CHAPTER VIII
THE POLICY AND OBJECTS OF SECESSION
While very little, if any, difference of opinion existed at the South as to the right of secession,there were many people who doubted the policy of the movement. Prominent among these was the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, who advised against the step. It was felt by such men that it was going to place great power in the hands of the Abolition party, who might then set themselves up as in favor of the Union, and use the very prestige and power of the Government, which southern statesmen had mainly created, to make war upon them. They distrusted the peaceful professions of the Black Republican leaders, who were talking against coercion, and who were announcing themselves as willing "to let the South go."
As it has turned out, it would seem that these men were right; for the Abolition party did raise large armies in the name of the Union, actually to overthrow it - to subvert its form of government, and to bring a doom on the southern people which words cannot describe. However, the overwhelming impulse of the great majority of the Southern people at the time of which we are writing was to get away from the North. They did not wish to be associated any longer with a people the majority of whom could deliberately elect a man President on a platform of avowed hostility to their States. They desired to get away from people who would not keep their compacts.
Yet they wished the North no harm. The debates of the great leaders in Congress at the time of withdrawing, prove that they went more in sorrow than in anger. They evinced indeed a great reluctance to go; but they felt that the North had already sundered the political bands made by our forefathers, and that there was nothing left for them but to go, or stay and acquiesce in the overthrow of their Government. They chose to go, declaring that their object was to preserve and perpetuate the sacred principles of liberty and self-government which our forefathers established.
.General Robert E. Lee, in a letter written since the war, dated January 6th, 1866, says, "all the South has ever asked or desired is, that the Union founded by our forefathers should be preserved,and that the Government as it was originally organized should be administered in puirty and truth." Now the Abolitionists could not say this. They desired the Government, as it was formed overthrown. General Lee desired the Government to remain just as it was. Mr. Seward said "No, Slavery must and shall be abolished." Mr. Lincoln stood on the same platform.
The great and overwhelming object the South had was to preserve to themselves the right of self-government, and thus save themselves from the horrible consequences of amalgamation and social death. They knew from their practical knowledge of the negro that he belonged to a distinct species of man; that his brain, his bones, his shape, his nerves, in fact that every part of his body was different from the white man's. They knew that he was liable to different diseases from the white man; that he required the care and protection of the superior race. They knew that to equalize the races was simply to follow the fate of Mexico and Central America.
What a splendid country was Mexico while under the control of the white blood of the pure Spanish race! Now what is it, after the white blood had all become mixed and diluted by amalgamation with the black race? When the black race held its natural position of subordination to the white race, Mexico was one of the richest and most prosperous countries on the globe; but now it is one of the meanest and most contemptible. The white man's proud and glorious civilization has faded out on the dead plain of amalgamation and negro equality. The white blood has become so muddy and polluted by a mixture with the inferior race, that no lapse of time can ever redeem that population from the utter degradation and uncivilization into which it has fallen. So of all those once rich and flourishing countries to the south of the United States- since the abolition of negro subordination to the white race, they have all fallen back in civilization, and sunken down in a slough of social, political, and moral filth, and wretchedness! It makes the heart sick to contemplate them.
The West India Islands which, under negro servitude, or when the white man was sole master, were among the richest and most flourishing spots on the globe, now, under negro equality, are the poorest and most detested sinks of sorrow and pollution that oppress the imagination of man.
To save the most beautiful and productive portion of our country from a similar terrible fate, was the great motive which made the Southern States desire separation from the abolitionized States of the North. To save our country from the terrible scourge of negro amalgamation and negro equality, which the Black Republicans are now forcing upon us, was a patriotic and sacred thought in the minds of those who wished no further union with the madmen who were determined to force the shame and horror of negro equality upon us.
God only can tell what the consequences of this amalgamation policy may be to the cause of liberty and civilization! Unless the people arise and put a stop to the further progress of the disgusting and brutalizing notions of negro equality, we shall inevitably land at last where Mexico, the Central American States, and the West India Islands have gone already. Negro emancipation and negro equality are driving us on that fatal shore with alarming rapidity. A mongrel nation, or a nation of mixed races, never yet remained free and prosperous.
The English, Irish, French, Spanish or Germans may amalgamate without detriment, because they are only different families of the same, or the white race; but the negro being of a different and lower race, the offspring of such a union are hybrids or mongrels, and are always a weak, degraded, and wretched class of beings-as inferior to the white race as the mule is to the horse.
Such, then, were the points involved in the policy and objects of secession. If the Northern people could have understood the great wrong they were forcing upon the South, they never would have blamed her for seeking to save herself from the degradation of amalgamation. But they had, unfortunately, been made to believe that it was wicked to hold negroes as inferiors of white people. They did not understand the horrible sin and crime, disease and death involved in equalizing races. Hence they thought that the South acted "without good cause."
They were made to believe that she resisted Lincoln's election from mere spite, and from a long cherished desire to break up the Union. While the real truth was, that the great mass of the people of the South loved and cherished the Union, and only withdrew from it when they felt themselves not only compelled to do so, but actually driven out by the abolition party, who came into possession of the Government, threatening to use it to bring upon them and their children the most horrible doom that can possibly be inflicted upon any people.
In the North, where there are but few negroes, it is difficult to understand this subject, but if our population were one half blacks, we would very soon begin to comprehend what it meant to give the negro the same rights as the white man. Every child can see that in such a society only two things are possible. Either one race or the other would be master, or else they would be compelled to fraternize-to mingle, and with that comes all the horrible consequences we have just depicted.
In the light of subsequent events, nearly all will now allow that the South made a mistake when they demanded unconditional separation. True, they had many reasons to lose faith in the North, and believe they would stand by no agreements if made. But if they had said all the time, "we stand ready to resume our places in the Union, when you of the North give us plain and distinct pledges and guarantees that you will abide by the Constitution and Union as they were formed," they would have deprived Mr. Lincoln and his party of nine-tenths of their capital. They could not then have set themselves up as "the Union party," while in fact they were the real disunion party, and always had been. Nor could they have made such a hue and cry about "the flag," which they had denounced as a "flaunting lie."
Perhaps you never saw the verses on the American flag which the Black Republicans circulated in 1854, just about the time they organized their party. I will give you two of them:
"All hail the flaunting lie
The stars grow pale and dim,
The stripes are bloody scars-
A lie the vaunting hymn.
Tear down the flaunting lie,
Half-mast the starry flag,
Insult no sunny sky
With hate's polluted rag."
Now it does not look reasonable that a political party which endorsed such poetry could have been at all sincere in love for the American flag.
They simply put forth the cry of "the Union," and "the flag," to get the war started. After which they believed they could use it to accomplish their real purposes, which were the overthrow of our form of government, and its revolution from a White Man's government to that of a mongrel nation, in which negroes should have the same rights as white people.
This is now plainly apparent, if it never was before; and however mistaken the South may have been as to the means used to avert this calamity, no one not deluded with negro equality will deny that they were justified in taking any step which would save them and their children from such horrible consequences.
Return to History of the Great Civil War
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