The North, on the other hand, maintained with the utmost confidence in the
correctness of her position that the Union formed under the
Constitution was intended to be perpetual; that sovereignty was a
unit and could not be divided; that whether or not there was any
express power granted in the Constitution for invading a State, the
right of self-preservation was inherent in all governments; that the
life of the Union was essential to the life of liberty; or, in the
words of Webster, "liberty and union are one and
inseparable."
To the charge of the North that secession was rebellion and treason, the
South replied that the epithets of rebel and traitor did not deter
her from the assertion of her independence, since these same
epithets had been familiar to the ears of Washington and Hancock and
Adams and Light Horse Harry Lee. In vindication of her right to
secede, she appealed to the essential doctrine, "the right to
govern rests on the consent of the governed," and to the right
of independent action as among those reserved by the States. The
South appealed to the acts and opinions of the Fathers and to the
report of the Hartford
Convention of New England States asserting
the power of each State to decide as to the remedy for infraction of
its rights; to the petitions presented and positions assumed by
ex-President John Quincy Adams; to the contemporaneous declaration
of the 8th of January assemblage in Ohio indicating that 200,000
Democrats in that State alone were ready to stand guard on the banks
of the border river and resist invasion of Southern territory; and
to the repeated declarations of Horace Greeley and the admission of
President Lincoln himself that there was difficulty on the question
of force, since ours ought to be a fraternal Government.
In answer to all these points, the North also cited the acts and opinions
of the same Fathers, and urged that the purpose of those Fathers was
to make a more perfect Union and a stronger government. The North
offset the opinions of Greeley and others by the emphatic
declaration of Stephen A. Douglas, the foremost of Western
Democrats, and by the official opinion as to the power of the
Government to collect revenues and enforce laws, given to President
Buchanan by Jere Black, the able Democratic Attorney-General.
Thus the opposing arguments drawn from current opinions and from the
actions and opinions of the Fathers were piled mountain high on both
sides. Thus the mighty athletes of debate wrestled in the political
arena, each profoundly convinced of the righteousness of his
position; hurling at each other their ponderous arguments, which
reverberated like angry thunderbolts through legislative halls,
until the whole political atmosphere resounded with the tumult. Long
before a single gun was fired public sentiment North and South had
been lashed into a foaming sea of passion; and every timber in the
framework of the Government was bending and ready to break from
"the heaving ground-swell of the tremendous agitation."
Gradually and naturally in this furnace of sectional debate,
sectional ballots were crystallized into sectional bullets; and both
sides came at last to the position formerly held by the great Troup
of Georgia: "The argument is exhausted; we stand to our
guns."
I submit that this brief and incomplete summary is sufficient to satisfy
those who live after us that these great leaders of conflicting
thought, and their followers who continued the debate in battle and
blood, while in some sense partisans, were in a far juster sense
patriots.
The opinions of Lee and Grant, from each of whom I briefly quote,
will illustrate in a measure the convictions of their armies. Every
Confederate appreciates the magnanimity exhibited by General Grant
at Appomattox; and it has been my pleasure for nearly forty years to
speak in public and private of his great qualities. In his personal
memoirs, General Grant has left on record his estimate of the
Southern cause. This estimate represents a strong phase of Northern
sentiment, but it is a sentiment which it is extremely difficult for
a Southern man to comprehend. In speaking of his feelings as
"sad and depressed," as he rode to meet General Lee and
receive the surrender of the Southern armies at Appomattox, General
Grant says: "I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the
downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and who had
suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one
of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there
was the least excuse." He adds: "I do not question,
however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed
to us."
The words above quoted, showing General Grant's opinion of the Southern
cause, are italicized by me and not by him. My object in emphasizing
them is to invite special attention to their marked contrast with
the opinions of General Robert E. Lee as to that same Southern
cause. This peerless Confederate soldier and representative
American, than whom no age or country ever produced a loftier spirit
or more clear-sighted, conscientious Christian gentleman, in
referring, two days before the surrender, to the apparent
hopelessness of our cause, used these immortal words: "We had,
I was satisfied, sacred principles to maintain and rights to defend
for which we were in duty bound to do our best, even if we perished
in the endeavor."
There were those, a few years ago, who were especially devoted to the
somewhat stereotyped phrase that in our Civil War one side (meaning
the North) "was wholly and eternally right," while the
other side (meaning the South) "was wholly and eternally
wrong." I might cite those on the Southern side of the great
controversy, equally sincere and fully as able, who would have been
glad to persuade posterity that the North was "wholly and
eternally wrong"; that her people waged war upon sister States
who sought peacefully to set up a homogeneous government, and
meditated no wrong or warfare upon the remaining sister States.
These Southern leaders steadfastly maintained that the Southern
people, in the exercise of the freedom and sovereign rights
purchased by Revolutionary blood, were asserting a second
independence according to the teachings and example of their
fathers.
But what good is to come to the country from partisan utterances on either
side? My own well-considered and long-entertained opinion, my
settled and profound conviction, the correctness of which the future
will vindicate, is this: that the one thing which is "wholly
and eternally wrong" is the effort of so-called statesmen to
inject one-sided and jaundiced sentiments into the youth of the
country in either section.
Such sentiments are neither consistent with the truth of history, nor
conducive to the future welfare and unity of the Republic. The
assumption on either side of all the righteousness and all the truth
would produce a belittling arrogance, and an offensive intolerance
of the opposing section; or, if either section could be persuaded
that it was "wholly and eternally wrong," it would
inevitably destroy the self-respect and manhood of its people. A far
broader, more truthful, and statesmanlike view was presented by the
Hon. A. E. Stevenson, of Illinois, then Vice-President of the United
States, in his opening remarks as presiding officer at the
dedication of the National Park at Chickamauga. In perfect accord
with the sentiment of the occasion and the spirit which led to the
establishment of this park as a bond of national brotherhood, Mr.
Stevenson said: "Here, in the dread tribunal of last resort,
valor contended against valor. Here brave men struggled and died for
the right as God gave them to see the right."
Mr. Stevenson was right -- " wholly and eternally right." Truth,
justice, and patriotism unite in proclaiming that both sides fought
and suffered for liberty as bequeathed by the Fathers--the one for
liberty in the union of the States, the other for liberty in the
independence of the States.
While the object of these papers is to record my personal
reminiscences and to perpetuate incidents illustrative of the
character of the American soldier, whether he fought on the one side
or the other, I am also moved to write by what I conceive to be a
still higher aim; and that is to point out, if I can, the common
ground on which all may stand; where justification of one section
does not require or imply condemnation of the other--the broad,
high, sunlit middle ground where fact meets fact, argument confronts
argument, and truth is balanced against truth.