A Youth's History of the Great Civil War
Van Evrie, Horton & Co., ©1866
Revised edition, ©2006 www.ronie-mooney-encs.us
The views expressed in the following document do not necessarily represent the views of www.ronie-mooney-encs.us. This document, originally published in 1866, has been provided to the public based solely on its potential value as a historical document.
CHAPTER 1
THE CAUSES OF THE WAR
Many histories of THE GREAT WAR through which we have just passed have already been written, but they are not such as convey to the youth of our land a full and true account of the causes which led to it, who were the real authors of it, and what were its objects and purposes. To understand fully the causes which produced it, we must go back a good ways in the history of our country.
Whatever produced a feeling of enmity and estrangement between the Southern and Northern States must be looked upon as one of the causes leading to the war. This feeling of hostility between the two sections began to show itself at a very early period, soon after the formation of the Union, almost a hundred years ago. We may say it began, in the first place, in the different political opinions held by the leading men of the North and the South.
This difference was indeed very great. It may be understood by briefly reviewing the different sentiments entertained by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton was the idol of what may be termed the New England or Monarchical party, and Jefferson was equally the idol of the Southern or Democratic party. There were many individuals in the North who followed Jefferson as there were some in the South who adopted the principles of Hamilton, but the prevailing sentiment of the North was with Hamilton, as that of the South was with Jefferson.
Hamilton was a monarchist. That is, he wanted to establish in this country a government that should be, in everything but its name, a kingdom instead of a republic. There is abundant proof of this fact.
Luther Martin, one of the most distinguished statesmen in the convention that made our constitution, speaking of the Hamilton party in that body said : " There was one party, whose object and wish was to abolish and annihilate all the State governments, and bring forward one general government, over all this extended continent, of a monarchical nature."
In many places in the letters and writings of Jefferson we find that great statesman and pure patriot alluding, with just condemnation, to these monarchical doctrines of Hamilton. He and Hamilton were in Washington's Cabinet together; and thirty years afterwards, while calmly reviewing the opinions of Hamilton, he says : " Hamilton was not only a monarchist but for a monarchy bottomed on corruption."
In another place he says : "Hamilton declared openly that there was no stability, no security, in any kind of government but a monarchy." Again he assures us that even while Hamilton Was in Washington's Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury, he declared : For my part, I avow myself a monarchist. I have no objection to a trial of this thing called a republic, but," etc., etc.
At the date of August 13th, 1791, Mr. Hamilton had a conversation with Mr. Jefferson, in which he said : "I own it is my opinion, though I do not publish it in Dan or Beersheba, that the present government is not that which will answer, and that it will be found expedient to go into the British form." That is, to become a monarchy. This language was uttered by Hamilton three years after our present Constitution had been adopted. He was then, as we have said, Secretary of the Treasury under president Washington.
Washington hearing, from various sources, that his Secretary has avowed such shameless sentiments, wrote him a letter, July 29th, 1792, asking for an explanation of these rumors. About a month after Hamilton received this letter, that is, on August 16th, he wrote a complaining kind of letter to Mr. Adams on the subject, in which be said : all the persons I meet are prosperous and happy, and yet most of them, including the friends of the Government(i. e. of Washington's Administration) appear to be much alarmed at a supposed system of policy tending to subvert the Republican Government of the country."
But, not only the friends of Washington's Administration were alarmed, but the alarm was shared by Washington himself. It was under the pressure of this very alarm for the honor of some members of his Cabinet that Washington said: "Those who lean to a monarchical government, have either not consulted the public mind, or they live in a region which is much more productive of monarchical ideas than is the case with the Southern States."
Washington, like Jefferson, was a Virginian, and had no sympathy with the monarchical principles of Hamilton and his followers. Washington well intimates that these treasonous principles had no friends "in the Southern States." The statesmen of the South, with scarcely an exception, were for a republican form of government, while the friends of the monarchical principle were mostly confined to the Eastern States.
So you see that as early as 1790 there was a great difference growing up between the leading statesmen of the North and South, on the subject of government. Indeed we may go back three years further, and find these very parties existing in the convention that formed the Constitution. There we find what we may call the Jeffersonian and the Hamiltonian parties pitted against each other. The one, in favor of a government of the people, with powers cautiously limited and clearly defined in the Constitution. The other, in favor of what they called "a strong government," with similar powers to a monarchy, without its name. We may say that the Jeffersonian idea was, that the people are the masters of the government; while the Hamiltonian idea was that the government is the master of the people. The conflict between these opposing ideas caused all the debates in the Constitutional Convention. But finally the Jeffersonian, or the anti-monarchical party, triumphed in the production of a democratic constitution. The great disappointment which this result gave to Mr. Hamilton, may be seen in a letter which; he wrote to Mr. Morris, Feb. 27th, 1802, where he says: "Mine is an odd destiny. Perhaps no man in the United States has sacrificed or done more for the present Constitution than myself, and contrary to all my anticipations of its fate, as you know from the beginning, I am still laboring to prop the frail and worthless fabric; yet I have the murmurs of its friends no less than the curses of its foes, for my reward. What can I do better than withdraw from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for me."
In the above extract we find Mr. Hamilton characterizing the Constitution of his country as "a frail and worthless fabric," and bitterly threatening to abandon his country forever. This was after the Constitution had been in operation fourteen years. His experience had certainly been a very hard one for a man of his political principles. He was an avowed monarchist. But his countrymen had, notwithstanding his earnest labors to the contrary, established a democratic Constitution. Failing in getting his principles incorporated into the Constitution, he next tried, as a leading member of Washington's Cabinet, to give a monarchical interpretation to a democratic constitution. This conduct on his part produced a murmur among the people, and caused the letter of inquiry from Washington above referred to. His disheartened and peevish letter to Mr. Morris, from which I have given an extract above, Was written two years after the election of Mr. Jefferson to the Presidency, Which event certainly seemed to give a finishing blow to the Hamiltonian ideas of government in the United States. His party had made a desperate effort to subvert the Constitution under the presidency of John Adams, which was terminated by the election of Jefferson in 1800.
General Washington served his country as President eight years, when John Adams was elected to succeed him in that high office. During Washington's term the Hamiltonians, who called themselves "Federalists," and who embraced a great majority of the men of wealth and high social position in the Northern States, were not permitted to make any visible headway in subverting the Constitution. The overshadowing popularity of Washington kept down everything like the ambition of cliques and sections. But no sooner was his Presidency at an end, than the "Federalists," the enemies of the democratic principle of government, showed the cloven foot of monarchism again, and nearly every safeguard which the Constitution throws around the liberty of the people was disregarded and overthrown. Then it was that the antagonism between the political principles of the leading statesmen of the North and South assumed a tolerably well defined shape in the division of parties. Adams was originally a democrat, and had performed most valuable service to his country in the Revolution which won the independence of the American colonies. In a letter to General Washington, dated Philadelphia, May 8th, 1791, Mr. Jefferson thus feelingly alludes to Mr. Adams' apostacy : "I am afraid the indiscretion of a printer has committed me with my friend Mr. Adams, for whom I have a cordial esteem, increased by long habits of concurrence in opinion in the days of his republicanism, and even since his apostacy to hereditary monarchy and nobility; though we differ, we differ as friends." Again Jefferson says: "Mr. Adams had originally been a republican (democrat). The glare of royalty and nobility, during his mission to; England, had made him believe their fascination to be a necessary ingredient in government. He was taken up by the monarchical Federalists in his absence, and on his return to the United States, he was by them made to believe that the general disposition of our citizens was favorable to monarchy."
Under Mr. Adams' administration, the most foolish and oppressive acts were passed by the Federalist majority of Congress - among them the infamous "Alien and Sedition laws." Which gave the President power to banish all aliens from the United States, or to lock them up in prison during his pleasure - also to cause the arrest and imprisonment of any person who should write or speak anything against the President or Congress. In a word, these acts endowed the President with despotic powers, putting the liberty of every Democrat in the United States in Jeopardy, and producing a reign of cruelty and terror which has lasted to the end of Mr. Adams' administration.
As a specimen of the despotism of that Administration, we will mention the case of Honorable Mathew Lyon, a Democrat and estimable citizen, who for "ridiculing the ridiculous or idle parade" of the President, was seized and thrust into a cold dungeon six feet square, where he was left freezing and starving for a whole winter, and his liberation then authorized only on condition of his paying a fine of one thousand dollars. The Federalists everywhere ran riot in cruelty and mob violence. One of the most distinguished patriots of the United States, General Sumter, was brutally knocked down and beaten, by one of the officers and spies of the Administration, at the theatre in Philadelphia, because he neglected to take off his hat when it was announced that the President was coming in. General Sumter was at this time an old man, as ripe with honors won in the service of his country, as with years. But neither age, nor virtue, nor patriotism afforded any shield from the malice of the supporters of the king aping President.
As a specimen of the monarchical spirit of those times, we will give the following brief extract of a public address made to the President, dated Boston, May 1st, 1798: "We, the subscribers, inhabitants;, and citizens of Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, Deeply impressed with the alarming situation of our country, beg leave to express to you, the chief magistrate and supreme ruler over the United States, our fullest approbation of all the measures, external and internal, you have been pleased to adopt, under direction of divine authority."
It is proper to mention that the only "alarming situation of our country" at that time was the natural and growing indignation of the people at the despotism of the party in power. The historian of these events, John Wood, says: "During the scenes of tyranny which were daily exhibited, the Federal papers throughout the Union were filled an address to the President, Complimenting him upon his mildness and justice, the impartiality of his administration, his attachment to liberty, and his benevolence to foreigners."
The author above quoted says in another place : " These factions admired John Adams, because John Adams admired the British constitution and cursed the French republic. They bestowed unbounded panegyrics upon Alexander Hamilton for the same reason. They thought the administration and the government ought to be confounded and identified; that the administration was the government, and the government the administration, and that the people ought to bow in tame submission to its whims and caprices."
It does not need one to come from the dead to tell you that during the last five years we had a resurrection of the same party, which had lain in its grave ever since it was driven from power in 1800, by the election of Mr. Jefferson to the Presidency. Its defeat and overthrow then was owing to the patriotism and decision of the united South under the lead of Jefferson and Madison. In opposition to all these unconstitutional and despotic acts of the Federalists, these patriots drew up the celebrated "Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798." Which were adopted by the Legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia, and accepted by the whole South, with as much unanimity as they were condemned by the North. These resolutions are too long to quote here, but their substance may be given in a few words. They pointedly condemn all the revolutionary and despotic acts of the Adams Administration, as subversive of the free government of the United States, and Clearly set forth all the powers of the Federal Government as resulting from a compact, or agreement, between independent and sovereign States, each State possessing "an equal right" to decide "for itself as well of infractions as of the mode and manner of redress." As one of these sets of resolutions was drawn by the very hand which wrote the Declaration of Independence, and the other by that which wrote the Constitution of our country, they were received by all the friends of free government as the utterance of the highest wisdom and patriotism. The monarchy-aping Federalists raised a wild outcry of alarm, but the friends of democracy at once adopted the resolutions as their written creed. On the platform of these resolutions Jefferson was elected President, and the Federalists hurled ignominiously from power.
No language can equal the violence and indecency of the vanquished Federalists. For defeating their plans of revolution, Jefferson was denounced as an "infidel," a "jacobin," a "traitor," a "scoundrel." These offensive epithets were hurled at the head of the patriotic author of our Declaration of Independence from pulpits, from the legislative halls of the Northern States, and from the columns of every Federal newspaper in the land, just as similar indecent jeers are now heaped upon the true followers of the great and good Jefferson, by those who are trying to overthrow the democratic government made by our fathers.
The hatred of Jefferson, as of all the leading statesmen of the South, which rankled in the bosoms of the discomfited Federalists, knew no bounds. It did not die with that generation. The parents taught their children to hate, not only the name of Jefferson, but the whole Southern people.
Return to History of the Great Civil War
RELATED LINKS
Thomas Jefferson: Important Terms, People and Events
After assassinating Alexander Hamilton in a duel, Burr fled south, ... of the Sedition Act. After being spurned for a desired appointment by Jefferson, ...
Federalist Party (United States) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Callender later went to prison for sedition; President Jefferson pardoned ... the balance of north and south, they would decide the presidential election.
American Federal Officials in 1803:1796
Republicans select Burr to run with Jefferson on the national ticket. He joins Washington briefly, up north, than returns south to serve under ...
Center for First Amendment Studies
Jefferson would be the most tolerate of these immigrants and Hamilton, ... For example, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maryland each had just over a ...
US Senate: Art & History Home
Thomas Jefferson, 2nd Vice ...
Worn out from his battles with Hamilton, Jefferson resigned as secretary of state at the end of ... Most notorious of these statutes were the Sedition Act, ...
America's History and Culture
Chapters16:13, Jefferson, Thomas, Alien and Sedition Acts ... what many people belief: that they are the "North and South Poles of the American Revolution."
