates in the Virginia Legislature (1833). The author, after graduation from William and Mary at the early age of twenty, travelled and studied in Europe; then in 1827 became Professor of History, Metaphysics, Natural and National Law, Government and Political Science at his Alma Mater, and in 1836 was made president of the institution. His writing and teaching marked the beginning of the transition in the South from the political philosophy of the Revolution and the early nineteenth century, of which Jefferson was the ablest exponent, to that which dominated that section in the fifties. He argued against emancipation or colonization. His reasons were based on history, religion, and economics. Slavery was a characteristic of classical civilization; it was approved by the Scriptures; and in America the slave-holding states produced most of the country's wealth-in fact, in Virginia the sale of surplus slaves equalled each year the value of the tobacco crop. Moreover, emancipation and deportation were impractical and the condition of the negro slave in the South was far better than that of the native African. Professor Dew publicly stated what many were privately thinking. His book therefore had a wide circulation and was reprinted in 1852 by William Gilmore Simms' in his collection entitled Pro-Slavery Argument. Dew's defence of slavery was based on things practical; others sought to justify it through political and social philosophy. Consequently the theories of social contract, equality, and inalienable rights, immortalized by Jefferson, were subjected to rigorous criticism. One of the pioneers in this task was Chancellor Harper of South Carolina. His Memoir on Slavery, published in 1838, was likewise reprinted in Simms's collection. In contrast to the dictum of Jefferson that "all men are created free and equal" Harper declared that "man is born to subjection as he is born to sin and ignorance." The proclivity of the natural man is to dominate or to be subservient, not to make social compacts. Civil liberty is therefore an artificial I See Book II, Chap. vii. Pro-Slavery Arguments 339 product, and the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are merely unmeaning verbiage. There is no place for contract as the basis of government, since it is "the order of nature and of God that the beings of superior faculties and knowledge, and superior power, should control and dispose of those who are inferior." It is therefore as much in the order of nature that "men should enslave each other, as that animals should prey upon each other." Yet Harper's book is more of a defence of Southern society than an attack on existing political theories. Such an attack was more definitely the aim of Albert T. Bledsoe, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Virginia, in his Liberty and Slavery (1856). He boldly rejected the traditional conceptions of natural liberty and the origin of government. Public order and private liberty, he held, are non-antagonistic. Civil society is "not a thing of compacts, bound together by promises and paper, but is itself a law of nature as irreversible as any other." The only inalienable rights are those coupled with duty, and they do not include life and liberty. Another teacher, William A. Smith, President of Randolph Macon College, gave to the public the arguments already presented to his classes in his Lectures on the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery (1856). Two aims inspired his work: to show "that the philosophy of Jefferson is false, and that the opposite is true, namely, that the great abstract principle of domestic slavery is, per se right," and that "we should have a Southern literature," especially textbooks in which there should be no poison of untruth. The books of these two teachers were widely circulated; Bledsoe's was especially well-known, finding its way into many private libraries of the age. Not only were Jefferson's ideals combatted, but in society as organized there was also found a basis for the defence of slavery. In Europe the industrial revolution had brought in its train poverty, child labour, distress, new social philosophies, and revolt. In contrast was the South with its contented labourers, its planters who had a personal interest in the welfare of those dependent on them, its wealth, its conservatism, and its spirit of chivalry. Here lay the theme of George Fitzhugh's Sociology for the South (1854). In Europe, he pointed out, free labour had resulted in exploitation of the workers by the capitalists. There actual conditions demonstrated the failure of the laissez faire theory of economics and politics. The remedy was a proper stratification of society through a strong-armed government. Let the state see that men, women, and children have employment and support. To this end let the English Government subordinate the mill owners to the state, and let the state furnish them employees who will be compelled to labour by the government at wages fixed by the state, which will insure a decent living. Thus only can strife and poverty be abolished in England. In our own country, let the government make over the public lands to responsible men, to be entailed to their eldest sons; let the landless and idle population of the Eastern states be attached to these vast tracts of land as tenants for life. By such a process peace and order will be established. "Make the man who owns a thousand dollars of capital the guardian (the term master is objectionable) of one white pauper of average value; give a man who is worth ten thousand dollars ten paupers, and the millionaire a thousand. This would be an act of simple justice and mercy; for the capitalists now live by the proceeds of poor men's labour, which capital enables them to command; and they command and enjoy it in almost the exact proportions which we have designated." Undoubtedly this programme of rigid state control was not acceptable to the South; but Fitzhugh's attack on free society and its political philosophy was approved, and his work in revised form was republished in 1857 under the title Cannibals All! or Slaves Without Masters. It should also be noted that Fitzhugh was an admirer of Thomas Carlyle, with whom he corresponded, and that his style shows unmistakable evidences of the great Scotchman's influence. Pro-slavery propaganda was not confined to teachers and publicists. The clergy also made their contribution. Dr. Thornton Stringfellow of Virginia wrote The Bible Argument against Slavery in the Light of Divine Revelation (1850). The Rev. Fred A. Ross of Alabama in his Slavery Ordained of God (1857) maintained that "Slavery is part of a government ordained to certain conditions of fallen mankind." Charles Hodge' of Princeton with learned erudition criticized the religious argument against slavery. "Parson" W. G. Brownlow of Tennessee, in a memor* See Book III, Chap. XVI. Pro-Slavery Arguments 341 able debate with Abram Prynne, portrayed the advantages of Southern society over that of the North. Political economists also wrote in the defence. Edmund Ruffin of Virginia, successful planter, pioneer in scientific farming, and editor of agricultural journals, in his Political Economy of Slavery (1857) claimed blessings for the existing relation of master and slave. David Christy of Cincinnati in Cotton is King (1855) showed the place of the plantation system in the wealth of the nation and pointed out the need of more territory for slavery and the cultivation of cotton. These writings and others of minor importance are the record of a change in Southern opinion, the passing of the conviction that slavery is inherently wrong, to be abolished in the future, to as strong a conviction that slavery is right per se; they also mark the declining influence of Jefferson's political ideas. The constitutional theories of states' rights and secession, to which the protagonists of slavery looked for ultimate defence, were likewise the subject of discussion. Calhoun's Disquisition on Government and Discourse on the Constitution were posthumously published in 1851. Politics gave an opportunity to carry to the people the constitutional conceptions of the great theorist. This was notably true just after the compromise of 1850 was enacted, when a definite movement was inaugurated. in the cotton states to reject the compromise and bring about secession. Typical was the trend of argument and appeal in South Carolina. Edward B. Bryan, in advocating immediate secession, anticipated one of Lincoln's themes when he wrote: "The cement is broken; the house is divided against itself. It must fall." William Henry Trescott, about to begin a long career in diplomatic service, likewise wrote; "The only safety for the South is the establishment of a political centre within itself; in simpler words, the formation of an independent nation." The aged Langdon Cheves wrote the following call to the Southern people: "Unite, and you shall form one of the most splendid empires on which the sun ever shone, of the most homogeneous population, all of the same blood and lineage, in soil most fruitful, and in climate most fruitful. But submit-submit! The very sound curdles the blood in my veins. But, Oh, Great God, unite us, and a tale of submission shall never be told." Against this rabid sectionalism there were a few notable |