A Youth's History of the Great Civil War
Van Evrie, Horton & Co., ©1866
Revised edition, ©2006 www.ronie-mooney-encs.us
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CHAPTER II. THE CAUSES OF THE WAR, CONTINUED
In continuation of the proofs that the enmity between the North and South; which resulted in the war, was laid, at a very early period, in the conflict of fundamental principles of government, we will summon again the testimony of Jefferson himself. In a letter, dated April 24th, 1796, addressed to the historian, Mazzei, and published in the Paris Moniteur, January 25th, 1798, Mr. Jefferson says: "Our political situation is prodigiously changed since you left us. Instead of that noble love of liberty, and that republican government, which carried us through the dangers of the war, and Anglo-monarchic-aristocratic party has arisen. Their avowed object is, to impose upon us the substance, as they have already given us the form, of the British Government. Nevertheless, the principle body of our citizens remain faithful to the republican principles. I should give you a fever if I should name the apostates who have embraced these heresies, men who were Solomons in council and Sampsons in conflict, but whose hair has been cut off by the Delilah of England. They would wrest from us that liberty which we have obtained by so much labor and peril; but we shall preserve it."
In another letter of a later date, Jefferson says: "The Alien and Sedition laws are working hard. For my own part I consider these laws merely as an experiment on the American mind, to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution. If this goes down we shall immediately see another act of Congress attempt declaring that the President shall continue in office during life, reserving to another occasion the transfer of the succession to his heirs, and the establishment of a Senate for life."
This severe language of Mr. Jefferson is fully borne out in a letter from John Langdon to Samuel Ringold, dated at Portsmouth, N. H., October 10th, 1800, in which he says: "In a conversation between Mr. Adams, Mr. Taylor, and myself, Mr. Adams certainly expressed a hope or expectation that his friend Giles would see the day when he would be convinced that the people of America would not be happy without an hereditary chief magistrate and senate, or at least for life."
Now let us return and quote further from the letter of Jefferson : "A weighty minority of these (Federalist) leaders considering the voluntary conversion of our Government into a monarchy as too distant, if not too desperate, wish to break off from our Union its eastern fragment, as being in fact the hotbed of American monarchism, with a view to the commencement of their favorite government, from whence other States may gangrene by degrees, and the whole thus by degrees be brought to the desired point."
This assertion of Mr. Jefferson is fully sustained by no less eminent an author than Mathew Cary, who, in his celebrated work, entitled The Olive Branch, gives a great many facts in relation to a conspiracy in New England to break up the Republic as early as 1796. He says: "A Northern Confederacy has been the Object for a number of years. They have repeatedly advocated in public prints a separation of the States, on account of pretended discordant views and interests of the different sections. This project of separation was formed shortly after the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Whether it was ventured before the public earlier than 1796, I know not, but of its promulgation that year there is most indubitable evidence. To sow discord, jealousy and hostility between different sections of the Union was the first grand step in their career, in order to accomplish the favorite object of a separation of the States. For eighteen years, therefore, (i. e. from 1796 to 1814) the most unceasing endeavors have been used to poison the minds of the people of the Eastern States towards, and to alienate them from, their fellow-citizens of the Southern States. Nothing can exceed the violence of these caricatures, some of which would have suited the ferocious in habitants of New Zealand rather than a civilized and polished nation."
Here you have proofs that the war upon the South was really begun by New England as early as 1796. In that year an elaborate series of papers was published in Hartford, in the State of Connecticut, under the signature of "Pelham." These papers, Mr. Carey tells us, were the joint production of men of the first talents in New England. The following extract from the first number of this Pelham series of essays fully justifies all that either Mr. Jefferson or Mr.Carey has said of the malcontents of New England:
"The Northern States can subsist as a nation without any connection with the Southern. It cannot be contested that if the Southern States were possessed of the same Political ideas, out Union would be more close, but when it becomes a serious question whether we shall give up our Government or part with the States south of the Potomac, No man north of that river, whose heart is not thoroughly democratic, can hesitate what decision to make."
This, you must bear in mind, was written in 1796. It proves that the republican, or democratic principle of government, which was so tenaciously adhered to by the people of the South, was the cause of all the cunning hatred and abuse heaped upon them by the Federal monarchy-loving leaders of New England. They deliberately proposed to destroy the Union then, because the South was so "thoroughly democratic." Incompatibility of "political ideas" was given as a sufficient reason for maligning the character of a whole people, and for desiring to break up the Union which had been established by the Constitution only eight years before.
As early as the above date, then, we must fix upon as the starting point of a political and social war upon the South, on the part of the Federalists in the Eastern States, which went on gathering and increasing in intensity of estrangement and hatred, until it ripened, at last, into the late terrible strife. There is a good maxim which tells us that "continual dropping will wear a stone." If all the vile and all ;the false things which have been published in Northern papers and books for the last seventy years, or from 1796 to 1866, ostensibly against the South, but really to make democracy odious, were gathered into one work, it would make a hundred volumes, each as big as a folio Bible. Is it not a wonder that the fatal conflict did not come before? The political peace, the moral peace, the social peace of this Union was broken by the old Federal party, more than seventy years ago. But the complete triumph of the Democratic part over that pernicious faction saved the country from an open rupture for the long period of sixty years.
The hatred of the South, however, engendered by the old monarchist partly of New England, Could never be worked out of the anti-democratic portion of the Northern people. If the ground on which their hatred rested was worn away by time, or rendered no longer a decent excuse for opposition, their leaders were sure to hunt up some new issue on which to hang another chance of securing the end they had in view. Thus, when ;there no longer remained a chance or a hope of revolutionizing or changing the Government of the United States into a form more congenial to the monarchical views of Hamilton and Adams, another excuse was sought for by which the cherished objects they had in view might be accomplished. After they could no longer make headway against the democracy of Jefferson, the old Hamilton party hunted round for some new issue on which they could rally and keep alive their waning partisan strength. They hit upon the negro. Not that they; had in their own hearts any peculiar love for him, or any objection to negro subordination as it existed in this country. A great man of the leading men of their party had become rich out of the "slave trade" - that is, in bringing negroes to these shores and selling them to the Southern States. Negro subordination had existed also in every Northern State; but the climate was so cold that the negro was found to be unprofitable as a laborer, and so he was declared "free." But no State did this for the reasons now given. Abolitionism or negro equality, as now understood, did not exist among the Federal leaders. The negroes were quite universally looked upon as an inferior and helpless race, incapable of sustaining themselves as civilized beings, and as every way better off under the institution of servitude, as it existed in this country, than they were in their own native Africa. There they are all slaves to uncivilized heathen masters. They live upon snakes and worms, and lead a life that is only just above that of the brute creation. Their lives also are entirely at the disposal of their barbarian masters. Sometimes as many as three or four thousand of them are taken out one after another, and butchered like so many pigs, as a sacrifice to the negro divinities. The most wretched negro in the Southern States was a great deal better off, every way, than he was in his own native country. All well-informed people knew this to be true. Therefore the great majority of good and intelligent men believed the institution of servitude in the Southern States to be a real blessing. A comparison made between the negro with a master and the negro without one, almost always resulted in favor of the former, as the happier of the two. Very few good people, therefore, had any objection to the condition of the negro in this country. It was conceded by all candid observers that there was nowhere on earth to be found another population of negroes so happy and so contented as those of the South. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and nearly all the greatest and best men who fought against England for our liberties, and who were the means of establishing the Government of the United States, were "slaveholders." They were not only great statesmen, but they were celebrated for their moral and Christian character. And they were "slaveholders." I have said that they considered the negro as belonging to an inferior race, not entitled to associate with white people, except as a servant. This had been the opinion of all Christian nations for more than two thousand years. Indeed it was the opinion of all wise men who lived in the ;world many thousands of years ago, even before the birth of our Saviour. If any taught otherwise, they were looked upon as ignorant dreamers, fanatics, and as men of no standing in society. No respectable white man or woman would have associated with; a person who admitted a negro to be his equal. This was the state of opinion, not only in our country, but throughout the civilized world. Even Massachusetts, no longer ago than 1836, passed a law to imprison any justice of the peace, or clergyman, who should be guilty of marrying a white person to a negro. The laws of every State in the Union wisely denied negroes an equality with white people. I say this was a jest and necessary provision in order to prevent what is called mulattoism or mongrelism, that is, a mixture of the white and black races, which history and experience have proved to be one of the greatest curses that can befall society. Every nation on the face of the earth where such a mixture has taken place to any considerable extent, has declined in its civilization, and gradually sunk down in ruin, as if wasted by a slow poison. And that is just what it was. God's punishment upon men for violating his laws.
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