Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 I 
 
 https://archive.org/details/heritageofsouth01earl 
 
THE HERITAGE 
 of THE SOUTH 
 
 A HISTORY OF 
 THE INTRODUCTION OF SLAVERY 
 ITS ESTABLISHMENT FROM COLONIAL TIMES 
 AND FINAL EFFECT UPON 
 THE POLITICS OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 By 
 
 JUBAL A. EARLY 
 
 MEMBER OF THE YIEGINIA CONVENTION OF 1861 
 
Copyright 1915 
 By R. H. early 
 
 PRESS OF 
 BROWN-MORRISON CO 
 LYNCHBURG, VA. 
 
Editor's Note 
 
 A review is given, in the pages following, of the causes 
 which led to the political issue of the '60s; an issue which 
 will be open to argument until, in all of its bearings, it be- 
 comes understood through familiarity with the conditions 
 of the past. Sentiment divorced from reason occasioned 
 misconception. Many causes contributed to that effect. 
 The lack of authentic records doubtless was one ; certainly 
 ill-advised publications inflamed, if they did not inspire, 
 public opinion at this critical period. 
 
 The author Avas actuated by the desire to correct er- 
 roneous opinion in relation to the South. His manuscript 
 has lain unpublished during the passing of half a century, 
 till passion having cooled and prejudice abated, there is no 
 longer reason for clash from difference of feeling upon the 
 subject. 
 
 The African slave trade began in the year 1442, when 
 Anthony Gonsalez, a Portuguese, took from the Gold Coast, 
 ten negroes, which he carried to Lisbon. In 1481, the 
 Portuguese built a fort on the Gold Coast, and as early as 
 1502, the Spaniards began to employ negroes in the mines 
 of Hispaniola. In 1517, Charles V, Emperor of Spain, 
 granted a patent to certain persons, for the supply of 4,000 
 negroes, annually, to the islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, 
 Jamaica and Porto Rico. John Hawkins, afterwards 
 knighted by Queen Elizabeth, got into his possession, partly 
 by the sword and partly by other means, 300 negroes, and 
 sold them in the West Indies. Hawkins ' second voyage was 
 patronized by Queen Elizabeth, who participated in the 
 profits ; and in 1618, in the reign of James I, the British 
 
government established a regular trade on the coast of 
 Africa. 
 
 When negotiations for the slave traffic were first agitated, 
 the cost to the victim seems not to have been considered. 
 The white man's need — or greed — demanded sacrifice. 
 The negro, a product of the ' ' three-cornered rum, slave and 
 molasses trade" was brought to New England to a condi- 
 tion offering few advantages beyond certain comforts 
 which were to be provided by the master who was to as- 
 sume all the obligations of the position. 
 
 "Wrenched from his home, separated from his people, 
 exiled to a foreign land, which was governed by laws main- 
 tained through penalties, the enforced emigrant was set to 
 labor in unaccustomed ways under uncongenial circum- 
 stances. 
 
 The experiment of settling him in a manufacturing sec- 
 tion proved disadvantageous to the investor. The demand 
 for field labor furnished a Southern market ; this occasioned 
 his removal to that part of the country, his aptitude for 
 the work kept him there. 
 
 His insurrectionary spirit made his training difficult. It 
 was a trial of endurance for master as well as apprentice, 
 but custom and good treatment tamed the wild nature of 
 the latter and converted him into an important factor in 
 Southern industries ; to this day none other has been found 
 to take his place in cotton or tobacco field. 
 
 He was also a form of property, and laws were made in 
 that connection. That instances of abuse on the part of the 
 owner arose was axiomatical — such is the history of life in 
 every sphere, and that was neither a Utopian age nor 
 country. 
 
 Having served its aim, the slave trade diminished, then 
 ceased. The attitude of those engaging in and encouraging 
 it altered, the base of operations changed, and there re- 
 mained only the people of the slave-holding states (upon 
 
whom now fell the responsibility of the support of these 
 nation wards) with any reason for interest in the subject. 
 Perhaps it was inevitable that diverging interest should 
 arise to cause the politics of the country to become affected 
 through distrust of those who owned that particular form 
 of property. 
 
 Originally acquired as a necessity, the slave's value les- 
 sened and the burden on his master increased, as other in- 
 terests divided hig attention. Legislation was resorted to 
 without success in the enactment of measures for the 
 abolishment of a system so firmly rooted. 
 
 In 1805, Mr. Jefferson wrote "I have given up all ex- 
 pectation of any early provision for the extinguishment of 
 slavery among us. There are many virtuous men who 
 would make any sacrifices to effect it, many equally virtu- 
 ous who believe it cannot be remedied." In 1814, however, 
 Mr. Jefferson again urged the policy of emancipation. 
 
 That many owners were in sympathy with this proposed 
 disposition of a vexed problem, is manifest from the records 
 of the courts, which show that slaves were sent to Liberia, 
 settled in the free states, permitted to purchase their 
 freedom, bequeathed land and liberty by the masters who 
 had held them. 
 
 A strange condition existed in the holding of slaves by 
 free negroes. These were to be found in nearly all of the 
 colonies and states where there were slaves. In some 
 counties they were numerous, while in others they were 
 unknown. In certain states this condition was at times 
 forbidden by law, but often continued in spite of the law, 
 tolerated or ignored; the laws upon the subject also varied 
 from time to time. In other states free negroes were given 
 the privilege of being masters by special statute or this 
 liberty was covered by general laws. 
 
 Certain good was accomplished by the transportation of 
 the African savage to a congenial clime among those who 
 
trained him to become a useful citizen. Under the tutelage 
 of his master, he was guided, stage by stage, along the path- 
 way to civilization by the law he recognized in his native 
 land — that of coercion — till he attained his present status. 
 Standing upon this vantage ground, it remains for him to 
 work out his further advancement and to discover the posi- 
 tion he can maintain. In the fact that some have made 
 strides forward, and thus fitted themselves as leaders of the 
 race, lies the hope and inspiration for the rest, an encourag- 
 ing factor being the imitative faculty with which many are 
 gifted. 
 
 Criticism today discovers that in the portrayal of the 
 character of "Uncle Tom" Mrs. Stowe paid a glowing 
 tribute to the achievement of the Southern master. Africa 
 has not done as much for the brother left upon her soil, 
 nor has the foreign missionary. "We may still read of such 
 practices as cannibalism on the western coast of the dark 
 continent — even along the trail of the religious enthusiast. 
 Taking then into account what has been accomplished, the 
 Kilaim that the Southern master was the most successful 
 .m^issionary can easily be proved. 
 
 We have no doubt but that some cause other than the 
 avarice of the white man led to the rescue of the man of 
 color from a life of ignorance and barbarism — to his ex- 
 patriation to this country of opportunity — to his settle- 
 ment under apprenticeship calculated to encourage self- 
 helpfulness by developing his capabilities. To this end he 
 passed through the probationary period of servitude. 
 
 General Early's review of the situation previous to the 
 war, as here presented, illustrates the point of view of the 
 people of the South. His attitude towards slavery 
 took its color from his familiarity with the institution as it 
 existed in the homes of those to whom it had become a 
 natural condition of life. It was so incorporated with their 
 daily living, and with the traditions of generations, that 
 
they became accustomed to it without considering the rea- 
 sons for its establishment. 
 
 The author was never an investor in slaves, although he 
 always possessed a negro servant. One who served 
 till age enfeebled him, was retired on a pension. Another, 
 cut short in his service by fatal disease, was respectfully 
 followed to his last resting place by the master upon whom 
 in health he had attended. His thoughtful care of his at- 
 tendants and his liberality when trouble overtook them, v/on 
 their affection and respect. 
 
 It may be understood then that interest in slaves as prop- 
 erty did not enter into his defense of slavery as an institu- 
 tion of his country. No selfish thought prompted the use 
 of his pen in the exposition of the unfairness of opinion 
 abroad — but, imbued with a keen sense of right, he was 
 actuated by the desire to dissipate that injustice which took 
 possession of many minds — coloring their views and prov- 
 ing barriers to their sympathies. 
 
 To make clear his point of view by stating the true 
 conditions which brought about slavery in the South and 
 to define the relation which existed betw^een master and 
 slave, was the purpose of General Early in writing this 
 real story of slavery as it was established in America, and 
 as it continued to exist in that section of which it became 
 the heritage. 
 
 R. H. Early. 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I— The African Slave Trade 11 
 
 II — Origin of Slavery in the United States 16 
 
 III — Legislation on the Question of State Establishment, 36 
 
 IV — Causes Leading to Secession — Secession of the 
 
 Cotton States 62 
 
 V — Action of the Border Slave States — Convention of 
 
 Virginia 88 
 
 VI— The Right to Withdraw 94 
 
 VII — Injurious Effect of Misinformation 110 
 
Come now let us reason together 
 
The Heritage of the South 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Ws:\t Afrtratt #kti]? ®rab^ 
 
 The struggle for independence made by the Sonthem 
 States of the American Union, grew out of questions of self 
 government arising mainly in regard to the institution of 
 African slavery as it existed in those states, and as that in- 
 stitution was the occasion for the development of the difficul- 
 ties which led immediately to the struggle, the conduct of the 
 states lately forming the Southern Confederacy has been 
 misunderstood, therefore, misrepresented, with the effect of 
 casting upon them not only the odium of originating the 
 war, but even for the existence and continuance of slavery 
 itself. 
 
 Much misapprehension has existed in the minds even of 
 intelligent foreigners upon these subjects and it is therefore 
 not inappropriate to take a retrospective view of the history 
 of slavery in general and especially of the slave trade and 
 of slavery in the United States, as well as of the questions 
 which led to the secession of the Southern States and to the 
 war consequent thereon. 
 
 It is said that the Portuguese began the traffic in slaves 
 on the coast of Africa in the 15th century, and that at the 
 beginning of the 16th century negro slaves had become quite 
 common in Portugal. 
 
 After the discovery of America, the Spaniards made 
 slaves of the Indians and employed them in their first set- 
 tlements in the newly discovered country, but the supply 
 not being found sufficient and the Indians not being very 
 well adapted for the purpose in the tropical regions, negro 
 slaves were introduced from Africa — the first being im- 
 
12 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 ported into Hispaniola (St. Domingo), in the year 1503. 
 The example of Spain in regard to the use of negro slaves 
 in her American Colonies was f ollov/ed by all the other 
 nations of Europe, who undertook the colonization of the 
 newly found continent and islands, to-wit : the Portuguese, 
 English, French, Dutch, Danes and Swedes. 
 
 Sir John Hawkins, an English admiral and adventurer, 
 was the first Englishman known to have engaged in the 
 African slave trade, and he carried his first cargo to the 
 Spanish West India islands about the year 1562. Eeport 
 says that Queen Elizabeth became a partner in and shared 
 the profits of his subsequent voyages in the prosecution of 
 "the trade. From that time the African slave trade became 
 a regular branch of English commerce, and was conducted 
 in its first stages principally under monopolies granted to 
 companies, in the profits of which members of the Royal 
 family, noblemen, courtiers and churchmen, as well as mer- 
 chants, shared, as was the practice in those days in all im- 
 portant branches of commerce. 
 
 From the restriction under Charles II, the African trade, 
 including that in slaves, was monopolized by the Royal 
 African Company" for a number of years; and that com- 
 pany built and established, on the coast of Africa, forts and 
 factories for the purpose of facilitating and protecting the 
 trade; but in the year 1698, the slave trade was thrown 
 open to private traders, upon the payment to the company 
 of a certain percentage towards the support of its forts and 
 factories. 
 
 The growing demand in Europe for colonial products 
 now gave a new impulse to the slave trade, and its profits 
 were very great. It was not only recognized by the govern- 
 ment, but was sustained by the universal public sentiment 
 in England, and was fostered and cherished by Parliament 
 as a lucrative traffic. 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 13 
 
 In the Tear 1713. by the treaty of Utrecht, the Assienio, 
 a contract originally entered into by the Spanish govern- 
 ment with a company of French merchants for a monopoly 
 by the latter of the trade in slaves to Spanish America, was^ 
 assigned to the South Sea Company. By the terms of this 
 contract 4.800 negro slaves vere to be furnished to the 
 Spanish colonies annually for thirty years, the company 
 being privileged to introduce as many more as could be 
 sold. 
 
 In this company Queen Anne and the King of Spain 
 became stockholders, as did a large portion of the nobility, 
 gentry, churchmen, and merchants of England. England 
 thus sought a monopoly of the entire slave trade, at least 
 so far as her ovm and the Spanish colonies were concerned. 
 The exclusive privileges granted to the Royal African Com- 
 pany having expired, in the year 1750 the British Govern- 
 ment undertook to maintain the forts and factories on the 
 African coast at its ovtl expense, and the slave trade vras 
 thrown open to free competition on the part of its citizens. 
 A great increase of the trade now took place, and England 
 had become the leading nation in that trade, which was 
 carried on chiefly from the ports of Bristol and LiA^rpool, 
 but otlier ports including that of London shared in it — the 
 TVest Indies furnishing the principal market, but a con- 
 siderable number were also introduced into the colonies of 
 North America. 
 
 In the meantime the Puritan settlers in New England, 
 under the allurements of the high profits of the trade, had 
 been tempted to engage in it from the time of the earliest 
 settlements there, which they did by evading the monopolies 
 and restrictions in favor of English merchants, and as Xew 
 England rum was mainly used in the traffic, by the Puritans, 
 the Parliament of Great Britain had, at the instance of 
 English merchants, passed an act, called the ''^Molasses 
 
14 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Act" imposing duties on molasses, sugar and rum imported 
 into the colonies from the French and Dutch West Indies, 
 for the purpose of preventing interference with the English 
 trade in slaves. 
 
 Numerous acts of the colonial legislatures imposing duties 
 on the importation of slaves, had also been vetoed or re- 
 pealed by royal proclamation, because they were regarded 
 and styled impediments to British commerce not to be 
 favoured, ' ' and all such acts continued to be vetoed and re- 
 pealed down to the time of the American Revolution, except 
 in the solitary case of Virginia, when, after repeated acts 
 imposing such duties had been vetoed or repealed, privilege 
 was finally given to the colonial legislature in 1734, to im- 
 pose a duty to be paid by the colonial purchaser and not 
 the English seller. 
 
 But it was not by fostering the slave trade and prosecut- 
 ing any restrictions on it, only, that the British govern- 
 ment made itself responsible for African slavery in its 
 American colonies. In the year 1730 seven of the principal 
 Cherokee Chiefs from the unsettled country west of South 
 Carolina, were carried to England by Sir Alexander Cum- 
 ming, and while there they were induced to enter into a 
 treaty with the Board of Trade then having charge of 
 colonial affairs, by which provision was made for the return 
 to their owners, by the Indians, of all runaway slaves ; and 
 in the year 1732, an act of parliament was passed ''for the 
 more speedy recovery of debts in America" by English 
 creditors, among the provisions of which was one subjecting 
 slaves to execution in judgments for all demands. While 
 England thus became so identified with the introduction of 
 African slavery into America, all the commercial nations 
 of Europe were likewise implicated in the trade; andjif 
 England took the lead in, it, that fact was owing to the 
 superior intelligence and energy of her merchants and 
 
/ 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 15 
 
 traders, and not to_any qualnis_of conscience on the part 
 of other nations. 
 
 In fact during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, until 
 towards the close of the latter, when a very few "philan- 
 thropists" appeared, there was no sentiment in any Chris- 
 tian or unchristian country which regarded the reduction 
 of the negroes of Africa to slavery as opposed to moral 
 right or religious duty, or in any other light than as a 
 blessing to the negroes themselves and Bt great benefit to 
 their owners. 
 
 It is a fact, not undeserving of notice, in reviewing the 
 conduct of England in forcing African slaves upon her 
 American colonies, that during the whole period from the 
 settlement to the revolt of those colonies, all trade with 
 them to and from Ireland was absolutely forbidden, and 
 hence it is that the Irish formed so inconsiderable an ele- 
 ment in their population previous to the Revolution. The 
 native Irish were then regarded by their rulers as having 
 but few more rights than the negroes of Africa. 
 
 Having thus briefly shown the origin and progress of the 
 slave trade, I will now trace the settlement of the colonies, 
 which afterwards became the United States, and the intro- 
 duction of slavery into them. 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 The first permanent settlement within the limits of the 
 United States — as they became afterwards — to be estab- 
 lished, was that of Florida, which was begun by the Span- 
 iards in the year 1564. Slavery was introduced into 
 Florida, as it was into all the Spanish colonies, and that 
 colony remained under the control of Spain until the year 
 1763, when it was ceded to Great Britain, at the close of 
 the war which resulted in the cession of Canada, and the 
 territory east of the Mississippi by France to the same 
 power, but in 1783, after the recognition of the inde- 
 pendence of the United States, Florida along with that part 
 of Louisiana east of the Mississippi and south of the 31st 
 degree of latitude, which had been ceded by France, was re- 
 ceded to Spain, and remained a Spanish colony until the 
 year 1821, when it was ceded to the United States ; slavery 
 continuing to exist there under all these changes. 
 
 The next permanent settlement in point of time, was that 
 of Virginia by the English in the year 1607. In the year 
 1620, twenty negro slaves were brought to Jamestown in 
 Virginia by a Dutch man-of-war and sold to the colonists, 
 but the number of slaves in that colony remained so small 
 for a long time, that there was no legislative enactment 
 recognizing the existence of slavery for more than forty 
 years after the first introduction of it. 
 
 The reduction of Indians to slavery was prohibited in 
 Virginia from the beginning, and in the year 1658 by the 
 revised laws adopted in that colony, the Indians were pro- 
 tected in the possession of their lands, and in order to 
 secure the Indian children, placed with the colonists for 
 
THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 17 
 
 education, from being sold as slaves, the transfer of their 
 service was forbidden. In the revised code adopted in 
 1662, very humane provisions were contained for the pro- 
 tection of the Indians, in the enjoyment of their lands, and 
 it was enacted that no Indians entertained as servants 
 should be sold into slavery for a longer period than English 
 indented servants of like age. In the same year, the first 
 act was passed by the colonial legislature recognizing the 
 existence of slavery, and it was to the effect that children 
 should be held as bond or free "according to the condition 
 of the mothers." 
 
 This law recognized the generally received principle that 
 slavery was valid according to the laws of nations, but did 
 not itself enact slavery. That principle prevailed uni- 
 versally, all over the world at that time, and had prevailed 
 since the foundation, being recognized in the bible. 
 
 In the year 1667, a law was passed providing that negro 
 slaves converted and baptized should not thereby become 
 free. The motive for the adoption of this law, was to secure 
 to slaves religious instruction, as an idea prevailed among 
 some that it was not lawful to hold a Christian in slavery, 
 and it was apprehended that masters might be indisposed, 
 under such impressions, to encourage their slaves to become 
 converted. In the same year it was provided by law that 
 ''all servants, not being Christians, imported by shipping 
 shall be slaves for life." 
 
 In 1671, there were in Virginia, according to a statement 
 furnished by Governor Berkeley, 40,000 inhabitants, includ- 
 ing in that number 2.000 "black slaves" and 6,000 Chris- 
 tian servants. The latter consisted of English servants 
 brought into the colony as indented servants for a term of 
 years, and sold — as was the practice in all of the colonies 
 at that day — to pay the expenses of their passage. 
 
18 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 During what was known as Bacon's rebellion in 1676, 
 the Virginia Assembly, acting under the coercion of Bacon 's 
 followers, passed an act for the prosecution of a war 
 against the Indians, and one of its provisions was that 
 all Indians taken prisoners in war should be held and ac- 
 coujQted slaves for life. This was the first and only pro- 
 vision of the laws of that colony authorizing the reduction 
 of Indians to slavery, though Indian slaves, not being 
 Christians, brought in by shipping might be held, under 
 the law of 1667; but there were no slaves made under this 
 forced enactment of Bacon 's, as the war was not prosecuted, 
 the rebellion having come to an end, by the death of its 
 leader, the same year. 
 
 A law was enacted in the year 1682, by which negroes, ' 
 Moors, mulattoes or Indians, brought into, the colony as 
 servants, by sea or land, were recognized as slaves ' ^ whether 
 converted to Christianity or not, provided they were not of 
 Christian parentage or country, or Turks or Moors in amity 
 with his majesty." 
 
 In the year 1692, an act was passed providing for ''a free 
 and open trade for all persons, at all times and at all places 
 with all Indians whatsoever," under which the Virginia 
 courts decided that no Indian could be reduced to slavery, 
 or brought into Virginia as a slave, after the passage of the 
 act. 
 
 In the revised Code of Virginia, adopted in the year 
 1705, is contained the final enactment upon the subject of 
 slavery during the colonial state, except some acts impos- 
 ing duties on imported slaves, and by that enactment it 
 was provided that ''all servants imported or brought into 
 this country by sea or land, who were not Christians in 
 their native country (except Turks and Moors in amity 
 with his majesty, and others who can make due proof of 
 their being free in England or any other Christian country 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 19 
 
 before tliey ^^-ere shipped in order to transportation tliitlier j 
 shall be aecijiinted and be slaves, notwithstanding a con- 
 version to Christianity afterwards : and it was further pro- 
 vided — as in the hrst act on the subject — for "'all children 
 to be bond or free according to the condition of their 
 mothers. ' ' 
 
 The Virginia Assembly had passed, from time to time, 
 acts imposing a duty of twenty shillings a head on all im- 
 ported slaves, and this being renewed in 1723. was repealed 
 by royal proclamation, but the Board of Trade in England 
 intimated that they had no objection to a duty on import-d 
 negroes, provided it was exacted from the colonial pur- 
 chaser, and not from the English seller : and in 1734 an act 
 was passed imposing a duty of five per cent, to be paid by 
 the purchaser, viiicli was su]\sequently increased and 
 reached as high as twenty per cent. 
 
 In the year 1772. the House of Burgesses of Virginia 
 adopted an address to George III. declaring the importa- 
 tion of negroes from Africa to be an inhuman trade and 
 asking that all restraints be removed from the passage of 
 acts to check ""that pernicious commerce, which request 
 was not granted. 
 
 After the commencement of the difficulties which led to 
 the Eevolution. the Virginia convention, which assembled 
 the 1st of August. 177-1. and took upon itself the actual 
 management of the ah'airs of the colony, ad'jpted among 
 its first acts, a resolution tC' import ""no more slaves, nor 
 British goods, nor tea,"" Practically this resolution put 
 an end rorevr^r to The African slave trade so far as Virgima 
 was concerned, and its abolition was subse^niently con- 
 firmed during th^ war of the Eevolution by a move f'jrmal 
 act pa.^sed by the legislatune in the year 177S. prohibit- 
 ing the impc'rtation of slaves from any cpuarter. whether hy 
 sea or land, and providing that all brought into the State 
 
20 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 in violation of the law should be free. Slaves brought in 
 by citizens of other of the United States coming into Vir- 
 ginia as actual residents, and those inherited by citizens of 
 Virginia in other States of the Union and brought in by 
 them being exempted from the operation of the act. In 
 addition to the grant of freedom to the slaves themselves 
 heavy penalties were imposed on both the buyer and seller 
 who violated the act. In adopting this prohibition, Virginia 
 was ahead of all the States in the Union except the little 
 State of Delaware, and its action preceded the abolition of 
 the slave trade, by England, thirty years. 
 
 The citizens of Virginia had never engaged in the slave 
 trade as importers, and were merely the purchasers from 
 others — its legislature being prohibited from interfering 
 with the trade. 
 
 About the year 1610, trading posts were established by 
 ^ the Dutch within the present limits of New York, and the 
 name of New Netherland was given to the territory claimed, 
 including that of New York, New Jersey, or the J ersey, and 
 some other. Actual colonization began within the present 
 limits of New York, under the authority of the Dutch 
 government in the year 1629, the traders located in those 
 limits having been previously engaged only in trade with 
 the Indians. Slavery was introduced with the first settlers 
 and was recognized and protected by law. In the year 1664, 
 New Netherland was conquered from its Dutch rulers, by 
 an English expedition under the authority of the Duke of 
 York, subsequently James II, to whom a royal grant of 
 the territory had been made. The province of New York 
 was then created out of New Netherland, though it came 
 again, temporarily, under the Dutch for portions of the 
 years 1673 and 1674. 
 
THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 21 
 
 Slavery was continued as it before existed until after the 
 Revolution. Vessels were fitted out in the port of New 
 York (first called New Amsterdam), for the slave trade at 
 an early period, and the merchants of that city engaged in 
 it without scruple ; some of them continued to be so engaged 
 until the traffic was prohibited by Congressional enactment. 
 
 The settlement next in point of time w^as that of Ply- 
 mouth, in the year 1620, within the present limits of the 
 State of Massachusetts. Slavery of the Indians and also 
 of negroes existed in this province from the beginning. The 
 settlement at Plj^mouth by the passengers of the May 
 Flower, though first in point of time, was not by any means, 
 the leading one in Massachusetts, and the Province of Ply- 
 mouth played comparatively an unimportant part in the 
 history of Massachusetts. The main settlement in that 
 colony was made in the year 1629, by John Winthrop and 
 his followers, Puritans emigrating directly^ from England, 
 professedly for the purpose of securing to themselves, and 
 their posterity, religious freedom. It was this settlement 
 which gave tone and character to Massachusetts, as well as 
 to all the other New England provinces, which were chiefly 
 offshoots from Massachusetts. 
 
 Though professing to be seeking a home in this wilder- 
 ness for the purpose of enjoying and establishing religious 
 liberty, the settlers of Massachusetts established as prescrip- 
 tive and despotic a theocracy as the world has ever seen. A 
 celebrated humorist has aptly said that their idea of re- 
 ligious liberty consisted in enjoying their own opinions to 
 the fullest extent and preventing any body else from enjoy- 
 ing theirs. 
 
 Under their charter a government was established by the 
 colonists at Massachusetts Bay, which was entirely theo- 
 cratic in form and substance. To be a freeman, that is a 
 
22 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 citizen and voter, it was necessary to be a member of the 
 established church, which was the Congregational, and was 
 supported at the public expense. The members of that 
 church claimed to be God 's elect, and they showed no mercy 
 to any other sect and allowed of no dissent whatever; all 
 others were heretics or heathens. 
 
 From the beginning, the colonists at Massachusetts Bay, 
 as well as those at Plymouth, regarded the ' ' heathen around 
 them'' and all their possessions as fit spoil for the ''Saints.'' 
 Accordingly they began at a very early period to help them- 
 selves. In the year 1637, in a war begun against the 
 Piquods, that tribe of Indians was exterminated by 
 slaughter and capture. Of several hundred prisoners taken, 
 the adult males, constituting but a small portion of the 
 captives, were sent to the West Indies and sold into slavery, 
 while the women and children were distributed among the 
 colonists as slaves also; this was done by the constituted 
 authorities. 
 
 These colonists commenced the building of ships in the 
 year 1634, and engaged in commerce, the African slave 
 trade, being, from the beginning, a part of that commerce. 
 By the year 1640, six large vessels had been built, and 
 fitted out by the Boston merchants, which were sent on 
 voyages to Spain, Madeira and the Canaries with cargoes 
 of fi^h and staves, and brought back, among other things, 
 cargoes of negroes from the coast of Africa for sale at 
 Barbadoes and the other British West India Islands. 
 
 It was not a great while before the religious persecution 
 in Massachusetts drove off a number of dissenters from the 
 established faith, among them being the celebrated Roger 
 Williams, the founder of the Baptists in America. These 
 "heretics," as they were called, took refuge within the 
 present limits of Rhode Island, where they established, at 
 different points, separate governments for themselves, all of 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 23 
 
 which were subsequently merged in that of Rhode Island. 
 Emigrants from Massachusetts also established themselves 
 at different points in the present limits of Connecticut and 
 formed two separate governments, one called New Haven 
 and the other Connecticut, which were afterwards united 
 under that of Connecticut. Massachusetts set up a claim 
 of jurisdiction over all of these settlements, but finally had 
 to abandon it. 
 
 In the year 1641, the general court of Massachusetts, in 
 which the legislative power was vested, adopted a code of 
 fundamental laws called "Fundamentals" or "Body of 
 Liberties." which were compiled from two separate drafts 
 reported by those "Godly ministers," "the great Cotton" 
 as he was called, and Xathaniel Ward, who had been ap- 
 pointed commissioners for that purpose. One of the "Lib- 
 erties" provided that "There shaU never be any bond- 
 slavery, villanage nor captivity among lis, ^unless it be law- 
 ful captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as will- 
 ingly sell themselves or are sold unto us, and these shall 
 have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law 
 of God, established in Israel, requires. This exempts none 
 from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority." 
 This surely was a one-sided idea of religious liberty; the 
 "elect" gave themselves abundant liberty to do as they 
 pleased in the matter. This "Fundamental" was twenty 
 years in advance of any legislative enactment in Virginia 
 recognizing the existence of slavery. 
 
 A confederacy was formed, in the year 1643, between the 
 colonies of Massachusetts. Plymouth, Connecticut and New 
 Haven, called the "United Colonies of New England" into 
 which the "heretics" of Rhode Island were not permitted 
 to enter. Slavery existed by law everj^here now in New 
 England, including Rhode Island, and one of the stipula- 
 tions of the compact, by which the United Colonies were 
 
24 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 bound, was that fugitive servants or slaves should be de- 
 livered up when fleeing from one province to another. The 
 stipulation was almost in the identical terms of that long 
 afterwards incorporated into the United States Constitution 
 upon the same subject. 
 
 The harsh treatment pursued towards dissenters, includ- 
 ing the most delicate females, who were sometimes stripped 
 naked and whipped through the streets, and the trials and 
 execution of persons as witches, furnish revolting details 
 of the conduct of the ' ' elect, ' ' but it is not intended to refer 
 more particularly to that here. One fact, however, in 
 regard to the history of Virginia and Massachusetts may be 
 properly mentioned — as descendants of the latter 's colonists 
 have arraigned at the bar of public opinion, the people of 
 Virginia, as well as the whole South upon the subject of 
 slavery — and that fact is very suggestive. 
 
 In the year 1644, the Indians in Virginia, under the 
 instigation of Opechancanough, successor of Powhatan, 
 undertook to exterminate the colonists in that province, 
 when five hundred persons, who were engaged in celebrat- 
 ing a victory of the king over the Parliamentary army in 
 the war then raging, were massacred at the first surprise. 
 A ship was sent to Boston to procure powder for the de- 
 fence of the colony, but the general court declined to 
 furnish it. This refusal was owing to the fact that the 
 people of Virginia sympathized with the king in the pend- 
 ing struggle, and to the further fact that three ministers 
 sent out from New England at the instance of some of the 
 ' ' elect, ' ' who had found their way into Virginia, were sent 
 out of the province by Governor Berkeley for violating the 
 law — Governor Winthrop declaring that the massacre of the 
 Virginians was a punishment ' ' for their reviling the Gospel 
 and those faithful ministers." 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 25 
 
 A law was adopted in Connecticut, 1650, for selling 
 debtors for debt, which remained in force more than a 
 century and a half; and at the same time a law was 
 adopted, upon the recommendation of the commissioners 
 for the United Colonies of New England, providing that 
 Indians refusing or neglecting satisfaction for injuries 
 might be siezed and delivered to the party injured "either 
 to serve, or to be shipped out and exchanged for negroes, 
 as the case will justly bear." About this time, the "her- 
 etics" at Warwick, one of the settlements in Ehode Island, 
 complained that the authorities of Massachusetts had insti- 
 gated the Indians to commit depredations upon them, and 
 Easton, subsequently governor of Ehode Island, was re- 
 ported to have said of the people of Massachusetts, that 
 "the elect had the Holy Ghost and the devil indwelling." 
 Upon hearing of the execution of two persons for witch- 
 craft, the people of Warwick exclaimed "There are no 
 witches on earth, nor devils, but the ministers of New Eng- 
 land and such as they. ' ' 
 
 In 1676, a large number of captives, taken in the war 
 against King Philip, in which all of New England was 
 united, were made slaves of, many of them were sent from 
 Boston to Bermuda and sold, including the infant son of 
 King Philip, who, some of the most prominent ministers in- 
 sisted, should be slain for his father's sins, though the more 
 remunerative expedient of selling him was adopted. The 
 captives who fell into the hands of the Rhode Islanders were 
 distributed as slaves, and Roger Williams, the expelled 
 "heretic" from Massachusetts, received a boy for his share. 
 A large body of Indians assembled at Dover, at the conclu- 
 sion of the war, to make peace , were treacherously captured 
 and some tv>^o hundred of them were sent to Boston, where 
 some vrere hung and the rest shipped off to be sold as slaves. 
 
26 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 In the reign of James II, the charter of Massachusetts 
 was vacated by legal proceedings, and in the year 1691, a 
 new charter was issued providing for the appointment of 
 the governor by the crown and for toleration to all religious 
 sects. This gave great dissatisfaction to the ruling church ; 
 and the theocratic power was in a great measure destroyed, 
 but the controlling influence of the old religious party still 
 prevailed in the general court, though restrained by the 
 royal governor. By this charter the province of Plymouth 
 was incorporated with that of Massachusetts, as was the 
 district of Maine, but New Hampshire, previously under 
 the government of Massachusetts, was soon created into a 
 separate province. 
 
 In 1701, the town of Boston instructed its representatives 
 to propose "putting a period to negroes being slaves," but 
 no action was taken, and these scruples were very short 
 lived, the enslaving of Indians and the prosecution of the 
 slave trade being still continued. The manufacture of New 
 England rum, which was in progress, furnished a very easy 
 means of prosecuting the trade, as that article was freely 
 exchanged on the coast of Africa with the natives for slaves. 
 One part of the inhabitants being imbruited by the detest- 
 able liquor, while the other was carried off into bondage. 
 The traders of New England, composed of all classes, in- 
 cluding church dignitaries, participated largely in the 
 profits resulting from the impulse given to the slave trade 
 in 1698, and it was sustained by public sentiment in those 
 colonies as well as in the mother country. 
 
 In 1704, in the intercolonial war with Canada, Massa- 
 chusetts offered a reward of $66 per head for Indian pris- 
 oners under ten years of age and double as much for older 
 prisoners or for scalps. 
 
 In 1712, Massachusetts passed an act prohibiting the 
 further importation of Indian slaves on pain of the forfei- 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 27 
 
 ture of the slaves, but this prohibition did not arise from 
 feelings of humanity for the Indians ; the reasons given for 
 it were, that the Indians were "of a surly and revengeful 
 spirit, rude and insolent in their behavior, and very un- 
 governable" and because ''this province being differently 
 circumstanced from the plantations in the islands, and hav- 
 ing great numbers of the Indian natives of the country 
 within and about them and at this time under the sorrowful 
 effects of their rebellion and hostilities." 
 
 The merchants of England having complained that the 
 New Englanders were infringing upon their rights by en- 
 gaging in the slave trade, which the New England traders 
 now mainly carried on with rum, for the manufacture of 
 which molasses was imported from elsewhere than the 
 British West India Islands, an act of Parliament was passed 
 in 1733, imposing a duty on molasses, sugar and rum im- 
 ported from the French and Dutch West Indies. This act 
 was called the "Molasses Act," and was the first of the 
 series of Acts bringing about the discontent which led to 
 the Revolution. The traders of New England man- 
 aged to elude this act as they had done the restrictions put 
 upon the slave trade for the benefit of the English mer- 
 chants. The manufacture of rum and the trade from all 
 the ports of New England still continued with great activity 
 up to the commencement of the Eevolution, and served to 
 build up the commerce of that section, as the same trade 
 had built up the commerce of the mother country. 
 
 Some slaves were imported into all the New England 
 colonies, but as there was not very profitable employment 
 for them there, and it was vastly more remunerative to sell 
 than to work them, the former was preferred to the latter 
 mode of dealing with the subject and in it they found a 
 rich reward. The markets for the slaves were found in the 
 West Indies and in the Southern colonies, where the soil, 
 
28 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 climate and productions were miicli more suitable for 
 African slave labor, than in the cold regions of the north. 
 There were, however, in the year 1754, 2,448 negro slaves in 
 Massachusetts over 16 years of age, 1,000 of them being in 
 Boston, and the whole number exceeded 4,000, while in 
 Connecticut and Ehode Island the proportion of slaves to 
 the white population was greater than in Massachusetts. 
 
 Maryland was settled under the proprietorship of Lord 
 Baltimore in the year 1634, and slavery was introduced into 
 that colony also, the laws recognizing and regulating it 
 being very similar to those of Virginia. In 1649, an act 
 was passed by which the kidnapping of Indians' to make 
 them slaves, was made felony, and in 1663, the first act 
 recognizing slavery was passed, being similar in its features 
 to that of Virginia. The people of Maryland did not en- 
 gage in the slave trade and were merely purchasers. 
 
 The first settlement in the Carolinas was within the 
 limits of what became South Carolina, and was made in the 
 latter half of the 16th century by French Huguenots, but 
 that settlement proved a failure. An attempt to make a 
 settlement in North Carolina under the auspices of Sir 
 Walter Raleigh also proved abortive. The first permanent 
 settlement in North Carolina was by Virginia emigrants to 
 the northern part of it, some years previous to the charter, 
 which was granted to some English noblemen and others for 
 both of the Carolinas. In 1665, North Carolina was taken 
 possession of under this charter, and a government was es- 
 tablished therefor. In 1670, South Carolina was perman- 
 ently settled. Though embraced in the same charter. North 
 and South Carolina now became separate provinces with 
 distinct governments. Slavery was introduced into both 
 provinces and was recognized by law ; the number of slaves 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 29 
 
 continuing to increase as the population increased and the 
 capacities of the soil became kno^^vn, which proved to be 
 very suitable for slave labor. There was nothing special 
 in the history of slavery in these provinces during the 
 colonial state. The people did not engage in the slave 
 trade, but were merely purchasers from English and New 
 England traders; nor did they make slaves of the Indians 
 by whom they were surrounded. 
 
 The first settlers within the limits of New Jersey were 
 Swedes, who came over prior to 1630. New Jersey, or East 
 and West Jersey as it was called then, wa^ settled in 1665 
 by English emigrants, and two governments were organized 
 therefor under grants from the Duke of York, which were 
 subsequently consolidated into one. Slavery was intro- 
 duced into that province as it had been in all of the others, 
 but the number of slaves did not become as numerous as in 
 the more Southern colonies, because the soil and climate 
 were not as suitable for slave labor. 
 
 Pennsylvania was settled in 1682 under the proprietor- 
 ship of "William Penn, and the government was organized 
 by him, including within its jurisdiction Delaware also. 
 Slavery was introduced into this colony, and slaves were 
 held without scruple by the Quaker followers of Penn. In 
 1692, George Keith, a Scotch Quaker who had been the 
 champion of the Quakers against their persecutors — the 
 Reverend Cotton Mather of witch notoriety, and the other 
 Massachusetts divines — attacked negro slavery as incon- 
 sistent with Quaker principles. For this he was ^'disavowed'' 
 by the yearly meeting of the Quakers of Pennsylvania, as a 
 schismatic, and he instituted a meeting of his own called 
 ''Christian Quakers." For publishing a reply to a publi- 
 cation against him, he was fined by the Quaker magistrates 
 of Philadelphia and he subsequently became disgusted 
 
30 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 with the whole sect, turned Episcopalian, went to England 
 and took orders there, and was one of the first missionaries 
 sent to the American colonies by the ''Society for propo- 
 gating the gospel in foreign parts. ' ' 
 
 In 1699, Penn proposed to provide by law for the mar- 
 riage, religious instruction and kind treatment of slaves, 
 but he met with no response from the Quaker legislature of 
 Pennsylvania. The ''spirit" had not then moved the Qua- 
 kers to "bear their testimony" against slavery and conse- 
 quently they did not "testify." In 1712, the legislature 
 imposed a duty of £20 on all negroes and Indians brought 
 into the province by land or water, a drawback to be 
 allowed in case of re-exportation within twenty days, and 
 slaves brought in and concealed were to be sold. This act 
 did not owe its origin to abhorrence of slavery itself, but 
 was passed in a fright at some alleged plots for insurrec- 
 tions, which were apprehended in consequence of one which 
 had been discovered in New York. The act was disallowed 
 by Queen Anne, and the same legislature replied to a peti- 
 tion in favor of emancipating the negroes, "That it was 
 neither just nor expedient to set them at liberty." This 
 was the only "testimony" borne by the Quakers of Penn- 
 sylvania against slavery prior to the war of the Revolution. 
 
 Delaware was originally settled by Swedes at the same 
 time the settlement was made in New Jersey, and it had 
 been embraced under the same government with Pennsyl- 
 vania at the time of Penn's settlement, but it was made a 
 separate province, by his consent, in the year 1691. Dela- 
 ware is entitled to the credit of being not only the first of 
 the provinces but the first country in the world to adopt an 
 express enactment prohibiting the introduction of slaves 
 within its limits. This it did in the year 1771, but the act 
 was vetoed by Governor Penn, the grandson of Wm. Penn, 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 31 
 
 and the representative of the crown. The prohibition was 
 incorporated into the first State Constitution adopted in 
 the year 1776. Delaware was, howeA'er. a slave colony and 
 remained a slave State. 
 
 The first permanent settlement within the limits of the 
 territory of Louisiana, which embraced a very large tract 
 of country, was made under the auspices of D'lbber^uUe, 
 a French Canadian, at Mobile, within the limits of the 
 present State of Alabama in the year 1702. Bienville, 
 governor of Louisiana, located Xew Orleans, the first perma- 
 nent settlement within the limits of the State of Louisiana, 
 in the year 1718. Slavery was introduced into the province 
 of Louisiana under the direction of the French government, 
 a contract being made for that purpose with Anthony 
 Crozat. a French merchant, to whom the province and a 
 monopoly of its trade were granted. Crozat resigned his 
 patent in 1717. and a monopoly of the trade for twenty- 
 five years was granted to "the company of the "West."' com- 
 monly called ' ' The ]\Iississippi Company, ' ' ^vith which the 
 famous Law was connected. By its contract, the company 
 undertook to introduce 6.000 whites and half as many negro 
 slaves into the province. Slavery thus became established 
 in Louisiana under the express stipulation of the French 
 government, and continued to exist under its authority. In 
 1763. by the treaty made between England. France and 
 Spain, at the close of the war in which all three nations had 
 been engagecL France ceded to England. Canada and all of 
 the territory east of the ^Mississippi river, except the island 
 of Orleans, and to Spain all of Louisiana which had not 
 been ceded to England, while Spain ceded Florida to Eng- 
 land. In 1783, England re-ceded Florida to Spain, and at 
 the same time ceded to the same power that part of Louisi- 
 ana north of the 31st degree of latitude which had been 
 
32 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 acquired from France. The parts of the original province 
 of Louisiana thus re-united, remained a Spanish province 
 until the year 1801, when it was re-ceded to France, and 
 in 1803 it was ceded to the United States. Slavery had 
 continued to exist in the province, and the different parts 
 of it, and to be recognized as legal, during all of these 
 changes. 
 
 In 1733, Georgia was settled under the patronage of Gen- 
 eral Oglethorpe, of the British Army, and it was intended 
 as a humanitarian scheme for furnishing refuge to impov- 
 erished meritorious persons, and persecuted Continental 
 Protestants. The territory, together with the power to 
 legislate for twenty-one years, was granted to trustees resi- 
 dent in England. The trustees at first prohibited the intro- 
 duction of slaves, but under the humanitarian ideas with 
 which the colony was begun, it languished and proved a 
 miserable failure until the year 1749. The trustees were 
 then induced to permit the introduction of slaves, at the 
 instance, among others, of the celebrated preacher, Whit- 
 field, and his follower, Habersham, who earnestly interceded 
 for the permission — Habersham stating as a reason for the 
 introduction of slavery that ''Many of the poor slaves in 
 America have already been made freemen of the Heavenly 
 Jerusalem. ' ' 
 
 Slavery was thus introduced into Georgia, and the Colony 
 began at once to prosper and advanced with rapid strides. 
 
 The institution of slavery, it will thus be perceived, 
 existed at the time of the Eevolution, not only in all of the 
 revolting colonies, aclmowledged by law and sustained by 
 public sentiment at home and in the mother country, but 
 it existed in all of the territories, which afterwards became 
 a part of the United States, and was sanctioned by the senti- 
 ment of all of the Christian world. 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 33 
 
 But before this review of the slave trade and of slavery 
 in the British colonies in North America, is closed, it is 
 proper that England should receive credit for one incident 
 in her judicial history in regard to tlje subject. In the year 
 1763, the celebrated case of Somerset, a slave who had been 
 carried to England by his master from one of the British 
 West India Islands, came up before Lord ]\Iansfield in 
 Westminster Hall on a writ of lialeas corpus, and that dis- 
 tinguished Chief Justice of the King's Bench, in delivering 
 his opinion discharging the petition, said : ' ' The air of Eng- 
 land has long been too pure for a slave, and every man who 
 breathes it is free. ' ' 
 
 This declaration is the source of much pride to English- 
 men and Lord Campbell in his "Lives of the Chief Jus- 
 tices" goes into ecstasies over it. It is regarded as the 
 enunciation of the great principle that the common law of 
 England establishes universal freedom, and that wherever 
 it prevails it knocks the shackles from the slave and turns 
 him loose, a free man. Yet it was most probable that Somer- 
 set himself, and it was certain that his ancestor, if not him- 
 self, had been carried from Africa, in a ship that had been 
 fitted out under the protection of that very common law 
 by men breathing that same pure air, and sold into slavery 
 in a colony to which the same law under which he was re- 
 leased, had followed the colonists. Was ever so absurd a 
 farce enacted as that which was enacted by the Chief Jus- 
 tice of England, when he announced in Westminster Hall 
 before the assembled bar of London, that the air breathed 
 by a nation of slave-traders was too pure for the slave him- 
 self. Xone but an Englishman would have failed to dis- 
 cover its absurdity. Where then, was that "genius of uni- 
 versal emancipation" referred to at a later period at the 
 Irish Bar b}^ Curran, in such eloquent language, that it did 
 not waft these words on the wings of that pure air across 
 
34 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 the channel to the Emerald Isle, to the coasts of Africa, to 
 the plantations of America and the West Indies, or to the 
 banks of the Ganges ? Could not a breath of that pure air 
 be afforded at least for the ships of the British Navy, then 
 so sedulously guarding English slave ships through the 
 horrors of the Middle Passage" from French cruisers? 
 No ! that pure air was ' * fixed air ' ' which could not extend 
 beyond the shores of England, and the wings of the 
 "genius of universal emancipation" were so clipped that 
 it was a more clumsy domestic bird than the barnyard fowl. 
 
 At the same time that these celebrated words were uttered 
 in Westminster Hall, the ministers of State, and king, lords 
 and commons in Parliament, were cherishing with a foster- 
 ing hand that very trade which had consigned Somerset 
 to slavery, and was then consigning thousands upon thous- 
 ands of his native countrymen to the same fate while the 
 boasted navy of the "Mistress of the Seas" was escorting 
 the human cargoes in safety and triumph to their destina- 
 tion, and in the colonies writs and executions were being 
 issued, according to forms framed in Westminster Hall, to 
 enforce from the sale of the bodies of human beings, the 
 collection of debts, due to men who breathed the "pure air 
 of England, ' ' and prided themselves on the liberties of the 
 common law. 
 
 This decision of Lord Mansfield was one of those acts of 
 judicial legislation for which he was so famous, and it was 
 not the law. Quite as able judges as himself had previously 
 decided the validity and legality of slavery even in Eng- 
 land, and Lord Stowell, as able a judge and purer man 
 than he was, subsequently ruled very differently from the 
 decision in the Somerset case. England had no use for 
 slaves at home, as her toiling millions supplied every de- 
 mand for labor or service. Had it been to her interest to 
 have had African slaves within her own limits, her pure 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 35 
 
 air would have accommodated itself to their constitution. 
 She never sacrificed her material interests to her philan- 
 thropy. Notwithstanding the decision of Lord Mansfield, 
 it was twenty-five years before the prime minister of Eng- 
 land (the younger Pitt) ventured to go even so far, as to 
 bring in a bill to mitigate the horrors '^of the Middle Pas- 
 sage," by limiting the number of slaves to be taken on 
 board a ship — it was forty-five years before another prime 
 minister ventured to advocate the abolition of the slave 
 trade, and seventy-one years before slavery was abolished 
 in the limited slave colonies left to England after the 
 American Eevolution, and that was not done until this 
 small interest was so far overshadowed by other interests 
 as to make it of no importance to her. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 In order to understand the status of the slave trade and 
 slavery in the United States after their independence was 
 achieved, it is necessary to glance at the progress of the 
 Revolution and the adoption of the new form of govern- 
 ment after its close. 
 
 In 1774, the contest between the mother country and the 
 English Colonies of North America approached a crisis, and 
 the first Continental Congress of delegates from the thir- 
 teen colonies assembled at Philadelphia on the 5th of Sep- 
 tember of that year. Fifteen articles, as the basis of an 
 "American Association," were adopted and signed on the 
 20th of October, in which, among other things the slave 
 trade was denounced, and entire abstinence from it and 
 from any trade with those engaged in it, was enjoined. 
 This had been preceded by the Virginia resolution on the 
 same subject more than two months, but the war which 
 ensued put an end to the trade during its continuance, 
 much more effectually than any resolutions or laws could 
 have done. 
 
 The "Declaration of Colonial Rights" adopted by this 
 Congress enumerated eleven acts of Parliament as having 
 been passed in derogation of the rights of the colonies 
 since the accession of George III to the throne, to- wit : 
 
 1. "The Sugar Act." — This act was a modification of 
 the "Molasses Act," by which the duties on molasses and 
 sugar were lowered and a few unimportant articles were 
 added to the list of those taxed. 
 
 2. "The Stamp Act." — This act never had been exe- 
 cuted and had been repealed. 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 37 
 
 3 and 4. ''The Two Quartering Acts."— The first of 
 these acts had been passed in 1765, after the close of the 
 war against the French in Canada, which resulted in the 
 conquest of that country from France, greatly to the ad- 
 vantage of the northern colonies. It was intended to 
 quarter troops on the colonies for their protection against 
 the Indians and was in accordance with the views of the 
 elder Pitt, who intimated that the colonies ought to bear a 
 portion of the burthen of a w^ar made for their benefit. By 
 the terms of this act, the colonial authorities were required 
 to furnish quarters, firewood, bedding, drink, soap, and 
 candles to the troops sent into the colonies. It had been re- 
 sisted or evaded and had been allowed to expire. 
 
 The second of these acts was a re-enactment of the first, 
 in consequence of the disturbance at Boston. 
 
 5. ''The Tea Act." — This act imposed a duty of three 
 pence a pound on tea imported into the colonies, and al- 
 lowed a drawback of the duty of a shilling a pound on the 
 tea imported into England, when re-shipped to the colonies ; 
 the practical effect of which was to lower the duties paid 
 by the colonists. 
 
 6. "The Act Suspending the New York Legislature." — 
 This act was passed in consequence of the continued refusal 
 of that legislature to comply with the terms of the quarter- 
 ing acts. 
 
 7 and 8. "The Acts For the Trials in Great Britain of 
 Offences Committed in America." — These acts were passed 
 in consequence of the resistance of all British authority at 
 Boston. 
 
 9. "The Boston Port Bill." — This act was passed in 
 consequence of the forcible destruction of tea in Boston 
 Harbor. 
 
38 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 10. ''The Act For Eegulating the Government of Mas- 
 sachusetts." — This Act was passed in consequence of the 
 continuous disturbances by the people of that colony. 
 
 11. ''The Quebec Act." — This act was for the govern- 
 ment of Canada, and the other colonies had no right to com- 
 plain, except so far as it extended to the country south of 
 the lakes and west of those colonies. 
 
 It is well to keep these causes of complaint in mind, when 
 considering the causes for the secession of the Southern 
 States previous to the late war, and the course pursued to- 
 wards those States. 
 
 In the war which resulted from the resistance to the acts 
 specified, was involved a great principle of self-government, 
 which the British government has since fully acknowledged 
 in the treatment of all her other colonies, but it must be 
 confessed that there was a good deal of turbulence and 
 violence exhibited by American colonists in the first stages 
 of the contest. Without depreciating the public spirit dis- 
 played by the people of Massachusetts during the war 
 which ensued, there can be no question but that by violence 
 and rashness the conflict was precipitated, and that much 
 forbearance was shown by some of the British military 
 officials. A candid review of the history of the difficulties 
 preceding actual hostilities must lead any honest mind to 
 the conclusion that while the British ministers acted un- 
 constitutionally and unwisely, as the quarrel approached its 
 crisis, the people of Massachusetts, with whom the conflict 
 began, exhibited a very turbulent spirit and often acted 
 with unwarranted violence. 
 
 The settlers of Massachusetts, on account of their pecul- 
 iar religious theories, had from the very beginning, been 
 impatient of all control from the mother country and 
 anxious to thrown it off. They had hailed the Common- 
 wealth with joy, had been greatly chagrined at the restora- 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 39 
 
 tion of the royal authority and. had been very much em- 
 bittered by the vacation of their charter and the los.- of the 
 theocratic form of government, and their ministry kept 
 alive the fires of discontent and fanned them into a flame 
 on all occasions. The same feeling existed throughout 
 New England. Virginia on the contrary had been always 
 a loyal colony and had not acknowledged the Parliament 
 or the Commonwealth in Cromwell's time, until compelled 
 to do so by a force sent for its conc^tiest. Its people had 
 hailed the restoration with delight and there was no senti- 
 ment in the colony demanding a separation from the 
 mother country which was not engendered by actual or 
 supposed infringement of their rights as British subjects. 
 Though the people of that colony had little direct interest 
 in the grievances complained of against the British govern- 
 ment, as the articles taxed entered very little into their 
 consumption, and no troops had been quartered among 
 them in an offensive manner since the Parliamentary ex- 
 pedition, they made common cause vith the people of I\Ias- 
 sachusetts, as it was a ciuestion of power which involved the 
 rights of all the colonies. The difference was that the peo- 
 ple of Massachusetts and Xew England were anxious to 
 bring on a separation, while those of Virginia were not, un- 
 less it was necessary for the protection of the rights of all 
 of the colonies. The statesmen of Virginia entered warmly 
 into the dispute both by speaking and writing, and when 
 the actual collision took place the people sprang to arms 
 and sent to Massachusetts aid in both men and provisions. 
 
 It was the attempt to coerce the people of Massachusetts, 
 in an unconstitutional manner, to compliance with uncon- 
 stitutional laws, on the part of the British government, 
 more than any actual grievances of their own. that aroused 
 the people of Virginia to action, as that coercion if success- 
 fully applied to one colony, might be used for the destruc- 
 
40 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 tion of all self-government in the others. This became the 
 traditional policy of Virginia as a sovereign State. After 
 the struggle began, she gave a leader to the continental 
 army, her wisest and best statesmen to the colonial councils, 
 her arms-bearing citizens to the ranks, and her resources 
 to the prosecution of the war. That war which was begun 
 ill Massachusetts, long after it ceased to exist within the 
 limits of that State, was finally, practically, ended on the 
 soil of Virginia, after that soil had been terribly ravaged 
 by the invading armies of Great Britain. 
 
 Motives similar to those which actuated Virginia, 
 prompted the action of all of the other Southern colonies, 
 and none suffered greater losses in war for the common de- 
 fence than South Carolina. This statement is not made in 
 order to claim for Virginia and the other Southern States 
 more than their due share of credit for services in the war 
 of the Revolution, nor to depreciate the valuable services 
 rendered by the more northern states of the confederation. 
 
 The war was prosecuted by the colonies as a confederacy 
 of sovereign States. The Continental Congress was in fact 
 but a congress of commissioners or embassadors, whose acts 
 derived their validity from the tacit adoption and sanction 
 of the several States, and the delegates were at all times 
 subject to recall and substitution, by the appointment of 
 others — a power which was repeatedly exercised. The Dec- 
 laration of Independence itself, was made in accordance 
 with powers expressly delegated for that purpose to the 
 representatives of the several appointing powers, and de- 
 rived its force not from the action of Congress, but from 
 the adoption of that action by those represented in that 
 body. 
 
 In the case of Virginia, her independence had been de- 
 clared by a convention of her own, and a State Government 
 had been actually organized in advance of the action of 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 41 
 
 Congress, and she was the first thus to assert her sover- 
 eignty. On the loth of May. 1776. the Virginia convention 
 resolved to adopt a bill of rights and frame a State govern- 
 ment, and on the 29th of June following, the government 
 was put into operation by the election of a governor and 
 other otficers — a Bill of Rights and State Constitution hav- 
 ing been framed and adopted in the meantime. 
 
 Articles of confederation were proposed in 1777. more 
 than a year after the adoption of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, for ratification by the thirteen sovereign States. 
 These articles reqtiired the unanimous ratification of all of 
 the States, and as Alaryland withheld her consent to this, 
 until the 1st of ]\Iarch. 17S1. they did not go into effect 
 until that time, In the meanwhile the Congress had con- 
 tmued to exercise its permissive powers in the prosecution 
 of the war. but it had no meaus of enforcing its edicts ex- 
 cept in the voluntary compliance of the several States. 
 
 The first three articles were as folLjws ; 
 
 Article I. Th^;^ style of this conft^deracy shall be '"'The 
 United States of America, " 
 
 Art. II. '"Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom 
 and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right, 
 which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to 
 the United States in Congress assembled." 
 
 Art. III. ■ • The several States hereby severally enter into 
 a fii-m league of friendship with each other for their 
 common defence, the security of their liabilities and their 
 mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist 
 each other against all force opposed to. or attacks made 
 upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sover- 
 eignty, trade or any other pretence whatever.'' 
 
 The other articles of confederation conferred upon Con- 
 gress Very little more power than it had been exercising. 
 All important measures required the concurrence of nine 
 
42 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 States, the votes being given by the delegates from each 
 State as a unit, and not in their individual capacity. 
 
 The right of the States to recall their delegates and to 
 appoint others was expressly reserved, so that five States 
 acting together, could at any time block the government, 
 and the latter had no means of enforcing its decrees when 
 made, but had to rely upon the voluntary compliance of 
 the States as before. It will thus be seen that the govern- 
 ment organized under the articles of confederation re- 
 mained still a mere confederacy of several independent 
 States. When peace was finally made with Great Britain, 
 that power recognized the sovereignty and independence of 
 the several States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Ehode 
 Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
 Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Caro- 
 lina and Georgia by name, and not the sovereignty and in- 
 dependence of the United States. 
 
 After the treaty of peace, under the navigation laws of 
 Great Britain, American vessels trading with that country, 
 were restricted to the importation of products of the several 
 States to which they belonged, which put those States upon 
 the footing of so many separate nations. 
 
 The action of the several States upon the subject of 
 slavery and the slave trade during the war and afterwards 
 to the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the United 
 States was as follows: 
 
 Delaware, as before stated, by her constitution adopted 
 in 1776, prohibited the further introduction of slaves. 
 
 Virginia did the same thing by her law adopted in 1778. 
 
 Pennsylvania, whose legislature had ceased to be under 
 the control of the Quakers, as they refused to take part in 
 the Revolution, adopted a law in 1780, prohibiting the 
 further introduction of slaves and giving freedom to all 
 children of slave mothers born after its passage. 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 43 
 
 jMassaehusetts incorporated a declaration in her bill of 
 rights adopted in 1780, that ''all men are born free and 
 equal," and under that declaration it was decided by the 
 Supreme Court of that State in 1783, that slavery was pro- 
 hibited. It cannot be claimed that this declaration was in- 
 tended to have that effect, for if such had been the case it 
 would not have been left to judicial interpretation to give 
 it, but an express provision would have been incorporated 
 on the subject. It was a species of judicial legislation which 
 was submitted to because no important interest was at 
 stake. There were a little over 6.000 slaves in Massachusetts 
 at the date of the Revolution, distributed in small numbers 
 among the owners and employed mostly as household serv- 
 ants. The population was largely engaged in com_merce, 
 fisheries, manufactures, etc.. and the character of the agri- 
 culture was not at all adapted to slave labor. Nothing of 
 consecjuence therefore, was to be gained by contesting the 
 validity of the decision, and it was the easiest way of getting 
 rid of the matter by quiet submission. 
 
 New Hampshire adopted a similar clause in her second 
 constitution in 1783. and under that it was held that free- 
 dom was guaranteed to all children born after its adoption. 
 
 Maryland adopted in 1783. laws in regard to the intro- 
 duction of slaves similar to those of Virginia. 
 
 Connecticut and Rhode Island, in 1784. adopted laAvs on 
 the subject of slavery similar to those of Pennsylvania. 
 
 The effect of these laws and decisions was to put an end 
 to the slave trade in all of the states but North and South 
 Carolina and Georgia ; to abolish it in Massachusetts and 
 provide for its gradual extinction in New Hampshire. 
 Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, while it still 
 remained as before in the other states. It has been alleged, 
 and probably was true, that a large number of the slaves 
 in the northern states were carried to the South and sold 
 
44 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 there, to avoid the operation of the emancipation measures 
 which were initiated. This allegation receives very strong 
 confirmation from a comparison of the free colonies' popu- 
 lation at the north at different periods, with the number of 
 slaves known to be there at the date of the institution of 
 emancipation measures, when taken in connection with the 
 increase to that colored population, from freed slaves and 
 runaways from the South. 
 
 Notwithstanding the provisions for abolishing slavery in 
 the New England states, the merchants and traders of those 
 states resumed the importation of slaves from Africa to the 
 Carolinas and Georgia immediately after the close of the 
 war. North Carolina, however, had denounced the trade as 
 impolitic, and imposed a duty on future importations which 
 furnished an impediment to it, so far as that state was con- 
 cerned.' 
 
 The confederation which, during the war, under the pres- 
 sure of the public danger, had answered the purpose, was 
 found to work very badly when peace ensued and the 
 states were no longer stimulated to comply with the requisi- 
 tions of Congress by immediate necessity. Though the 
 states were all vested with full powers to regulate their 
 domestic affairs, yet there was a large debt contracted in 
 common which it was necessary to provide for, and as the 
 states were forbidden by the Articles of Confederation to 
 make treaties, and Congress had no power to impose taxes 
 or duties on imports or exports, which power rested en- 
 tirely in the state legislatures, there was a very great de- 
 rangement of the finances, commerce and business of the 
 country, entailing very ruinous consequences upon all 
 classes and interests. It became, therefore, necessary to 
 provide a remedy for existing evils, and a convention of 
 delegates from the states assembled at Philadelphia in the 
 year 1787, for the purpose of revising the Federal system. 
 
THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 45 
 
 This convention was assembled in accordance with the rec- 
 ommendation of a previous one, that had assembled at 
 Annapolis on the invitation of Virginia, but found its 
 powers inadequate. 
 
 The deliberations of the Philadelphia convention, which 
 were presided over by General Washington, resulted in the 
 adoption of the Constitution of the United States, for rec- 
 ommendation to the states for their ratification, and by the 
 terms of the Constitution, it was provided that it should go 
 into effect when ratified by nine states, as to the states rati- 
 fying it. 
 
 There were many difficulties in the way of the formation 
 of the Constitution by reason of conflicting views and inter- 
 ests, and the instrument as framed by the convention was 
 the result of a compromise of those views and interests. 
 The only questions arising in regard to slavery was in rela- 
 tion to the basis of representation in Congress and taxation, 
 the foreign slave trade and the restoration of fugitive 
 slaves. The questions in regard to representation and taxa- 
 tion were settled by compromise, as was that in regard to 
 the slave trade. Virginia and Maryland were in favor of 
 an absolute and immediate prohibition of the foreign slave 
 trade, while South Carolina and Georgia opposed any inter- 
 ference with it. With the two latter states some of the New 
 England delegates sided, and after much discussion a com- 
 promise was finally effected, by adopting a provision pro- 
 hibiting Congress from preventing, prior to the year 1808, 
 the importation of any persons the states might think proper 
 to admit, but giving the power to impose a duty on such 
 persons in the meantime, not to exceed $10 per head. This 
 compromise was effected by an arrangement between the 
 delegates of South Carolina and Georgia on the one side 
 and the New England delegates on the other, by which it 
 was agreed to insert a provision vesting Congress with the 
 
46 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 power to pas^ navigation laws by a majority vote — ^which 
 was earnestly desired by New England but was opposed by 
 some of the other states — and to adopt the restriction pro- 
 hibiting any interference with the slave trade until the 
 time designated. 
 
 For the provision in regard to the slave trade as adopted, 
 Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut, the only 
 New England States represented, voted, while Virginia 
 voted with some of the other states against it in all its 
 stages — the final vote being, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, 
 Connecticut, Maryland, North and South South! Carolina 
 in the affimative, and New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware 
 and Virginia in the negative; absent or not voting, New 
 York, Rhode Island and Georgia. 
 
 The clause in regard to the restoration of fugitive slaves 
 was adopted without any objection from any quarter, and 
 it was worded in almost the identical language of the pro- 
 vision on the same subject contained in the old compact of 
 ''The United Colonies of New England." Without the pro- 
 vision for the return of slaves escaping into any of the 
 states or the public territory, not a solitary Southern State 
 would have accepted the Constitution, and its necessity, 
 propriety and justice were conceded on all sides without 
 question. When the Constitution was submitted to the 
 states for ratification, it met with a good deal of opposition 
 because it was thought to impose too great restrictions on 
 the rights of the states, but it was finally ratified by the end 
 of July, 1788, by eleven states, and steps were taken to 
 organize the government under it, which was done in April, 
 1789, by the meeting of the first Congress under the Consti- 
 tution and the inauguration of General Washington as 
 President. 
 
 North Carolina did not ratify the Constitution until No- 
 vember, 1789, nor Rhode Island until May, 1790, and until 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 47 
 
 they did ratify it they remained as foreign nations to the 
 other states. When the ratification was under consideration, 
 there was much discussion as to the construction of various 
 clauses, and most of the states were induced to give their 
 assent by the hope of adoption of amendments explaining 
 all ambiguities and objectionable clauses, and the ratifica- 
 tion was accompanied with the recommendation of such 
 amendments as were desired. 
 
 In passing the ordinance ratifying the Constitution, the 
 Virginia convention adopted an explanatory preamble, de- 
 claring that when the powers delegated should be abused 
 they would be resumed, and the New York convention ac- 
 companied the ratification with a declaration of the right 
 to withdraw it. It is curious in view of subsequent events, 
 that Massachusetts proposed as an amendment ''That all 
 powers not expressly delegated to Congress should be re- 
 served to the states," and another "That no person be tried 
 for any crime (cases in the military and naval service ex- 
 cepted) without previous indictment by a grand jury; and 
 that in civil cases the right of trial by jury be preserved. ' ' 
 The first of these was recommended by Virginia and South 
 Carolina also, and the last by Virginia, and both were sub- 
 sequently adopted as amendments! to the Constitution on 
 the recommendation of the first Congress, with only a 
 change of phraseology not at all effecting their import. 
 Massachusetts has changed her views since she asserted 
 these doctrines of states ' rights and civil liberty. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States left slavery in the 
 states precisely where it was before, the only provision hav- 
 ing any reference to it whatever being that which fixed the 
 ratio of representation in the House of Representatives and 
 direct taxation ; that in reference to the foreign slave trade, 
 and that guaranteeing the return of fugitive slaves. Had 
 it been proposed to insert any provision giving Congress 
 
48 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 any power over the subject in the states, it would have been 
 resisted, and the insertion of such provision would have 
 insured the rejection of the Constitution. The government 
 framed under this Constitution being one of delegated 
 powers entirely, those powers were necessarily limited to 
 the objects for which they were granted, but to prevent all 
 misconception, the 9th and 10th amendments were adopted, 
 the first providing that ' ' The enumeration in the Constitu- 
 tion of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or dis- 
 parage others retained by the people,'' and the other that: 
 ''The powers not delegated to the United States by the 
 Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved 
 to the states respectively, or to the people." 
 
 It has now been shown how slavery originated in the 
 United States and that the Federal Constitution left its 
 regulation in every particular, where it belonged, that is 
 to the several states where it existed, save only in regard to 
 the foreign slave trade and the guarantee for the return of 
 fugitive slaves as mentioned. 
 
 State action had already provided for the removal of 
 slavery from several of the northern states, and this was 
 followed, later, by a law adopted in New York in 1799, pro- 
 viding that all children of slaves born after the 4th of July 
 of that year should be free, males at 28 and females at 25 
 years of age, and a law adopted in New Jersey in 1804, pro- 
 viding that all children of slaves born after the 4th of July 
 of that year should be free, the males at 25 and the females 
 at 21 years of age. This was the last of the acts for the 
 emancipation of slavery where it previously existed and 
 therefore, so far as regarded the original thirteen states, 
 slavery was confined to Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, 
 North and South Carolina and Georgia, except as to the 
 remnants left in the other states by the acts for gradual 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 49 
 
 emancipation, whicli lingered in some of them for a long 
 time. 
 
 If African slavery was a crime, tvIio was responsible for 4- 
 
 it? Did the sole guilt or the greater part of it rest upon 
 the shoulders of the colonists who purchased the slaves al- 
 ready ravished from their homes in the plains and wilds of 
 Africa, or on the shoulders of the descendants of the orig- 
 inal purchasers who found the institution already estab- 
 lished as a settled policy, or did it rest with those who pro- 
 cured the enslavement of these ignorant and degraded bar- 
 barians and reaped the enormous profits resulting from 
 their sale in their persons ? 
 
 Treating it as national or individual sin. where does the 
 guilt lie ? The mercantile marines of Great Britain and 
 New England are monuments to the African slave trade, 
 upon the profits of which they were mainly built up. 
 
 It has been often said that the assertion contained in the 
 Declaration of Independence ''That all men are created 
 equal, etc.," was entirely inconsistent with the continuation 
 of slavery in any of the United States ; and that the states 
 which continued it Avere guilty of a great inconsistency. 
 TVlio had then a right to make this criticism ? "Was it the 
 Englishman, with Lord ^Mansfield's decision staring him in 
 the face, and his boast of liberty under the common law on 
 his tongue, while his heel was upon the neck of Ireland, his 
 ships ploughing the main, freighted with human mer- 
 chandise packed to suffocation, and his writs of execution 
 levied upon the bodies of human beings to satisfy his de- 
 mands ? "Was it the Frenchman, who, equally guiltj' in the 
 traffic in human flesh, in the name of ''Liberty, Equality 
 and Fraternity'' glutted the guillotine with the blood of 
 his brethren, until he himself was forced to take refuge 
 from his own "Liberty" under the protection of a despotism 
 that kept watch upon his very thoughts ? Was it the Dutch- 
 
50 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 man, whose ships had carried the traffic in slaves to every 
 clime and who landed the first cargo within the limits of the 
 United States? "Was it the Russian, who had bleeding 
 Poland under his feet and caused order to reign in Warsaw, 
 while he peopled Siberia with every age and sex, and his 
 ears were gladdened by the sound of the well-plied knout ? 
 Was it the Prussian, the Austrian, the Dane, the Swede, or 
 the Italian? The Portuguese, the Spaniard and the Turk 
 have not troubled themselves about the matter. 
 
 The fact is that the assertion of independence was made 
 by the Continental Congress, by a resolution adopted on 
 the 2d of July, 1776, in the following words: 
 
 "Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and, of right, 
 ought to be. Free and Independent States, that they are ab- 
 solved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all 
 political connection between them and the state of Great 
 Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." 
 
 That was the authoritative assertion of the independence 
 of the colonies, and the Declaration of Independence 
 adopted afterwards was merely a manifesto put forth to the 
 world to show the reasons which impelled them to the step 
 and to justify it. The assertion that "all men are created 
 equal," was no more enacted by that declaration as a settled 
 principle than that other which defined George III to be " a 
 tyrant and unfit to be the ruler of a free people." The 
 Declaration of Independence contained a number of un- 
 doubtedly correct principles and some abstract generalities 
 uttered under the enthusiasm and excitement of a struggle 
 for the right of self-government. 
 
 The portion of it in question was not designed for the 
 wide application which is sought to be made of it, nor is it 
 capable of that application. The intention of it was to 
 assert the right of the people, on whose part the declaration 
 was made, to equality under the law with all other British 
 
THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 51 
 
 subjects, and to maintain their right to set up a new govern- 
 ment for themselves, when the one under which they had 
 been living had been perverted to their oppression. If it 
 was intended to assert the absolute equality of all men, it 
 was false in principle and in fact. 
 
 Taken in its literal sense, it might be construed to mean 
 that all men are created equal in every respect, but does any 
 one believe, or will any one ever believe, that the native 
 Congo, the Hottentot or the Australian negro, is the equal, 
 mentally, physically and morally, of the Caucasian ? 
 
 Whatever construction the words quoted and those fol- 
 lowing them may admit of, let it be borne in mind, that they 
 belong to the argument and not to the fact. The separation 
 and independence were asserted by the resolution adopted 
 on the 2d of July, and not by the declaration adopted on 
 the 4th, and the latter was no more a part of what was 
 authoritatively established, than the ohitu dictum of a judge 
 is a part of his decision. 
 
 The truth is, that several of the statesmen of the South 
 and especially of Virginia, deplored slavery as an evil and 
 expressed the hope that at some future time, in some way 
 that might be desired, the institution might be abolished in 
 such manner as to secure the welfare of both races, but none 
 of them could suggest any mode for doing so, and though 
 perfectly sincere, they contented themselves with expressing 
 the hope that the way might be discovered. 
 
 Slavery was a fixed fact, fastened upon the colonies by 
 the mother country, and in the South, the slaves bore such a 
 proportion to the white population and the whole business 
 of the country was so identified with their labor, that it was 
 impossible to emancipate them, without entailing on both 
 races evils far greater than those supposed to result from 
 the existence of slavery itself. It was a practical question 
 with w^hich the statesmen of the country had to deal as 
 
52 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 practical men, and all they could do, was to allow the system 
 to remain, as the best for all parties under the circum- 
 stances, without reverting to the dangerous experiment of 
 the ideal schemes of a false philanthropy. 
 
 As to the slave trade, Delaware, Virginia and Maryland 
 had already put an end to it as soon as they were vested 
 with the power to do so, and North Carolina followed suit 
 very shortly after the adoption of the Constitution, and 
 the prohibition would probably have been made general, 
 but for the combination of the New England states with the 
 two southern states that were in favor of having the trade 
 continued. 
 
 It would not be amiss to notice what was transpiring in 
 England on this subject at the time the Federal Constitu- 
 tion was being adopted. Clarkson, Wilberforce and others 
 were agitating the question of the slave trade at this time, 
 and the utmost that the younger Pitt, then at the head of 
 the government, would venture to do, was to procure the 
 passage of an act of Parliament, for the mitigation of the 
 atrocities of the "Middle Passage'' by which it was pro- 
 vided that slave ships should not carry beyond a certain 
 number of slaves in proportion to the tonnage. 
 
 Even this bill met with strong opposition and among 
 others, from Lord Chancellor Thurlow* "the Ruler of the 
 King's conscience." In opposing the bill he said: "It ap- 
 pears that the French have offered premiums to encourage 
 the African trade, and that they have succeeded. The 
 natural presumption therefore is, that we ought to do the 
 same." He further said: "One witness has come to your 
 Lordship 's bar with a face of woe, his eyes full of tears and 
 his countenance fraught with horror, and said 'My Lords, 
 I am ruined if you pass this bill! I have risked £30,000 
 on the trade of this year ! It is all I have been able to gain 
 by my industry, and if I lose it, I must go to the hospital ! 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 53 
 
 I desire of you to think of such things, my Lords, in your 
 humane phrenzy and to show some humanity to the whites 
 as well as the negroes. ' ' ' 
 
 The bill, however, passed with amendments to grant com- 
 pensation for losses, and this was as far as English states- 
 manship would venture to go at that time. Was it to be 
 expected that American statesmen should be better, wiser 
 and more philanthropic than English statesmen ? 
 
 Shortly after the close of the war, Virginia had ceded 
 to the Confederation for the common benefit of all the 
 states, the territory northwest of the Ohio river; and Mas- 
 sachusetts, New York and Connecticut had ceded their 
 rights, (?) The claim of Connecticut skipped over Penn- 
 sylvania and that state made a very good bargain for her- 
 self by securing the title to the lands in what has since been 
 known as the "Western Reserve," though no officer or 
 soldier or, so far as is known, citizen of hers, had even been 
 in the northwestern territory. 
 
 Virginia's original charter, the oldest of all covered the 
 country, but independent of that, it had been conquered 
 from the Indians and British by the forces of Virginia 
 under George Rogers Clarke. It was a magnificent empire 
 which Virginia thus surrendered for the common good and 
 for the cause of the Union of the states, and the only com- 
 pensation she asked was, that the land grants pledged her 
 own soldiers should be ratified. 
 
 During the sitting of the convention which framed the 
 Constitution, the Congress, which was in session, adopted 
 the celebrated ordinance of 1787, for the government of the 
 territory northwest of the Ohio river, in which ordinance 
 was contained a prohibition of slavery in that territory 
 forever, and also a provision for the recovery of slaves es- 
 caping into the territory similar to that incorporated into 
 the Constitution. 
 
54 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 At the first session of the first Congress, under the new 
 Constitution, an act was passed for the government of the 
 territory northwest of the Ohio river, by which the ordi- 
 nance of 1787 v/as recognized and confirmed. 
 
 In 1787, South Carolina had surrendered her claim to 
 all territory west of the present limits, and in 1790, North 
 Carolina ceded to the United States that part of her terri- 
 tory which subsequently became the state of Tennessee, with 
 a stipulation, "that no regulation made or to be made by 
 Congress shall tend to the emancipation of slaves." 
 
 In 1791, Vermont, formed out of part of the territory 
 of New York, with the consent of the legislature of that 
 state, was admitted into the Union as one of the states and 
 came in without slavery, which was forbidden by her consti- 
 tution. 
 
 Kentucky (formed out of the territory of Virginia, south 
 of the Ohio river, with the assent of her legislature) in 
 1792 was admitted into the Union, and came in with slavery 
 as it existed in Virginia and with similar laws on the 
 subject. 
 
 In 1793, Congress passed an act to carry into effect the 
 provision of the Constitution for the restitution of fugitive 
 slaves, providing for their delivery to the owners by order 
 of any United States judge, or any magistrate of the city, 
 town or county where they might be arrested, on due proofs 
 of ownership, etc. 
 
 In 1796, Tennessee, formed out of the territory which 
 had been ceded by North Carolina, was admitted into the 
 Union, and came in with slavery as it existed in North 
 Carolina and with similar laws in regard to it. 
 
 In 1798, Georgia adopted a new Constitution, in which 
 was a clause forbidding the importation of slaves from 
 "Africa or any foreign country." In this same year Con- 
 gress passed an act for the establishment of the Mississippi 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 55 
 
 territoiy out of the territory acquired from Great Britain, 
 wliicli constituted that part of British TTest Florida lying 
 betvreen a line drawn due east from the mouth of the Yazoo 
 to the Chattahoochie river and the 31st degree of latitude. 
 The act provided for the government and organization of 
 the ^lississippi territory' in ever^' respect like the Xorth 
 AYestern territory, except that slavery vas not to be pro- 
 hibited, but an amendement was incorporated into the act 
 wdthout opposition, on motion of a representative from 
 South Carolina, prohibiting the introduction of slaves into 
 the territory from withotit the United States. 
 
 Immediately after the adoption of the Constitution, 
 South Carolina had passed a lav prohibiting the introduc- 
 tion of slaA'es from foreign countries for a limited period, 
 which was contintied by renewal from time to time, and as 
 North Carolina had adopted a permanent law on the sub- 
 ject, the foreign slave trade was now prohibited in all of 
 the states as well as in the public territories, but it con- 
 tinued to be carried on by English, Xew England and Xew 
 York traders within the limits of South Carolina and 
 Georgia despite the laws. 
 
 In 1802, Georgia ceded to the United States all of her 
 territory west of her present limits, including her claim to 
 the ^Mississippi territory. This cession including in it the 
 Mississippi territory, embraced all of the states of ]^Tississippi 
 and Alabama which was north of the 31st degree of latittide 
 and the compact made v-ith Georgia stipulated that wiien 
 the population reached the ntimber of 60.000. the ceded ter- 
 ritory should be erected into a state on the conditions con- 
 tained in the ordinance of 1767, '"That article only excepted 
 which prohibits slavery.'' 
 
 In 1803. on the complaint of South Carolina of the im- 
 portation, in violation of her laws, of slaves from Africa, as 
 weU as of free persons from the French West Indies, Con- 
 
56 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 gress passed an act imposing a fine of $1,000 on the captain 
 of a vessel for the importation of such persons in violation 
 of the laws of a state, with forfeiture of the vessel. 
 Next year, however, South Carolina repealed her laws 
 against the African slave trade, and it continued to be 
 lawful there until 1808. 
 
 In the same year Ohio, erected out of part of the north- 
 western territory, was admitted into the Union and came in 
 without slavery. 
 
 In this year Louisiana, which had been re-ceded to France 
 by Spain, was ceded to the United States by the French 
 government, with a stipulation in the treaty of cession that 
 the inhabitants should be secure in their liberty, property 
 and religion and should be admitted, as soon as possible, 
 according to the principles of the Federal Constitution to 
 the enjoyment of the rights of citizens of the United States. 
 The territory thus ceded, embraced as claimed by the 
 United States, all of the territory west of the Mississippi 
 and south of the 31st degree of latitude to the western 
 boundary of the old Spanish province of Florida. Slavery 
 existed in Louisiana at the time of its acquisition, having 
 been established there by the French government, and there 
 could be no question as to the meaning of the guarantee to 
 the inhabitants of security in their property, as the right of 
 property in slaves was universally acknowledged in all of 
 the civilized world, and both of the contracting parties rec- 
 ognized it. 
 
 In 1804, Congress passed an act organizing the ceded pro- 
 vince of Louisiana into the Territory of Orleans and the 
 District of Louisiana, the former to embrace all of the terri- 
 tory south of the 33rd degree of latitude ; the latter to em- 
 brace that part north of the same degree. A provision was 
 embraced in the act that no slaves should be carried into 
 the Territory of Orleans or the District of Louisiana, except 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 57 
 
 from some part of the United States by citizens removing 
 thither as actual settlers, and this permission was not to 
 extend to negroes brought into the United States since 1793. 
 This was a direct admission of the right of the people to 
 remove into the territory with all of their property, includ- 
 ing slaves,, and the restriction as to negroes brought into the 
 United States since 1798 was in consequence of the fact 
 that, from that time to the passage of the act, the introduc- 
 tion of such persons was prohibited by the laws of all of 
 the States, showing that the right to introduce slaves was 
 regarded as resulting under the constitution from the rights 
 under the laws of the several States and from no other. 
 
 By an act passed at the same session, all of the territory 
 ceded by Georgia was included in the territory of Missis- 
 sippi. 
 
 In 1805. by Act of Congress, the Territory of Orleans 
 was given a similar government to that of Mississippi, and 
 the District of Louisiana was made a territory of the second 
 class, that is with the power of legislation vested in the 
 governor and .judges of the territory. Settlements had been 
 previously made within the limits of the District of Louis- 
 iana on the Arkansas River and within the present limits 
 of Missouri, and slavery had been carried there by settlers 
 from the slave States. The act organizing the territory of 
 Louisiana provided for continuing in force all of the ex- 
 isting laws and regulations until repealed by the legisla- 
 ture, and thereby gave direct recognition of the system of 
 slavery, as it had not only been protected by the law organ- 
 izing the District of Louisiana, but existed by operation 
 of the old French and Spanish laws still in force. 
 
 In 1807, at the second session of the 9th Congress, on the 
 recommendation of ]\Ir. Jefferson, then President, an act 
 was passed for the prohibition of the slave trade from 
 foreign countries to the United States, to take effect on the 
 
58 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 1st day of January, 1808. Up to that time the trade had 
 been continued by English, New England, and New York 
 traders to South Carolina and Georgia by evading the laws 
 against it, when such were in force, but it ceased after the 
 United States law went into effect ; many slaves were intro- 
 duced into the port of Charleston within the last four years 
 prior to the time when the law went into effect, brought in 
 by English and Northern vessels. 
 
 In the same year and about the same time that the United 
 States law was passed, under the brief ministry of Lord 
 Grenville, the Parliament of Great Britain passed the act 
 to abolish the trade on the part of British subjects, though 
 not without serious opposition. Among the opponents of 
 the measure was another Lord Chancellor of England, 
 Lord Elden, at that time for a short period out of the 
 office which he had held for many years, and to which he 
 returned in about two months after the passage of the bill 
 to continue in it until the year 1827. In opposing the bill, 
 Lord Elden said: "I do not believe the measure now pro- 
 posed would diminish the transport of negroes, or that a 
 single individual would be preserved by it, at the same 
 time, that it would be utterly destructive of the British 
 interests involved in that commerce." He asked *'was it 
 right because there was a change of men and of public 
 measures in consequence, that the interests of those who 
 petitioned against the bill should be disregarded and what 
 was before considered fit matter of enquiry should now be 
 rejected as immaterial and inapplicable?" 
 
 In the argument of Wilberforce and others, in favor of 
 the measure, it was shown that there had never been any 
 natural increase of the slaves in the British and West India 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 59 
 
 Islands — the excess of deaths over births in Jamaica being 
 as follows: 
 
 From 1698 to 1730, 3 1/2 per cent. 
 1730 1755, 2 1/2 
 1755 1769, 1 3/4 
 " 1769 " 1780, 3/5 
 1780 1800, 1/24 
 
 The supply had therefore been kept up by constant im- 
 portations to meet the growing demands and the advocates 
 of the measure urged the following reasons for its adoption : 
 
 ''The grand, the decisive advantage which recommends 
 the abolition of the slave trade is, that by closing the supply 
 of foreign negroes to which the planters have hitherto been 
 accustomed to trust for all of their undertakings, we will 
 compel them to promote the multiplication of the slaves 
 on their estates ; and it is obvious that this cannot be done 
 without improving their physical and moral condition. 
 Thus not only will the inhuman traffic itself be prevented 
 in so far at least as the inhabitants of this country are 
 concerned, but a provision will be made for the progressive 
 amelioration of the black population in the West Indies, 
 and that too on the securest of all foundations, the interests 
 and selfish desires of the masters in whose hands they are 
 placed." 
 
 It seems from this that ''slave breeding" was not con- 
 sidered a crime by the philanthropists of that day but this 
 discovery was reserved for those of a later time. 
 
 Slavery in the United States has now been brought down 
 to the time of the abolition of the slave trade by both the 
 United States and Great Britain, and it will be seen that 
 the former government had no jurisdiction over the matter 
 in any way, except to give protection to that species of 
 property in the states where it existed, in the same way that 
 
60 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 it was bound to protect every other species of property 
 within the scope of its delegated powers. Slavery existed 
 in the states prior to the creation of the government and 
 independent of it, and the states in forming that govern- 
 ment as sovereign states, reserved to themselves the ex- 
 clusive power of continuing or discontinuing it at their 
 option. Not only was this so with regard to the original 
 states, but by express stipulation with the states of North 
 Carolina and Georgia at the time of their cession of terri- 
 tory. Congress had bound itself not to interfere with 
 slavery in that territory. 
 
 Kentucky had been formed out of part of Virginia and 
 was admitted into the Union upon the same footing as that 
 state, and by the treaty with France upon the acquisition 
 of Louisiana, the faith of the United States was pledged 
 to respect and protect the right of property in slaves within 
 the limits of the acquired territory in the same way that 
 it was pledged to respect and protect the right of property 
 in every thing else. This embraced all of the territory within 
 the limits of the United States except the northwestern 
 territory, and to that the prohibition against slavery had 
 been extended by the ordinance of 1787, prior to the adop- 
 tion of the Federal Constitution. The validity of that 
 ordinance has been disputed, and certainly if it had any 
 validity, that was given by the assent of Virginia from 
 whom the territory was acquired. The act for the organ- 
 ization of the government of the Northwestern territory 
 recognized the validity of the restriction contained in the 
 ordinance, and did not create it. 
 
 The states which had thought proper to abolish or ex- 
 clude slavery because it was not to their interests to have 
 it, had no right to complain of its existence in other states. 
 If they did not desire to be allied to states which tolerated 
 slavery, then they should have refused to ratify the Consti- 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 61 
 
 tution. Having ratified it, the faith of those states became 
 pledged by every consideration that can bind states as 
 communities, or men as individuals, to respect the institu- 
 tions, rights and property of the other states and to faith- 
 fully abide by all of the compromises and guaranties of 
 the Constitution. They were bound to respect and abide by 
 them not only in the capacity of states, but they were 
 bound by the exercise of their just powers of legislation and 
 restraint, to compel their citizens to respect and abide by 
 them. This obligation extended not merely to abstaining 
 from all violent interference and active measures of wrong, 
 but from all agitation or incitement to others to do wrong, 
 by disturbing the peace, property or rights of other states 
 and the citizens thereof. 
 
 The Constitution did not make the general government 
 censors over the morals or domestic institutions of the 
 several states, nor did it make the states or the citizens 
 thereof censors of the moral or domestic institutions of 
 each other. It was merely a compact formed between 
 sovereign states for the common defence and protection of 
 each other in their rights and liberties, as they existed 
 before its formation. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Very shortly after the organization of the government 
 under the new Constitution, petitions upon the subject of 
 the slave trade began to be presented to Congress, mostly 
 from the Quakers of Pennsylvania, that "non-resisting" 
 sect "conscientiously opposed to all war." Some of the 
 petitions were very inflammatory in their character, and 
 caused much excited debate in the early Congresses, and 
 one presented by Warren Mifflin, a Quaker of Delaware, 
 urging the injustice of slavery and the necessity for its 
 abolition, was returned to him by order of the House at the 
 second session of the second Congress on account of its 
 incendiary and mischievous character. 
 
 In January, 1805, the first proposition for the abolition 
 of slavery in the District of Columbia was made. It was 
 made by Sloan, a democratic representative from New 
 Jersey, and was "that all children born after the ensuing 
 4th of July should be free at certain ages," but it was re- 
 fused a reference to a committee and was then rejected by 
 a vote of 77 to 31. It is a little remarkable in view of 
 subsequent events that 26 of the 31 were Northern Demo- 
 crats, and that only 5 constituting the rem^ainder of the 
 vote for the proposition were Northern Federalists. 
 
 After the passage of the acts in the United States and 
 Great Britain abolishing the slave trade, the agitation on 
 the subject of slavery abated very considerably for a num- 
 ber of years, only, however, to be revived at a later period 
 in a more virulent form. 
 
 In the year 1812, the state of Louisiana, erected out of 
 the territory of Orleans, was admitted into the Union as a 
 slave state, and that part of the territory east of the Pearl 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 63 
 
 river and bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, was added to 
 the territory of Mississippi. The name of Mississippi was 
 then given to the territory of Louisiana. 
 
 In 1816, Indiana was admitted into the Union as a free * 
 state, and in 1817, Mississippi was admitted as a slave 
 state, the residue of the territory of that name taking the 
 name of Alabama. 
 
 In 1818, Illinois was admitted as a free state and in 1819, 
 Alabama came in as a slave state. This increase of the 
 number of slave states did not increase the number of 
 slaves, as the slaves introduced into them came from the 
 older slave states. If any slaves were introduced from 
 Africa or any foreign country, it was by such evasion of 
 the laws as will take place under any government, and they 
 were not so introduced to any appreciable extent. 
 
 In 1819, towards the close of the 15th Congress, a bill 
 was introduced into the House of Representatives to 
 authorize the erection of the state of Missouri out of part 
 of the territory of that name, and on motion of Tallmadge, 
 of New York, a clause was inserted in the bill prohibiting 
 the further introduction of slaves and granting freedom to 
 the afterborn children of those already there, on arriving 
 at the age of twenty-five, the proposition being carried by 
 a vote of 87 to 76. This proposed restriction caused a very 
 excited debate, in the course of which Cobb, of Georgia, said 
 that ''a fire had been kindled which all the water of the 
 ocean could not put out, and which only seas of blood could 
 extinguish;" he did not "hesitate to declare that if the 
 northern members persisted, the Union would be dis- 
 solved." The bill, however, passed the House with the 
 restriction, but in the Senate, the latter was stricken out, 
 the clause prohibiting the further introduction of slaves 
 by a vote of 24 to 16, and the one freeing the children by 
 a larger vote, there being only 7 votes for retaining it. The 
 
64 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 House refused to concur with the Senate and the bill was 
 lost. 
 
 At the same time the Missouri bill was introduced, an- 
 other bill was presented for establishing Arkansas territory 
 out of that part of the Missouri territory south of 36° 30', 
 and a clause was inserted into it granting freedom! to all 
 afterborn children of slaves, at the age of twenty-five, but 
 a clause prohibiting the further introduction of slaves was 
 defeated by a vote of 70 to 71 and the clause for freeing 
 the children of those already in the territory was stricken 
 out. Taylor of New York then proposed to add a proviso 
 to the bill that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude 
 should exist in any of the territories of the United States 
 north of 36° 30', but his motion was defeated and the bill 
 for organizing Arkansas Territory passed both houses with- 
 out any restriction. 
 
 Before the meeting of the next Congress, Massachusetts 
 authorized the formation of the District of Maine into a 
 state and a Constitution was adopted by the people in that 
 district for that purpose. In the meantime there was much 
 agitation in the North upon the subject of excluding 
 slavery from the territory west of the Mississippi. Upon 
 the meeting of the 16th Congress, a bill was introduced to 
 authorize the people of Missouri to frame a State Constitu- 
 tion, but on motion of Taylor, the author of the proposed 
 proviso excluding slavery from the territories north of 
 36° 30', a committee was appointed to consider the sub- 
 ject of prohibiting slavery west of the Mississippi, and the 
 Missouri bill was postponed to await the action of the com- 
 mittee. 
 
 A bill had been introduced for the admission of Maine — 
 and after the defeat of a motion to postpone it until the 
 Missouri bill came up — was passed. When this bill came 
 up in the Senate, a clause for the admission of Missouri, 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 65 
 
 was attached to it, after the defeat of a motion to insert in 
 the latter a proviso for the prohibition of slavery, and 
 Thomas, a senator from Illinois, then proposed an amend- 
 ment prohibiting the introduction of slavery into any of 
 the remaining territory north of 36° 30', which was adopted 
 by a vote of 34 to 10; the senators from Virginia, South 
 Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and one senator from North 
 Carolina and Mississippi each voting in the negative. The 
 biU was then passed by a vote of 24 to 20, all the senators 
 from the slave states and the two from Illinois voting in 
 the affirmative, and those voting in the negative being from 
 the free states. 
 
 The House refused to concur in the Senate's amend- 
 ment, and the Senate adhered, therefore a committee of 
 conference was appointed. In the meantime, the House had 
 been debating the IMissouri bill, and pending the conference 
 it was passed by a vote of 93 to 84 with a clause prohibiting 
 the further introduction of slaves. When this bill went to 
 the Senate, the prohibition was stricken out and the 
 Thomas proviso attached, and it was then passed and re- 
 turned to the House. The Committee of Conference at 
 the same time reported recommending that the Senate re- 
 cede from ita amendment to the Maine bill and that the 
 House pass the Missouri bill as amended by the Senate. 
 The House agreed to the amendment to the Missouri bill, 
 striking out the clause for prohibiting slavery, by a vote 
 of 90 to 87, and to that inserting the Thomas proviso, by 
 a vote of 134 to 42, 35 of the latter being Southern members 
 who objected to the proviso as unconstitutional, and 5 being 
 Northern men who objected because it did not go far 
 enough. The Senate receded from its amendment to the 
 Maine bill and both bills were thus passed. 
 
 President Monroe signed the IMissouri bill after much 
 hesitation, upon having his scruples as to the constitution- 
 
66 
 
 THI HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 ality of the proviso removed, and upon being assured that 
 the restriction as to the territories extended to theni only 
 while in the territorial condition. 
 
 The bill in relation to Maine admitted that state into 
 the Union at once, but that in regard to Missouri was a 
 mere act enabling the people to frame a Constitution, and 
 a joint resolution for the admission of the state after the 
 formation of the Constitution was still necessary. 
 
 "When the Constitution was presented at the next session 
 of Congress, it was found to contain a clause requiring the 
 legislature to pass laws to prevent free persons of color 
 from settling in the state, and as the admission of Maine 
 was complete, the Northern members took occasion to ob- 
 ject to the admission of Missouri because of this clause, 
 though Ohio and Indiana had passed laws forbidding the 
 settling of free persons of color in those states, and there 
 was an old law of Massachusetts to the same effect, still un- 
 repealed. A resolution offered in the House for the ad- 
 mission of Missouri, with its Constitution as it stood, was 
 defeated by a vote of 78 to 93, those voting in the negative 
 being Northern members. After much discussion and ex- 
 citement and the defeat in the House of an effort to compro- 
 mise the question, on motion of Mr. Clay, a joint committee 
 was appointed to take the subject into consideration, and 
 this committee reported a joint resolution for the admission 
 of Missouri, after the state legislature should have given a 
 solemn pledge, that the Constitution should not be con- 
 strued to authorize any act and that no act should be passed 
 "by which any of the citizens of either of the states should 
 be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges 
 and immunities to which they are entitled under the Con- 
 stitution of the United States.'' The President being 
 authorized to announce by proclamation, the adoption of 
 the pledge, and Missouri then to become a state in the 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 67 
 
 Union, this resolution "^as adopted, the vote being 86 to 52 
 in the House, all the votes in the negative, excepting four, 
 being given by Northern members and the four Southern 
 members not being willing to submit to the concession. 
 Since the rejection of the proposition for compromise in 
 the House on the same basis, news had been received of the 
 final ratification by Spain of the treaty for the cession of 
 Florida, and as. by that treaty the United States relin- 
 quished all claim to Texas, thus reducing the whole of the 
 territory south of 36^ 30' and west of the I\Iississippi to the 
 Territory of Arkansas, comprising the present state of 
 Arkausas and the small tract of Indian country west of it, 
 while there remained an immense domain north of that 
 parallel, stretching across the Rocky Mountains to the 
 Pacific, a few Northern members were induced to cast their 
 votes for the last proposition, thus securing its passage. 
 
 The required pledge was given by the legislature of Mis- 
 souri, and that state was thus admitted into the Union in 
 1821. For a long time, the arrangement by which the pas- 
 sage of the enabling act for ]\Iissouri was secured, was 
 called compromise, and the line of 36" 30' was called ''The 
 Missouri Compromise Line."' The subject was fully ex- 
 plained by Mr. Clay in the Senate in 1850, and it will be 
 seen that the arrangement was no compromise at all, but 
 was merely one of those legislative expedients often 
 adopted to secure the passage of a measure. As it passed, 
 the restriction was merely a legislative enactment, liable 
 to repeal at any time like any other law. But few of the 
 Northern members agreed to the arrangement, and at the 
 very next session of Congress, the great mass of them re- 
 pudiated the idea of its being a compromise by voting 
 against the admission of Missouri, upon a mere pretext. 
 
 The only compromise made at all was that made with the 
 state of Missouri about the construction of her Constitution. 
 
68 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Nevertheless, the Southern States were always to regard 
 this legislative adoption of the line 36° 30' as a settlement 
 of the question of slavery in the territories, provided it was 
 adhered to as such in principle and spirit, but it was not 
 accepted by the Northern people in that light and was made 
 by them the ground-work for new demands and encroach- 
 ments. 
 
 The proposition for the prohibition of slavery in the 
 territories, was not one in favor of the freedom of the 
 slaves themselves, as their introduction into those territories 
 would not increase the number of slaves, but would ex- 
 pand them on a wider sphere, thus rendering it easier to 
 adopt measures for emancipation, at least in some of the 
 states if that was desirable, and making the condition of 
 the slaves more comfortable if emancipation did not take 
 place; while the restriction of the institution to the states 
 where it existed, would forever close the door on any steps 
 for its voluntary abolition and render the condition of the 
 slaves much less desirable. Diffusion was much the best 
 policy for both masters and slaves, and the opposition to 
 the introduction of the latter into the territories was only 
 a political manoeuvre for the purpose of obtaining a sec- 
 tional preponderance of power, and in all of the debates, 
 the views expressed by the advocates of the restriction 
 tended to the furtherance of that object. 
 
 By the final ratification of the treaty between the United 
 States and Spain in the year 1821, Florida became a terri- 
 tory of the United States and a territorial government was 
 soon formed therefor. 
 
 After the admission of Missouri into the Union, there 
 was a subsidence in the agitation upon the subject of 
 slavery for a number of years, though every now and then 
 a petition from some Quaker meeting was received and 
 quietly disposed of. 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 69 
 
 In the year 1834, the British Parliament passed an act 
 for the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, her 
 colonies in those islands being all of the slave colonies left 
 to Great Britain. These colonies had dwindled into insigni- 
 ficance and formed but a very inconsiderable part of her 
 gigantic colonial system. Canada, Australia, New Zealand 
 and her possessions in the East Indies furnished an ample 
 field for British settlement and colonial trade, "which 
 dwarfed into very diminutive proportions the British in- 
 terests in the West Indies. Great Britain could therefore 
 afford to be philanthropic and at the cost of £20,000,000 
 (about $96,000,000) she gave liberty to a very few more 
 than 600,000 slaves, who were placed in a condition of ap- 
 prenticeship for several years to enable the planters to ac- 
 commodate themselves to the new order of things by de- 
 grees. She had abandoned the slave trade after, by the 
 loss of the American colonies, she had ceased to have a 
 large interest in the subject of slavery, and this grant of 
 £20,000,000 for the freedom of all of the negro slaves left 
 in her dominions, was the final atonement she made for the 
 millions she had consigned to slavery, and the millions who 
 had been cast overboard, to meet a watery grave, on their 
 route to slavery. 
 
 To make her own gracious act more conspicuous, she 
 turned propagandist and commenced denouncing the 
 system of slavery which she had been so instrumental in 
 fixing upon the world, as un-Christian, inhuman and bar- 
 barous. Having, as she considered, cast the beam out of 
 her own eye, she could see more distinctly the moat in that 
 of others, but she made no restitution of the hundreds of 
 millions she derived from the profits of the inhuman traffic 
 as she now styled it, and which had assisted in building up 
 her marine, manufactures and commerce. Having thus 
 washed her hands of the sin, as she imagined, she became 
 
70 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 most intolerant in her opinions and denunciations of those 
 upon whom she had entailed the institution of slavery by 
 her avarice and power, furnishing another example of those, 
 
 **Who compound for sins they 're inclined to, 
 By damning those they have no mind to. ' * 
 
 Emissaries soon came out from Great Britain to the 
 United States and began the agitation of the abolition of 
 slavery there. The preponderance of women in the New 
 England States caused them to be selected as proselytes 
 for the new crusade. There was also a class of men in 
 that section, offshoots of the old persecuting theocracy who 
 furnished recruits to the agitators. There were doubtless 
 many who really believed slavery to be a great sin and 
 wrong, who joined in the crusade from conscientious mo- 
 tives. Knaves there were in plentiful supply, gowned 
 and ungowned, who were ready for anything which would 
 tend to their personal advancement in position or their 
 pecuniary profit. Out of these materials abolition societies 
 were formed and petitions began to pour into Congress for 
 the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and 
 other places within the Federal jurisdiction, while the mails 
 were filled with incendiary publications calculated to stir 
 up insurrections. John Quincy Adams, who had held 
 political office from his earliest manhood, until he became 
 President, obtained a return to political life by his election 
 to the lower House of Congress. Shortly after his return 
 there, in presenting one of the chronic petitions of the 
 Quakers for the abolition of slavery in the District of 
 Columbia, he had taken occasion to notify the House and 
 the country that he had no sympathy with the views of the 
 politicians, yet he joined the new agitators. 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 71 
 
 This new agitation in Congress began about 1834-5 and 
 was continued with great violence for several years, a peti- 
 tion being presented by Mr. Adams, during the time, for 
 the dissolution of the Union. After much exasperation of 
 feeling growing out of the presentation of the petitions in 
 both Houses of Congress and the circulation of incendiary 
 publications, some respite from the excitement in Congress 
 was obtained by the adoption of a rule in the lower House 
 for laying petitions on the table on their presentation, with- 
 out debate, and by the conservative action of the Senate. 
 The agitation, however was continued at the North and 
 began to have an important influence upon the canvass for 
 the presidential elections. The law for the recovery of 
 fugitive slaves, always inefficient because of the refusal or 
 failure of the states' officers to enforce it, had now become 
 a dead letter by the resistance to its execution by mobs and 
 the still more mischievous action of several of the legis- 
 latures of the free states. The circulation of incendiary 
 publications through the mails had been forbidden by Con- 
 gress, but the Northern press was prolific in the production 
 of gross libels upon the character of the people of the 
 Southern states and misrepresentations of the institution of 
 slavery as it existed there; even the Constitution of the 
 United States was denounced by the new lights as " a league 
 with hell and a covenant with death. ' ' 
 
 Arkansas had been admitted as a slave state in the year 
 1836 and Michigan as a free state in 1837; and, in 1845 
 Florida was admitted as a slave state, the same act provid- 
 ing for the admission of Iowa, which was a free state, but 
 did not come in until 1846. 
 
 On the 29th of December, the independent Republic of 
 Texas was admitted into the Union as a state, and came in 
 with slavery already established there. This admission, or 
 annexation as it was called, of Texas, resulted in the war 
 
72 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 with Mexico and the establishment, at the close of the war 
 in 1848, of the Rio Grande as the southern boundary of 
 Texas and the acquisition of the provinces or territories of 
 New Mexico and upper California as United States ter- 
 ritory. 
 
 The admission of Texas gave a new impulse to the anti- 
 slavery agitation, and the acquisition, by the war, of the 
 new territory brought it again prominently before Con- 
 gress. Even before the close of the war with Mexico, the 
 old proposition for the exclusion of slavery from the public 
 territories was revived, with a view to its application to any 
 territory that might be acquired as a result of the war, and 
 it was then designated as the ''Wilmot Proviso" from the 
 name of the member re-introducing it. On all propositions 
 to establish governments of the newly acquired territory, 
 after the close of the war, the "Wilmot Proviso" was 
 pressed with great vehemence by Northern politicians, and 
 was strenuously resisted by those of the South. 
 
 The most extreme of the Southern politicians were will- 
 ing to extend the so-called Missouri Compromise line of 
 36° 30' to the Pacific ocean, and regard it as a final settle- 
 ment of the question, but the Northern advocates of the 
 proviso would listen to no terms for an adjustment, and 
 thus again repudiated the principle and spirit of the settle- 
 ment made by the Missouri bill. Southern statesmen, while 
 willing to accept the line of 36° 30' for the sake of peace, 
 did not claim the right to foster slavery even upon the ter- 
 ritory south of that line, by the action of Congress, but they 
 claimed that the question should be left where the Consti- 
 tution of the United States left it, that is, that the people 
 settling in the territories should be allowed freedom to 
 adopt their own institutions when they came to form state 
 governments, and that Congress in the meantime should 
 adopt no measures to forestall their action. They urged 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 73 
 
 that the territory was acquired by the common blood and 
 treasure, and that Congress, therefore, in its action, should 
 not give preference to one section over another and thus 
 virtually exclude the people of the South from the newly 
 acquired domain. This was a reasonable and just view of 
 the subject, and did not look to the increase of the number 
 of slaves, but merely to their expansion over a wider area, 
 and the older states from the rapidly increasing slave popu- 
 lation. Nor was the proposition to exclude slavery ever in ; 
 the interest of freedom, for it sought merely to confine 
 slavery to the country where it already existed, and thus 
 surround the slave states with a cordon of free states, so as 
 to increase year by year, the difficulties of prospective eman- 
 cipation, and render any but a subversion of the institution 
 by violence an impossibility. It was as injurious to the 
 slaves themselves as to the white population of the states. 
 
 Had the would-be philanthropists been governed by an 
 enlightened regard for the welfare or freedom of the slaves, 
 they would not have objected to their introduction, either 
 into the territory north of 36° 30' or that acquired from 
 Mexico, for with the greater eagerness existing at the 
 North for emigration, as well as that from foreign countries 
 and the want of adaptation of the soil and climate of the 
 greater part of the territory, old and new, to the staples in 
 the production of which slave labor could be profitably em- 
 ployed, it was certain that much the larger population 
 ?ettlirjg in that territory would be from the free states and 
 foreign countries, and it was eaually certain that, when the 
 people came to form new states, slavery would be prohibited 
 and freedom given to the slaves within the limits of most, 
 if not all of those states. 
 
 But fanaticism of no kind, whether political or religious, 
 listens to reason, and among the pseudo-philanthropists 
 there was much of the leaven of that old spirit, which had 
 
74 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 prompted the hanging, burning and scourging of heretics 
 and witches." 
 
 There were many politicians by trade, whose aspirations 
 had been unsuccessful and who cared nothing for the negro 
 or the cause of freedom, but who fell in with the "free- 
 soil" movement, as it was called with the selfish hope of 
 building up a great sectional party under the auspices of 
 which they could obtain and retain that power which they 
 had failed to acquire otherwise. A very large mass of men 
 rarely think for themselves and among this class the leaders 
 of the ''free-soil" operated extensively by impassioned ap- 
 peals to their prejudices and passions, inducing them to be- 
 lieve that their vital interests required that slavery should 
 be excluded by law from the territories. One of the shrewd- 
 est and most far-seeing of the ' ' free-soil ' ' leaders boldly de- 
 clared that there was a "higher law" than the Constitution 
 and that there was "an impassaMe conflict between slavery 
 and freedom." 
 
 It cannot be denied that there were extreme men at the 
 South on the other side, but they were made so mostly by 
 the hostile attitude assumed by their opponents. 
 
 The result of the agitation was that for some time no 
 government could be formed for any part of the new ter- 
 ritory. The exasperation of feeling between the two sec- 
 tions of the Union, and the danger to that Union itself, be- 
 came so great that in 1850 the more moderate of the leading 
 statesmen of the country, with Clay and Webster at their 
 head, devoted themselves to the adjustment of the threaten- 
 ing questions and their efforts resulted in the adoption of 
 certain measures commonly called the "Compromise Meas- 
 ures of 1850." These measures consisted of a bill for the 
 admission of California into the Union, under a constitu- 
 tion excluding slavery, which had been irregularly adopted 
 a bill to establish a territorial government for Utah and a 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 75 
 
 bill to establish the northern and western boundaries of 
 Texas with her assent, and to establish a territorial govern- 
 ment for New Mexico, it being provided in the territorial 
 bills that states created out of the two territories organized 
 when the population should be sufficient, should be admitted 
 into the Union with or without slavery, as the people them- 
 selves might decide. 
 
 Along with these bills another was passed for enforcing 
 the provision of the Constitution in regard to the return of 
 fugitive slaves, as the former one could not be executed 
 because most of the free states had prohibited their officers 
 from acting under it. These measures as a whole were not 
 acceptable to the extreme men of either section, but the 
 more moderate portion of the two leading political parties 
 hoped that they would put an end to the agitation and re- 
 store peace and concord to the country. Such appeared to 
 be their first effect, and both of the great political parties, 
 into which the country had been divided, without reference 
 to sections for many years — Democrat and Whig — in their 
 platforms of principles adopted in the canvass for Presi- 
 dent in 1852, gave their adhesion to the ''Compromise 
 Measures of 1850" as a final settlement of the questions 
 embraced by them. 
 
 In 1848, a portion of the * ' f ree-soilers " had run Martin 
 Van Buren, a former President and a defeated candidate 
 for the Democratic nomination, as their candidate for the 
 Presidency, but the party did not have cohesiveness enough 
 to give him its whole vote, and in 1852 the ''free-soil" 
 party had no candidate, the members of it voting with the 
 parties to which they had previously been attached accord- 
 ing to their predilections, though there was still much 
 muttering by the leaders. 
 
 The abolition party proper, however, had a candidate for 
 form's sake. 
 
76 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 In 1848, Wisconsin had been added to the Union as a 
 free state, and there were now in the Union sixteen free 
 states and fifteen slave states, giving to the free states the 
 preponderance in the Senate, as they had long had in the 
 lower House. Neither Utah nor New Mexico was fitted at 
 all for slave labor, and there was no territory out of which 
 it was likely that another slave state could be formed, ex- 
 cept by the sub-division of Texas, while there was a prospect 
 for the formation of several more free states, at no distant 
 day, out of the territory west of the Mississippi and north 
 of 36° 30' and on the Pacific coast, the territories of Min- 
 nesota and Oregon having already been organized. 
 
 By what was called the Compromise of 1850, the South 
 had gained nothing whatever, except the abstract principle 
 inserted in the Utah and New Mexico bills, of non-inter- 
 ference by Congress with the question of slavery and the 
 submission of the decision of the question to the people of 
 the territories when they came to frame their state govern- 
 ments, while the North had gained the rich and growing 
 state of California. The bill for the restoration of fugitive 
 slaves was in accordance with an express stipulation in the 
 Constitution, without which it would never have been 
 adopted. Yet the execution of this law was resisted from 
 the very beginning and very soon most of the free states 
 passed laws, called * ' personal liberty bills ' ' which virtually 
 nullified the act of Congress. Several collisions ensued be- 
 tween the United States officers in their efforts to execute 
 the law and mobs in the free states who resisted its execu- 
 tion, and even members on the floor of Congress denounced 
 the law and counselled resistance to it. This served to pre- 
 vent that harmonious feeling which had been expected from 
 the adoption of the measures of adjustment, and the new 
 fugitive slave act became soon a dead letter from the 
 danger, difficulty and expense attending its execution. Not 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 77 
 
 only was the ^aranty contained in the Constitution, and 
 the act of Congress to enforce it, thus rendered nugatory, 
 but for many years slaves had been enticed by agents from 
 the North to make their escape and aid had been furnished 
 them while doing so, under a system which obtained the 
 designation of * * The underground railroad. ' ' This was not 
 confined to citizens merely but was participated in by state 
 officers who were sworn to support the Constitution of the 
 United States, and instead of compelling their citizens and 
 officers to comply with the Constitution and law, many of 
 the free states passed laws to make it felony for the owner 
 to arrest his slave or for any one to assist him. 
 
 At the session of Congress for 1853-54 in the introduction 
 of a bill for the establishment of governments for the ter- 
 ritories of Kansas and Nebraska, both north of 36° 30', a 
 proposition was made by Mr. Douglas, a senator from Illi- 
 nois, to incorporate a provision in regard to slavery similar 
 to that contained in the Utah and New Mexico bills. "When 
 the measure was offered by a Northern man, it was sup- 
 ported by nearly all of the Southern representatives as cor- 
 rect in principle, though it met with the opposition of a 
 few Southern representatives and statesmen, who de- 
 precated it as tending to arouse again the excitement which 
 had partially- subsided. 
 
 The question was not one of any great practical import- 
 ance, as the climate and soil of Kansas and Nebraska fur- 
 nished a more formidable barrier to the introduction of 
 slaves than any legal enactment. The proposition to repeal 
 the enactment as to the line of 36° 30' violated no com- 
 promise, as has been shown, and it violated no right of any 
 of the Northern states or people, but merely asserted a 
 principle deducible from the Constitution and right in it- 
 self ; though in this case it was an abstract one. 
 
78 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 The measure was passed with the assistance of some of 
 the Northern Democrats, and it had the effect so much 
 dreaded by the conservative men who opposed it, of reviv- 
 ing with new intensity the fires of the former agitation 
 and of giving new life to the languishing free-soil or Re- 
 publican party. Though they had never acceded to or com- 
 plied with the compromise in regard to Missouri or that of 
 1850, or even those of the Constitution itself, the leaders of 
 the free-soil party raised a tremendous clamor about the 
 violation of plighted faith, and soon the agitation spread 
 over the whole North with ten fold force. 
 
 The Puritan ministers of New England, successors of 
 the Cotton-Mathers of religious persecution and witches- 
 killing notoriety, abandoned the gospel of peace for dis- 
 sertations upon the merits of Sharp 's rifles, and under their 
 auspices a considerable number of armed emigrants were 
 sent to Kansas. In consequence of this movement some hot 
 heads from the South imprudently went to Kansas for the 
 purpose of disputing the settlement of that territory with 
 the emissaries of the New England parsons. The result was 
 that a very disorderly condition of things ensued in the 
 new territories, as is always the case where reason gives 
 way to passion. Many wrongs and acts of violence were 
 committed on both sides and there was a tremendous howl 
 about ''bleeding Kansas*' by the Northern parsons and 
 agitators, but not one slave was carried into Kansas and 
 no one thought of carrying any there. 
 
 The result of the agitation consequent on the theoretic 
 extension of slavery to Kansas and Nebraska, and of the 
 troubles in Kansas, was the appearance of John C. Fre- 
 mont as the Eepublican free-soil candidate for the presi- 
 dency in 1856. He was beaten, but his vote showed the 
 existence of a formidable sectional party, in all of the free 
 states, based on a solitary idea. The strength of this party 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 79 
 
 Tvas still further increased by an attempt to secure the ad- 
 mission of Kansas into the Union, under a Constitution 
 liberating slavery and adopted by a convention held during 
 the prevalence of the bitter feud there, but the most im- 
 portant result of the Kansas troubles was the development 
 of the character of John Bro^vn, a bold, desperate and 
 fanatical Northern man, who made his appearance on the 
 scene of action, and participated largely in the outrages 
 committed by the free-soilers and abolitionists. 
 
 What gave the crowning stroke to the already over-heated 
 animosity between the two sections, was the appearance of 
 John Bro^vn on a new theatre of action. The political par- 
 sons and the agitators of the North did not confine them- 
 selves to the denunciation of the Southern people and of 
 slavery, but they lavished their anathemas upon the Consti- 
 tution which tolerated slavery and the Union which gave it, 
 as they alleged, protection. Nor were the denunciations 
 confined to Northern pulpits and abolition or free-soil 
 papers, but were heard in the Senate Chamber and on the 
 floor of the House of Eepresentatives, and were accom- 
 panied with the most atrocious libels on the Southern 
 people, in which they were represented as barbarians who 
 delighted in inflicting upon their slaves the most revolting 
 cruelties, and who engaged in the most debasing immorali- 
 ties. Encouraged by these open denunciations of the Con- 
 stitution and the Union, and stimulated by the picture of 
 Southern wrongs and cruelty to the slaves, which were con- 
 stantly placed before his eyes. John Brown gave way to 
 the wild conceptions of a fanatical mind and undertook to 
 subvert the government of the United States and to redress 
 the wrongs of the slaves by deluging the Southern states 
 in blood. 
 
 In the year 1858. he held a secret meeting or convention 
 of reckless fanatics like himself at Chatham, in Canada 
 
80 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 West, and devised a scheme for a provisional government 
 of the United States, of which he was to he the head, with 
 a cabinet appointed by himself, and he concocted a plan for 
 putting his government in operation by raising a rebellion 
 among the slaves and freeing them. All of these proceedings 
 were kept from the public until the month of October, 1859, 
 when John Brown, with a band of followers, made his ap- 
 pearance suddenly at Harper's Ferry, within the limits of 
 Virginia, surprised and captured the United States arsenal 
 at that place, which was without a guard; killed several 
 citizens ; captured and imprisoned others, and committed a 
 number of depredations and robberies in the neighborhood. 
 His pretended provisional government was proclaimed and 
 the object of the movement declared, but failing to receive 
 some expected re-inforcements, and not meeting with co- 
 operation on the part of the slaves for whom he brought a 
 supply of arms and expected to get others from the arsenal, 
 he and his band of desperadoes were soon surrounded and 
 the greater part captured or killed. John Brown himself 
 was made a prisoner in a wounded condition and he and 
 several of his followers were tried under the laws of Vir- 
 ginia, convicted and executed for treason and murder. 
 
 His plan of operations contemplated a servile insurrection 
 in all of the Southern states with all of the horrors of blood 
 and rapine, and his acts amounted to treason, not only 
 against the state of Virginia, but against the United States ; 
 yet there was reason to suspect that some of the leaders of 
 the Eepublican or free-soil party, were cognizant of his de- 
 signs if they did not secretly favor them. Certain it is that 
 very great sympathy was openly expressed for him by 
 many individuals and by public meetings at the North, and 
 that the legislature of Massachusetts, by an almost unan- 
 imous vote, adjourned over so as not to be in session on the 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 81 
 
 day of his execution, avowedly as a mark of respect for him, 
 and of condemnation at his execution. 
 
 "When this desperate undertaking of John BroT\Ti to de- 
 luge the South with fire and sword, and the marked sym- 
 pathy for him expressed at the North, w^ere added to the 
 failure of the Northern states to comply with their plighted 
 faith in regard to the restoration of fugitive slaves — to 
 their interference with the institutions of those states, the 
 persistent libels upon the Southern people, the encourage- 
 ment given to the slaves to revolt by incendiary publica- 
 tions, the attitude of hostility assumed by a great number 
 of the Northern representatives to the South on every occa- 
 sion in which anything had been proposed or done in re- 
 gard to slavery, and to the rapid growth of the party now 
 coming into the ascendency on the ground of enmity to 
 the South and her institutions — it may be well conceived 
 that a profound sensation was created in the latter section. 
 
 South Carolina then proposed some agreement between 
 the Southern states, for the purpose of withdrawing from 
 a compact, the obligations of which had been so disre- 
 garded, but Virginia discouraged this proposition, as she 
 was exceedingly loth to take any step looking to the sever- 
 ance of a Union which she had done so much to establish, 
 and for which she had made so many sacrifices. 
 
 By the commencement of the canvass for the Presidency 
 in 1860, the Democratic party had become divided on the 
 question of the construction of the slavery clause in the 
 Kansas-Nebraska bill : that is whether the power to exclude 
 or adopt slavery could be exercised by the people of the 
 territories while in the territorial condition. Mr. Douglas 
 and the greater portion of the Northern Democrats con- 
 tended for the former view, while nearly all of the Southern 
 Democrats advocated the latter. It was contended by the 
 Southern Democrats with great force and justice that if 
 
82 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Congress did not have the power to exclude slavery, the 
 legislatures of the territories, which derived their powers 
 from the acts organizing the territories could not have 
 that power. This view was conclusive, for the territorial 
 legislatures, being now temporary bodies deriving their sole 
 powers from the acts of Congress, could not exercise greater 
 powers than the body which created them, while the people, 
 when they came to form constitutions, under that clause 
 of the Constitution of the United States providing for the 
 admission of new states on the same footing with the old, 
 were necessarily vested with that sovereign power over this 
 subject and all others which belonged to the original states. 
 
 The Northern Democrats contended for what was called 
 * * Squatter Sovereignity, ' ' that is, that this sovereign power 
 of legislation vested in the settlers of the territories from 
 the beginning, and to propitiate the free-soil sentiment, 
 many of them contended that the clause in the Kansas- 
 Nebraska bill secured the territories to the north and free- 
 soil more effectually than could be done by Congressional 
 legislation, as settlers from the North could more readily 
 take possession of the territories and exclude slavery from 
 them, than settlers from the South could introduce slavery 
 there, while in Congress the Southern Representatives es- 
 pecially in the Senate where the sections were more nearly 
 equal, could, with the aid of a few Northern men, prevent 
 any interfer fence with slavery. This view of the subject 
 made the doctrine of squatter sovereignty even more offen- 
 sive than what was called the Wilmot proviso, and Southern 
 men contended that it was a trap to entrap them. 
 
 It was in fact not a question of construction of the clause 
 in the Kansas-Nebraska bill but of the Constitution itself. 
 If Congress had no power to legislate on the subject, then 
 it could delegate none, and if there was such a thing as 
 "squatter sovereignty" it extended to all other subjects as 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 83 
 
 well as to slavery, and the settlers in the territories might 
 set up for themselves without any authority from Congress, 
 which would involve some very extraordinary consequences, 
 including that even of disposing of the public lands. The 
 squatter sovereignty view of the question was one not to be 
 tolerated ; and it applied to the Utah and New Mexico bills 
 as well as to that in regard to Kansas and Nebraska. 
 
 The great mass of Southern Whigs agreed with the 
 Southern Democrats in their way of interpreting the prin- 
 ciple, but they did not regard the question as one of suffi- 
 cient practical importance to make a fight over, and old 
 party divisions and feuds prevented a coalescence of all of 
 the Southern men. 
 
 Though considered by many an abstract question, as it 
 certainly was so far as it applied to Kansas and Nebraska, 
 it seemed to divide the Democratic party into two wings, 
 a Northern and a Southern one, with some adherents to 
 either wing from the opposite section. This di^dsion re- 
 sulted in the nomination of two sets of candidates by the 
 Democratic party — Douglas of Illinois and Johnson of 
 Georgia by the Northern T^ing, and Breckenridge of Ken- 
 tucky and Lane of Oregon by the Southern wing. The Re- 
 publican free-soil or abolition party nominated Lincoln of 
 Illinois and Hamlin of ]\Iaine, while the Southern Whigs 
 and a reumant of Northern Whigs, who had not fused with 
 the free-soilers and abolitionists, nominated BeU of Ten- 
 nessee and Everett of Massachusetts. The advocates of this 
 latter ticket proposed to sink every other issue and stand 
 for "The Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of 
 the Laws." 
 
 At the election in 1860, Lincoln and Hamlin received the 
 majority of the popular vote in nearly all of the Northern 
 states and by that vote alone secured a majority of the 
 votes of the electoral colleges, but they lacked very nearly 
 
84 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 1,000,000 votes of receiving a majority of the combined 
 popular vote of the United States. In this election the 
 Southern people were unanimous in their opposition to 
 Lincoln and Hamlin though divided as to the other candi- 
 dates, the few thousands of votes given on the border for 
 the Eepublican ticket, being given by Northern men who 
 had emigrated across the line, and amounting to a very 
 inconsiderable fraction. 
 
 It was the first time in the history of the Government 
 that a mere sectional candidate had been elected and this 
 was done upon sectional issues alone. This result presented 
 an alarming state of things and developed the fact that 
 under a Eepublican form of Federal Government, with 
 suffrage nearly universal, it was perfectly practicable for 
 a minority to get possession of the government on sectional 
 issues and perhaps control it permanently. There had 
 been, before, presidents elected by a minority popular vote, 
 but this was on National issues and the support of the suc- 
 cessful candidate was confined to no particular section. Of 
 the thirteen presidents elected, seven had been elected from 
 Southern states, and all of them received majorities of the 
 popular vote except Mr. Polk of Tennessee, and his prin- 
 cipal opponent was Mr. Clay of Kentucky, a Southern man. 
 
 Six had been selected from Northern states, and but one 
 of them, Harrison of Ohio, but a native of Virginia, re- 
 ceived a majority of the popular votes. 
 
 Of the Southern presidents, Washington's electoral vote . 
 was unanimous. Jefferson received twenty Northern elec- 
 toral votes at his first election, and all but nine of them at 
 his second. Madison received a majority of Northern 
 electoral votes at his first election and forty of them at his 
 second. Monroe received a very large majority of Northern 
 electoral votes at his first election and all but one at his 
 last, that being the only vote cast against him. Jackson 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 85 
 
 received 73 Northern and Northwestern electoral votes out 
 of 147 cast, at his first election and a very large majority at 
 his second election. Polk received 103 of the same vote to 
 58 cast for Mr. Clay and Taylor received a large majority 
 of the same vote. 
 
 Of the Northern presidents, John Adams received 12 
 electoral votes from the South. John Quincy Adams re- 
 ceived six electoral votes from the slave states and was 
 elected by the House of Representatives, receiving the 
 votes of several slave states. Van Buren received 61 out 
 of 126 votes cast by the slave states, 28 of the rest being 
 cast for Harrison. Harrison received a large majority of 
 Southern electoral votes, as did Pierce and Buchanan and 
 in every election the majority of Northern electoral votes 
 had been cast for the successful candidates, except at Jef- 
 ferson's first election, Madison's second, Jackson's first and 
 Buchanan's election and in this the majority of that vote 
 had been cast for Fremont, the sectional Republican candi- 
 date. Two vice-presidents, Tyler from Virginia and Fill- 
 more of New York, had succeeded to the presidency by the 
 deaths of the incumbents and both of them had received 
 majorities of the popular vote as well as of the Northern 
 electoral vote. 
 
 Lincoln's election therefore was the first instance of the ^ 
 election of a mere sectional president. It was very evident 
 that if the party electing him continued in possession of . 
 the government for any length of time, there would inevita- 
 bly follow a subversion of the rights of the states and a 
 consolidation of all power in the Federal government under 
 the control of a sectional majority, not a majority of the 
 whole. This form of consolidation promised to be infinitely 
 worse than an entire obliteration of all state lines and a 
 concentration of power in the hands of the entire people. 
 
86 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Under the circumstances attending the election of Lin- 
 coln, those of the Southern states which are usually desig- 
 nated the Cotton States" deemed thal^ their own safety 
 required their withdrawal from the Union, and they conse- 
 quently withdrew. The legislature of South Carolina was 
 in session for the purpose of appointing electors for presi- 
 dent, and when the result was ascertained, a convention for 
 that state was called, which adopted an ordinance of seces- 
 sion on the 20th of December, 1860. Georgia, Florida, 
 Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana soon followed the 
 example of South Carolina, and a Congress of the seceding 
 states met at Montgomery, Alabama, early in February, 
 1861, and organized a provisional government under the 
 style of the ''Confederate States of America," of which 
 the Honorable Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was ap- 
 pointed President, and the Honorable A. H. Stephens, of 
 Georgia, Vice-President. 
 
 Texas had previously adopted an ordinance of secession 
 which went into effect when it was certified by the popular 
 vote and that state soon afterwards became also one of the 
 Confederate States. 
 
 A permanent constitution was adopted for the Confeder- 
 ate States to go into effect on the 22d of February, 1862, 
 modelled after that of the United States, but containing 
 some changes in the details and the powers delegated, with 
 more ample recognition of states rights and a prohibition 
 of the introduction of slaves from any other than the slave- 
 holding states and territories of the United States. 
 
 The secession of these states had been without violence, 
 except to take possession of some forts and arsenals of the 
 United States within the limits of the seceding states, 
 which had been accomplished without bloodshed. Commis- 
 sioners were appointed to the United States government, to 
 effect a peaceful settlement of all questions between the 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 87 
 
 two governments in regard to the public debt, territory, etc. 
 
 This change in the relations of the seceding states to the 
 United States resulted in no change whatever in the do- 
 mestic affairs of those states, but they continued to be regu- 
 lated as before under the laws and constitutions of the 
 several states. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Arltnn of % Mnrhn Blurts Bt^tm—dlommtmn 
 nf Utrgtma 
 
 The Border Slave States/* as they were called, includ- 
 ing North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, which im- 
 mediately joined the Cotton States" on the south, though 
 equally appreciating the outrages upon their rights and the 
 dangers to be apprehended in the future, were not at first 
 disposed to secede, as they had cherished such an habitual 
 attachment to the Union that they were exceedingly loth 
 to give it up, being governed by that sentiment described 
 in the Declaration of Independence in the assertion "that 
 mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are suffer- 
 able than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to 
 which they are accustomed.'' 
 
 The majority of the people of those states were actuated 
 by hope that the party which was about to obtain posses- 
 sion of the government would not long hold together, and 
 they trusted that the sober second thought of the people of 
 the North would keep the dominant party within bounds 
 until it could be ejected from power, and that in the mean- 
 time guaranties might be obtained for the rights of the 
 states, so as to bring the government back to a conformity 
 with its original designs, and effect a restoration of the 
 Union. This was especially the case with the State of Vir- 
 ginia, which had made so many sacrifices to establish and 
 perpetuate the Union, which in great part had been the 
 work of her own hands. The legislature of Virginia was 
 in session when the secession of the * * Cotton States ' ' began, 
 and the crisis was of such a threatening nature that an act 
 was passed, providing for the assemblage of a convention, 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 89 
 
 vested with the sovereign power of the state, but directing 
 at the same time, that a vote should be taken upon the 
 question of any ordinance of secession which might be 
 adopted^ and that it should be submitted to the popular 
 vote for ratification before it should be effectual. The 
 legislature also by resolution, invited a convention of com- 
 missioners from all of the non-seceding states. North and 
 South, to assemble at Washington for the purpose of con- 
 sulting upon and devising some plan for adjusting the 
 pending difficulties with a view to a restoration of the 
 Union. This latter convention assembled and was known 
 as the ' ' Peace Convention. ' ' 
 
 The election for members of the Virginia convention took 
 place on the first Monday in February, 1861, and a large 
 majority of the delegates elected were opposed to secession. 
 The convention assembled at the Capitol in Richmond, on 
 the 13th of February, and a decided union man, Mr. John 
 J anney, of Loudoun, was chosen President. A deliberative 
 body containing more general talent and worth had rarely, 
 if ever, assembled in the state, and all of the members 
 seemed to be impressed with the momentous character of 
 the crisis. This convention contained one distinguished 
 gentleman who had been President of the United States, 
 another who had been governor of the state, a number who 
 had filled seats in the Federal Congress, two who had been 
 heads of departments in the Cabinet at Washington, besides 
 many others among the most talented and distinguished 
 statesmen and lawyers of the state. 
 
 There was a variety of sentiment among the Union mem- 
 bers as to the terms upon which it would be safe for the 
 state to remain in the Union, but a very large majority 
 were earnestly in favor of some adjustment in the way of 
 amendments to the Constitution of the United States, by 
 which the seceded states could be induced to return, while 
 
90 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 the members favoring immediate secession constituted a 
 very small minority. A committee was at once appointed, 
 which after considerable deliberation reported a plan of ad- 
 justment for submission to the other states through Con- 
 gress, after its adoption by the convention. In the mean- 
 time the Peace Convention which assembled at Washington, 
 had adopted a proposition for adjustment which met with 
 no favor at the hands of the Republican members of Con- 
 gress, and was not entirely satisfactory to a majority of the 
 Virginia Convention. Propositions of compromise in Con- 
 gress had also failed. 
 
 The Virginia Convention engaged earnestly in the dis- 
 cussion of the report of its committee and counter proposi- 
 tions, and continued it until the month of April, having 
 in the meantime voted down, by a very large majority, a 
 direct proposition for secession. 
 
 It is difficult to describe the intense anxiety felt by most 
 of the members of the convention to preserve the peace of 
 the country and effect an amicable settlement of the 
 troubles. Lincoln had been inaugurated president on the 
 4th of March, and had delivered an inaugural address that 
 was enigmatical in its terms. During the whole of the dis- 
 cussion which was progressing in the Virginia convention, 
 the members engaged in the effort to preserve peace and 
 restore the Union, received no offer whatever of co-opera- 
 tion from the occupant of the White House, and no direct 
 answer ever reached them as coming from him to persons 
 who approached him on the questions engrossing all hearts 
 and minds in the state. 
 
 In the early part of April, the convention had become 
 very anxious in regard to the uncertain condition of things, 
 and appointed a committee of three of its members, of great 
 ability and experience to wait upon Mr. Lincoln and as- 
 certain from him, in a respectful manner, what course he 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 91 
 
 proposed to take in regard to the seceded states. This com- 
 mittee reached Washington a little before the attack on 
 Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, and had an interview 
 with Mr. Lincoln, receiving very little encouragement from 
 him. While the committee was awaiting a formal answer, 
 which was promised, the news of the commencement of the 
 bombardment of Fort Sumter was received, and the reply 
 from Mr. Lincoln appeared in extra issues from the press 
 without having been communicated to the committee. 
 
 This reply was enigmatical in its terms like the inaugural, 
 but was rather stronger on the question of coercion. The 
 committee at once returned and reported to the convention 
 the result of its mission, and Fort Sumter having fallen, a 
 proclamation from Lincoln soon followed, on the 15th of 
 April, calling on the states, Virginia included, for 75,000 
 troops 'Ho repossess the forts, places and property which 
 have been seized from the Union. ^' 
 
 There was no mistaking that this meant war on the 
 seceded states, and the Virginia convention went into secret 
 session, when an ordinance of secession was introduced by 
 Mr. Ballard Preston, Chairman of the Committee, which 
 had waited on Lincoln, and up to that time an opponent of 
 secession. After a very earnest discussion, that ordinance 
 was adopted on the 17th day of April. 
 
 A number of members of the convention, including my- 
 self, who afterwards fully sustained the action of the state, 
 voted against the passage of this ordinance with the hope, 
 even in that stage of the controversy, that the people of 
 the North would not respond to the call of Lincoln for 
 troops, and that a disruption of the Union and the horrors 
 of war might still be avoided. The scenes which occurred 
 during the discussion which ensued after the convention 
 went into secret session, were characterized by a solemnity 
 rarely witnessed in a deliberative body and several mem- 
 
92 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 bers while speaking were unable to restrain their tears. As 
 for myself, it was exceedingly difficult to surrender the at- 
 tachment of a lifetime to that Union which had been ce- 
 mented by the blood of so many patriots, and which I had 
 been accustomed to look upon (in the language of Washing- 
 ton) as the palladium of the political safety and prosperity 
 of the country, and therefore I had hoped even against 
 hope, but I soon became convinced fully that the action of 
 the convention was right, and that it could have pursued no 
 other course, consistently with the honor and dignity of 
 Virginia, and in this opinion I have remained firmly fixed, 
 notwithstanding the result of the war which ensued. 
 
 After the passage of the ordinance of secession, provision 
 was made for submitting it to the popular vote for ratifica- 
 tion, at the elections to be held on the fourth Thursday in 
 May. In the meantime steps were taken for placing the 
 state in a condition of defence, and an ordinance was passed 
 directing the governor to call into service of the state as 
 many volunteers as might be necessary to defend it against 
 invasion. Colonel Robert E. Lee, a native and citizen of 
 Virginia, who had resigned his commission in the United 
 States Army on hearing the action of his state, was ap- 
 pointed by the governor, with the consent of the convention, 
 commander-in-chief of all of the forces of the state with the 
 rank of Major General. 
 
 In the meantime an arrangement was made with the Con- 
 federate Government for assistance in defending the state, in 
 the event of an attempt by the government at Washington 
 to march troops into or through it with a view to an in- 
 vasion of any of the seceded states, and the Confederate 
 Government was invited to remove to the City of Eichmond. 
 
 The convention remained in session until the first day of 
 May, when it adjourned over to the second week in June to 
 await the result of the popular vote on the ordinance of 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 93 
 
 secession. The ratification was given by an overwhelming 
 
 majority of the popular vote, and upon the re-assembling 
 of the convention the ordinance was duly signed by the 
 greater part of the members. I had voted for the ratifica- 
 tion at the polls and now put my signature to the ordinance. 
 
 Virginia now had fully and completely dissolved her 
 connection with the United States, and resumed the powers 
 she had delegated when she ratified the Constitution. To 
 this step she had been impelled against her previous inclina- 
 tions, by the course of the government at Washington, to 
 avoid being dragged into an unholy war against the Cotton 
 States, and to maintain the cherished principles for which 
 she had fought, and which she had uniformly asserted since 
 the adoption of the United States Constitution. AVhen the 
 act of secession was complete, she adopted the Constitution 
 of the Confederate States, both provisional and permanent, 
 and was fully admitted into the Confederacy. 
 
 North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas likewise with- 
 drew from the Union and became members of the Confeder- 
 acy for the same reasons which influenced Virginia. ]\Iis- 
 souri subseciuently passed an ordinance of secession and 
 joined the Confederacy, but that state was soon overrun by 
 United States troops, and the regular government was sub- 
 verted and another substituted in its place by the force 
 of Federal bayonets. Kentucky undertook to occupy a 
 neutral position until the greater part of that state was in 
 the power of the Federal troops, when an irregular govern- 
 ment was formed which passed an ordinance of secession 
 and joined the Confederacy. The situation of Maryland 
 was such that she was soon overruii by troops and prevented 
 any legislative expression of opinion, the members of her 
 legislature being seized and imprisoned. Little Delaware 
 was so situated that its voice was never heard at all. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The causes which led to the secession of the Southern 
 States have never been given, and when they are compared 
 with those which led to the American Revolution as given 
 by the First Continental Congress, the latter sink into com- 
 parative insignificance. A large portion of the wrongs com- 
 plained of in the Declaration of Independence were acts 
 committed after the commencement of the collisions between 
 the British troops and the Colonists, and if these were com- 
 pared with those committed by the Federal troops in the 
 beginning of the war, in Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, 
 to say nothing of the long list of outrages perpetrated dur- 
 ing its progress, the indictment against King George con- 
 tained in the eloquent language of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, would be a very tame affair in comparison with 
 that which could be preferred against the Government at 
 Washington. 
 
 The third article of the Confederation had specified the 
 object for which it had been formed, and that it was **A 
 firm league of friendship ' ' for the common defence, the se- 
 curity of the liberties and the mutual and general welfare, 
 and that the states bound themselves to assist each other 
 against all force offered to or attacks made upon them or 
 any of them ' ' on account of religion, sovereignity, trade or 
 any other pretense whatever." The preamble to the Con- 
 stitution recites that it was made ''to form a more perfect 
 union." More perfect how? To the subversion of the 
 liberties and sovereignty of the states? Had the conduct 
 of the Northern States been that of the members of ''a 
 firm league and friendship?" And when they had so flag- 
 rantly violated and neglected the plain stipulations of the 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 95 
 
 Constitution, did not the Southern States have the same 
 right to withdraw from the connection with them, that the 
 colonies had to withdraw from the connection with Great 
 Britain, because the government which had been instituted 
 for ''the common defence and general welfare" had be- 
 come ''destructive of those ends?" 
 
 Who was to judge of whether there was a necessity for 
 severing the connection, the oppressor or the oppressed ? If 
 the former, then the decision would have been against the 
 colonies. If colonies, the mere offshoots from the mother 
 coimtry, could undertake to judge the sufficiency of the 
 grievances and the mode and measure of redress, could not 
 sovereign states which had framed the government of which 
 they complained, do the same thing ? In seceding from the 
 Union, the Cotton States had acted as states, and not as 
 factious individuals resisting the laws or authority of the 
 government. The right of no one had been violated, and 
 it was not proposed to violate the rights of any individuals 
 or states, but merely to dissolve a compact, the terms of 
 which had been violated. To undertake to coerce those 
 states by military force was subversive of the whole spirit 
 and purpose of the Constitution, and made the government 
 the master, instead of the agent, of the powers which had 
 created it. This doctrine of coercion had never been as- 
 serted by any respectable statesman since the foundation of 
 the government, and was at war with all of its principles 
 and aims. When therefore the other states were called 
 upon to engage in this war of coercion against the Cotton 
 States, it was not only their right but their duty to resist. 
 By the very terms of the Constitution, it was made the 
 duty of the Federal Government to protect the states 
 against invasion. Did that government have the right to 
 invade the state it was bound to protect? It was not 
 authorized even to protect the states against domestic vio- 
 
96 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 lence except upon invitation of the legislature or of the 
 executive, when the legislature was not in session. Was 
 it authorized to create that domestic violence? The power 
 of coercion involved the anomalous consequence of reducing 
 the states to conquered provinces when exercised, and this 
 involved the self-destruction of the government itself. 
 
 In regard to this question of the right of the states to 
 withdraw, and the power of coercion, it is not inappropriate 
 to call attention to the following views expressed by Mr. 
 Horace Greeley, one of the ablest writers and firmest sup- 
 porters of the Republican or abolition party. In an article 
 published in the New York Tribune a few day after the 
 election of Lincoln in 1860, and reproduced in his work 
 styled ' ' The American Conflict ' ' he says : 
 
 ' ' That was a base and hypocritic row that was once raised 
 at Southern dictation about the ears of John Quincy 
 Adams, because he presented a petition for the dissolution 
 of the Union. The petitioner had a right to make the re- 
 quest; it was the member's duty to present it. And now 
 if the Cotton States consider the value of the Union de- 
 batable, we maintain their perfect right to discuss it. Nay ! 
 we hold, with Mr. Jefferson, to the inalienable right of 
 communities to alter or abolish forms of government that 
 have become injurious or oppressive, and if the Cotton 
 States shall decide that they can do better out of the Union 
 than in it, we insist upon letting them go in peace. The 
 right to secede may be a revolutionary one but it exists 
 nevertheless, and we do not see how one party can have a 
 right to do what another party has a right to prevent. We 
 must ever resist the asserted right of any state to coercion 
 in the Union, and nulify and defy the laws thereof; to 
 withdraw from the Union is quite another matter. And 
 whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliber- 
 ately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 97 
 
 to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof 
 one section is pinned to another by bayonets. 
 
 "But while we uphold the practical liberty, if not the 
 abstract right of secession, we must insist that the step be 
 taken, if ever it shall be, with the deliberation and gravity 
 becoming so momentous an issue. 
 
 "Let ample time be given for reflection, let the subject 
 be fully canvassed before the people, and let a popular 
 vote be taken in every case before secession is decreed. Let 
 the people be told just why they are asked to break up the 
 Confederation; let them reflect, deliberate, then vote; and 
 let the act of secession be the echo of an unmistakable 
 popular fiat. A judgment thus rendered, a demand for 
 separation so backed, would either be acquiesced in with- 
 out effusion of blood, or those who rushed upon carnage to 
 defy or defeat it, would place themselves clearly in the 
 wrong." 
 
 It would be hard to conceive language more forcible for 
 defining the right of the states to withdraw and the wrong 
 and criminality of the attempt to coerce them when they 
 had exercised that right, than this of Mr. Greeley's. It de- 
 rives additional force as coming from him, when it is recol- 
 lected that he had ever been inimical to the institutions of 
 the South, and it announced principles which had been 
 previously asserted in all questions of the Union, and un- 
 derlay the whole superstructure of a government which it- 
 self was founded on the right of revolution. It is difficult 
 to realize the fact that the man who uttered language like 
 that quoted, subsequently became one of the most strenuous 
 advocates of the war of coercion, which was waged on the 
 Southern states. Mr. Greeley cannot avoid the effect of his 
 statement of the principles asserted in his article, by con- 
 tending that the act of separation was not "the echo of an 
 unmistakeable popular fiat," and that the Southern people 
 
98 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 were precipitated into secession without due deliberation. 
 
 When the right to discuss, deliberate and decide, exists, 
 those possessing it, must necessarily be the sole judges of 
 how it is to be exercised. The Southern states did de- 
 liberate and did decide that they could no longer remain in 
 the Union with safety, and therefore they determined to 
 withdraw from it. If the Southern people had been hur- 
 ried into secession by their leaders, they are the parties to 
 complain and to hold the guilty ones responsible. They 
 have not done so, and what right had Mr. Greeley and his 
 party to become their champions against their wishes ? He 
 and his party are estopped from denying that the Southern 
 people, did with almost entire unanimity, adopt secession and 
 willingly gave their support to the cause of separation ; for 
 since their country was overrun by a superior military 
 force, their state governments overthrown; military despot- 
 isms established over them ; and in the effort to reconstruct 
 the Union, the great mass of the people disfranchised, and 
 the right of suffrage given to the freed slaves, because it 
 was alleged that the Southern people were still rebellious, 
 and so wedded to the idea of secession, notwithstanding the 
 bitter experience of the war, that they could not be trusted 
 with the right to vote and hold office. All of this was done 
 with Mr. Greeley's full knowledge and sanction. 
 
 It has been shown how long, how earnestly, and how 
 anxiously the question was discussed in Virginia, and that 
 secession was resorted to by that state only when a war of 
 coercion had been proclaimed, and she had been required 
 to furnish troops to carry it on. The state of Virginia be- 
 lieved, with Mr. Greeley, that it would be a grievous wrong 
 to ''rush upon carnage to defy and defeat" the right of 
 the Cotton States to withdraw from the Union ; and she de- 
 termined to do what he had declared his purpose of doing : 
 that is "resist all coercive measures." The ordinance of 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 99 
 
 secession was submitted to the popular vote at an election 
 held more than one month after its adoption by the con- 
 vention, and it was ratified by an overwhelming majority, 
 thus showing beyond dispute that it was "the echo of an 
 unmistakable popular fiat." Did not "those who rushed 
 upon carnage to defy and defeat" "a judgment thus 
 rendered, a separation so backed," "place themselves 
 clearly in the wrong 1 ' ' 
 
 Yet Virginia was the first of the seceding states invaded 
 by the Federal army ; her towns and plains were devastated 
 by a long and cruel war ; her people plundered, imprisoned 
 and murdered; her territory severed, and a new state 
 erected within her limits, in violation of the Constitution 
 of the United States. Subsequently a military despotism 
 was thrust upon them, and the freed slaves were vested 
 with the right of suffrage and the capacity to hold office, 
 while such wide measures of disfranchisement were adopted 
 that enough men competent to fill the petty offices of state, 
 even with those whose fears and cupidity led them to 
 apostatize and the influx of adventurers could not be found 
 in all the limits of that old commonwealth which has been 
 designated "the mother of states and of statesmen." 
 
 In the case of ]\Iaryland, Kentucky and Missouri, the 
 people were overrun by Federal troops owing to the pec- 
 uliar nature of their situation, and they were deprived of 
 the opportunity of freely discussing and deliberating upon 
 the questions involved, though the legislature of ]\Iissouri 
 did pass an ordinance of secession. Did not those people, 
 under such circumstances, have the right individually to 
 resist so flagrant an outrage upon their rights and liberties? 
 They were not only deprived of the liberty of peaceably as- 
 sembling to discuss their grievances, but it was sought to 
 deprive them of the right "to keep and bear arms," as ex- 
 pressly guaranteed by the second amendment to the Con- 
 
100 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 stitution, in order that they might have the means always 
 of defending their liberties and rights, and the only re- 
 source they had was to unite as individuals in the defence 
 of the common cause, and of their own violated homes and 
 liberties. 
 
 It has been said that the Confederate states began the 
 war by firing upon Fort Sumter. If those states had the 
 right to withdraw from the Union and the United States 
 had no right to resist or coerce them then the attempt to 
 maintain a garrisoned fort in one of the most important 
 harbors of the Confederacy, was an act of war. This had, 
 nevertheless, been patiently borne with, for nearly three 
 months after the secession of South Carolina, in whose 
 principal harbor the Fort was situated, and it was only 
 when the Government of the United States had given 
 notice of its intention to supply Fort Sumter "peaceably, 
 if possible, otherwise by force," and the vessels for that 
 purpose had appeared off the harbor, that the attack began. 
 The commissioners sent to Washington to effect a peaceable 
 settlement of all questions had then been denied an audi- 
 ence, and informed that the authorities at Washington 
 would hold no intercourse with them. 
 
 The war was thus inevitable, and the Federal authorities 
 were quietly preparing for it, in order to entrap the border 
 states. The threat to supply Fort Sumter indicated a pur- 
 pose of war ; was then the Confederate Government to wait 
 until the measures of the Government at Washington had 
 been so completely taken that the former would find itself 
 helpless in the hands of its enemy ? The port of Charleston 
 was necessary to it as an inlet for obtaining supplies and 
 arms for its defence, was it then to allow the port, which 
 could block the entrance to that harbor, to be placed in a 
 condition to render the blockade complete, the harbor 
 worthless and Charleston untenable? 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 101 
 
 There can be no question of tlie right of the Confederate 
 
 Government to force a surrender of the fort. Avhich had 
 been refused, and that it was fully warranted in pursuing 
 the course it did. I must confess that, at the time. I deeply 
 deplored and condemned the attack on Fort Sumter, on the 
 score of policy, because I regarded the threat of the "Wash- 
 ington Government as designed to provoke a commence- 
 ment of the conflict by the firing of the first shot, and not 
 intended really to be carried into effect. It is now manifest 
 that war had already been resolved upon, and the firing of 
 the first gun on Fort Sumter was not its commencement. 
 The war was begtin by the attempt to hold the forts in the 
 Confederate harbors. 
 
 It has been alleged that the Southern States had pre- 
 viously controlled the policy of the government, and that 
 they seceded becatise they had now lost that power. There 
 had never been a president elected from any of the Cotton 
 States, which established the Confederate Government ex- 
 cept from Louisiana, of which state General Taylor was a 
 nominal resident, but really a native of Virginia, and an 
 officer in the army, and he lived but a little over a year 
 after his inaugttration. These Cotton States had furnished 
 comparatively few cabinet ministers, and they had in the 
 main been opposed to the policy ptirsued by the govern- 
 ment in regard to the most important branches of It^gisla- 
 tion. stich as internal improvements, the pttblic lands, tariff, 
 etc. Their leading interest, the culture of cotton, had re- 
 ceived no fostering care whatever from the government, 
 and South Carolina had been complaining for more than 
 thirty years that her interest had been sacrificed to Xorth- 
 ern cupidity by high tariff and at one time she had taken 
 steps to nullify the laws on that sttbject. In no sense cotild 
 the state which initiated secession, be said to be actttated by 
 disappointment at the loss of Federal power. 
 
102 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 It is true that they had lost the power to protect them- 
 selves in the Union, as the Constitution had been so flag- 
 rantly violated and were now threatened with submission — 
 and for this they seceded. 
 
 The state of Virginia had given four of the Southern 
 presidents to the Union, and Tennessee the other two. 
 Washington had been the unanimous choice of all of the 
 states; Jefferson, Madison and Munroe had been national 
 men in their policy and had received the support of a large 
 majority of the Northern vote; Munroe being accepted 
 without opposition at his last election and receiving all of 
 the votes. North and South, but one northern electoral 
 vote. Munroe w;as the last Virginian elected or nominated 
 as President. It is true Tyler had succeeded to the office by 
 the death of Harrison, but he had not received the vote of 
 Virginia even as vice-president. 
 
 Virginia had voted against Clay, Harrison, Taylor and 
 Scott, all na,tives of the state, when they were candidates 
 for the presidency, and she had cast her vote three times 
 against Mr. Clay, and in the cases of Harrison, Taylor and 
 Scott, her vote had been cast for Northern men against 
 them. All of the presidents she had given had been re- 
 elected, because there was nothing sectional or local in their 
 policy, while no Northern president had been re-elected, 
 though three out of the six had been candidates again. In 
 the election of 1860, the state of Virginia cast its vote for 
 Bell and Everett, by a plurality vote over Breckenridge 
 and Lane, and Douglas and Johnson, showing that in this 
 election she was not liable to the charge of sectionalism, 
 even if that charge could be brought against the supporters 
 of Breckenridge and Lane, which is by no means admitted. 
 No interest of Virginia had at any time been fostered by 
 the action of the government, in any stage of its history, 
 and the government had not even taken steps to obtain 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 103 
 
 from foreign countries a diminution of the enormous duties 
 placed on her leading staple, tobacco, but her statesmen, 
 when in office, had pursued a policy looking to the general 
 weKare and prosperity. If she had furnished many states- 
 men to the common councils, it was because of the general 
 confidence in their patriotism, and freedom from all selfish 
 ambition and narrow-minded notions of policy. 
 
 Her history from the beginning of the controversy w^ith 
 Great Britain had been one of sacrifices for the benefit of 
 all of the states. She had promptly sent troops to Mas- 
 sachusetts on the commencement of the war of the Revolu- 
 tion in that state, all of its battlefields were red with the 
 blood of her sons ; and that war had been terminated on her 
 own soil. With a territory larger than that of all of the 
 other states at the conclusion of peace, she had surrendered 
 an empire beyond the Ohio river, for the sake of Union 
 and for the common benefit; and subsequently, she had 
 consented to the erection of the state of Kentucky within 
 her remaining territory. 
 
 As the acknowledgement of the independence of the 
 states had left her, she would have been amply able to take 
 care of herself, and erect a powerful government of her 
 own. yet she had contracted her power and narrowed her 
 limits for what she considered the common good.* 
 
 The Union had not advanced her pecuniary or material 
 interests, yet, in all of its trials, she had been its firmest 
 
 *XoTE — The following extract is from the ''History of the 
 American Civil Vv^ar" by Professor Draper, a Xorthern Union 
 man, which shows the nature of Virginia's sacrifices: ''At the 
 time of the Declaration of Independence, Virginia was the most 
 powerful of the colonies; she occupied a central position and had 
 in Norfolk one of the best harbors on the Atlantic. She had a 
 vast western territory, an imposing commerce, and in the produc- 
 tion and export of tobacco not only a source of wealth, but from 
 the mercantile connections it gave her in Europe, a means of re- 
 finement. It was through this circumstance that so many of her 
 
104 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 supporter and her blood had been freely shed in all of its 
 wars and upon all of its battlefields. It was only where 
 that Union was to be perverted from its original designs 
 and made the means of humiliating and degrading the 
 Southern states, herself included, that Virginia resolved 
 upon severing the connection. 
 
 On the other hand, New England had made no sacrifices 
 for the Union, and had received only benefits from it. To 
 that section the Union had been a "paying operation'* in 
 every way: its fisheries, commerce and factories had been 
 fostered and protected by high bounties and duties until 
 its comparatively sterile soil bloomed as a garden, while its 
 surplus population found homes in the fertile region sur- 
 rendered by Virginia. Descendants of the Puritans did 
 not undertake to become ''philanthropists" until the slave 
 trade with the South ceased to be profitable. 
 
 Nothwithstanding the benefits received by the New Eng- 
 land states from the Union, the first proposition for its 
 dissolution cam0 from those states when the country was 
 engaged in a foreign war — the war of 1812 with Great 
 Britain — because that war was caused by a temporary sus- 
 pension of their commerce. Most of these states refused to 
 permit their militia to be marched beyond their limits for 
 the common defence and the question of a separate peace 
 with the public enemy was mooted, notwithstanding the 
 fact that the war had been undertaken in defence of com- 
 
 young men were educated abroad. When the epoch of separation 
 from the mother country had come, and the question of Confedera- 
 tion arose, she might have asserted her colonial supremacy; she 
 might have been the central power. Many of her ablest men sub- 
 sequently thought that in her voluntary equalization with the 
 feeblest colonies, the spontaneous surrender of her vasi) domain, 
 the self-abnegation with which she sacrificed all her privileges on 
 the altar of the Union, she had made a fatal mistake. In her 
 action there was something very noble." 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 105 
 
 mercial rights in which New England was principally in- 
 terested. Such was the spirit manifested in that section 
 that the British government in declaring a blockade for 
 the coast of the United States, for some time exempted the 
 New England coast from that blockade and did not invade 
 those states. 
 
 Upon the passage of an act for a general embargo in 
 1814, so as to put a stop to the contraband trade from New 
 England, the Massachusetts legislature was flooded with 
 petitions for redress and protection against the act of the 
 Federal government in enforcing the embargo, and a com- 
 mittee to which the petitions were referred, made a report 
 in which the following views, among others, were ex- 
 pressed : 
 
 ''The sovereignty reserved to the states, was reserved to 
 protect the citizens from acts of violence by the United 
 States, as well as for the purposes of domestic regulation. 
 We spurn the idea that the free, sovereign and independent 
 State of Massachusetts is reduced to a mere municipal cor- 
 poration, without the power to protect its people or to de- 
 fend them from oppression from whatever quarter it comes. 
 "Whenever the national compact is violated and the citizens 
 of this state are oppressed by cruel and unauthorized enact- 
 ments, this legislature is bound to interpose its power and 
 to wrest from the oppressor its victim. ' ' 
 
 To show the spirit animating the people of Massachusetts 
 in the assertion of these doctrines — however true they might 
 be in principle — when the news was received of the abdica- 
 tion of Buonaparte and the restoration of the Bourbons in 
 1814 — thus leaving the British government at liberty to 
 employ all of its forces against the United States, the peo- 
 ple of Massachusetts as well as of all New England hailed 
 the news with joy and exultation, "as the harbinger of 
 peace and the renewal of commerce;" and the event was 
 
106 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 celebrated at Boston by a religious ceremony and a sermon 
 from the celebrated Dr. Cbanning. 
 
 In the fall of 1814, the legislature of Massachusetts in- 
 vited a convention of the New England states, which as- 
 sembled in Hartford in December of that year and adopted 
 a series of resolutions in which it was declared, among 
 other things, that, "In cases of deliberate, dangereous and 
 palpable violations of the Constitution, affecting the sover- 
 eignty of a state and the liberties of a people, it was not 
 only the right but the duty also of that state, to interpose 
 its authority for their protection, when emergencies occur, 
 either beyond the reach of the judicial tribunal or too press- 
 ing to admit of delay incident to their forms ; states which 
 have no common umpire must be their own judges and 
 execute their own decisions." The danger to the Union 
 from these steps on the part of Massachusetts and the other 
 New England states, in a time of public war, was put to 
 an end by the unexpected arrival of the news of a treaty 
 of peace ; this perhaps prevented the former state from pro- 
 ceeding to assert her sovereignty and making a separate 
 peace with Great Britain. 
 
 In fact in 1809, during the existence of the troubles 
 growing out of the embargo passed before the close of Mr. 
 Jefferson's administration, John Quincy Adams had com- 
 municated to the government at Washington that the ob- 
 ject of the dominant party in Massachusetts was, and had 
 been for several years, the establishment of a separate con- 
 federacy, as he knew from unequivocal evidence ; and that 
 in cas^ of a civil war, the aid of Great Britain to affect 
 that purpose would be assuredly resorted to, as it would be 
 indispensably necessary to the design. 
 
 There was strong reason to suspect that during the war 
 some secret arrangement existed with the enemy, by which 
 New England withheld from the country the support of 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 107 
 
 her troops and her soil was kept free from invasion. In 
 all the measures then resorted to in order to embarrass the 
 government, Massachusetts took the lead, yet when a war 
 of invasion and subjugation against the Southern states 
 was waged, Massachusetts found no constitutional difficul- 
 ties, had no scruples about sending her troops into the 
 South. 
 
 The idea that any of the Southern states resorted to 
 secession because of the loss of the power and patronage 
 of the government is not founded on fact, as neither had 
 ever been used for their special benefit even when in the 
 hands of Southern men, but it was the Northern states 
 whose trade and factories had groT\Ti up under the foster- 
 ing care of the government throughout its whole history, 
 while the schools of the Northwest had been richly endowed 
 from the public lands and the gigantic system of railroads 
 in the same quarter had been built up mainly from grants 
 of this common property. 
 
 It has been further alleged that it was the slave power 
 which attempted to break up the government, because of 
 its defeat, and that that power had hitherto controlled the 
 government in its interest. In the first place, it is as well 
 to state that as far as the executive branch of the govern- 
 ment was concerned, there had been nothing of which to 
 complain on the part of the Southern people. The great 
 difficulty had been with the legislative department, which 
 always manifested a disposition, more or less, to be aggres- 
 sive on the subject of slavery, and the ;^outhem people 
 looked to the executive to interpose its conservative in- 
 fluence. The preponderence of Northern men in Congress, 
 already increased by the admission of Oregon and Minne- 
 sota, and soon further to be increased by the admission of 
 Kansas, had become so great, that the only hope of the 
 South was in the executive, and when that branch of the 
 
108 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 government was also sectionalized, there was no safety for 
 the weaker section. The people of the South had never asked 
 the government to protect slavery; they had merely asked 
 that it should be let alone, and left where the Constitution 
 left it. 
 
 In entering the Union, they had stipulated for a govern- 
 ment for certain general purposes, and not one to regulate 
 their domestic affairs; and they claimed that the govern- 
 ment should be confined to the purposes for which it was 
 instituted. That government had in no way acted so as to 
 strengthen slavery, and it had not been able to comply with 
 the express stipulation for the return of fugitive slaves. 
 Slavery had been excluded from an immense territory by 
 the action of the government, but it had not been carried 
 to one foot of territory by that action. All of the new 
 states east of the Mississippi, except Florida, had been 
 formed out of territory originally belonging to the slave 
 states, and they had been admitted into the Union under 
 that provision of the Constitution which declared that such 
 states should be admitted upon the same footing in every 
 respect with the original states and to add to this obligation 
 not to interfere with their domestic institutions, the states 
 ceding the territory had expressly stipulated that there 
 should be no interference with slavery. 
 
 Louisiana came in by treaty as slave territory, and with 
 a stipulation for the protection of the people in their prop- 
 erty. Out of that territory, three slave states had been 
 formed, and they were the last there was any prospect of 
 forming ; while the free states of Iowa, Oregon and Minne- 
 sota had already been admitted from the same territory 
 with the prospect of the speedy admission of Kansas and 
 Nebraska and the not remote prospect of an indefinite 
 number of other free states from the same territory. 
 Texas had come in as a state from the condition of 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 109 
 
 an independent republic and the measures leading to 
 her admission had resulted in the acquisition and admis- 
 sion of California as a free state with a prospect of 
 more free states from the territory acquired. So that 
 in every ease of the introduction of new slave ter- 
 ritory into the Union, there had been largely more than 
 equivalent in territory for the formation of. free states ex- 
 cept in the case of the slave territory of Florida ; and when 
 that was acquired the vastly larger and more important 
 slave territory of Texas had been surrendered. It is not a 
 fact. then, in any sense of the term, that the government 
 had been used for the protection and growth of the slave 
 power. That power, if it might be called such, was rela- 
 tively stronger the day the Constitution was formed than 
 it was ever afterwards. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 In connection with this claim of the slave power were the 
 most shocking misrepresentations of the condition of the 
 slaves themselves and of the social relations of the Southern 
 people, in order to array the prejudices of the world against 
 their cause. This course of misrepresentation had long 
 been pursued before the war, and was not confined to 
 American writers, but many works appeared from the 
 British press containing libels upon the society of the 
 Southern states and false views o^ slavery as established 
 there. Such works in both countries were evidently written 
 by persons with prejudiced minds or who knew^ little 
 practically of slavery as it existed in the South. Such was 
 the intolerance of the public sentiment which had been 
 fostered in both countries upon the subject, that no candid 
 and impartial account of the workings of domestic slavery 
 as it existed in the Southern states would be received with 
 the slightest favor, whilst the exaggerated accounts of 
 cruelty practiced by the slave-owners, and consequent suf- 
 ferings of the slaves were eagerly accepted as the truth. 
 
 A very striking evidence of this prejudice was furnished 
 by the reception given to the works of two female writers 
 not many years since. The one. Miss Harriett Beecher, later 
 Mrs. Stowe, wrote a work of fiction called "Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin," containing misrepresentations of slavery and 
 slanders upon Southern society. Drawing upon a fertile 
 imagination and pandering to the prejudices of the unin- 
 formed, she published the book, which had a great run in 
 Europe as well as America, and was translated into almost 
 all of the continental languages. The incidents contained 
 in the book were either erroneous in point of fact or greatly 
 
THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 111 
 
 exaggerated, but the book itself was still more untrue as 
 a picture of Southern society and slavery, and would have 
 been a misrepresentation if every fact contained in it had 
 been true in isolated cases. But the book was received as a 
 true and faithful picture of society and slavery in the South, 
 not merely by the agitators of abolition, but by that very 
 considerable class of persons in the world who allow others 
 to do their thinking, and when the authoress visited Great 
 Britain, she was treated with great attention and exten- 
 sively feted by the nobility, gentry and others. The view 
 of Southern slavery which she drew is perhaps accepted by 
 nine-tenths of the otherwise well informed persons in 
 Europe. 
 
 In remarkable contrast to Miss Beecher 's case, was that of 
 Miss Murray, a lady of talents and refinement, who held 
 the position of maid of honor to Queen Victoria. Miss 
 Murray visited the United States as a tourist with all of 
 her predilections against slavery, but she happened to be 
 one of those persons who, not satisfied with hearsay report, 
 took the necessary trouble to inform herself intelligently 
 upon the subject. In the course of her travels, she went into 
 the Southern states, where she remained for some time as a 
 guest on some of the plantations. She had the opportunity of 
 observing the workings of domestic slavery as it actually 
 existed and in all of its details, and she availed herself of 
 that opportunity to make her own reflections. In letters to 
 friends at home she gave the result of her actual observa- 
 tions and upon her return to England was induced to pub- 
 lish her letters. These letters represented slavery in the 
 Southern states in a very different light from that in which 
 it was accustomed to be presented to the British public, and 
 the consequence was that Miss Murray was notified by the 
 ministry that it was not desirable that she should longer 
 occupy the relation she held to the Queen, as the views she 
 
112 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 expressed in regard to slavery were not consonant with the 
 policy of the British government; so she was retired. 
 
 This illustrates the difference in the reception of two 
 works on the subject of slavery given by the British public : 
 one a work of fiction from a prejudiced writer, the other a 
 matter-of-fact account of an eye witness of what she under- 
 took to describe. 
 
 If British ministers could thus view the subject and be 
 guilty of the injustice they perpetrated in Miss Murray's 
 case, what could be expected of the great mass of British 
 readers ? It is hard to conceive how the glory or prosperity 
 of a nation could be advanced by giving currency to falla- 
 cies, or suppressing the truth in regard to the actual condi- 
 tion of African slavery in the Southern states. 
 
 'It would seem that as Great Britain had had so much 
 to do with fostering the institution in those states, it would 
 be rather gratifying, than otherwise, to its ministers and 
 its people, to know that the descendants of those who had 
 been ravished from their native country by the cupidity of 
 their predecessors, were in a contented and comfortable con- 
 dition. But such was not then "the policy of the govern- 
 ment" and perhaps the philanthropic disciple of Exeter 
 Hall who callously passed by the misery, want and im- 
 morality at her own door in the great city of London, 
 while she shed tears over the imaginary woes pictured by 
 Miss Beecher, would have been equally as indignant as the 
 British ministers with Miss Murray for attempting to dis- 
 abuse her of the delusion which caused those tears to flow. 
 
 Such is, and perhaps ever will be, the character of hu- 
 man philanthropy, that it troubles itself more about the 
 sufferings which exist a long way off or only in imagina- 
 tion, than those which are before its eyes. One weeps over 
 the trials of the hero or heroine in a novel or a play, while 
 we pass the miserable child of want and sin in the street 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 113 
 
 with perfect indifference. If slavery did not have its evils 
 and its wrongs, it would not be a human institution, and 
 as long as "man's inhumanity to man makes countless 
 thousands mourn," so long will evils and wrongs exist in 
 every relation of human society. These exist in the rela- 
 tion of governor and governed, parent and child, husband 
 and wife, master and servant, employer and employed, 
 neighbor and neighbor, and are not excluded even from the 
 church. 
 
 It is not pretended therefore that some masters did not 
 abuse their servants, but these were rare instances, more 
 perhaps than in any other relation of like, and if for no 
 other reason, the great mass of masters were induced to 
 treat their slaves well, because it was their interest to do so. 
 Let any one compare the condition of the African in his 
 native land, with that of the slaves of the South before the 
 violent abolition of slavery, and then say whether that 
 institution, which had produced such a vast improvement 
 in his condition was so great a wrong after all.* 
 
 *ISroTE — Professor Draper, in Ms ''History of the American Civil 
 War ' ' thus represents the condition of the negro in his native land. 
 ''The Negro in Africa." 
 
 "On the west coast of Africa, the true negro-land, the thermo- 
 meter not infrequently stands at 120° in the shade. For months 
 together it remains, night and day, above 80°. The year is divided 
 into the dry and the rainy season; the latter setting in with an in- 
 cessant drizzle, continues until May. It culminates in the most 
 awful thunderstorms and overwhelming rains. This is particularly the 
 case in the mountains. When the dry season has fairly begun a 
 pestiferous miasm is engendered from the vast quantities of vege- 
 table matter brought down into the low lands by torrents. From 
 the fevers thus arising the negroes themselves suffer severely. 
 
 "Moisture and heat, thus so fatal in their consequences to man, 
 give to that country its amazing vegetable luxuriance. For 
 hundreds of square miles there is an impenetrable jungle, infested 
 with intolerable swarms of musquitoes. The interior is magnifi- 
 ciently wooded. The mangrove thickets that line the river banks 
 upon the coast are here replaced by a dark evergreen verdure, 
 interspersed with palms and aloes. A rank herbage obstructs the 
 
114 
 
 THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 The most conclusive answer to all the slanders against 
 Southern slave owners is to be found in the rapid multipli- 
 cation of the slaves by natural increase, which could not 
 have taken place if such barbarities had been practiced or 
 such immorality had existed, as has been represented. 
 Our detractors have convicted themselves of the slanders 
 they have uttered by taking the Southern slave from 
 the Cotton fields to the ballot box and vested him with 
 all the privileges of an American citizen. If the insti- 
 tution of slavery has so tutored the negro that immediately 
 his bonds are loosened, he is qualified for the privileges of 
 the ballot box, what a civilizing tendency that institution 
 must have had. If on the contrary that institution has 
 kept him in utter ignorance of moral and Christian duty 
 and made him the cringing, degraded creature he has been 
 represented, what a monster must be he who proposes to 
 vest in the untutored savage the power of governing others 
 while the white man is disfranchised. In his native land 
 he has never reached the dignity of a civilized being, and 
 
 course of the streams. The crocodile, hippopotamus, pelican find 
 here a suitable abode. Monkeys swarm in the woods; in the more 
 gloomy recesses live the champanzee, gorilla and other anthropoid 
 apes approaching man most closely in stature and habits of life. 
 In the open land — the prairie of equatorial Africa — game is in- 
 frequent; there are a few antelopes and horned cattle, but no horses. 
 Man — or perhaps more truly woman — is the only beast of burden. 
 
 * ' Plantains, sweet potatoes, cassava, pumpkins, ground-nuts, 
 Indian corn, the flesh of the deer, antelope, bear, snake, furnish to 
 the negro, his food. He lives in a hut constructed of bamboo or 
 flakes of bark, thatched with matting or palm leaves. His villages 
 are often pallisaded. Too lazy, except when severely pressed, to 
 attend to the labors of the field, he compels his wives to plant the 
 roots or seeds, and gather the scanty harvest. In hunting and in 
 war, his main occupation, he relies upon cunning and will follow 
 his prey with surprising agility, crawling like a snake prone upon 
 the ground. He has little or no idea of property in land; slaves 
 are his currency; he makes his purchase and pays his debts with 
 them. 'A slave is a note of hand that may be discounted or 
 pawned. He is a bill of exchange that carries himself to his desti- 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 115 
 
 he has never been civilized until transplanted into slavery. 
 Even till this day there are native Africans who continue — 
 in a state of barbarism despite the civilizing influence of 
 the British government and the efforts of missionaries. 
 In the western country away from the coast and civiliza- 
 tion, tribes of the ''hinterland" practice cannibalistic rites, 
 the victim being preferably a blood relation of the sacrificer. 
 The unfortunates are kidnapped, then with ghoulish cere- 
 mony and weird incantations they are frightfully muti- 
 lated; while life still remains a demoniacal feast is held 
 and human flesh consumed to offset the ''Ju-Ju" or spell 
 of evil omen. Then the victim is put out of his misery and 
 buried so that the white man shall know nothing of the 
 mysteries ages old, which the tribes of Africa revere ; many 
 of the victims are young women and girls, captured by 
 members of secret societies and taken to some remote spot 
 in the bush. 
 
 Whatever of eminence any individual of the- race has 
 attained, is due directly or indirectly to the civilizing in- 
 
 nation, and pays a debt bodily. He is a tax that walks corporeally 
 into tlie chieftain's treasury.' 
 
 ''Ferocious in his amours, the African negro has no sentiment 
 of love. The more wives he possesses the richer he is. If he in- 
 clines to traffic, each additional father-in-law is an additional trad- 
 ing connection; if devoted to war, an ally. His animal passions 
 too often disdain all such mercenary suggestions; he brings home 
 new wives for the sake of new gratifications. Fond of ornaments, 
 his prosperity is displayed in thick bracelets and anklets of iron 
 or brass. An old European hat or a tattered dress-coat, without 
 any other article of clothing is a sufficient badge of kingship. He 
 inclines to nocturnal habits. He will spend all the night lolling 
 with his companions on the ground at a blazing fire, though the 
 thermometer may be at more than 80°, occupying himself in smok- 
 ing native tobacco, drinking palm wine and telling stories about 
 witches and spirts. He' is an inverate gambler, a jester and a 
 buffoon. He knows nothing of hero-worship; his religion is a 
 worship of fetiches. 
 
 ''They are such objects as the fingers and tails of monkeys, 
 human hair, skin, teeth, bones, old nails, copper chains, claws and 
 
116 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 fluence of the institution of slavery. It was the master of 
 slaves who accomplished the greatest missionary success 
 and the progress of his ward since is due to the training 
 and influence of the past. 
 
 Foreign people have said that if the Confederate Govern- 
 ment had freed the slaves, it might have been recognized 
 by European nations. Such persons should recall that 
 when Don Quixote freed the galley slaves he had then to 
 defend himself against them — they would see the absurdity 
 of such an idea. What could the people of the South have 
 done in the prosecution of the war if 3,000,000 slaves had 
 been turned loose among them and the whole labor system 
 of the country deranged? 
 
 Our victors say that having submitted ''to the arbitra- 
 ment of arms," and having been overcome, the question of 
 right has been decided against us, and that we are a con- 
 quered people who must submit to the fate of the con- 
 quered; but though the gordian knot was cut with the 
 sword, constitutional questions cannot be solved in the same 
 
 skulls of birds, seeds of plants. He believes that evil spirits walk 
 at the sunset hour by the edge of forests; he adores the devil, who 
 is thought to haunt burial-grounds and, in mortal terror of his 
 enmity, leaves food for him in the woods. He welcomes the new 
 moon by dancing in her shine. AVhatever misfortune or sickness 
 befalls him, he imputes to sorcery and punishes the detected 
 wizard or witch with death. He determines guilt by the ordeal of 
 fire: the accused who can seize a red-hot copper ring without being 
 burned is innocent. His medicine-man — a wind raiser and rain- 
 maker — pursues his main business of exorcism in a head-dress of 
 black feathers, with a string of spirit-charms around his neck and 
 a basket of snake-bone incantations. The more advanced tribes 
 have already risen to idol worship; they adore grotesque figures 
 of the human form, and following the course through which intel- 
 ligence in other races has passed, they have wooden gods who can 
 speak and nod and wink. 
 
 In this deplorable, this benighted condition, the negro neverthe- 
 less shows tokens of a capacity for better things. He is an eager 
 trader, and knows the value of his ebony, bar-wood, beeswax, palm 
 oil, ivory. He has learned how to cheat; nay, more, infrequently 
 
THE HERITAGE OP THE SOUTH 
 
 117 
 
 way, such a view would but prove the wrong of the whole 
 doctrine of coercion. The Constitution created by sovereign 
 states, whatever the powers delegated, could never have 
 contemplated the possibility of one of those states being re- 
 duced to the condition of a conquered province. That 
 Constitution was as binding in those states, which remained 
 after the secession of the Southern states as before, and it 
 was as much an outrage to make war upon those latter for 
 the act of secession, as it would have been to have destroyed 
 their existence as states while they remained in the Union. 
 
 It is true that the South claimed to be a sovereign inde- 
 pendent people after their withdrawal, and were so by 
 every principle of right and justice, but that position did 
 not authorize the making of war against them. A counter- 
 claim was that the seceding states had no right to with- 
 draw, and therefore those arrayed in opposition under- 
 took to compel them to submission to the rule and laws of 
 the Union: upon that ground alone could they justify the 
 war. They were the aggressors and disregarded the Con- 
 
 he can out-cheat the white man. He can adulterate the caoutchouc 
 and other products he brings down to the coast ana pass them off 
 as pure. His color secures him from the detection of a blush when 
 he lies. Though utterly ignorant of any conception of art, he is 
 not unskillful in the manufacture of cooking pots and tobacco pipes 
 of clay; he has a bellows-forge of his own invention; he can reduce 
 iron from its ores and manufacture it. He makes shields of 
 elephants' hide, cross-bows, and other weapons of war. But in the 
 construction of musical instruments his skill is chiefly displayed. 
 From drums of goat-skins, from harps and gourds, he extracts their 
 melancholy sounds and disturbs the nocturnal African forests with 
 his plaintive melodies. 
 
 ''It has been afiSrmed by those who have known them well, that 
 the equatorial negro tribes do not increase but tend to die out 
 spontaneously. This is attributed to infanticide and to the ravages 
 of miasmic "fever, which in its most m.alignant form will often 
 destroy its victim in a single day. Even though quinine be taken 
 as a prophylactic no white man can enter their country with im- 
 punity. The night dews are absolutely mortal." 
 
118 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 stitution and the Union and they also were the ones who 
 violated the principle and precept of that Constitution, 
 which they were sworn to support and defend. 
 
 The doctrine has been broached that the highest law 
 that can exist is that established by force of arms. That the 
 red-handed conquerors or the armed, robber on the high- 
 way should assert this, is not to be wondered at, but when 
 it comes from the men who have been compelled to yield 
 to force of arms while struggling for the right, the mantle 
 of charity should be allowed to fall over the weakness which 
 cannot resist the temptations of adversity. 
 
 In regard to this question of submitting our rights to 
 **the arbitrament of arms," much irrational language has 
 been used and very erroneous opinions have been expressed 
 as to the result. There was never a greater mistake of 
 terms or perversion of language than that made in saying 
 that the Southern states submitted their right to be with- 
 drawn from the Union to the arbitrament of arms or hav- 
 ing lost, that the question of right has been decided against 
 them. Those states proposed to withdraw peaceably, tend- 
 ered a peaceful solution of all of the questions which might 
 arise out of their former relations to the United States 
 government. That government declared a war of coercion, 
 and the Southern states of necessity resorted to arms to de- 
 fend their rights and homes when most wrongfully and 
 unjustly invaded. In no sense* can they be said to have 
 submitted any of their rights to the arbitrament of arms any 
 more than the traveller on the highway submits his money 
 to the arbitrament of arms between himself and the robber, 
 and the result of the war decided no question of principle, 
 but simply furnished another instance of the fact that in 
 this world, the truth does not always prevail and that might 
 is often more powerful than right. 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SOUTH 
 
 119 
 
 Not only has the question of right not been decided by 
 the arbitrament of arms, but the proposition that "The 
 voice of the people is the voice of God" is no better es- 
 tablished now than on that memorable occasion when the 
 people cried ' ' crucify him ! crucify him ! ' ' 
 
 ERRATA 
 
 Page 51, line 17— 
 
 "obitu" should be "obitur." 
 
 Page 58, lines 15 and 19— 
 
 "Elden'' should be "Eldon." 
 
 Page 77, line li- 
 the letter ''a" should be inserted before the word "felony." 
 
 Page 82, line 26— 
 
 "interferfence" should be "interference." 
 
d066t^tf00a