The late civil war which raged in the United States has been very generally attributed to the abolition of slavery as its cause. When we consider how deeply the institutions of southern society and the operations of southern industry were founded in slavery, we must admit that this was cause enough to have produced such a result. But great and wide as was that cause in its far reaching effects, a close study of the history of the times will bring us to the conclusion that it was the fear of a mischief far more extensive and deeper even than this which drove cool and reflecting minds in the South to believe that it was better to make the death struggle at once than submit tamely to what was inevitable, unless its coming could be averted by force. Men, too old to be driven blindly by passion, women, whose gentle and kindly instincts were deeply impressed by the horrors of war, and young men, with fortune and position yet to be won in an open and inviting field, if peace could be maintained so as to secure the opportunities of liberty and fair treatment, united in the common cause and determined to make a holocaust of all that was dear to them on the altars of war sooner then submit without resistance to the loss of liberty, honor and property by a cruel abuse of power and a breach of plighted faith on the part of those who had professed to enter with them into a union of justice and fraternal affection.
When this Union was originally formed, the United States embraced too many degrees of latitude and longitude, and too many varieties of climate and production, to make it practicable to establish and administer justly one common government which should take charge of all the interests of society. To the wise men who were entrusted with the formation of that union and common government, it was obvious enough that each separate society should be entrusted with the management of its own peculiar interests, and that the united government should take charge only of those interests which were common and general. To enforce this necessary distinction, it was provided that all powers, not specially granted, should be reserved to the people and the States, and a list of the granted powers was carefully and specifically made. But two parties soon arose in regard to these limitations. Those who wielded the powers thus granted became interested to remove these limitations as far as possible, whilst the minority, who belonged to the governed rather than the governing party, early learned to regard these limitations as the best and surest defences against the abuses and oppressions of a despotic majority.
A tendency soon became manifest in the non - slaveholding portion of the union to constitute themselves into that governing party. Endowed with the greater share of power in the commencement, that preponderance was increased by the course of events. The famous northwestern ordinance, to which the old Virginia fathers were driven by their abhorrence of slavery, without looking too closely to its probable consequences, made the predominance of the non slaveholding section in the government irresistible. The abolition of the slave trade, after a time, by the constitution and the northwestern ordinance, left the growing superiority of that section not even doubtful. But the acquisition of Louisiana made another order of growth in political power possible as between the two sections. The bare possibility of such a result kindled a violent opposition in some portions of the non - slaveholding section. In New England it was particularly angry, and there sprung up for the first time in the history of our government audible threats of separation. The "land hunger" of the Anglo Saxon race, as Theodore Parker calls it, soon quieted the opposition to the acquisition of territory, but a far more bitter strive arose as to the equal rights of the two sections to settle the vacant territory of the Union and grow possibly pari passu in power. So fierce was the strife, and so loud its tumult, that for the first time it broke upon
Mr. Jefferson's ear like "a fire bell in the night." The contest between the two sections over the limitations in the constitution upon the governing party under it began with the commencement of its history, and ended only, as I shall presently show, with the revolution which destroyed the old form and established the despotism of a majority of numbers. It is in the history of this context we must look for the true causes of the war, and the use made of the victory by the winning party will show the object and nature of that contest. When it became obvious that the only protection of the rights of the minority against the encroachments of the majority was to be found in the limitations upon the power of the governing party, a death struggle arose between the two parties over the constitutional restraints upon this power. The struggle between the two parties commenced at the beginning of the government.
These were respectively led by Hamilton and Jefferson, the one with an avowed preference for monarchy, the other the great apostle of democracy, men of signal abilities, and each conscious of what would be the consequence of complete and perfect victory on either side. The party of power showed a constant tendency to draw all important subjects of jurisdiction within the vortex of Federal control, and an equally persevering effort on the other to limit that control to the strict necessities of a common government. A great leader, who came into the contest and figured in it until it was well nigh ended, used to say that in all good governments there existed a tax consuming and tax paying party, between whom a constant conflict existed, and in the history of that conflict the history of party strife would be found to consist; but when the first acquired complete supremacy, the nature, if not the form of the government, if it was originally republican, was sure to change.
The leaders of the States rights party, aware of this tendency, as the contest went on, became more and more anxious to preserve their constitutional defences, and loudly proclaimed the danger of yielding them up. Time and again they proclaimed that the worst of all governments was that of a majority of numbers with absolute and unrestricted powers. Despotism of all sorts was bad, but the despotism of a majority of numbers in a democratic form of government was the worst of all, particularly was that the case in regard to slavery, as was often asserted. In February, 1790, when two abolition petitions, one of them signed by Dr. Franklin, were presented to Congress, that body "resolved that Congress had no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or even the treatment of them within any of the States, it remaining with the several States alone to provide any regulations therein which humanity or true policy may require." Congress thus clearly declared its view of its power over the subject. Congress was petitioned to do all in its power to discourage slavery, of which a Massachusetts man, in an able history of the long contest, has said: "Congress could not move a hair's breadth towards discouraging it, either lawfully or honestly.
The powers of Congress being defined and nominated by the constitution which framed the government, all it could do in regard to any specific subject was to act upon it, if within the province, and if otherwise, 'to touch not, taste not, handle not.'" (Lunt's Origin of the Late War, p. 25.) In the debate upon the subject, one Southern gentleman objected to the commitment of these memorials as containing "unconstitutional requests," and said "he feared the commitment would be a very alarming circumstance to the Southern States; for if it was to engage Congress in an unconstitutional measure, it would be considered as interference with their rights, making them uneasy under the government, and causing them to lament that they had ever put additional power into their hands." Another declared "that the States would never have entered into the confederacy unless their property had been guaranteed to them, and that we look upon this measure as an attack upon the palladium of our property" -- meaning the constitution. Another said if he was to hold these slaves in eternal bondage he would feel no uneasiness on account of the present menace, "because he would rely upon the virtue of Congress that they would not exercise any unconstitutional authority." The same historian well says "the impression made upon the southern members of Congress at the earliest period is also significant. Although evidently considering it of no practical importance, they yet clearly made it known they regarded such action as in violation of the constitution, and that without the guaranty for their rights of property in slaves, permitted by that instrument, the States which they represented would not have assented to it, and hence the plan for the
Union must have failed. No one can doubt that if they had deemed the guaranty afforded insufficient they could have obtained pledges of a still more precise character, either then or at a later period, since the object of the Union was one of permanent interest to all. But neither they nor their northern compatriots entertained any question of the fidelity of their successors to engagements so solemnly undertaken, both express and implied." (Lunt, p. 27.) The history of this transaction shows how early the South was taught to look to the constitution for the defences of their rights in regard to slavery; how fully, too, and clearly the Congress admitted the existence of these defences, and that the South disregarded the unauthorized menace of these "anarchic Quakers," as Carlisle calls them, because they "relied upon the virtue of Congress that they would not exercise any unconstitutional authority." Their property in slaves was guaranteed by the constitution; they felt authorized to say so by a solemn declaration of Congress made at the time, and they had too much confidence in the northern majority, who were soon to control that body, to believe that directly or indirectly they would impair or destroy a right so solemnly guaranteed.
To have anticipated such an attack upon their property and peace, would have been to suppose that they had been made the easy victims of a perfidy, which, under all the circumstances, under all the traditions of common sufferings and exertions, was characterized by a wealth of deception that would have excited the envy even of a Carthaginian. Especially would that be the case if the deceit was to be covered up by a constant course of perjury on the part of the officials of the government, who were to be sworn as qualification for office to support the constitution which contained that pledge. How justly our fathers relied upon that instrument to protect their rights, subsequent history has shown. Nothing could be more clearly established than the right on one side to reclaim fugitive slaves, and the obligation on the other to return them -- an obligation which surely ought to have rested lightly enough on those who brought them here and sold them. Nor is it easy to see how the remorse for having sold them could be relieved by inveigling them away from those who had bought them. But so it was, that during the existence of slavery there was an ever living contest between the slave and the free States on this very subject -- the former seeking to enforce, and the latter to evade, the constitutional obligation for the return of fugitive slaves.
Long before the secession of the slave States, it had become almost impossible, without the assistance of armed forces, to reclaim a fugitive slave openly in the free States. Lunt, p. 320, says: "At length fourteen of the sixteen free States had provided statutes which rendered any attempt to execute the fugitive slave act so difficult as to be practically impossible, and placed each of those States in an attitude of virtual resistance to the laws of the United States." When Mr.
Toombs, in the Senate of the United States, during the session in which he withdrew from that body, referred to these laws and taxed the free States with their violation of constitutional obligation, in evidence of which he produced these statutes, it was pitiful to hear the excuses by which the representatives of these States sought to squirm out of the difficulty -- a difficulty for which the executives of Ohio and Iowa would scarcely have cared to apologize, if it be true, as doubtless it is, as Lunt states, that "at a somewhat later period those officers refused to surrender to justice persons charged with participation in the John Brown raid." (See note, p. 320.) At the era of secession the constitution had not only ceased to be a palladium for these rights of the slaveholder, but was hardly recognized to be binding at all If, then, this instrument was to be relied upon by the slave States to protect them, it was only in the event that they could arm themselves with enough political power to enforce its provisions. So obvious had this become by 1819-20, when the State of Missouri was struggling for admission as a slave State, that the slave States at that time solemnly asserted their right to settle the unoccupied and unappropriated territory of the United States with their slave property, under the protection of its laws -- a right which was as vehemently denied by the free States. So bitter and fierce was this contest, that its agitations shook the very foundations of American society. It was settled for a time by a compromise excluding slavery from the United States
Territories north of a line 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, and admitting it south of that line. Even this line left the South in a condition of hopeless inferiority, which was but little helped by the acquisition of a portion of Texas as a slave State. When the vast territory obtained from Mexico at the close of the war was organized, the Missouri compromise line was set aside, and the non intervention principle was adopted, by which it became between the sections a mere question of the ability to colonize -- a question in regard to which there could scarcely be a doubt, with the superior resources in wealth and population of the free States. It had become manifest that the South had no protection for its rights but the constitution, nor could it hope to avail itself of that protection without an increase of power in the government. Its hopes for acquiring that were daily becoming less, whilst sectional animosities were constantly becoming more angry and bitter.