CHAPTER XIX.

HISTORICAL REVIEW.

COURSE OF SOUTHERN OLIGARCHS THROUGHOUT THEIR EVERLASTING GREED AND RAPACITY-BROKEN COVENANTS AND AGGRESSIVE METHODS-THEIR UNIFORM GAINS UNTIL 1861-UPS AND DOWNS OF THE TARIFF-FREE TRADE, SLAVERY, STATES-RIGHTS, SECESSION, ALL PARTS OF ONE CONSPIRACY-"INDEPENDENCE THE FIRST OBJECT OF THE WAR-DREAMS, AMBITIONS AND PLANS OF THE CONSPIRATORS-LINCOLN'S FAITH IN NORTHERN NUMBERS AND ENDURANCE-" RIGHT MAKES MIGHT" THE SOUTH SOLIDLY-CEMENTED BY BLOOD-THE 37TH CONGRESS-ITS WAR MEASURES-PAVING THE WAY TO DOWNFALL OF SLAVERY AND

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REBELLION

.Pages 462 to 473.

ET us now refresh recollection by glancing backward over the history of our Country, and we shall see, as recorded in these pages, that, from the first, there existed in this Nation a class of individuals greedily ambitious of power and determined to secure and maintain control of this Government; that they left unturned no stone which would contribute to the fostering and to the extension of African Slavery; that, hand in hand with African Slavery —and as a natural corollary to it-they advocated FreeTrade as a means of degrading Free White labor to the level of Black Slave labor, and thus increasing their own power; that from the first, ever taking advantage of the general necessities of the Union, they arrogantly demanded and received from a brow-beaten People, concession after concession, and compromise after compromise; that every possible pretext and occasion was seized by them to increase, consolidate, and secure their power, and to extend the territorial limits over which their peculiar Pro-Slavery and Pro-Free-Trade doctrines prevailed; and that their

nature was so exacting, and their greed so rapacious, that it was impossible ever to satisfy them.

Nor were they burdened with over-much of that high sense of honor-a quality of which they often vaunted themselves-which impelled others to stand by their agreements. It seemed as though they considered the most sacred promises and covenants of no account, and made only to be trampled upon, when in the way of their Moloch. We remember the bitter Slavery agitation in Congress over the admission of the State of Missouri, and how it eventuated in the Missouri Compromise. That compromise, we have seen, they afterward trod upon, and broke, with as little compunction as they would have stepped upon and crushed a toad.

They felt their own growing power, and gloried in their strength and arrogance; and Northern timidity became a scoff and by-word in their mouths.

The fact is, that from its very conception, as well as birth, they hated and opposed the Union, because they disliked a Republican and preferred a Monarchical form of Government. Their very inability to prevent the consummation of that Union, imbittered them. Hence their determinaion to seize every possible occasion and pretext afterward to destroy it, believing, as they doubtless did, that upon the crumbled and mouldering ruins of a dissevered Union and ruptured Republic, Monarchical ideas might the more easily take root and grow. But experience had already taught them that it would be long before their real object could even be covertly hinted at, and that in the meantime it must be kept out of sight by the agitation of other political issues. The formulation and promulgation therefore, by Jefferson, in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, and by Madison, in the Virginia Resolutions of 1799, of the doctrine of States Rights already referred to, was a perfect "God-send" to these men. For it not only enabled them to keep from public view and knowledge their ultimate aim and purpose, but constituted the whip which they thenceforth everlastingly flourished and cracked over the shrinking heads of other and more patriotic people-the

whip with which, through the litter of their broken promises, they ruthlessly rode into, and, for so long a period of years held on to, supreme power and place in the Land.

Including within the scope of States Rights, the threats of Nullification, Disunion and Secession-ideas abhorrent to the Patriot's mind-small wonder is it that, in those days, every fresh demand made by these political autocrats was tremblingly acceded to, until patience and concession almost utterly exhausted themselves.

Originally disturbing only South Carolina and Georgia to any extent, these ambitious men, who believed in anything rather than a Republic, and who were determined to destroy the Union, gradually spread the spirit of jealousy and discontent into other States of the South; their immediate object being to bring the Southern States into the closest possible relations the one with the other; to inspire them all with common sympathies and purposes; to compact and solidify them, so that in all coming movements against the other States of the Union, they might move with proportionately increased power, and force, and effect, because of such unity of aim and strength.

This spirit of Southern discontent, and jealousy of the Northern States, was, as we have seen, artfully fanned by the Conspirators, in heated discussions over the Tariff Acts of 1824, and 1828, and 1832, until, by the latter date, the people of the Cotton-States were almost frantic, and ready to fight over their imaginary grievances. Then it was that the Conspirators thought the time had come, for which they had so long and so earnestly prayed and worked, when the cotton Sampson should wind his strong arms around the pillars of the Constitution and pull down the great Temple of our Union-that they might rear upon its site another and a stronger edifice, dedicated not to Freedom, but to Free-Trade and to other false gods!

South Carolina was to lead off, and the other CottonStates would follow. South Carolina did lead off-but the other Cotton-States did not follow.

It has been shown in these pages how South Carolina declared the Tariff Acts aforesaid, null and void, armed herself

to resist force, and declared that any attempt of the general Government to enforce those Acts would cause her to withdraw from the Union. But Jackson as we know throttled the treason with so firm a grip that Nullification and Secession and Disunion were at once paralyzed.

The concessions to the domineering South, in Clay's Compromise Tariff of 1833, let the Conspirators down easily, so to speak; and they pretended to be satisfied. But they were satisfied only as are the thirsty sands of Africa with the passing shower.

The Conspirators had, however, after all, made substan tial gains. They had established a precedent for an attempt to secede. That was something. They had demonstrated that a single Southern State could stand up, armed and threatening, strutting, blustering, and bullying, and at least make faces at the general Government without suffering any very dreadful consequences. That was still more.

They had also ascertained that, by adopting such a course, a single Southern State could force concessions from the fears of the rest of the United States. That was worth knowing, because the time might come, when it might be desirable not only for one but for all the Southern States to secede upon some other pretext, and when it would be awkward, and would interfere with the Disunion programme, to have the other States either offer or make concessions.

They had also learned the valuable lesson that the single issue of Free-Trade was not sufficiently strong of itself to unite all the Southern States in a determination to secede, and thus dissolve the Union. They saw they must agitate some other issue to unify the South more thoroughly and

adoption of justify Disunion. On looking over the whole held they slavery question

concluded that the Slavery question would best answer their purpose, and they adopted it.

It was doubtless a full knowledge of the fact that they had adopted it, that led Jackson to make the declaration, heretofore in these pages given, which has been termed "prophetic." At any rate, thenceforth the programme of the Conspirators was to agitate the Slavery question in all

ways possible, so as to increase, extend and solidify the influence and strength of the Slave power; strain the bonds uniting them with the Free States; and weaken the Free States by dividing them upon the question. At the same time the Free-Trade question was to be pressed forward to a triumphal issue, so that the South might be enriched and strengthened, and the North impoverished and weakened, by the result.

That was their programme, in the rough, and it was relentlessly adhered to. Free-Trade and Slavery by turns, if not together, from that time onward, were ever at the front, agitating our People both North and South, and not only consolidating the Southern States on those lines, as the Conspirators designed, but also serving ultimately to consolidate, to some extent-in a manner quite unlooked for by the Conspirators-Northern sentiment, on the opposite lines of Protection and Freedom.

The Compromise Tariff Act of 1833-which Clay was weak enough to concede, and even stout old Jackson to permit to become law without his signature-gave to the Conspirators great joy for years afterward, as they witnessed the distress and disaster brought by it to Northern homes and incomes-not distress and disaster alone, but absolute and apparently irreparable ruin.

The reaction occasioned by this widespread ruin having brought the Whigs into power, led to the enactment of the Protective-Tariff of 1842 and-to the chagrin of the Conspirators-industrial prosperity and plenty to the Free North again ensued

Even as Cain hated his brother Abel because his sacrifices were acceptable in the sight of God, while his own were not, so the Southern Conspirators, and other Slave-owners also, had, by this time, come to hate the Northern freethinking, free-acting, freedom-loving mechanic and laboring man, because the very fact and existence of his Godgiven Freedom and higher-resulting civilization was a powerful and perpetual protest against the abounding iniquities and degradations of Slavery as practiced by themselves.