If we look to Europe, we see that this has been so in Greece, Italy, Spain, France, and the Netherlands; in England and Scotland; in Prussia and in Russia; and the Western World shows us the same story. Where is now the glory of the Antilles? where the riches of Mexico and the power of Peru? They still produce sugar, guano, gold, cotton, coffee--almost whatever we may ask them--and will continue to do so while held to labor under sufficient restraint;but where are their men, where are their books, where is their learning, their art, their enterprise? I say it with sad regret at the decadence of so vast a population; but I do say that the Southern States of America have not been able to keep pace with their Northern brethren; that they have fallen behind in the race, and, feeling that the struggle is too much for them, have therefore resolved to part.
The reasons put forward by the South for secession have been trifling almost beyond conception. Northern tariffs have been the first, and perhaps foremost. Then there has been a plea that the national exchequer has paid certain bounties to New England fishermen, of which the South has paid its share, getting no part of such bounty in return. There is also a complaint as to the navigation laws--meaning, I believe, that the laws of the States increase the cost of coast traffic by forbidding foreign vessels to engage in the trade, thereby increasing also the price of goods and confining the benefit to the North, which carries on the coasting trade of the country, and doing only injury to the South, which has none of it. Then last, but not least, comes that grievance as to the Fugitive Slave Law. The law of the land as a whole--the law of the nation--requires the rendition from free States of all fugitive slaves. But the free States will not obey this law. They even pass State laws in opposition to it, "Catch your own slaves," they say, "and we will not hinder you; at any rate we will not hinder you officially. Of non-official hinderance you must take your chance.
But we absolutely decline to employ our officers to catch your slaves." That list comprises, as I take it, the amount of Southern official grievances. Southern people will tell you privately of others. They will say that they cannot sleep happy in their beds, fearing lest insurrection should be roused among their slaves. They will tell you of domestic comfort invaded by Northern falsehood.
They will explain to you how false has been Mrs. Beecher Stowe.
Ladies will fill your ears and your hearts too with tales of the daily efforts they make for the comfort of their "people," and of the ruin to those efforts which arises from the malice of the abolitionists. To all this you make some answer with your tongue that is hardly true--for in such a matter courtesy forbids the plain truth. But your heart within answers truly, "Madam, dear madam, your sorrow is great; but that sorrow is the necessary result of your position."As to those official reasons, in what fewest words I can use I will endeavor to show that they come to nothing. The tariff--and a monstrous tariff it then was--was the ground put forward by South Carolina for secession when General Jackson was President and Mr.
Calhoun was the hero of the South. Calhoun bound himself and his State to take certain steps toward secession at a certain day if that tariff were not abolished. The tariff was so absurd that Jackson and his government were forced to abandon it--would have abandoned it without any threat from Calhoun; but under that threat it was necessary that Calhoun should be defied. General Jackson proposed a compromise tariff, which was odious to Calhoun--not on its own behalf, for it yielded nearly all that was asked, but as being subversive of his desire for secession. The President, however, not only insisted on his compromise, but declared his purpose of preventing its passage into law unless Calhoun himself, as Senator, would vote for it. And he also declared his purpose--not, we may presume, officially--of hanging Calhoun, if he took that step toward secession which he had bound himself to take in the event of the tariff not being repealed. As a result of all this Calhoun voted for the compromise, and secession for the time was beaten down. That was in 1832, and may be regarded as the commencement of the secession movement. The tariff was then a convenient reason, a ground to be assigned with a color of justice because it was a tariff admitted to be bad. But the tariff has been modified again and again since that, and the tariff existing when South Carolina seceded in 1860 had been carried by votes from South Carolina. The absurd Morrill tariff could not have caused secession, for it was passed, without a struggle, in the collapse of Congress occasioned by secession.
The bounty to fishermen was given to create sailors, so that a marine might be provided for the nation. I need hardly show that the national benefit would accrue to the whole nation for whose protection such sailors were needed. Such a system of bounties may be bad; but if so, it was bad for the whole nation. It did not affect South Carolina otherwise than it affected Illinois, Pennsylvania, or even New York.
The navigation laws may also have been bad. According to my thinking such protective laws are bad; but they created no special hardship on the South. By any such a theory of complaint all sections of all nations have ground of complaint against any other section which receives special protection under any law. The drinkers of beer in England should secede because they pay a tax, whereas the consumers of paper pay none. The navigation laws of the States are no doubt injurious to the mercantile interests of the States. I at least have no doubt on the subject. But no one will think that secession is justified by the existence of a law of questionable expediency. Bad laws will go by the board if properly handled by those whom they pinch, as the navigation laws went by the board with us in England.