They Do Not
Object To Pay For It, But They Like To Have The Handling Of The
Article For Which They Pay.
As the descendants of Puritans and
other godly Protestants, they will submit to religious teaching,
but as republicans they will have no priestcraft.
The French at
their revolution had the latter feeling without the former, and
were therefore consistent with themselves in abolishing all
worship. The Americans desire to do the same thing politically,
but infidelity has had no charms for them. They say their prayers,
and then seem to apologize for doing so, as though it were hardly
the act of a free and enlightened citizen, justified in ruling
himself as he pleases. All this to me is rowdy. I know no other
word by which I can so well describe it.
Nevertheless the nation is religious in its tendencies, and prone
to acknowledge the goodness of God in all things. A man there is
expected to belong to some church, and is not, I think, well looked
on if he profess that he belongs to none. He may be a
Swedenborgian, a Quaker, a Muggletonian, - anything will do, But it
is expected of him that he shall place himself under some flag, and
do his share in supporting the flag to which he belongs. This duty
is, I think, generally fulfilled.
CHAPTER XX.
FROM BOSTON TO WASHINGTON.
From Boston, on the 27th of November, my wife returned to England,
leaving me to prosecute my journey southward to Washington by
myself. I shall never forget the political feeling which prevailed
in Boston at that time, or the discussions on the subject of
Slidell and Mason, in which I felt myself bound to take a part. Up
to that period I confess that my sympathies had been strongly with
the Northern side in the general question; and so they were still,
as far as I could divest the matter of its English bearings. I
have always thought, and do think, that a war for the suppression
of the Southern rebellion could not have been avoided by the North
without an absolute loss of its political prestige. Mr. Lincoln
was elected President of the United States in the autumn of 1860,
and any steps taken by him or his party toward a peaceable solution
of the difficulties which broke out immediately on his election
must have been taken before he entered upon his office. South
Carolina threatened secession as soon as Mr. Lincoln's election was
known, while yet there were four months left of Mr. Buchanan's
government. That Mr. Buchanan might, during those four months,
have prevented secession, few men, I think, will doubt when the
history of the time shall be written. But instead of doing so he
consummated secession. Mr. Buchanan is a Northern man, a
Pennsylvanian; but he was opposed to the party which had brought in
Mr. Lincoln, having thriven as a politician by his adherence to
Southern principles. Now, when the struggle came, he could not
forget his party in his duty as President. General Jackson's
position was much the same when Mr. Calhoun, on the question of the
tariff, endeavored to produce secession in South Carolina thirty
years ago, in 1832 - excepting in this, that Jackson was himself a
Southern man. But Jackson had a strong conception of the position
which he held as President of the United States. He put his foot
on secession and crushed it, forcing Mr. Calhoun, as Senator from
South Carolina, to vote for that compromise as to the tariff which
the government of the day proposed. South Carolina was as eager in
1832 for secession as she was in 1859-60; but the government was in
the hands of a strong man and an honest one. Mr. Calhoun would
have been hung had he carried out his threats. But Mr. Buchanan
had neither the power nor the honesty of General Jackson, and thus
secession was in fact consummated during his Presidency.
But Mr. Lincoln's party, it is said - and I believe truly said -
might have prevented secession by making overtures to the South, or
accepting overtures from the South, before Mr. Lincoln himself had
been inaugurated. That is to say, if Mr. Lincoln and the band of
politicians who with him had pushed their way to the top of their
party, and were about to fill the offices of State, chose to throw
overboard the political convictions which had bound them together
and insured their success - if they could bring themselves to adopt
on the subject of slavery the ideas of their opponents - then the
war might have been avoided, and secession also avoided. I do
believe that had Mr. Lincoln at that time submitted himself to a
compromise in favor of the Democrats, promising the support of the
government to certain acts which would in fact have been in favor
of slavery, South Carolina would again have been foiled for the
time. For it must be understood, that though South Carolina and
the Gulf States might have accepted certain compromises, they would
not have been satisfied in so accepting them. The desired
secession, and nothing short of secession, would in truth have been
acceptable to them. But in doing so Mr. Lincoln would have been
the most dishonest politician even in America. The North would
have been in arms against him; and any true spirit of agreement
between the cotton-growing slave States and the manufacturing
States of the North, or the agricultural States of the West, would
have been as far off and as improbable as it is now. Mr.
Crittenden, who proffered his compromise to the Senate in December,
1860, was at that time one of the two Senators from Kentucky, a
slave State. He now sits in the Lower House of Congress as a
member from the same State. Kentucky is one of those border States
which has found it impossible to secede, and almost equally
impossible to remain in the Union. It is one of the States into
which it was most probable that the war would be carried - Virginia,
Kentucky, and Missouri being the three States which have suffered
the most in this way.
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