THE UPRISING OF A GREAT PEOPLE.

THE UNITED STATES IN 1861.

TO WHICH IS ADDED
A WORD OF PEACE
ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND
THE UNITED STATES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF
COUNT AGÉNOR DE GASPARIN

BY MARY L. BOOTH.

NEW AMERICAN EDITION
FROM THE AUTHOR'S REVISED EDITION.
1862.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
TO THE REVISED AMERICAN EDITION.

The edition of the Uprising of a Great People which we issue herewith, has been carefully revised to conform to the new edition of the original work, just published at Paris. The author has corrected several errors of fact, which were noted by American reviewers on the appearance of the translation, and has also made sundry changes in the work, designed to bring it down to the present time, and to adapt its counsels to the new light that is breaking in upon us in the progress of events. These changes, however, have been few, and relate chiefly to the policy of emancipation, for so truly has this remarkable book proved a prophecy, that the author, on reviewing it after a lapse of several eventful months, can find nothing to strike out as having proved untrue. We are indebted to the kindness of Count de Gasparin for one or two corrections of trifling biographical misstatements in the translator's preface.

The pamphlet concerning the Trent affair, and the surrender of Messrs. Mason and Slidell, which we append to this edition, will be read with interest at the present crisis, as an able exposition of the views of European statesmen on the international difficulty which has sprung so unexpectedly upon us. While it justifies the surrender on the ground of technical error, it utters a solemn warning in the name of Europe, that, if the demand were a mere pretext to force us into a ruinous war, such a proceeding will not again be tolerated. This pamphlet, entitled Une Parole de Paix, is the article which appeared in the Journal des Débats, December 11, 12, and 13, since published as a brochure, with some additions.

This new edition is especially valuable, inasmuch as it seals the faith of our noble friend and sympathizer. "A few months ago," says Count de Gasparin, in his preface, "I believed in the uprising of a great people; now I am sure of it." Let not the issue shame us by disappointing his trust!

MARY L. BOOTH.

NEW YORK, February, 1862.

PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION.

I have nothing to change in these pages. When I wrote them before the breaking out of the American crisis, I foreboded, which was not difficult, that the crisis would be long and grievous, that there would be mistakes and reverses; but I foreboded, also, that through these mistakes and reverses, an immense progress was about to come to light. Some have undertaken to doubt it: at the sight of civil war, and the evils which it necessarily entails, at the recital of one or two defeats, they have hastened to raise their hands to Heaven, and to proclaim in every key the ruin of the United States.

This is not the place to discuss judgments, sometimes superficial, sometimes malevolent, which too often pass current among us; to examine what has been, what should be the attitude of our Europe, what is our responsibility, what are our interests and our duties. We alone, I am ashamed to admit it, we alone run the risk of rendering doubtful the final triumph of the good cause; we have not ceased to be, in spite of ourselves, the only chance and the only hope of the champions of slavery.

Perhaps I shall enter ere long, in a new study, upon the important subject which I confine myself to indicating here, and which pre-occupies the government at Washington to such a degree that it seems inclined to order defensive preparations in view of an unnatural conflict between liberal America and ourselves. Everything may happen—alas! the seemingly impossible like all else. It is not enough, therefore, to declare this impossible and monstrous, it is not enough to prove that the present state of feeling in Europe is far from giving reason to foresee an intervention in favor of the South; it is necessary to sap at the base these deplorable sophisms, more fully credited than is imagined, which may, in due time, under the pressure of certain industrial needs or of certain political combinations, urge France and England into a course which is not their own.

For the present, I have only wished to repeat, with a strengthened conviction, what I said a few months ago. I believed then in the uprising of a great people; now I am sure of it.

VALLEYRES, November 2, 1861.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

At this moment, when we are anxiously scrutinizing every indication of European feeling with respect to the American question, the advent of a book, bearing the stamp of a close philosophical, political, and practical study of the subject, and written, withal, in so hopeful a spirit as to make us feel with the writer that whatever may result from the present crisis must be for good, cannot fail to be of public interest and utility. So truly prophetic is this work in its essence, that we can hardly believe that it was written in great part amid the mists that preceded the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. All probabilities appear to have been foreseen, and the unerring exactness with which events have taken place hitherto precisely in the direction indicated by the author, encourages us to believe that this will continue until his predictions will have been fulfilled to the end. Clear-sighted, philosophical, appreciative of American genius and accomplishment, critical, yet charitable to tenderness, stigmatizing the fault, yet forgiving the offender, cheering our nation onward by words of encouragement, bravely spoken at the needed-moment, menacing Europe with the scorn of posterity, if, forgetting her oft-repeated professions, she dare forsake the side of liberty to traffic in principles; such is the scope of what a late reviewer calls "the wisest book which has been written upon America since De Tocqueville."

Few men are better qualified to judge American affairs than Count de Gasparin. A many-sided man, combining the scholar, the statesman, the politician, the man of letters, and the finished gentleman, possessed of every advantage of culture, wealth, and position, he has devoted a long life to the advocacy of liberty in all its forms, whether religious or political, and has ended by making a profound study of American history and politics, the accuracy of which is truly remarkable. A few facts with respect to his career, kindly furnished by his personal friend, Rev. Dr. Robert Baird, of New York, will be here in place.

Count Agénor Étiénne de Gasparin was born at Orange, July 4, 1810. His family is Protestant, and of Corsican origin; his father was a man of talent and position, who served for many years as Prefect of the District of the Rhone, and afterwards as Minister of the Interior under Louis Philippe, by whom he was highly esteemed. He received a liberal education, and devoted himself especially to literature, till 1842, when he was elected by the people of the island of Corsica to represent them in the Chamber of Deputies. Here began his political career. At that time, religious liberty was in danger of perishing in France, assailed by the powerful opposition of the tribunals and the administration. De Gasparin declared himself its champion, and, in an eloquent speech in the Chamber of Deputies, which moved the audience to tears, he boldly accused the courts of perverting the civil code in favor of religious intolerance, and claimed unlimited freedom for evangelical preaching and colportage. He also made strenuous efforts to effect the immediate emancipation of slaves in the French colonies, and published several essays on the subject. He devoted himself especially to the protection of Protestantism, and founded in France the Society for the Protection of Protestant interests, and the Free Protestant Church, yet, detesting religious intolerance everywhere, he did not hesitate to denounce the Protestant persecutions of Sweden as bitterly as he had done the Catholic bigotry of France. He was head of the Cabinet in the Ministry of the Interior while his father was Minister, and was in the Ministry of Public Instruction under M. Guizot. In 1848, while travelling in the East with his wife, a talented Swiss lady, the author of several works, he received intelligence of the downfall of the government of Louis Philippe. This event closed his public career. He addressed a letter of condolence to the dethroned monarch, to whom he was warmly attached, then retired to Switzerland to devote himself to literature and philanthropy, being too warm an adherent of the Orleans dynasty to take part in the new administration. Politically, he is, like Guizot, an advocate of constitutional monarchy. Since the Revolution, he has continued to reside in Switzerland. He has published numerous works on philosophical and social questions, among which may be instanced: Esclavage et Traite; De l'Affranchissement des Esclaves; Intérêts généraux du Protestantisme Français, Paganismet Christianisme, Des tables tournantes, du surnaturel en général, et des esprits, etc.

His present work, so hopeful and sympathizing, recommends itself to the attention of the American public; and even those who may dissent from some of his positions or conclusions, cannot but admire his vigorous comprehension of the outlines of the subject, and be cheered by his predictions of the future. As the expression of the opinion of an intelligent, clear-sighted European, in a position to comprehend men and things, concerning the storm which is now agitating the whole country, it can scarcely fail of a hearty welcome. I commend the following interpretation, which I have sought to make as conscientiously literal as due regard to idioms of language would permit, to all true lovers of liberty and of the Union, of whatever State, section, or nation.

MARY L. BOOTH.

NEW YORK, June 15, 1861.

PREFACE.

In publishing this study at the present time, I expose myself to the blame of prudent men. I shall be told that I ought to have waited.

To have waited for what? Until there shall be no more great questions in Europe to dispute our attention with the American question? Or until the American question has shaped itself, and we are able to know clearly what interests it will serve, in what consequences it will end?

I am not sorry, I confess, to applaud duty before it is recommended by success. When success shall have come, men eager to celebrate it will not be wanting, and I shall leave to them the care of demonstrating then that the North has been in the right, that it has saved the United States.

To construct the philosophy of events after they have passed is very interesting, without doubt, but the work to be accomplished to-day is far more serious. The point in question is to sustain our friends when they are in need of us; when their battle, far from being won, is scarcely begun; the point in question is to give our support—the very considerable support of European opinion—at the time when it can be of service; the point in question is to assume our small share of responsibility in one of the gravest conflicts of this age.

Let us enlist; for the Slave States, on their part, are losing no time. They have profited well, I must admit, by the advantages assured to them by the complicity of the ministers of Mr. Buchanan. In the face of the inevitable indecision of a new government, around which care had been taken to accumulate in advance every impossibility of acting, the decided bearing of the extreme South, its airs of audacity and defiance have had a certain éclat and a certain success. Already its partisans raise their heads; they dare speak in its favor among us; they insult free trade, by transforming it into an argument destined to serve the interests of slavery. And shall we remain mute? Shall we listen to the counsels of that false wisdom that always comes too late, so much does it fear to declare itself too early? Shall we not feel impelled to show in all its true light the sacred cause of liberty? Ah! I declare that the blood boils in my veins; I have hastened and would gladly have hastened still more. Circumstances independent of my will alone have retarded a publication prepared more than a month ago.

ORANGE, March 19, 1861.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.

I.—AMERICAN SLAVERY

II.—WHERE THE NATION WAS DRIFTING BEFORE THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN.

III.—WHAT THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN SIGNIFIES.

IV.—WHAT WE ARE TO THINK OF THE UNITED STATES.

V.—THE CHURCHES AND SLAVERY.

VI.—THE GOSPEL AND SLAVERY.

VII.—THE PRESENT CRISIS.

VIII.—PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS.

IX.—COEXISTENCE OF THE TWO RACES AFTER EMANCIPATION.

X.—THE PRESENT CRISIS WILL REGENERATE THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE

UNITED STATES.

CONCLUSION.

A GREAT PEOPLE RISING.

INTRODUCTION.

The title of this work will produce the effect of a paradox. The general opinion is that the United States continued to pursue an upward course until the election of Mr. Lincoln, and that since then they have been declining. It is not difficult, and it is very necessary, to show that this opinion is absolutely false. Before the recent victory of the adversaries of slavery, the American Confederation, in spite of its external progress and its apparent prosperity, was suffering from a fearful malady which had well-nigh proved mortal; now, an operation has taken place, the sufferings have increased, the gravity of the situation is revealed for the first time, perhaps, to inattentive eyes. Does this mean that the situation was not grave when it did not appear so? Does this mean that we must deplore a violent crisis which alone can bring the cure?

I do not deplore it—I admire it. I recognize in this energetic reaction against the disease, the moral vigor of a people habituated to the laborious struggles of liberty. The rising of a people is one of the rarest and most marvellous prodigies presented by the annals of humanity. Ordinarily, nations that begin to decline, decline constantly more and more; a rare power of life is needed to retrieve their position, and stop in its course a decay once begun.

We have a strange way of seconding the generous enterprise into which the United States have entered with so much courage! We prophesy to them nothing but misfortunes; we almost tell them that they have ceased to exist; we give them to understand, that in electing Mr. Lincoln they have renounced their greatness; that they have precipitated themselves head foremost into an abyss; that they have ruined their prosperity, sacrificed their future, rendered henceforth impossible the magnificent character which was reserved to them. Mr. Buchanan, we seem to say, is the last President of the Union.

This, thank God, is the reverse of the truth. But lately, indeed, the United States were advancing to their ruin; but lately there was reason to mourn in thinking of them; the steps might have been counted which it remained for them to take to complete the union of their destiny with that of an accursed and perishable institution—an institution which corrupts and destroys every thing with which it comes in contact. To-day, new prospects are opening to them; they will have to combat, to labor, to suffer; the crime of a century is not repaired in a day; the right path when long forsaken is not found again without effort; guilty traditions and old complicities are not broken through without sacrifices. It is none the less true, notwithstanding, that the hour of effort and of sacrifice, grievous as it may be, is the very hour of deliverance. The election of Mr. Lincoln will be one of the great dates of American history; it closes the past, but it opens the future. With it is about to commence, if the same spirit be maintained, and if excessive concessions do not succeed in undoing all that has been done, a new era, at once purer and greater than that which has just ended.

Let others accuse me of optimism; I willingly agree to it. I believe that optimism is often right here below. We need hope; we need sometimes to receive good news; we need to see sometimes the bright side of things. The bright side is often the true side; if Love is blindfolded, I see a triple bandage on the eyes of Hate. Kindliness has its privileges; and I do not think myself in a worse position than another to judge the United States because they inspire me with an earnest sympathy; because, after having mourned their faults and trembled at their perils, I have joyfully saluted the noble and manly policy of which the election of Mr. Lincoln is the symptom. Is it not true, that at the first news we all seemed to breathe a whiff of pure and free air from the other side of the ocean?

It is a pleasure, in times like ours, to feel that certain principles still live; that they will be obeyed, cost what it may; that questions of conscience can yet sometimes weigh down questions of profit. The abolition of slavery will be, I have always thought, the principal conquest of the nineteenth century. This will be its recommendation in the eyes of posterity, and the chief compensation for many of its weaknesses. As for us old soldiers of emancipation, who have not ceased to combat for it for twenty years and more, at the tribunal and elsewhere, we shall be excused without doubt for seeing in the triumph of our American friends something else than a subject of lamentation.

CHAPTER I.

AMERICAN SLAVERY.

If they had not triumphed, do you know who would have gained the victory? Slavery is only a word—a vile word, doubtless, but to which we in time become habituated. To what do we not become habituated? We have stores of indulgence and indifference for the social iniquities which have found their way into the current of cotemporary civilization, and which can invoke prescription. So we have come to speak of American slavery with perfect sang froid. We are not, therefore, to stop at the word, but to go straight to the thing; and the thing is this:

Every day, in all the Southern States, families are sold at retail: the father to one, the mother to another, the son to a third, the young daughter to a fourth; and the father, the mother, the children, are scattered to the four winds of heaven; these hearts are broken, these poor beings are given a prey to infamy and sorrow, these marriages are ruptured, and adulterous unions are formed twenty leagues, a hundred leagues away, in the bosom and with the assent of a Christian community. Every day, too, the domestic slave-trade carries on its work; merchants in human flesh ascend the Mississippi, to seek in the producing States wherewith to fill up the vacuum caused unceasingly by slavery in the consuming States; their ascent made, they scour the farms of Virginia or of Kentucky, buying here a boy, there a girl; and other hearts are torn, other families are dispersed, other nameless crimes are accomplished coolly, simply, legally: it is the necessary revenue of the one, it is the indispensable supply of the others. Must not the South live, and how dares any one travesty a fact so simple? by what right was penned that eloquent calumny called "Uncle Tom's Cabin"?

A calumny! I ask how any one would set to work to calumniate the customs which I have just described. Say, then, that the laws of the South are a calumny, that the official acts of the South are a calumny; for I affirm that the simple reading of these acts and these laws, a glance at the advertisements of a Southern journal, saddens the heart more, and wounds the conscience deeper, than the most poignant pages of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. I admit willingly that there are many masters who are very kind and very good. I admit that there are some slaves who are relatively happy. I cast aside unhesitatingly the stories of exceptional cruelty; it is enough for me to see that these happy slaves expose themselves to a thousand deaths to escape a situation declared "preferable to that of our workmen." It is enough for me to hear the heart-rending cries of those women and young girls who, adjudged to the highest and last bidder, become, by the law and in a Christian country, the property, yes, the property (excuse the word, it is the true one) of the debauchees, their purchasers. And remark here that the virtues of the master are a weak guarantee: he may die, he may become bankrupt, and nothing then can hinder his slaves from being sold into the hands of the buyer who scours the country and makes his choice.

We should calumniate the South if we amused ourselves by making a collection of atrocious deeds, in the same manner that we should calumniate France by seeking in the Police Gazette for the description of her social state. There is, notwithstanding, this difference between the iniquities of slavery and our own: the first are almost always unpunished, while the second are repressed by the courts. An institution which permits evil, creates it in a great measure: in saying that men are things, it necessarily engenders more crimes, more acts of violence, more cowardly deeds, than the imagination of romancers will ever invent. When a class has neither the right to complain, nor to defend itself, nor to testify in law; when it cannot make its voice heard in any manner, we may be excused for not taking in earnest the idyls chanted on its felicity. We must be ignorant at once of the heart of man and of history to preserve the slightest doubt on this point. I add that those who, like me, have had in their hands the documents of our colonial slavery, have become terribly suspicious, and are likely to look with a skeptical eye on these Arcadian descriptions, the worth of which they can appreciate.

Once more, I do not contest the humanity of many masters, but I remember that there were humane masters too in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Bourbon; yet this did not prevent the discovery, on a rigid scrutiny, sometimes of excesses, as fearful as inevitable, of the discretionary power; at others, of a systematic depravation, and this to such a point that in one of our colonies the custom of regular unions had become absolutely unknown to the slaves.

I cannot help believing that man is the same everywhere. Never, in any time or in any latitude, has it been given him to possess his fellow, without fearful misfortunes having resulted to both. Have we not heard celebrated the delightful mildness of Spanish slavery in Cuba? Travellers entertained by the Creoles usually return enchanted with it. Yet, notwithstanding, it is found that on quitting the cities and penetrating into the plantations, the most barbarous system of labor is discovered that exists in the entire world. Cuba devours her black population so rapidly that she is unceasingly obliged to purchase negroes from abroad; and these, being once on the island, have not before them an average life exceeding ten years! In the United States, the planters of the extreme South are also obliged to renew their supply of negroes; but, as they have recourse to the domestic instead of the African trade, and as the domestic trade furnishes slaves at an excessively high price, it follows that motives of interest oppose the adoption of the destructive system of Cuba. Other higher motives also oppose it, I am certain; and I am far from comparing the system of Louisiana or the Carolinas to that which prevails in the Spanish island. We exaggerate nothing, however; and whatever may be the points of difference, we may hold it as certain that those of resemblance are still more numerous: the tree is the same, it cannot but bear the same fruits.

It must be affirmed, besides, that slavery is peculiarly odious on that soil where the equality of mankind has been inscribed with so much eclat at the head of a celebrated constitution. Liberty imposes obligations; there is at the bottom of the human conscience something which will always cause slavery to be more scandalous at Washington than at Havana. What happens in the United States will be denounced more violently, more loudly, than what happens in Brazil; and this is right.

This said, I pause: I have not the slightest wish to introduce here a perfectly superfluous discussion on the principle and the consequences of slavery. I know all with which Americans reproach us Europeans. It was we, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Spaniards, Hollanders, who imposed on them this institution which we take delight in combating—this inheritance which we anathematize! Before attacking slavery, we would do well to turn our attention to our own crimes—to the oppression of the weak in our manufactories, for instance! But these retaliatory arguments have the fault of proving nothing at all. We will leave them; we have said enough on the nature of American slavery; let us proceed to the special subject of our work.

CHAPTER II.

WHERE THE UNITED STATES WERE DRIFTING BEFORE THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN.

I have spoken of the great perils which the United States encountered before the election of Mr. Lincoln. The time has come to enter into some details in justification of this proposition, which must have appeared strange at first sight, but the terms of which I have weighed well: if the slavery party had again achieved a victory, the United States would have gone to ruin. Here are the facts:

Formerly, there was but one opinion among Americans on the subject of slavery. The Southerners may have considered it as a necessary evil; in any case, they considered it as an evil. Carolina herself nobly resisted its introduction upon her soil; other colonies did the same. Washington inscribed the wish in his will that so baleful an institution might be promptly suppressed. To pen up slavery, to prevent its extension, to reduce it to the rôle of a local and temporary fact, which it was determined to restrain still more—such was the sentiment which prevailed in the South, as in the North. And, in fact, slavery was ere long abolished in the majority of the States composing the Union. To-day, slavery has become a beneficent, evangelical institution, the corner-stone of republics, the foundation of all liberties; it has become a source of blessings for the blacks as for the whites. We not only are not to think of reducing the number of slave States, but it becomes important to increase them unceasingly: to interdict to slavery the entrance into a new territory is almost iniquitous. Such are the theories proclaimed by the governors, by the legislators of the cotton States; they propose them openly, without scruple and without circumlocution, under the name of political—what do I say? of moral and Christian axioms. For these theories they take fire, they become excited; they feel that enthusiasm which was inspired in other times by the love of liberty. See entire populations, who, under the eye of God, and invoking his support, devote themselves, body, soul, and goods, to the holy cause of slavery, its conquests, its indefinite extension, its inter-State and African trade.

And the conquests of slavery do not figure only in platforms; they are pursued and accomplished effectively on the soil of America. In the face of the nineteenth century, free Texas has been transformed into a slave State. To create other slave countries is the aim proposed; and slave countries multiply, and the South does not tolerate the slightest obstacle to conquests of this kind, and it goes forward, and nothing stops it—I am wrong, the election of Mr. Lincoln has stopped it, and this is why its fury breaks out to-day.

One would he furious for less cause! Every thing had gone so well till then! The South spoke as a master, and the North humbly bowed its head before its imperious commands. Its exactions increased from day to day, and it was not difficult to see to what abysses it was leading the entire American Union. Shall we give our readers an idea of this crescendo of pretensions?

We will content ourselves with going back to the last Mexican war and to the Wilmot proviso. This was, as is known, a measure, or proviso, stipulating that slavery could not be introduced into conquered provinces. Such was the starting point. It was sought then, in 1847, to prevent the territorial extension of slavery. This seems to me reasonable enough; and I am not astonished that the Lincoln platform tends simply to return to this primitive policy. The measure passes the House of Representatives, but is defeated in the Senate. Notwithstanding, the American people hold firm to the principle that slavery shall henceforth no longer be extended; it elects, in 1848, the upright Administration of Gen. Taylor. The cause of justice seems about to triumph, when the death of the whig President, succeeded by the feeble Mr. Fillmore, comes to restore good fortune to the Southerners, the proviso is forgotten, and the nation, weary of resistance, ends by adopting a series of deplorable compromises.

Beginning from this moment, the progress of the evil is rapid. Among the compromises, the oldest and most respected, dating back to 1820, was that which bore the name of the Missouri Compromise. On admitting Missouri as a Slave State, it had been stipulated that slavery should be no longer introduced north of the 36th degree of latitude. Of this limit, so long accepted, the South now complains; it is no longer willing that the development of its "peculiar institution" shall be obstructed in any thing. Other combats, another victory. A bill proposed by Mr. Douglas annuls the Missouri Compromise, and, based on the principle of local sovereignties, withdraws from Congress the right to interfere in the question of slavery.

The Wilmot proviso could not subsist in the presence of these absolute pretensions. The liberty of slavery (pardon me this mournful and involuntary conjunction) finds an application on the spot. At this juncture, Texas, a province detached from Mexico, is admitted in the quality of a slave State.

What happens then? The partisans of slavery, hampered by nothing any longer, either by limits at the North, or limits at the South, or provisos, or compromises, encounter, to their great horror, an obstacle of quite a different nature. The local sovereignty which they have invoked turns against them; in the Territory of Kansas, the majority votes the exclusion of slavery. At once the Southerners change theory; against local sovereignty they invoke the central power; they demand, they exact that the decisions of the majority in Kansas shall be trodden under foot; they put forward the natural right of slavery. Why shall they be prevented from settling in a Territory with the slaves, their property? When this Territory shall be by and by transformed into a State, there will doubtless be a right to determine the question; but to abolish slavery is quite a different thing from excluding it.

If the South did not win the cause this time, it was not the fault of the government of the United States, but of the inhabitants of Kansas. As for Mr. Buchanan, he showed himself what he has constantly been, the most humble servant of the slavery party. They came together into collision with squatter sovereignty: they found for the first time in their path that solid resistance of the West which was manifested in the last election, and which, I firmly hope, is about to save America. But in the mean time, they had taken a new step forward—a formidable step, and one which introduced them into the very bosom of the free States: they had obtained a decision from the Supreme Court—the Dred Scott decree. In the preamble of this too celebrated decision, the highest judicial power of the Confederation did not fear to proclaim two principles: first, that there is no difference between a slave and any other kind of property; secondly, that all American citizens may settle everywhere with their property.

What a menace for the free-soilers! How easy to see to what lengths the South would shortly go! Since slavery constituted property like any other, it was necessary to prohibit the majority from proscribing it in States as well as in Territories. Who knew whether we should not some day see slaves and even slave-markets (the right of property carries with it that of sale) in the streets even of Philadelphia or Boston!

Let no one cry out against this: those who demanded and those who framed the Dred Scott decision knew probably what they wished to do. With the right of property understood in this wise, no State has the power either to vote the real abolition of slavery, or to forbid the introduction of slaves, or to refuse their extradition. And, effectively, horrible laws, ordering fugitive slaves to be given up, were accorded to the violent demands of the South. Liberty by contact with the soil, that great maxim of our Europe, was interdicted America; the very States that most detested slavery were condemned to assist, indignant and shuddering, in the federal invasion of a sheriff entering their homes to lay hands on a poor negro, who had believed in their hospitality, and who was about to be delivered up to the whip of the planter.

It was asking much of the patience of the North; yet, notwithstanding, this patience was not yet at an end. The Administration was given up a prey to the will of the Southerners. On their prohibition, the mails ceased to carry books, journals, letters, which excited their suspicion. They had seized upon the policy of the Union, and they ruled it according to their liking. No one has forgotten those enterprises, favored underhand, then disavowed after failure, those filibustering expeditions in Central America and in the islands of Cuba. They were the policy of the South, executed by Mr. Buchanan with his accustomed docility. The point in question was to make conquests, and conquests for slavery. By any means, and at any price, the South was to procure new States. Cuba would furnish some, several would be carved out of Mexico and Central America; for otherwise the slavery majorities would be compromised in Congress, and slavery would be forced to renounce forever the election of the Presidents of free America. To avoid such a misfortune, there is nothing that they would not have been ready to undertake.

Thus, step after step, and exaction after exaction, overthrowing, one after the other, all barriers, the Wilmot proviso, the Missouri Compromise, the right of majorities in the Territories, the very sovereignty of the States annulled by the Dred Scott decision, the South had succeeded in drawing the United States into those violent and dishonest political practices which filled the administration of Mr. Buchanan. The barriers of public probity, and the right of men, yielded in turn; the administration dared write officially that Cuba was necessary to the United States, and that the affranchisement of slaves in Cuba would be a legitimate cause of war. The United States were yoked to the car of slavery: to make slave States, to conquer Territories for slavery, to prevent the terrible misfortune of an abolition of slavery, such was the programme. In negotiations, in elections, nothing else was perceived than this. If the liberty of the seas and the independence of the flag were proudly claimed, it was by the order of the South, and there resulted thence, whether desired or not, a progressive resurrection of the African slave-trade; if candidates in favor of the maintenance of the Union were recommended, it was to assure the conquests of slavery within and without, the invasion of neighboring countries, the extradition of fugitive slaves, the subjugation of majorities rebellious to the South, the suppression of laws disagreeable to the South, the overthrow of the last obstacles which fettered the progress of the South.

And it was thus far, to this degree of disorder and abasement, that a noble people had been dragged downwards in the course of years, sinking constantly deeper, abandoning, one by one, its guarantees, losing its titles to the esteem of other nations, approaching the abyss, seeing the hour draw nigh in which to rise would be impossible, bringing down maledictions upon itself, forcing those who love it to reflect on the words of one of its most illustrious leaders: "I tremble for my country, when I remember that God is just!"

All this under the tyrannical and pitiless influence of a minority constantly transformed into a majority! Picture to yourself a man on a vessel standing by the gun-room with a lighted match, in his hand; he is alone, but the rest obey him, for at the first disobedience he will blow up himself with all the crew. This is precisely what has been going on in America since she went adrift. The working of the ship was commanded by the man who held the match. "At the first disobedience, we will quit you." Such has always been the language of the Southern States. They were known to be capable of keeping their word; therefore, there ceased to be but one argument in America: secession. "Revoke the compromise, or else secession; modify the legislation of the free States, or else secession; risk adventures, and undertake conquests with us for slavery, or else secession; lastly and above all, never suffer yourselves to elect a president who is not our candidate, or else secession."

Thus spoke the South, and the North submitted. Let us not be unduly surprised at it, there was patriotism in this weakness; many citizens, inimical to slavery, forbore to combat its progress, in order to avoid what appeared to them a greater evil. Declivities like these are descended quickly, and the deplorable presidency of Mr. Buchanan stands to testify to this. The policy of the United States had become doubtful; their good renown was dwindling away even with their warmest friends; their cause was becoming blended more and more with that of servitude; their liberties were compromised, and the Federal institutions were bending before the "institution" of the South; no more rights of the majority before the "institution;" no more sovereignty of the States before the "institution." The ultra policy of Mr. Buchanan had coveted Cuba, essayed violence in Kansas, given up the government of America in fine to a cabinet of such a stamp, that a majority was nearly found in it, ready to disavow Major Anderson, and to order the evacuation of forts of the Confederation, menaced by Carolinian forces.

During this time, an incredible fact had come to light. It was one of the glories of America to have abolished the African slave trade before any other nation, and even to have put it on the same footing with the crime of piracy. The South had openly demanded the re-establishment of a commerce which alone could furnish it at some day with the number of negroes proportioned to its vast designs. What had Mr. Buchanan done? He doubtless had not consented officially to an enormity which Congress, on its part, would not have tolerated; but repression had become so lax under his administration, that the number of slave ships fitted out in the ports of the United States had at length become very considerable. The port of New York alone, which participates but too much in the misdeeds and tendencies of the South, fitted out eighty-five slavers between the months of February, 1859, and July, 1860. These slavers proudly bore the United States' flag over the seas, and defied the English cruisers. As for the American cruisers, Mr. Buchanan had taken care to remove them all from Cuba, where every one knows that the living cargoes are landed. The slave trade is therefore in the height of prosperity, whatever the last presidential message may say of it, and as to the application of the laws concerning piracy, I do not see that they have had many victims.

We can now measure the perils which menaced the United States. It was not such or such a measure in particular, but a collection of measures, all directed towards the same end, and tending mutually to complete each other: conquests, the domestic and the foreign slave trade, the overthrow of the few barriers opposed to the extension of slavery, the debasement of institutions, the definitive enthroning of an adventurous policy, a policy without principles and without scruples; to this the country was advancing with rapid strides. Do they who raise their hands and eyes to heaven, because the election of Mr. Lincoln has caused the breaking forth of an inevitable crisis, fancy then that the crisis would have been less serious if it had broken forth four years later, when the evil would have been without remedy? Already, the five hundred thousand slaves of the last century have given place to four millions; was it advisable to wait until there were twenty millions, and until vast territories, absorbed by American power, had been peopled by blacks torn from Africa? Was it advisable to await the time when the South should have become decidedly the most important part of the Confederation, and when the North, forced to secede, should have left to others the name, the prestige, the flag of the United States? Do they fancy that, by chance, with the supremacy of the South, with its conquests, with the monstrous development of its slavery, secession would have been avoided? No! it would have appeared some day as a necessary fact; only it would have been accomplished under different auspices and in different conditions. Such a secession would have been death, a shameful death.

And slavery itself, who imagines, then, that it can be immortal? It is in vain to extend it; it will perish amidst its conquests and through its conquests: one can predict this without being a prophet. But, between the suppression of slavery such as we hope will some time take place, and that which we should have been forced to fear, in case the South had carried it still further, is the distance which separates a hard crisis from a terrible catastrophe. The South knows not what nameless misfortunes it has perhaps just escaped. If it had been so unfortunate as to conquer, if it had been so unfortunate as to carry out its plans, to create slave States, to recruit with negroes from Africa, it would have certainly paved the way, with its own hands, for one of those bloody disasters before which the imagination recoils: it would have shut itself out from all chance of salvation.

It is not possible, in truth, to put an end to certain crimes, and wholly avoid their chastisement; there will always be some suffering in delivering the American Confederation from slavery, and it depends to-day again upon the South to aggravate, in a fearful measure, the pain of the transition. However, what would not have been possible with the election of Mr. Douglas or Mr. Breckenridge, has become possible now with the election of Mr. Lincoln; we are at liberty to hope henceforth for the rising of a great people.

CHAPTER III.

WHAT THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN SIGNIFIES.

I think that I have justified the fundamental idea of this work, and the title which I have given it. If the slavery policy had achieved a new triumph; if the North had not elected its President, the first that has belonged to it in full since the existence of the Confederation; if supremacy had not ranged itself in fine on the side with force and justice, this unstable balance would have had its hour of downfall: and what a downfall! Of so much true liberty, of so much progress, of so many noble examples, what would have been left standing? The secession of the South is not the secession of the North; affranchisement with four millions of slaves is not affranchisement with twenty millions; the crisis of 1861 is not that of 1865 or of 1869. The United States, I repeat, with a profound and studied conviction,—the United States have just been saved.

There are those who ask gravely whether the electors of Mr. Lincoln have a plan all ready to effect the abolition of slavery. We answer that this is not in question. Among the influential and earnest men of the victorious party, not one could be cited who would think of proposing any plan whatever of emancipation. One thing alone is proposed: to check the conquests of slavery. That it shall not be extended, that it shall be confined within its present limits, is all that is sought to-day. The policy of the founders of the Confederation has become that of their successors in turn; and to this policy, what can be objected? Is not the sovereignty of the States respected? do they not remain free to regulate what concerns them? do they not preserve the right of postponing, so long as they deem proper, the solution of a dreaded problem? could not this solution be thought over and prepared by those who best know its elements?

The matter is, indeed, more complicated and difficult than is generally imagined. Should we be imprudent enough to meddle with it, we might rightfully be blamed. Here, summary proceedings are evidently not admissible. Time and the spirit of Christianity must do their work by degrees; they will do it, be sure, provided the evil be circumscribed, provided the seat of the conflagration be hemmed in and prevented henceforth from spreading further.

Now, such is the great result acquired by the election of Mr. Lincoln; it is nothing more than this, but it is all this: it is prudence in the present, and it is also the certainty of success in the future. Emancipation is by no means decreed; it will not be for a long time, perhaps: yet the principle of emancipation is established, irrevocably established in the sight of all. Irrevocability has prodigious power over our minds: without being conscious of it, we make way for it; we arrange in view of it our conduct, our plans, and even our doctrines. Once fully convinced that its propagandism is checked, that the future of which it dreamed has no longer any chances of success, the South itself will become accustomed to consider its destiny under a wholly new aspect. The border States, in which emancipation is easy, will range themselves one after another on the side of liberty. Thus the extent of the evil will become reduced of itself, and instead of advancing, as during some years past, towards a colossal development of servitude, it will proceed in the direction of its gradual attenuation.

I reason on the hypothesis of a final maintenance of the Union, whatever may be the incidents of temporary secession. I am not ignorant that there are other hypotheses, which may possibly be realized, and which I shall examine in the course of this treatise; but whatever may happen, I have a full right to call to mind the true scope of the vote which has just been taken. It does not involve the slightest idea of present emancipation; it contents itself with checking the progress of slavery; and to check its progress is, doubtless, to diminish the perils of its future abolition.

It was important to present this observation, for nothing perverts our judgment of the American crisis more than the inexact definitions which are given of abolitionism. We willingly picture abolitionists to ourselves as madmen, seeking to attain their end on the spot, regardless of all else, through blood and ruin! That there may be such is possible, is even inevitable; but the men who exercise any political influence over the North have not for a moment adopted such theories. This is so true, that the other day, at Boston, the people themselves (the people who nominated Mr. Lincoln) dispersed a meeting intended to discuss plans of immediate emancipation.

What if abolitionism, moreover, be a party? what if it make use of the means employed by parties? what if it have its journals, its publicists, its orators? what if it seek allies? what if it be based on interests which may be given it by the majority? what if it appeal to the passions of the North, as the slavery party appeals to those of the South? I do not see, in truth, why this should astonish us. I am far from believing that all the acts of abolitionism are worthy of approbation; I say only that it would be puerile to repudiate a great party for the sole reason that it has the bearing of a party. The duty of citizens in a free country is to choose between parties, and to unite with that whose cause is just and holy. Let them protest against wrong measures, let them refuse to participate in them—nothing can be better; but to withdraw into a sort of political Thebais because the noblest parties have stains on their banner, is, in truth, to turn their back on the civil obligations of real life.

The abolition party is a noble one. Several of its champions have given their lives to propagate their faith. But lately, indeed, the Texan journals took pains to tell us that a number of them had just been hung in that State; and, without even speaking of these noble victims, whose death completes the dishonor of the Southern cause, are there any bolder deeds in the history of mankind than those of the citizens of New England who, to wrest Kansas from slavery, went thither to build their cabins, thus braving a fearful struggle, not only with the slaveholders, but with the President, his illegal measures, and the troops charged with maintaining them?

We must fight to conquer. This seems little understood by those who reproach abolitionism with having been a party militant; to hear them, the true way of bringing about the abolition of slavery was to let it alone: to attack was to exasperate it.

This argument is so unfortunate as to be employed in all bad causes. I remember that when measures were taken against the slave trade, we were told that the sufferings of the slaves would be thus increased, and that the slavers would be exasperated. Later, when we held up to the indignation of the whole world the Protestant intolerance of Sweden, we were assured that these public denunciations would put back the question instead of accelerating it. We persevered, and we did rightly. Sweden is advancing, though at too slow a pace, towards religious liberty. It would be difficult to cite any social iniquities that have reformed of themselves; and, since the existence of the world, the method which consists in attacking evil has been the one sanctioned by success. In America itself, the progress made by the border States does not seem to confirm what is told us of the reaction caused by the aggressions of abolitionism. In Virginia, in Kentucky, in Missouri, in Delaware, etc., the liberty party has been continually gaining ground; and the votes received in the slave States by Mr. Lincoln prove it a very great mistake to suppose letting alone to be the condition of progress. Would to God that slavery had not been let alone when the republic of the United States was founded! Then, abolition was easy, the slaves were few in number, and no really formidable antagonism was in play. Unhappily, false prudence made itself heard: it was resolved to keep silence, and not to deprive the South of the honor of a voluntary emancipation—in fine, to reserve the question for the future. The future has bent under the weight of a task which has continued to increase with years, thanks to letting it alone.

A little more letting alone, and the weight would have crushed America; it was time to act. The Abolition party, or rather the party opposed to the extension of slavery, has acted with a resolution which should excite our sympathies. The future of the United States was at stake; it knew it, and it struggled in consequence. Remember the efforts essayed four years ago for the election of Mr. Fremont, efforts which would have succeeded perhaps, if Mr. Fremont had not been a Catholic. Remember those three months of balloting, by which the North succeeded in carrying the election of speaker of the House of Representatives. Remember the conduct of the North, in the sad affair of John Brown, its refusal to approve an illegal act, its admiration of the heroic farmer who died after having witnessed the death of his sons. On seeing the public mourning of the Free States, on hearing the minute gun discharged in the capital of the State of New York on the day of execution, one might have foreseen the irresistible impulse which has just ended in the triumph of Mr. Lincoln.

The indignation against slavery, the love of country and of its compromised honor, the just susceptibilities of the North, the liberal instincts so long repressed, the desire of elevating the debased and corrupt institutions of the land, the need of escaping insane projects, the powerful impulse of the Christian faith, all these sentiments contributed, without doubt, to swell the resistance against which the supremacy of the South has just been broken. This, then, is a legal victory, one of the most glorious spectacles that the friends of liberty can contemplate on earth. It was the more glorious, the more efforts and sacrifices it demanded. The Lincoln party had opposed to it, the Puseyistic and financial aristocracy of New York; the manoeuvres of President Buchanan were united against it with those of the Southern States. Many of the Northern journals accused it of treading under foot the interests of the seaports, and of compromising the sacred cause of the Union.

To succeed in electing Mr. Lincoln, we must not forget that it was necessary to put the question of principle above the questions of immediate interests, which usually make themselves heard so distinctly. The unity, the greatness of the country, the gigantic future towards which it was advancing, were so many obstacles arising in the way. Then came the reckoning of profits and losses, the inevitable crisis, the Southern orders already withdrawn, the certain loss of money; it seems to me that men who have braved such chances, have nobly accomplished their duty.

America, it is said, is the country of the dollar; the Americans think only of making money, all other considerations are subordinate to this. If the reproach is sometimes well-founded, we must admit, at least, that it is not always so. Those who wish to persuade us that the Abolitionists in this again have simply sought their own interests, by seeking to break down the competition of servile labor, forget two or three things: first, that the slaves produce tobacco or cotton, while the North produces wheat, so that there is not a race in the world that competes less with it: next, that the cotton of the South is very useful to the North, useful to its manufactures, useful to its trade, both transit and commission. The people of the North are not reputed to lack foresight; they were not ignorant that in electing Mr. Lincoln, they had, for the time at least, every thing to lose and nothing to gain; they were not ignorant that Mr. Lincoln occasioned the immediate threat of secession; that the threat of secession was a commercial crisis, was the political weakening of the country, and the unsettling of many fortunes. But neither were they ignorant that above the fleeting interests of individuals and of the nation, arose those permanent interests which must rest only on justice; they decided, cost what it might, to wrest themselves from the detestable, and ere long fatal allurements of the slavery policy.

Let us beware how we calumniate, without intending it, the few generous impulses which break out here and there among mankind. I know that there is a would-be prudent skepticism which attacks all moral greatness that it may depreciate it, all enthusiasm that it may translate it into calculation. To admire nothing is most deplorable, and, I hasten to add, most absurd. Without wandering from the subject of slavery, I can cite the great Emancipation Act, wrested from Parliament by Christian public opinion in England. Have not means been found to prove, or at least to insinuate, that this act, the most glorious of our century, was at the bottom nothing but a Machiavellian combination of interests? Doubtless, those who have taken the trouble to look over the debates of the times know what we are to think of this fine explanation; they know what resistance was opposed by interests to the emancipation, both in the colonies and in the heart of the metropolis; they know with how much obstinacy the Tories, representing the traditions of English politics, combated the proposed plans; they know in what terms the certain ruin of the planters, the manufactures, and the seaports, was described; they know by how many petitions the churches, the religious societies, the women, and even the children, succeeded in wresting from Parliament a measure refused by so many statesmen. But the mass of the people do not go back to the beginning; they take for granted the summary judgment that English emancipation was a master-piece of perfidy.

We hear very nearly the same thing said of that glorious movement which has just taken place in America. We would gladly detect all motives in it except one that is generous and Christian. As if a vulgar calculation of interest would not have dictated a contrary course! And it is precisely this that makes the greatness of the resolution adopted by the North. It knew all the consequences; they had been announced by the South, recapitulated by prudent men, stated in detail by the newspapers of great commercial cities; it chose to be just. Despite the inevitable mingling of base and selfish impulses, which always become complicated in such manifestations, the ruling motive in this was a protest of conscience, and of the spirit of liberty.

The accounts that have come to us from America demonstrate the lofty character of the joy which was manifested after the election. Men shook hands with each other in the streets; they congratulated each other on having at last escaped from the yoke of an ignoble policy; they felt as though relieved from a weight; they breathed more freely; the true, the noble destinies of the United States reappeared on the horizon, they saluted a future that should be better than the present, a future worthy of their sires, those early pilgrims who, carrying nothing with them but their Bibles, had laid the foundation of a free country with poor but valiant hands.

I should like to quote here the sermon in which the Rev. Mr. Beecher poured out his Christian joy at that time. He spoke of the strength of the weak; he showed that principles, however despised they may be, end by revenging themselves on interests; he recalled the fact that the Gospel is a power in America. To rise up, to attack its enemy manfully, to arraign the causes of the national decline, to approach boldly the solution of the most formidable problem which could be propounded here on earth, such is not the act of a nation of calculators. Something else is implied in it than tactics, something else than combinations of votes or sectional rivalries. To vote as they did, they had to overcome almost as many obstacles in the North as in the South; for, in consequence of the vote, the North had to suffer like the South, and they knew it.

If you wish to be just to the United States, compare them with other countries in which slavery exists. In the United States there is a struggle; the question is a living one; men do not turn aside from it with lax indifference. I love the noise of free nations; I find in the very violence of their debates a proof of the earnestness of convictions. Men must become excited about great social problems; if abuses exist, they must, at least, be pointed out, attacked, and stigmatized; the prescription of silence must never be accorded them; devoted voices must exclaim against them, unceasingly, in the name of justice and of humanity. Such a spectacle does good to the soul; it solaces the sorrows of the present, it carries within itself guarantees for the future.

The sad, profoundly sad, spectacle, is that of nations where crimes make no noise. Look at Brazil. Like the United States, it has slavery, but it is an honorable, discreet slavery, of which nothing is said. Whatever may happen there, no one inquires about it; there are no discussions, either through the press or in the courts. No party would dare insert such a question into its platform. One thing, very properly, has been found to disturb it, and the public sale of slaves has just been forbidden.

Look, above all, at Spain and its island of Cuba. There, too, is perfect silence. Nothing, in truth, opposes the belief that Cuba is the abode of felicity, and that the atrocities of slavery are the monopoly of the United States. But inquisitive people, who like to search to the bottom of things, discover that if the masters are very gentle at Havana, the overseers are scarcely so on their account on the plantations; I have already given the proof of it. Out of ten slavers that are seized on the high seas, nine are always destined to Cuba. Spain has forbidden the slave trade; she has even been compensated for it by the English; but this does not prevent her from suffering it to be carried on before her eyes with almost absolute impunity. Her high-sounding phrases change nothing; the smallest fact is of more value. At Cuba, the landing of slaves is continual, and the places of disembarkation are known. Now, the American flag protects no one at the time of disembarking. Why is no opposition made to this? Why has the importation of negroes tripled in Cuba? Why does no slaver, American or any other, steer towards Brazil, since Brazil has desired to put an end to the slave trade? The answer to these questions will be given us on the day when Spain shall desire, in turn, to suppress it. In the mean time she prefers to keep silence, unless when a word from London strikes out a concert of protestations more patriotic than convincing; save in this case, the government is silent, public opinion is silent, no colonial sheet is found ready to hazard an objection, nor even a metropolitan journal that is willing to disturb so touching an equanimity. The court of Madrid, in which many questions are agitated, prudently stands aloof in the matter of slavery and the slave trade; among the numerous parties disputing for power, not one dares venture on a ground where it would meet nothing but unpopularity. Ah! after this death-like silence, how the soul is refreshed by the fiery contests of the United States, the great word-combats carried on in every village of the Union, the appeals addressed to the conscience, the battle in broad daylight! How refreshing to see by the side of these nations, who sleep so tranquilly, while regarding the inroads of slavery, a people whom, it disquiets, whom it irritates, who refuse to take part in it, and who, rather than conform to the evil, agitate, become divided, and rend themselves perchance with their own hands!

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT WE ARE TO THINK OF THE UNITED STATES.

We are not just towards the United States. Their civilization, so different from ours, wounds us in various ways, and we turn from them in the ill-humor excited by their real defects, without taking note enough of their eminent qualities. This country, which possesses neither church, nor State, nor army, nor governmental protection; this country, born yesterday, and born under a Puritanic influence; this country, without past history, without monuments, separated from the Middle Ages by the double interval of centuries and beliefs; this rude country of farmers and pioneers, has nothing fitted to please us. It has the exuberant life and the eccentricities of youth; that is, it affords to our mature experience inexhaustible subjects of blame and raillery.

We are so little inclined to admire it, that we seek in its territorial configuration for the essential explanation of its success. Is it so difficult to maintain good order and liberty at home when one has immense deserts to people, when land offers itself without stint to the labor of man?—I do not see, for my part, that land is lacking at Buenos Ayres, at Montevideo, in Mexico, or in any of the pronunciamento republics that cover South America. It seems to me that the Turks have room before them, and that the Middle Ages were not suffering precisely from an excess of population when they presented everywhere the spectacle of anarchy and oppression.

Be sure that the United States, which have something to learn of us, have also something to teach us. Theirs is a great community, which it does not become us to pass by in disdain. The more it differs from our own Europe, the more necessary is impartial attention to comprehend and appreciate it. Especially is it impossible for us to form an enlightened opinion of the present crisis, unless we begin by taking into consideration the surroundings in which it has broken out. The nature of the struggle and its probable issue, the difficulties of the present, and the chances of the future, will be clear to us only on condition of our making a study of the United States. A few details will, therefore, be permitted me.

Among the Yankees, the faults are on the surface. I am not one to justify Lynch law, whatever may be the necessities which exist in the Far West. Riots in the United States are cited which have performed their work of fire and devastation, and which no one has dared treat rigorously afterwards, for fear of incurring disgrace from the sovereign people; but I remember, I fancy, that similar things have been seen in Paris itself. We will not, therefore, lay too great stress on them.

One thing that is not seen in Paris, is, unhappily, remarked in America: the general tendency among women to substitute masculine qualities which scarcely befit them, for the feminine qualities which constitute their grace, their strength, and their dignity; thence results a certain something unpleasant and rude which does no credit to the New World. I by no means admire coarseness, and I do not admit that it is the necessary companion of energy; the tone of the journals and of the debates in Congress is often calculated to excite a just reprobation. There is in the United States a levelling spirit, a jealousy of acquired superiority, and, above all, of inherited distinctions, which proceeds from the worst sentiments of the heart. What is graver still, the tender and gentle side of the human soul, such as shines forth in the Gospel, appears too rarely among this people, where the Gospel, notwithstanding, is in honor, but where the labor of a gigantic growth has developed the active instead of the loving virtues; the Americans are cold even when good, charitable and devout.

They may love money, and often concentrate their thoughts on the means of making it; I will not contest this, although I doubt, on seeing what passes among ourselves, whether we have the right to cast the stone at them; especially as American liberality, as I shall presently show, is of a nature to put our parsimony to shame. As to the bankrupt acts, of which American creditors have many times complained, nothing can justify them; yet here again the rôle of pedagogue scarcely becomes us. If more than one American railroad company have taken advantage of a crisis to declare without much dishonor, a suspension of payment, it is not proved that these suspensions of payment must be converted into bankruptcy. If more than one town or more than one county make the half yearly payments of their debts with reluctance, the courts always do fair justice on this ill will; there are some countries, Russia, for instance, where the courts do not do as much. If, in fine, at one time, a number of States failed to keep their engagements, and a single one dared proclaim the infamous doctrine of repudiation, all have since paid, except one State of the extreme South, Mississippi. Once more, are we sure of being in a position to reprove such misdeeds; we, whose governments, anterior to '89, made use, without much scruple, of the fall of stocks, and bankruptcies; we, whose debt, on emerging from the Revolution, took the significant name of tiers consolidé?

Let us not forget that the population of the United States has increased tenfold since the close of the last century; they have received immigrants annually, by hundreds of thousands, who have not always been the elite of the Old World. Must not this perpetual invasion of strangers promptly transformed into citizens, have necessarily introduced into the decision of public affairs some elements of immorality? I admire the honorable and religious spirit of the Americans which has been able to assimilate and rule to such a degree these great masses of Irish and Germans. Few countries would have endured a like ordeal as well.

Remark that, in spite of all, public order is maintained without paid troops, (Continental Europe will find it hard to credit this.) Tranquillity reigns in the largest cities of the United States; respect for the law is in every heart; great ballotings take place, millions of excited men await the result with trembling; yet, notwithstanding, not an act of violence is committed. American riots—for some there are—are certainly less numerous than ours; and they have the merit of not being transformed into revolutions.

The greater part of the immigrants remain, of course, in the large cities; here they come almost to make the laws, and here, too, noble causes encounter the most opponents. Mr. Lincoln, to cite an example, received only a minority of suffrages in the city of New York, whilst the unanimity of the country suffrages secured him the vote of the State. Contempt of the colored class, that crime of the North, breaks out most of all in the large cities, and particularly among agglomerations of immigrants; none are harsher to free negroes, it must be admitted, than newly-landed Europeans who have come to seek a fortune in America.

As to crimes, they are numerous only in cities; still the criminal records of the United States appear somewhat full when compared with ours. I know how great a part of this must be assigned to the insufficiency of repression; in America, criminals doubtless escape punishment much oftener than among us. Notwithstanding, there is real security; and a child might travel over the entire West without being exposed to the slightest danger.

M. de Tocqueville has said that morals are infinitely more rigid in North America than elsewhere. This is not, it seems to me, a trifling advantage. Whatever may be the depravity of the seaports, where the whole world holds rendezvous, it remains certain that it does not penetrate into the interior of the country. Open the journals and novels of the United States; you will not find a corrupt page in them. You might leave them all on the drawing-room table, without fearing to call a blush to the brow of a woman, or to sully the imagination of a child.

In the heart of the manufacturing States, model villages are found, in which every thing is combined to protect the artisans of both sexes from the perils that await them in other countries. Who has not heard of the town of Lowell, where farmers' daughters go to earn their dowry, where the labor of the factories brings no dissipation in its train, where the workwomen read, write, teach Sunday-schools, where their morality detracts nothing from their liberty and progress? When I have added that the United States have not a single foundling asylum, it seems to me that I have indicated what we are to think at once of their good morals and good sense.

And let not the Americans he represented as a people at once honest and narrow-minded. If they are still far from our level—and this must necessarily be true, in an artistic and literary point of view—we are not, however, at liberty to despise a country which counts such names as Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, Cooper, Poe, Washington Irving, Channing, Prescott, Motley, and Bancroft. Note that among these names, men of imagination hold a prominent place, which proves, we may say in passing, that the country where we oftenest hear the exclamation, "Of what use is it?" agrees in finding poetry of some use. And I speak here neither of orators, like Mr. Seward or Mr. Douglas, nor of scholars, like Lieutenant Maury, nor of those who, like Fulton or Morse, have applied science to art: judgment has been passed on all these points.

But the true superiority of Americans is in the universality of common instruction. The Puritans, who came hither with their Bibles, were of necessity zealous founders of schools; the Bible and the school go together. See, therefore, what the schools are in the United States! The State of Massachusetts alone, which does not number a million of souls, devotes five millions yearly to its public instruction. If other States are far from equalling it in academies and higher institutions, all are on a level with it as regards primary schools; a man or woman, therefore, is rarely found outside the class of immigrants, who does not possess a solid knowledge of the elementary sciences, the extent of which would excite our surprise. By the side of the primary school, and to complete its instruction in the religious point of view, the Americans have everywhere opened Sunday-schools, kept gratuitously by volunteer teachers, among whom have figured many men of the highest standing, several of whom have been Presidents of the Confederation. These Sunday-schools, not less than twenty thousand in number, and superintended by one hundred and fifty thousand teachers, count more than a million of pupils, of which ten thousand at least are adults. Calculate the power of such an instrument!

People read enormously in America. There is a library in the meanest cabin of roughly-hewn logs, constructed by the pioneers of the West. These poor log-houses almost always contain a Bible, often journals, instructive books, sometimes even poetry. We in Europe, who fancy ourselves fine amateurs of good verses, would scarcely imagine that copies of Longfellow are scattered among American husbandmen. The political journals have many subscribers; those of the religious papers are no less numerous. I know of a monthly journal designed for children, (the Child's Paper,) of which three hundred thousand copies are printed. This is the intellectual aliment of the country. In the towns, lectures are added to books, journals, and reviews: in all imaginable subjects, this community, which the Government does not charge itself with instructing, (at least, beyond the primary education,) educates and develops itself with indefatigable ardor. Ideas are agitated in the smallest market-town; life is everywhere.

Accustomed to act for themselves, knowing that they cannot count on the administrative patronage of the State, the Americans excel in bringing individual energies into action. There are few functionaries, few soldiers, and few taxes among them. They know nothing, like us, of that malady of public functions, the violence of which increases in proportion as we advance. They know nothing of those enormous imposts under which Europe is bending by degrees—those taxes which almost suppress property by overburdening its transmission; they have not come to the point of finding it very natural to devote one or two millions every year to the expenses of the State, and no theory has been formed to prove to them that of all the expenses of the citizens, this is applied to the best purpose. They have not entered with the Old World into that rivalry of armaments in which each nation, though it become exhausted in the effort, is bound to keep on a level with its neighbors, and in which no one will be stronger in the end when the whole world shall be subjugated. Their ten thousand regulars suffice, and they have their militia for extraordinary occasions. Lastly, their Federal debt is insignificant; and, if the private debts of a few States reach a high figure, they are nowhere of a nature to impose on the tax-payers a large surplus of charges.

All of the great liberties exist in the United States: liberty of the press, liberty of speech, right of assemblage, right of association. Except in the slave States, where the national institutions have been subjected to deplorable mutilations in fact, every citizen can express his opinion and maintain it openly, without meeting any other obstacle than the contrary opinion, which is expressed with equal freedom.

But there is one ground above all where we should acknowledge the superiority of America: I mean, religious liberty. We are still in the beginning of doubts upon the point as to where the interference of the State should cease; in what measure it should govern the belief of the citizens, and its manifestation. These questions, alas, are still propounded among us. And there are countries at our doors, where men shudder at the mere idea that the law may some day cease to decide for each in what manner he is bound to worship God, that the courts may cease to punish those whose conscience turns aside from the path of the nation. Protestant Sweden but lately condemned dissenters to fine and imprisonment; Catholic Spain daily inflicts the severest penalties on those who suffer themselves to profess or to propagate beliefs which are not those of the country—those who sell the Scriptures, and those who read them.

The United States have not only proclaimed and loyally carried out the glorious principle of religious liberty, but have adopted as a corollary another principle, much more contested among us, but which I believe destined also to make the tout of the world: the principle of separation of Church and State. That believers should support their own worship, that religious and political questions should never be blended, that the two provinces should remain distinct, is a simple idea which seems most strange to us to-day. It will make its way like all other true ideas, which begin as paradoxes and end by becoming axioms. Meanwhile, the American Confederation enjoys an advantage which more than one European government, I suspect, would at some moments purchase at a high price: it has not to trouble itself about religious interests, either in its action without or its administration within. If there are conflicts everywhere in the spiritual order, it leaves them to struggle and become resolved in the spiritual order, without needing to trouble itself in the matter. Hence arises for the State a freedom of bearing, a simplicity of conduct, which we, who have to steer adroitly through so many dangers, can hardly comprehend. The American government is sure of never offending any church—it knows none; it does not interfere either to combat or to aid them; it has renounced, once for all, intervention, in the domain of conscience.

The result, doubtless, is, that this domain is not so well ordered as in Europe; the administrative ecclesiastical state has by no means submitted to such regulation. Is that to say that this inconvenience (if it be one) is not largely compensated for by its advantages? Is it nothing to suppress inheritance in religious matters, and to force each soul to question itself as to what it believes? In the United States, adhesion to a church is an individual, spontaneous act, resulting from a voluntary determination. This is so true that four-fifths of the inhabitants of the country do not bear, the title of church members. Although attending worship, although manifesting an interest and zeal in the subject to which we are little accustomed, although assiduous church-goers, and liberal givers, they have not yet felt within themselves a conviction strong and clear enough to make a public profession of faith. Think what we may of such a system, we must avow, at least, that it implies a profound respect for sacred things; nothing can less resemble that indolent and formal assent which we give, in conformity with custom, and without binding ourselves, in earnest, to the religion that prevails among us.

Hence arises something valiant in American convictions. Hence arises also, it may be said, that dispersion of sects, the picture of which is so often drawn for us. I am far from loving the spirit of sectarianism, and I am careful not to present the American churches as the beau ideal in religious matters. The sectarian spirit, the fundamental trait of which is to confound unity with uniformity, to transform divergencies into separations, to refuse to admit into the bosom of the church the element of diversity and of liberty; to exact the signing of a theological formula, and the formal adhesion as a whole to a collection of dogmas and practices, without tolerating the slightest shade of difference—the sectarian spirit, with its narrowness, with its traditions of men, with its exaggeration of little things, with its separate denominations, is certainly not worthy of admiration. I reject it in America as elsewhere, but I think it well to state that the religious disruption produced by it has been much exaggerated. We must greatly abbreviate the formidable list of churches furnished us by travellers. Putting aside those which have no value, either as to influence or numbers, we reduce the numbers of denominations existing in the United States, outside the Roman Catholic church, to five, (and these are too many;) namely: Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Episcopal, and Presbyterian. The remainder is composed of small eccentric congregations which spring up and die, and of which no one takes heed, except a few tourists, who are always willing to note down extraordinary facts.

We will add that the sectarian spirit is now attacked in America, and that the essential unity which binds the members of the five denominations together, in spite of some external differences, is manifesting itself forcibly. Not only does the evangelical alliance prove to the most sceptical that this unity is real, but a fact peculiar to the United States, the great awakening produced by the crisis of 1857, has given evidence of the perfect harmony of convictions. In the innumerable meetings caused to spring up by this awakening from one end of the country to the other, it has been impossible to distinguish Baptists, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists from each other. All have been there, and no one has betrayed by the least shade of dogmatism those self-styled profound divisions about which so much noise is made. I invite those still in doubt to look at the manner in which public worship is established in the West: as soon as a few men have formed a settlement, a missionary comes to visit them; no one inquires about his denomination, for the Bible that he brings is the Bible of all, and the salvation, through Christ, which he proclaims, is the faith of all. It suffices, besides, to see this entire people, so restless, so laborious, leaving its business on Sunday to occupy itself with the thoughts of another life; it suffices to observe the unanimous uprising of the public conscience at the rumor of an attack directed against the Gospel, to perceive that unity subsists beneath lamentable divisions, and that individual conviction creates the most active of all cohesive powers in the heart of human communities; I know of no cement that equals it.

If individual convictions are a strong bond, they are also an inexhaustible source of life. It is easy to assure ourselves of this by a brief survey of the proofs of Christian liberality which are displayed in the United States. Here, there is no legal charity, no aid to be expected from the government, either for the support of churches, or for that of the sick and poor; the voluntary system must suffice for all. And, in fact, it does suffice for all.

What is the first thing in question? To collect thirty million francs annually for the payment of the clergy. The thirty millions are furnished: poor and rich, all give eagerly, and without compulsion. The next thing in question is to provide for the construction of new churches; now, it is necessary to finish not less than three of these daily, for the clearing of the forests advances with rapid strides, and a thousand churches, at least, are built every year. The majority of these churches are doubtless composed of beams laid one upon another, then painted white, or left of the natural color, and surmounted by a bell; they are simple and inexpensive, and, in the infant villages, the streets of which are still blocked up by trees left standing, the place, serving at once for a church and a school, where the people gather round an itinerant preacher, is not decorated with much sumptuousness; yet these new edifices demand annually from twelve to fifteen millions.

Next come the religious societies. In the West, preachers are needed, hardy laborers, who live in privations, traversing vast solitudes on horseback, and journeying continually, without repose, until their strength is exhausted. Eight hundred missionaries or agents are required for the American Board of Missions, for the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and all the other churches. Now, they cannot send them to the four quarters of the globe without providing for their wants. The Bible Society, which prints three hundred thousand Bibles annually, the Religious Tract Society, which publishes every year five millions of tracts, and which, in New York alone, employs a thousand visitors or distributors; the various works, in a word, expend from nine to ten million francs.

Such, then, is the budget of voluntary charity in the United States.[^[A]] It amounts to fifty or sixty million francs, without counting the very considerable donations destined to public instruction; without counting (and this is immense) the relief of the sick and the poor. You will scarcely find a village in the whole United States that has not its benevolent society, and private benevolence, which is the best, also carries on its work, independently of societies. I know of no country where acts of profuse liberality are more frequent; one man founds a hospital, another an observatory. Asylums are opened for all human unfortunates, for lunatics, the blind, the deaf, orphans, abandoned children.

Was I not right in saying that this is a great people? Whatever may be its vices, we are not at liberty to speak of it with disdain. If the Americans know how to make a fortune, they know, also, how to make a noble use of their fortune; accused with reason, as they are, of being too often preoccupied with questions of profit, we have seen them retrenching much of their luxury since the commercial crisis, yet economizing very little in their charities. The budget of the churches and religious societies remained intact at the very time that embarrassment was everywhere prevailing. I cannot help believing that there are peculiar blessings attached to so many voluntary sacrifices which carry back the mind to the early ages of Christianity. We may be sure that the religion that costs something, brings something also in return.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] It seems that I have understated the truth; but I prefer to do so; I wish, above all, to avoid exaggeration.

CHAPTER V.

THE CHURCHES AND SLAVERY.

This leads me to examine a side of the American question upon which, attention is, naturally fixed at the present time; how is it that the iniquities of slavery are maintained among this charitable and liberal people? how is it that such iniquities have subsisted under the influence of so powerful a Christian sentiment? Can it be true that Christians have deserted the cause of justice? Has the Gospel had the place which belongs to it, in the great struggle that is going on between the North and the South? yes; or no. This is perhaps the point of all others most important to clear up; first, because it is the one on which the most errors have accumulated; next, because it is the one most closely connected with the final solution; for this solution will not be happy, if the Gospel has no hand in it.

To judge rightly, let us approach and endeavor to comprehend the true position of those whose conduct we seek to appreciate. See the South, for example, where the almost universal opinion is favorable to slavery, where governors write dithyrambics on its benefits, where many Christians have succeeded in discovering that it is sanctioned by the Gospel, where men of sincerity are now placing their impious crusades in behalf of its extension under the protection of God, where numerous preachers expound in their own way the celebrated text "Cursed be Canaan!" Do not these sentiments of the South, detestable as they are, find, to a certain point, their explanation and excuse in the circumstances in which the South is placed?

The power of surroundings is incalculable. If we ourselves, who condemn slavery, and are right in so doing, had been reared in Charleston; if we had led a planter's life from our earliest infancy; if we had nourished our minds with their ideas; if we considered our monetary interests menaced by Abolitionism; if the image of more fearful perils, of violent destructions and massacres, appeared to haunt our thoughts; if the political antagonism between the North and the South came to add its venom to the passions already excited within us, is it certain that we ourselves should no be figuring at the present time among the desperadoes who are firing upon the ships of the Union, and attempting the foundation of a Southern Confederacy?

It is well to ask this of ourselves, in order to learn to respect, to love, and consequently to aid those whose conduct we blame the most strongly. For my part, whenever I am tempted to set myself up as a judge or an accuser of the South, I ask myself what I should do if I belonged to the South, and this brings me back to the true position. I remember, too, what I saw, with my own eyes, at the time when the discussion on slavery was carried on in France; the colonial passions, the blindest and most violent of all, broke out in Martinique and the isle of Bourbon, as they had broken out before in Jamaica, where the circulars of Mr. Canning, the proposition, for example, to suppress the flagellation of women, had excited a veritable explosion. There were some very honorable men among those who were indignant at this measure; and, among us, likewise, the planters who determined to combat all modification of the negro system, were good men. Severity is almost always a defect of memory; we blame others without pity, only when we begin by forgetting our own history. We Frenchmen, who had so much difficulty in emancipating our own slaves, and who would not, perhaps, have succeeded in it, had it not been for the bold decision of M. Schoelcher; we, who have sought to take back, in part, through our colonial regulations, the liberty accorded the blacks; we, who suffered recruitals by purchase to be made on the African coast; who formerly organized the expedition charged with re-establishing slavery and the slave trade at St. Domingo; who suppressed the slave trade at the Congress of Vienna only in stipulating its continuance for some years; who carried into our discussions on the right of search, a very meagre interest for the victims of the slavers; we, whose consciences are burdened with these misdeeds, are bound to use indulgence towards the States of the South.

This remark was necessary: it is from the South that the Biblical theories in favor of slavery proceed; it is on account of the South that these theories have been adopted by certain Christians of the North, desirous, above every thing, of avoiding both the dismemberment of the United States, and that of the churches and religious societies. Take away the South, and no one in America, any more than in Europe, will dream of discovering in the Gospel the divine approbation of the atrocities of slavery.

I comprehend better than most, the sentiment of indignation that is caused by these deplorable teachings, in which slavery is sometimes excused, sometimes exalted; I comprehend, that, under the impulse of a sentiment so justifiable, one may be led on to anathematize preachers and churches in a mass, that he may even come to the point of representing to himself the Christian faith as the true obstacle to the progress of liberty. This is a great perversion of the truth, but we can easily understand how it has succeeded in gaining the assent of generous and sincere minds. I myself have read a sermon which was listened to with sympathy in a certain Presbyterian church in New York, in which slavery, declares right until the return of Jesus Christ, ceases to be so, I know not why, during the millennium? I know the nature of that theology, too truly styled cottony, which is displayed in the clerical columns of the New York Observer. Notwithstanding, I hasten to say that these revolting excesses seldom appear except in seaports, and especially in New York. The interests of this great city are bound up to such a degree with those of the cotton States, that, until very lately, New York might have been considered as a prolongation of the South. We need not be surprised, therefore, to find some congregations there which are ruled by the prejudices of the South. Besides, even in New York, other churches protest with holy zeal, and other journals, among which I will cite the Independent, the organ of the Congregationalists, combat slavery unceasingly in the name of the Gospel.

Then people persist in seeing only New York, in taking notice only of what passes in New York; but they forget that New York is ordinarily an exception in the North, as much by its commercial position as by its opinions and votes. Let us go ever so short a distance from the city into the surrounding country, and we will encounter a different spirit—a spirit thoroughly impregnated with Christian faith, and little disposed to covenant with slavery. There we begin to see that race of Puritan farmers, but lately represented by John Brown. Has not the attempt been made to transform him also into a free thinker, a philosophic enemy of the Bible, and, from this very cause, an enemy to slavery? We need nothing more than his last letter to his wife, to show from what source he had drawn that courage, so misdirected but so indomitable, which he displayed at Harper's Ferry; the Christian, the Biblical and orthodox Christian, comes to explain the liberal and the hero.

That Christians in general condemned the enterprise of John Brown, while sympathizing with him, I hasten to acknowledge; and I am far from blaming them. That many have committed the real wrong of recoiling before the consequences of an open and decided conduct, I am forced to admit. Yes, without even mentioning the South, where, as every one knows, the reign of terror prevails, there are numerous Protestant and Catholic churches in the remainder of the Confederation, which have refused to declare themselves, as they should have done, in opposition to the crime of slavery. Let us not hasten, however, to cry out against falsehood and hypocrisy; most honorable and sincere men have believed that they would do more harm than good by bringing on a rupture with the South. Let us not forget that political rupture is complicated here with religious rupture. Now, all the churches extend over both North and South; all the charitable societies number committees and subscribers in both North and South. The point in question then, (let us weigh the immensity of the sacrifice,) the point in question is to rend in twain all the churches, to break in pieces all the societies, to expose to perilous risks all the great works that do honor to the United States.

Doubtless, to have gone their way, to have done their duty, and not to have troubled themselves about the consequences, was the great rule of action. I grant it; yet, notwithstanding, I refuse to stigmatize, as many have done, those men who have committed the fault of hesitating; I feel that to rank them among the champions of slavery is to pervert facts, and to fall into a blamable exaggeration. Again, to-day, after the election of Mr. Lincoln, cannot citizens be cited in the North who are devoted to the cause of the negroes, but who refuse to participate in abolitionist demonstrations, because they fear (and the sentiments does them honor) to encourage the impending insurrections?

This said, I wish to prove by some too well-known facts, what has been this forbearance, or even this pretended hesitation of orthodox Christianity. On regarding the churches, I see two, and the most considerable, which have openly declared themselves: the Congregationalists and the Methodists. About six months since, the General Conference of Methodists resolutely plunged into the current without suffering itself to be trammelled by the protests which came to it from the South. I read in a report presented to one of the great divisions of this church: "We believe that to sell or to hold in bondage human beings under the name of chattels, is in contradiction to the divine laws and to humanity; and that it conflicts with the golden rule and with the rule of our discipline." Last year, a numerous assemblage of delegates of the Congregational churches adopted the following resolution: "Slaveholding is immoral, and slaveholders should not be admitted as members of Christian churches. We ought to protest against it without ceasing, in the name of the Gospel, until it shall have entirely disappeared." And this resolution has not remained a dead letter: a Congregational church of Ohio has expelled from its bosom one of its deacons, who had contributed in the capacity of magistrate to the extradition of a fugitive slave.

Other churches, without taking so decided a position, have at least manifested by their internal convulsions the profound interest excited among them by the question of slavery. In this manner a secession has just rent the Presbyterian church in twain, because the declared adversaries of slavery were unwilling to remain responsible for a forbearance which appeared to them criminal. These things are signs of life, and these signs are beginning to show themselves even in the midst of ecclesiastical bodies which have acted, until now, in the most unchristian manner. A warm discussion has been thus called forth, and this signifies a great deal, among the members of the Episcopal church in New York. The majority stifled the debate; will it be able to do this always?

If from the churches we proceed to the religious societies, we find the same symptoms among them; here, they declare themselves openly against slavery, in spite of the menaces of the South; there, they succeed in staving off the question, yet at the price of excited debates, which continually spring up again, of a great scandal, and of protests which are heard by Christians through the whole world. The course of conduct adopted by the great American Board of Missions is the more significant, inasmuch as its committee is composed of members belonging to various evangelical denominations; it stands, therefore, as their permanent representative, yet this has not prevented its adoption, after long hesitation, of resolutions indicating in what course it will henceforth proceed: it has broken off its relations with the missionaries employed among the Choctaws, for the sole reason that they obstinately refused openly to attack Indian slavery, and the abominable practices which it engenders. The Society, which long, too long, contented itself with a timid and inconsistent censure, has been obliged, therefore, to resort to more decisive measures.

Another great body, the Tract Society, unfortunately, has not followed this example; the general assemblies held at New York, and ruled by the spirit of that city, have given a majority to the party opposed to the discussion of the subject; but, be it said to the honor of American Christians, the very large minority resisted to the end; the latter was sustained by outside opinion, and many friends of the Gospel joined with it in deploring the pusillanimity which yielded to the menaces of the South. A crisis thence arose, which has not yet reached its height, and the first fruits of which have been the foundation of a rival society in Boston, to which adherents are gathering from all sides.

These are grave events, for they manifest the inmost revolutions of the human soul. Would you know what will take place in political societies? Begin by informing yourself about what is taking place in the consciences of the public. Now it is evident that the public conscience is in motion in the United States. The vast obstacles by which this movement was trammelled have been surmounted on every side. I wish no other proof of this than the deplorable fact of which I have just made mention: the conduct of the Tract Society, the internal crisis which it has experienced, the reprobation which it encounters, in Europe as in America. Are not these palpable proofs of the too little known truth that the great moral force which is struggling with American slavery is the Gospel?

And how could it be otherwise? If we had not positive facts before our eyes, if we did not know that one entire sect of Christians, the Quakers, have devoted themselves, body and goods, to the service of poor fugitive slaves, if we did not recognize the deep Puritan imprint in the movement which has colonized Kansas, and in that which has borne Mr. Lincoln to the presidency, should we not be forced to ask ourselves whether it is possible that the Gospel remains a stranger to a struggle undertaken for liberty? There exist, thank God, between liberty and the Gospel, close, eternal, and indestructible relations. I know of one species of freedom which contains the germ of all the rest—freedom of soul; now what was it, if not the Gospel, that introduced this freedom into the world? Remember ancient Paganism: neither liberty of conscience, nor liberty of individuals, nor liberty of families—such was its definition. The State laid its hand upon all the inmost part of existence, the creeds of the fathers, and the education of the children; moral slavery also existed everywhere, and if slavery, properly called, had been anywhere wanting, it would have given cause for astonishment. The Gospel came, and with it these new phenomena: individual belief, true independence makes its advent here on earth, a liberty worthy of the name appears finally among men. From this time we see men lifting up their heads, despotism finding its limits, the humblest, the weakest opposing to it insurmountable barriers.

They act without reflection, who attempt to place in opposition these two things: the Gospel and liberty. And remark that in the United States, in particular, the Gospel and liberty are accustomed to go together; they first landed together at New Plymouth with the passengers of the Mayflower. Why had these poor pilgrims torn themselves from all the habits of home and country, to seek in the dead of winter an asylum on an unknown soil? Because they loved the Gospel, and because they desired liberty; the chief of liberties—that of the conscience. From the 21st of December, 1620, there existed on the shores of the New World the beginning of a free people—free through the powerful influence of the Gospel. All who have studied the United States with sincerity, will ratify the opinion of M. de Tocqueville: "America is the place, of all others, where the Christian religion has preserved the most power over souls." This power is such, that we find it at the base of all lasting reforms. In this country, in which the idea of authority has little force, there is one authority, that of the Bible, before which the majority bow, and which is of the more importance inasmuch as it alone commands respect and obedience.

If you doubt the decisive part which the Gospel fills in American debates, look at the pains taken by parties to render public homage to it, the Democrats as the Republicans, Mr. Buchanan as Mr. Lincoln. Then look more closely at the Republican party, do you not find in it again the visible traces of Puritanism? It is the ancient States, it is old America, it is also the Young America of the farmers, of the pioneers of the Western solitudes, the America of the clearers of the forests, the America of the Bible and the schools. This America long since abolished slavery, and prevented its introduction into the territories that acknowledged its influence. In the meanest of its cabins, you will find the Scriptures, hymn books, reports of religious societies; in the majority of its families, domestic worship is celebrated; in its prayer-meetings, it is not rare to see physicians, lawyers, magistrates, marine officers, taking part publicly; its statesmen do not think themselves dishonored by keeping a Sunday-school; the Gospel, in a word, is a power to which no other can compare, and outside of which it would be puerile to expect to succeed in accomplishing any thing of importance.

Here the action of the Gospel can be plainly detected; an important religious event preceded and paved the way for the political event which we have witnessed: before the election of Mr. Lincoln, an awakening took place. The American awakening, which must not be confounded with those revivals, the description and sometimes the caricature of which have been transmitted us by travellers, the awakening, which had neither ecstasies nor convulsive sobs, and the distinctive feature of which was a tone of simplicity and conviction, produced one of those profound agitations of the conscience, which give rise to generous resolutions. The financial crisis had just overthrown the fortunes of the people; they turned towards God and began to pray. On a route of three thousand miles, wherever one might stop, he found a meeting, a simple, spontaneous meeting, at which the pastors did not take the initiative, where they were present instead of presiding. Ere long, public attention became fixed on this movement, the greatness of which could not be contested; the most hostile journals ended by rendering it homage. And it lasted, it still subsists, it has produced something else than meetings and prayers, it has induced extensive moral reforms, it has closed places of debauchery and taverns by hundreds. The military and commercial marine of the United States has been especially subjected to its influence; captains, officers, and sailors in great numbers, have shown by their lives that their habits of piety are more than a vain form; American vessels are perhaps the only ones at the present day in which groups of sailors assemble to converse on the interests of their soul, and to make the praises of God resound over the ocean.

In strengthening the religious element, in exciting the Puritan fibre of America, the awakening certainly contributed a great share to the success of the party opposed to slavery. South Carolina acknowledged this herself lately, when she inserted the following phrase in her declaration of independence: "The public opinion of the North has given to a great political error the sanction of a still more erroneous religious sentiment." Is this religious sentiment, assailed by the slaveholders, that of free thinkers, or of Christians? The South is not mistaken; it knows that the truly difficult acts of emancipation are accomplished on earth only by the power of the Gospel; it saw the great abolition impulse rise in England, and spread over the United States; journals, committees, correspondence, all indicated that the English had become the American movement, and was continued under the same banner. Under this banner, and this alone, it has conquered. A colossal work in fact is here in question, before which all purely human forces fall to the ground. If such prodigious Christian efforts were needed to give the victory to Wilberforce, what will be required in the heart of a country where slavery is not exiled to distant colonies, and where it has acquired formidable proportions with years. There are easy abolitions, which are wrought in some sort of themselves, and which seem the natural corollary of a political revolution; as, for instance, that which occurred forty years ago in the Spanish republics. Bolivar, Quiroga, and the other leaders, needed the support of all classes of the population in their struggle against Spain; they adopted the expedient of suppressing slavery. In taking this resolution, they accomplished a most honorable deed, but they made little change in the condition of the country, for large planting was rare, and both the blacks and the whites were few in numbers, less numerous, indeed, than the Indians and the half breeds.

If political reasons then sufficed, it is evident that they are far from sufficing to-day: we must seek elsewhere for the explanation of the movement which, a long time wavering and suppressed, has just manifested its irresistible power in the United States. We have recognized in it the hand of the Gospel; and this is no indifferent matter, for if the Gospel had no part in it, such a movement would end in destruction.

The responsibility of Christians will be great in America; they can do much for the favorable solution of a problem which menaces the future of their country, and overshadows that of humanity. The mode of pacification here is, to declare themselves; the pretensions of the South, its fatal progress, the extreme peril to which but lately it exposed the Confederation, are due much more than is imagined to the deplorable hesitation of the religious societies and the churches. If it had long since been brought face to face with a determined evangelical doctrine, the South, which knows also, though in a less degree, the influence of the Gospel, would have avoided falling into the excesses to which it is now abandoned. The faults of the past are irreparable, but it is possible to ward off their return. Let all Northern churches, let all societies, let all eminent Christians take henceforth with firmness the position which they ought to have taken from the first; let them present to their Southern brethren a solid rallying point, and the effects of this faithful conduct will not be slow in making themselves felt. There is, in the slave States, especially in those occupying an intermediate position, more disturbance of thought, and more conflicts of feeling, than we generally suppose. Let the banner of the Christian faith be openly displayed, and many good men will rally round it: this is certain.

And let no one put forward the shameful pretext: there are sceptics, rationalists, free thinkers in the ranks of Abolitionism! Why not? Questions of this sort, thanks to the Gospel, have entered in the domain of common morality; shall I desert these questions in order to avoid contact with men who reject the essential doctrines of Christianity? I confess that the orthodoxy which should draw such conclusions would appear suspicious to me. Voltaire pleading for the Calas will not make me turn my back on religious liberty; Channing writing pages against slavery, revealing a heart more Christian than his doctrine; Parker, blending his noble efforts in favor of the negroes with his assaults against the Bible, will not alienate me from a cause which was mine before it was theirs.

I say, besides, that the objections of these men against Christianity force me to ask whether our conduct as Christians be not one of the principal causes of their scepticism. Is it quite certain that Voltaire himself would have been the adversary that we know him, if he had not seen that thought was stifled, that liberty was crushed, that conscience was violated in the name of the Gospel? Would not this same Gospel have presented itself under a different aspect to Parker, Channing, and the other Unitarians of Boston, if they had seen it at its post, the post of honor, at the head of all generous ideas and true liberties? Yes; there are Abolitionists who reject the Bible because they have heard certain orthodox Christians maintain that the Bible is in favor of slavery. Whoever preaches this, is of a school of impiety.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GOSPEL AND SLAVERY.

How did they set to work to preach this? I will answer this question by two others: How did Bossuet set to work to write his Politique tirée de l'Ecriture, to proclaim in the name of the Bible obligatory monarchy, divine right, the absolute authority of kings, the duty of destroying false religion by force, the duty of officially sustaining the truth, the duty of having a budget of modes of worship, the duty of uniting Church and State, without speaking of his Biblical apology for war, for the use of Louis XIV.? How did certain doctors among the Roundheads, in their turn, set to work to proclaim the divine right of republics, and to ordain the massacre of the new Amalekites? The method is very simple: it consists only in confounding the law with the Gospel. This confusion once wrought, the political and civil institutions of the Old Testament lose their temporary and local character, and we go to the New Testament in search of what is not there: namely, political and civil institutions.

Though the Gospel is not the law, it is a truth which has been making its way since the seventeenth century, and which seems to be no longer contested to-day, except in the camp of the champions of slavery. The Gospel, which addresses itself to all nations and all ages, does not pretend to force them into the strait vestments of the ancient Jewish nation; no more does it pretend to "sew a piece of new cloth on an old garment, else the new cloth taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse." I speak here with a view to those who, in the law as in the Gospel, in the New Testament as in the Old, venerate the infallible word of God. A revelation, to be divine, does not cease to be progressive, and nothing exacts that all truths should be promulgated in a single day. If God deemed proper to give to his people, so long as they needed it, a legislation adapted to their social condition, this legislation, divinely given at that time, may be also divinely abrogated afterward. And this is what has taken place. Those who quote to us texts from the Old Testament concerning slavery, appear to have forgotten the saying of Jesus Christ in reference to another institution, divorce: "It was on account of the hardness of your hearts." Yes, on account of the hardness of their hearts, God established among the Israelites, incapable, at that time, of rising higher, provisory regulations,[^[B]] perfect as regards his condescension, but most imperfect, as he declares himself, as regards the absolute truth. He who makes no account of this great fact will find in the books of Moses, and in the Prophets, pretexts either for practising to-day what was tolerated only for a time, or for attacking the Scriptures, indignant at what they contain.

It was Jesus Christ himself, therefore, who drew the line of demarcation between the law and the Gospel—who announced the end of local and temporary institutions. Has he revealed other institutions, this time definitive? To form such an idea of the Gospel, we must never have opened it. The Gospel is not a Koran. In the Koran, we doubtless find both civil and criminal laws, and the principles of government; the Apostles did not once tread on this ground. Fancy what their work would have been, had they substituted a social for a spiritual revolution—had they touched, above all, the question of slavery, which formed part of the fundamental law of the ancient world. And here I wish my thought to be clearly comprehended: I do not pretend that the Apostles were conscious of the unlawfulness of slavery, and that they avoided pointing it out through policy, for fear of compromising their work. No, indeed, this happened unconsciously. According to all appearances, they held the opinions of their times, and God revealed nothing to them on the subject, wishing that the abolition of slavery, like all the social results of the Gospel, should be produced by moral agency, which works from within outward, which changes the heart before changing the actions.

At the time of the Apostles, there were many other abuses than slavery; they never wrote a word in their condemnation. They make allusions to war, yet say nothing of the nameless horrors which then attended it; they speak of the sword placed in the king's hands to punish crime, yet say nothing of those atrocious tortures, in the first rank of which must be cited crucifixion; they make use of figures borrowed from the public games, yet say nothing either of the combats of the gladiators, or of the abominations which sullied other spectacles; they unceasingly call to mind the reciprocal relations of husbands and wives, of parents and children, yet say nothing of the despotic authority which the Roman law conferred upon the father, or of the debasement to which it condemned the wife. The evangelical method is this: it has not occupied itself with communities, yet has wrought the profoundest of the social revolutions; it has not demanded any reform, yet has accomplished all of them; the atrocities of war and of torture, the gladiatorial combats and immodest spectacles, the despotism of fathers and the debasement of women, all have disappeared before a profound, internal action, which attacks the very roots of the evil.

Not only does the Gospel forbear to touch on social and religious problems, but, even on questions of morals, it refuses to furnish detailed solutions. Its system of morality is very short; and in this lies its greatness, through this it becomes morality instead of casuistry. Cases of conscience, special directions, a moral code, promulgated article by article—you will find in it nothing of this sort. What you will find there, and there alone, is a growing morality, which passes my expression. Two or three sayings were written eighteen centuries ago, and these sayings contain in the germ a series of commandments, of transformation, of progression, which we have not nearly exhausted. I spoke a moment since of the progress of revelations; I must speak now of the progress which is being wrought in virtue of a revelation constantly the same, but constantly becoming better understood, which multiplies our duties in proportion as it enlightens our conscience. With the one saying: "What ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also to them," the Gospel has opened before us infinite vistas of moral development.

Before this one saying, the cruelties and infamous customs of ancient society, not mentioned by the Apostles, have successively succumbed; before this one saying, the modern family has been formed; before this one saying, American slavery will disappear as European slavery has disappeared already. With this saying, we are all advancing, we are learning, and we shall continue to learn. Yes, the time will come, I am convinced, when we shall see new duties rise up before us, when we cannot with a clear conscience maintain customs, what, I know not, which we maintain conscientiously to-day.

This carries us somewhat further, it must be granted, than a list of fixed duties ne varietur; it opposes slavery in a different manner than a sentence pronounced once for all. The Gospel took the surest means of overthrowing it when, letting alone the reform of institutions, it contented itself with pursuing that of sentiments; when it thus prepared the time when the slaveholder himself would be forced to ask what is contained in the inexhaustible saying: "What ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto them." Even in the heart of the Southern States, despite the triple covering of habits, prejudices, and interests, this saying is making its way, and is disturbing the consciences of the people much more than is generally believed. And the work that it has begun it will finish; it will force the planters to translate the word SLAVERY, to consider one by one the abominable practices which constitute it. Is it to do to others as we would that they should do to us, to sell a family at retail? To maintain laws which give over every slave, whether wife or maiden, to her owner, whatever he may be, and which take away from this maiden, from this wife, the right of remembering her modesty and her duties—what do Christians call this? To produce marketable negroes, to dissolve marriages, to ordain adulteries, to inflict ignoble punishment, to interdict instruction—is this doing to others what we would that they should do to us?

The Christian sense of right is relentless, thank God; it does not suffer itself to be deceived by appearances; where we dispute about words, it forces us to go to facts. Now, look at the facts which are really in question in America, when the great subject of slavery is discussed there theoretically. Against the great evangelical system of morality, the Judaical interpretations of such or such a text have little chance. The epistle of Paul, sending back to Philemon his fugitive slave Onesimus, is quoted to us. Assuredly, the Apostle pronounces in it no anathema against slavery, nor does he exact enfranchisement; these ideas were unknown to him; but he says: "I beseech thee for my son whom I have begotten in my bonds, whom I have sent again: thou therefore receive him, that is my own bowels. Without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly. For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him forever; not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved. Having confidence in thy obedience I wrote unto thee, knowing that thou wilt do also more than I say."

Does any one fancy Philemon treating Onesimus, after this epistle, as fugitive slaves are treated in America, putting up his wife and children directly after for sale, or delivering him, over to the first slave merchant that was willing to take charge of him, and carry him a hundred leagues away? It is so certain that Philemon did more than had been told him, that the Epistle to the Colossians shows us the "faithful and well-beloved brother Onesimus" honorably mentioned among those concerned about the spiritual interests of the church.

Do what one will, there is an implied abolition of slavery (implied but positive) at the bottom of that close fraternity created by the faith in the Saviour. Between brethren, the relation of master and slave, of merchant and merchandise, cannot long subsist. To sell on an auction-block or deliver over to a slave-driver an immortal soul, for which Christ has died, is an enormity before which the Christian sense of right will always recoil in the end. "In this," it is written, "there is neither Greek nor Jew, nor circumcision nor uncircumcision, nor barbarian nor Seythian, nor bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all." Let slaveholders put to themselves the question what they would say to-day if the epistle to Philemon were addressed to them; and it is addressed to them; the Onesimuses of the South—and such there are—are thus thrown upon the conscience of their masters, their brothers.

I have said enough on the subject to dispense with examining very numerous passages in which slavery is supposed by the writers of the New Testament. The duties of masters and of slaves are laid down by them without doubt, and the existence of the institution is not contested for a moment; only, it is brought face to face with that which will slay it: the doctrine of salvation through Christ, of pardon, of humility, of love, is, in itself, and without the necessity of expressing it, the absolute negation of slavery.

It has fully proved so, and the early ages of Christianity leave no doubt as to the interpretation given by Christians to the teachings of the Apostles. Despite the rapid corruptions introduced into the churches, we see one brilliant fact shining forth in them: emancipations becoming more frequent, slaves, as well as free men, succeeding to ecclesiastical offices, spiritual equality producing the fruit which it cannot help producing, namely, legal equality. Observe, too, how the edicts of the emperors multiplied as soon as the influence of Christianity was exerted in the Roman world. And all these edicts had but one aim: to sweeten servitude, to increase affranchisement by law, to facilitate voluntary emancipation.

What the Gospel did then against European slavery, it is doing now against American slavery. Its end is the same; its weapons are the same; they have not rusted during eighteen centuries. Those planters of the English islands were not mistaken, who, instinctively divining where lay their great enemy, had recourse to every measure to expel missionaries from among them. Neither were those Texan executioners mistaken, who lately put to death the missionary Bewley, a touching martyr to the cause of the slaves. I ask, in the face of the gallows of Bewley, what we are to think of that prodigious paradox according to which the Gospel is the patron of slavery. To those who mistake its meaning on this point, the Gospel replies by its acts; it replies also by the unanimous testimony of its servants. What is more striking, in fact, than to see that, apart from the country in which the action of interests and habits disturbs the judgment of Christians, there is but one way of comprehending and interpreting the Scripture on this point? Consult England, France, Germany; Christians everywhere will tell you that the Gospel abolished slavery, although it does not say a single word which would proclaim this abolition. Why, if the doubt were possible, would not diversity of opinions be also possible among disinterested judges? To speak only of France, see the synods of our free churches, which continually stigmatize both Swedish intolerance and American slavery; see an address signed three years ago by the pastors and the elders of five hundred and seventy-one French churches, which has gone to carry to the United States the undoubted testimony of a conviction which in truth is that of all.

It seems to me that our demonstration is complete. What would it be if I should add that American slavery, which its friends so strangely claim to place under the protection of the Apostles, has nothing in common with that of which the Apostles had cognizance. The thing, however, is certain. Slavery, in the United States, is founded on color, it is negro slavery. Now, this is a fact wholly new in the history of mankind, a monstrous fact, which profoundly modifies the nature of slavery. Before Las Casas, that virtuous creator of the slave trade, the name of which comprises to him alone a whole commentary on the maxim "Do evil that good may come," before Las Casas, no one had thought of connecting slavery with race. Now, the slavery connected with race is that of all others most difficult to uproot, for it bears an indelible sign of inequality, a sign which the law did not create, and which it cannot destroy.

Such was not the slavery that offered itself to the eyes of the Prophets and Apostles; a normal servitude, of right, based upon a native and indestructible inferiority was not then in question, but an accidental servitude among equals, to which the chances of war had given birth, and which emancipation suppressed entire. Quite different is the slavery which depends on race, and which, it may be said, supposes a malediction; do what one will, this latter will subsist, it will, in a manner, survive itself; it will find, besides, in the idea of a providential dispensation, the natural excuse for its excesses. This slavery the Bible condemns in the most explicit manner. If its champions dare suppose two species, the book of Genesis shows them all mankind springing from one man, and the Gospel recounts to them the redemption wrought in behalf of all the descendants of Adam; if they argue from the curse pronounced against Canaan, the Old Testament presents to them the detailed enumeration of the Canaanites, a vast family, in which the whites figure as well as the blacks.

In short, there is a deadly struggle between the Gospel and slavery under all its forms, and particularly under the odious form which the African slave trade has given it in modern times. The Gospel has been, is, and will be, at the head of every earnest movement directed against slavery. It is important that it should be so; it is the only means of avoiding the acts of violence, the revolts, the extreme calamities from which the whites and the blacks would equally suffer. The Gospel is admirable, inasmuch as by the side of the duties of masters, it proclaims those of slaves; as in the time of the Apostles, it does not hesitate to recommend to them gentleness, submission, scrupulous fidelity, love for those who maltreat them, the practice of difficult virtues; it makes them free within, in order to render them capable of becoming free without.

To judge of this method, we have only to compare the miserable population of St. Domingo with the beautiful free villages which cover the English islands. How true the saying: "The wrath of man never accomplishes the justice of God." Wherever the wrath of man has had full sway, even to chastise abominable abuses, it has remained a curse. I tremble when I think of the revolts which may break out at any moment in the Southern States. Bloodshed, let us not forget, would sully our banner; to the right of the slaves, such a crisis would be forever opposed, and who knows whether a terrible return might not burst upon them?

The mind becomes troubled at the mere image of the horrors that would ensue from civil war. May the Christians of America comprehend, at length, in a more perfect manner, the greatness of the part that God reserves for them, and the extent of the responsibilities that are weighing upon them. To take a stand frankly against slavery; to remove their last pretexts from sincere men who seek to reconcile it with the Gospel; to organize in the North the action of a vast moral power; to address to the South words breathing forth truth and charity; to appeal without wearying to the hearts of masters and slaves; to prepare for trying moments that guarantee which nothing can replace, the common faith of the blacks and the whites; to keep courage even when all seems lost; to practise the Christian vocation, which consists in pursuing and realizing the impossible; to show once more to the world the power that resides in justice—this is to accomplish a noble task.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] These provisory and imperfect regulations appear none the less admirable when compared, not only with the systems of legislation of other nations of antiquity, but with those which prevail to-day even in the Southern States. According to the law of Moses, the Jewish slave always becomes free in seven years; the foreign slave also becomes free when his master wounds him in chastising him; he has the right to testify in law; he has the right to acquire and to possess.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PRESENT CRISIS.

We now possess the principal elements of our solution; we can approach the problem just propounded by the present crisis, and, confining ourselves no longer to the appreciation of the past, can glance at the future. Not, indeed, that I make any pretensions to prophecy; political predictions, suspected with reason in all times, should be still more so at our epoch, which is that of the unforeseen. But I have a right to prove that the work which is being pursued in America is, as I have affirmed, a work of elevation, not of destruction. The dangers which the nation is advancing to meet are nothing, compared with those towards which it was lately progressing; the election of Mr. Lincoln, and the secession of the cotton States have introduced a new position which at last affords a glimpse of real chances of salvation.

I have named secession: what are we to think of the principle on which it rests? For this question another may be substituted: what is a Confederation? If we reduce it, which is inadmissible, to a simple league of States, it still remains none the less binding on each of them, so long as the end of the league remains intact. Never yet existed on earth, a federal compact conceived in this wise: "The States which form a part of this league will remain in it only till it pleases them to leave it." Such, notwithstanding, is the formula on which the Southern theorists make a stand. Among the anarchical doctrines that our age has seen hatched, (and they are numerous,) this seems to me worthy of occupying the place of honor. This right of separation is simply the liberum veto resuscitated for the benefit of federal institutions. As in the horseback diets of Poland, a single opposing vote could put a stop to every thing, so that it only remained to vote by sabre-strokes, so Confederations, recognizing the right of separation, would have no other resort than brute force, for no great nation can allow itself to be killed without defending itself.

Picture to yourselves, I intreat you, the progress that political demoralization would make under such a system. As there is never a law or a measure that is not displeasing to some one, it would be necessary to live in the presence of the continually repeated threat: "If the law passes, if the measure is adopted, if the election takes place, if you do not do all I want, if you do not yield to all my caprices, I leave you, I constitute myself an independent State, I provoke the formation of a rival Confederacy." The worst causes are the readiest to threaten in this style; having nothing reasonable to say in their own favor, they willingly proceed to violence, and the saying of Themistocles would find here a legitimate application: "You are angry, therefore, you are wrong."

What the result of this would be, we can imagine. No question would be longer judged by its own merits; the despotism of bad men would be established; expedients would take the place of principles; fear would put justice to flight; national resolutions would be nothing more than compromises and bargains. This, we must admit, is something like what has been passing in the United States since the South proclaimed its ultra policy, and placed its pretensions under the protection of its threats. If they had once more bowed the head, all would have been lost; the dignity, the mental liberty of America, would have suffered complete shipwreck; of all this noble system of government, there would have remained standing but a single maxim: Accord always and everywhere whatever is necessary to prevent the separation of the South. Unconstitutional in all places, the theory of separation is doubly so in the United States, where the federal system is more concentrated than elsewhere. It is without doubt a federal system; the separate States preserve the right in it of regulating their special legislation, of governing themselves as they choose, and even of holding and practising principles which are profoundly repugnant to other parts of the Confederation; the central power is, however, endowed with an extended sphere.

It has its taxes, its officers, its army, its courts; it possesses in the Territory of the different States federal property depending upon it alone; in fine, its general government and general legislation apply to the effective handling of all the essential interests of the nation. I am not surprised that the American Confederation is so strongly cemented together, excluding the pretended right of separation better than any other; the States that united towards the close of the last century were already in the habit of acting in concert; they were of the same blood, and had lived under the same rule; their history, their interests, their customs, their tongue, their religion, all contributed to bind them closely to each other.

Besides, the question is unanimously resolved in the United States. Apart from the fire-eaters, not a person is found who has the slightest doubt as to the impossibility of modifying, by the violent decision of a few, the common Constitution which contains the enumeration of the States, and which can only be amended by a solemn act, voted in the special form prescribed by the compact. Mr. Lincoln merely expressed the general opinion when he said the other day: "The Union is a regular marriage, not a sort of free relation which can be maintained only by passion." Secession is Revolution is a political axiom which has been current at all times in the United States. It is because they are something else than a juxtaposition of States, that they comprise, by the side of a Senate in which all the States are equal, a House of Representatives, in which the number of deputies is in proportion to the population. "Our Constitution," wrote Madison, "is neither a centralized State nor a Federal Government, but a blending of the two." The experience which they had had from 1776 to 1789 had taught the different States the necessity of giving a more concentrated character to their federation. Let us not forget that they are bound by oath to remain faithful to perpetual union, and that there is not a federal officer in America who has not sworn to maintain this Union.

I shall not dwell on the fact that the Confederation purchased with its money two of the States that now pretend to secede from it; that it gave seventy-five millions to France for Louisiana, and twenty-five millions to Spain for Florida; no, I choose to appeal from this to precedents, the authority of which is not contested, and which form, in some sort, the interpreting commentary of the Constitution. In the last century, the State of New York, on giving in its adhesion to the Constitution, desired to reserve to itself this same power of seceding some day if it pleased; but such a reservation was rejected. At the epoch of the war of 1812 and the embargo laws, a convention of the New England States assembled at Hartford, and talked of eventual separation, whereupon the Southern party likened all separation without consent to treason, and this doctrine was sustained by the Richmond Inquirer, the organ of Jefferson. When, afterwards, South Carolina, accustomed to the fact, dared proclaim that act of nullification which was the prelude to a complete renunciation of federal obligations, it was plainly signified to her that a revolt would be suppressed by force of arms, and she yielded on the spot. When, the other day, this same South Carolina lowered the colors of the United States, and unfurled the Palmetto flag, Mr. Buchanan himself proclaimed (how could he do otherwise?) the flagrant illegality of such an act; it is true, that, after having declared it illegal, he took care to disavow all intention of putting the law in force.

And this same conduct of Mr. Buchanan is the precise explanation of the prodigious haste which the South Carolinians have used in their proceedings. They knew that the President in power could not, if he would, act with vigor against his own party. His inaction was assured; there were two months of interregnum, of which it was important to make the most; so that Mr. Lincoln, on coming into office, might find himself checked, or at least harassed, by the power of a deed accomplished.

It seems as though Mr. Buchanan was anxious himself to give the signal of revolt. The message that was issued by him, after the election of Mr. Lincoln, is really the most extraordinary document ever written by the head of a great State; he doubtless declares in it that a regular election cannot of itself alone furnish sufficient cause for the violence of the South; he takes care, however, to add that the South has reason to complain, that reparation and guarantees are due it, and that if these are refused, (that is, if the North refuses to replace its head under the yoke, and to decree at once the ruin and the shame of America,) it will then he time for action.

The Carolinians thought that they might be excused for being a little less prudent than the first magistrate of the United States, since, moreover, they saw their pretensions sanctioned by him. Why not attack the Confederation while it had a chief who was determined to make as little defence as possible? The weakness of Mr. Buchanan justified the confidence of Carolina. He refrained to place in the Federal fortresses troops destined to protect them against an expected assault; when a brave man, Major Anderson, took measures to defend the post that had been confided him, this unexpected resistance by which the programme was deranged, appeared as ill-timed to Mr. Buchanan as insolent to the people of Charleston; and the despatch of the 30th of December, addressed to their commissioners, exculpates him from the crime of having sent the reinforcements, and makes excuses in pitiful terms for the conduct of Major Anderson, whom they ought to hear before condemning. In fact, Anderson acted on his own responsibility, and incurred the blame of the Minister of War, who advised in full council the surrender of the forts.

The American Government is as timid as the seceded States are resolute. Our generation, which has witnessed sad spectacles, has never yet, perhaps, contemplated any more humiliating. Ministers, one of whom, hardly out of the Cabinet, has gone to preside over the secession convention at Montgomery, and another of whom has taken care to pave the way in advance for the revolt of the South, and to secure for it the resources of money, arms, and munitions, which it was about to need; ministers who vote openly for the insurgents, whose financial intrigues have been proved by investigation, and whose electoral manoeuvres, duplicated by embezzlement of public money, have ended in a sort of political treason, disavowed only by General Cass; a Cabinet, in the last extremity, still essaying to continue its former course by killing with its veto the bill adopted by the Legislature of Nebraska to prohibit slavery in its Territory; a Government falling apart by piecemeal, for fear of compromising itself by resisting some part of the South: do you know of any thing so shameful? Mr. Buchanan will end as he began: for four years, he has been struggling to obtain an extension of slavery; for a month, he has been favoring the plans of separation, by opposing his force of inertia to the growing indignation of the North.

Being unable to prevent every thing, he does at least what he can: forced to send some reinforcements, he speedily withdraws them in a manner seemingly designed to render easy the attack on Fort Sumter and to discourage Major Anderson. In the hands of a President who understood his duties, things would have gone on very differently. In the first place, the South would have known on what to rely, and would have been reminded of the message of General Jackson in 1833, exacting the immediate disbanding of its troops; next, preliminary measures of precaution would not have been systematically neglected; lastly, at the first symptom of revolt, a sufficient number of ships of war would have been sent to Charleston to insure the regular collection of taxes and respect for the Federal property. Nothing is so pacific as resolution: face to face with a strong Government, we look twice before launching into adventures; but, with Mr. Buchanan, it was almost impossible for the cotton States to refrain from precipitating themselves headlong into them. The repression that will come by and by will not repair the evil that has been done. Explanations will also follow too late; it was for the President to reply on the spot, and categorically, to the manifestos issued by the South. To let the violent States know that their unconstitutional plans would meet a prompt chastisement; to let the neighboring States know that their sovereignty was by no means menaced, and that they would continue to regulate their internal institutions as they pleased; to say to all that the discussion of plans of abolition was not in question; to say too to all that the majorities of free-soilers would be protected in the Territories, and that the conquests of slavery were ended: what language would have been better fitted than this to isolate the Gulf States—perhaps to check them?

I say perhaps, because I know that passions had reached such a pitch of exasperation that a rupture seemed inevitable. In South Carolina, for example, the Governor had recommended both Houses in advance to take measures for seceding if Mr. Lincoln should be elected; a special commission was nominated, and held permanent session. In Texas, Senator Wigfall did not fear to say, in supporting Mr. Breckenridge: "If any other candidate is elected, look for stormy weather. There may be a Confederation, indeed, but it will not number more than thirty-three States." Mr. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, and Mr. Benjamin, of Louisiana, held no less explicit language, announcing that at the first electoral defeat of the South, it would set about forming a separate Confederation, long since demanded by its true interests.

What the South called its "interests," what it ended by adopting as a political platform, outside of which there was no safety, was, as we have seen, the subjugation of majorities in the Territories, the restriction of sovereignty in the Northern States, the reform of the liberty bills, which refused the prisons of these States and the co-operation of their officers, to the Federal agents charged with arresting fugitive slaves, the power of transporting slavery over the whole Confederation, the duty of extending indefinitely the domain of slavery. Who paid Walker? Who continually recruited bands of adventurers to launch on Cuba or Central America? Who prepared the well-known lists of slave States with which the South counted on enriching itself: four States some day to be carved out of Texas, (the South had caused this to be authorized in advance,) three States to be created in the Island of Cuba, an indefinite number of States to be detached one after another from Central America and Mexico? Who clamorously demanded the reëstablishment of the African slave trade, alone capable of peopling this vast extent, and of lowering the excessive price of the negroes supplied by the producing States? The extreme South, which alone was concerned in this, saw gigantic vistas opening before it on which it fastened with ecstasy. Now, already, in spite of the more or less avowed support of Mr. Buchanan, its success was already checked, it felt itself provoked and thwarted. Henceforth, all its hopes were concentrated on the election of 1860: we may judge, therefore, of its disappointment, and of the furious ardor with which it must have seized upon its last resource, namely, secession, which might prove in its hands either a means of terrifying the North, and of bringing it again under the yoke, or of entering alone into a new destiny, of having elbow-room, and of devoting itself entirely to the propagation of slavery!

The facts are known; I do not think of recounting them. I content myself with remarking the enthusiasm, which prevails in the majority of the cotton States. One could not commit suicide with a better grace. It is easy to recognize a country hermetically sealed to contradiction, which is enchanted with itself, and which ends by accomplishing the most horrible deeds with a sort of conscientious rejoicing. The enthusiasm which is displayed in proclaiming secession, or in firing on the American flag, is displayed in freeing the captain of a slaver, a noble martyr to the popular cause. There is something terrifying in the enthusiasm of evil passions. When I consider the folly of the South, which so heedlessly touches the match to the first cannon pointed against its confederates; when I see it without hesitation give the signal for a war in which it runs the risk of perishing; when I read its laws, decreeing the penalty of death against any one who shall attack the Palmetto State, and its dispatches, in which the removal of Major Anderson is exacted, in the tone which a master employs toward a disobedient servant, I ask myself whether the present crisis could really have been evaded, and whether any thing less than a rude lesson could have opened eyes so obstinately closed to the light.

People have taken in earnest the plans of the Southern Confederacy. Nothing could be more imposing, in fact, if they had the least chance of success. The fifteen Southern States, already immense, joined to Mexico, Cuba, and Central America—what a power this would be! And, doubtless, this power would not stop at the Isthmus of Panama: it would be no more difficult to reëstablish slavery in Bolivia, on the Equator, and in Peru, than in Mexico. Thus the "patriarchal institution" would advance to rejoin Brazil, and the dismayed eye would not find a single free spot upon which to rest between Delaware Bay and the banks of the Uruguay. Furthermore, this colossal negro jail would be stocked by a no less colossal slave trade: barracoons would be refilled in Africa, slave expeditions would be organized on a scale hitherto unknown, and whole squadrons of slave ships (those "floating hells") would transport their cargoes under the Southern colors, proudly unfurled; patriotic indignation would be aroused at the mere name of the right of search, and the whole world would be challenged to defend the liberty of the seas.

Such is the project in its majestic unity. Such is the glorious ideal which the extreme South hoped to attain by its union with the North, and which it now seeks to attain by its separation. The hearts of men beat high at the thought, and many are ready to give their lives heroically in order to secure its realization. Alas! we are thus made; passion excuses every thing, transfigures every thing.

Each one feels instinctively, moreover, that no part of the plan can be separated from the whole; that it must be great to be respected; that to people this vast extent with slaves, the African slave trade is indispensable; of course, they took care not to avow all this at the first moment; it was necessary, in the beginning, to delude others, and perhaps themselves; it was necessary to obtain recognition. On this account, the prudent politicians who have just drawn up the programme of the South, have been careful to record in it the prohibition of the African slave trade, and the disavowal of plans of conquest. But this does not prevent the necessities of the position from becoming known by and by. True programmes, adapted to the position of affairs, are not changed from day to day. I defy the slave States, provided their Confederation succeeds in existing, to do otherwise than seek to extend towards the South; hemmed in on all sides by liberty, incessantly provoked by the impossibility of preventing the flight of their negroes, they will fall on those of their neighbors who are the least capable of resistance, and whose territory is most to their convenience. This fact is obvious, as it is also obvious that they will have recourse to the African slave trade to people these new possessions. It is in vain to deny it, on account of Europe, or of the border States; the necessities will subsist, and, sooner or later, they will be obeyed. If the border States persist in deluding themselves on this point, and fancy that they will always keep the monopoly of this infamous supply of negroes sold at enormous prices, this concerns them. In any case, the illusion will finally become dispelled. It is not in the nomination of Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederate States, that we are to look for the final repudiation of those projects of which this politic man is in some sort the living representative.

And when they are renewed, we shall see an invincible obstacle rise up in the way of the realization of a plan so monstrous. As soon as the African slave trade is established, the domestic slave trade will cease, the revenues of the producing States will be suppressed, the price of negroes will fall everywhere, and the fortunes of all the planters will fall in like proportion. Can it be possible that they will accept the chances of civil war, of insurrections, and of massacres, in order to ensure to themselves the risk of ruin in case of success? Can it be possible, above all, that Europe will lend a hand, as we seem to imagine, to the most audacious attack ever directed against Christian civilization?

I know that we must always make allowance for probable perfidy, and I am far from dreaming, as times go, that chivalric Europe will refuse to serve her own interests because these interests would cost her principles something. No, indeed, I imagine nothing of the sort; yet I think that I should wrong the nineteenth century if I supposed it capable of certain things. There are sentiments which cannot be provoked beyond measure with impunity.

Remember the shudder that ran through the world when Texas, a free country, was transformed into slave territory as the result of the victory of the United States; multiply the crime of Texas by ten, by twenty, and you will have a faint image of the impression of disgust that the Southern republic is about to call forth among us.

It is important that they should know this in advance at Charleston, and not delude themselves as to the kind of welcome for which the Palmetto State and its accomplices have to hope. Not only will no one recognize their pretended independence at this time, for to recognize it would be to tread under foot the evident rights of the United States, but they will excite one of those moral repulsions which the least scrupulous policy is forced to take into account. It is one thing to hold slaves; it is another to be founded expressly to serve the cause of slavery on earth; this is a new fact in the history of mankind. If a Southern Confederacy should ever take rank among nations, it will represent slavery, and nothing else. I am wrong; it will also represent the African slave trade, and the fillibustering system. In any case, the Southern Confederacy will be so far identified with slavery, with its progress, with the measures designed to propagate and perpetuate it here below, that a chain and whip seem the only devices to be embroidered on its flag.

Will this flag cover the human merchandise which it is designed to protect against the interference of cruisers? Will there be a country, will there be a heart, forgetful enough of its dignity to tolerate this insolent challenge flung at our best sympathies? I doubt it, and I counsel the Carolinians to doubt it also. The representative of England at Washington is said to have already declared that in presence of the slave trade thus practised, his government will not hesitate to pursue slavers into the very ports of the South. France will hold no less firm a tone; whatever may be the dissent as to the right of search, the right of slave ships, be sure, will be admitted by none; a sea-police will soon be found to put an end to them; if need be, the punishment will be inflicted on their crews that is in store for a much less crime, that of piracy; these wretches will be hung with short shrift at the yard-arm, without form or figure of law.

The Carolinians deceive themselves strangely. They fancy that they will be treated with consideration, that they will even be protected, because they maintain the principle of free trade, and because they hold the great cotton market. Free trade, cotton, these are the two recommendations upon which they count to gain a welcome in Europe. Let us see what we are to think of this.

I shall not be suspected in what I am about to say of free trade—I, who have always been its declared partisan; I, who sustained it twenty years ago as candidate in the bosom of one of the electoral colleges of Paris, and who applauded unreservedly our recent commercial treaty with England; but man does not live by bread alone, and if ever a school of commercial liberty should anywhere be found that should carry the adoration of its principle so far as to sacrifice to it other and nobler liberties, a school disposed to set the question of cheapness above that of justice, and to extend a hand to whoever should offer it a channel of exportation, maledictions enough would not be found for it. Let England take care; those who have no love for her, take delight in foretelling that her sympathies will be weighed in the balance with her interests, and that the protection of the North risks offending her much more than the slavery of the South. I am convinced that it will amount to nothing, and that we shall once more see how great is the influence of Christian sentiment among Englishmen. Should the reverse be true, we must veil our faces, and give over this vile bargaining, adorned with the name of free trade, to the full severity of public opinion.

I repeat that it will amount to nothing. Moreover, do not let us exaggerate either the protective instincts of the North or the free trade of the South. The new tariff just adopted at Washington (a grave error, assuredly, which I do not seek to palliate) may be amended in such a manner as to lose the character of prohibition with which certain States have sought to invest it. Let us not forget, that by the side of Pennsylvania, which urges the excessive increase of taxes, the North counts a considerable number of agricultural States, the interests of which are very different. Now, these are the States which elected Mr. Lincoln, and which will henceforth have the most decisive weight on the destinies of the Union. We may be tranquil, the protective reaction which has just triumphed in part will not long be victorious. All liberties cling together: the liberty of commerce will have its day in the United States.

But if all liberties cling together, all slaveries cling together also, and cannot be liberal at will, even in commercial matters. The Southern States plume themselves on being thus liberal, and it is sought to give them this reputation. However, the facts are little in harmony with their brilliant programme. Far from, proclaiming free trade, the "Confederate" States, by a formal act adopted on the 18th of February, have maintained the tariff of 1857. They have gone further: their Congress has just established a new and relatively heavy tax, which must burden the exportation of cotton. This is not commercial liberty as I understand it.

Notwithstanding, the watchword has been given, the champions of slavery have skilfully organized their system of manoeuvre in Europe, and it is developing according to their wishes. To be indignant at the new tariff, to speak only of the new tariff, to create by means of the new tariff a sort of popularity for the Southern republic—such is the end which they sought to attain. I doubt whether they have fully obtained it, although the South, I say it to our shame, has already succeeded in procuring friends and praisers among us. The factitious indignation will fall without doubt; but cotton remains: at the bottom, the South counts much more upon cotton than free trade to bring the Old World into her interests. On rushing into a mad enterprise, all the perils of which, enraged as it was, it could not disguise, it said to itself that its cotton would protect it. Is it not the principal and almost the only producer of a raw material, without which the manufactures of the whole world would stand still? Are there not millions of workmen in England (one-sixth of the whole population!) who live by the manufacture of cotton? Is not the wealth of Great Britain founded on cotton, which alone furnishes four-fifths of its exported manufactures? All this is true, and they are not ignorant of it at Manchester. Notwithstanding, what happened there the other day? An immense meeting was convoked for the purpose of carefully examining the great cotton business, and the perils created by the present crisis. I do not know that among these manufacturers, knowing that their interests were menaced, that among these workmen, knowing that their means of livelihood were at stake, that from the heart of this country, knowing that want, famine, and insurrections might come to her door, there arose a voice, a single one, to address a word of sympathy to the Southern States, and to promise them the slightest support. It was because there was something transcending manufacturing supplies, and even the bread of families: the need, I am glad to state, of protesting against certain crimes. Instead of extending a hand to the secessionists of Charleston, the English manufacturers resolutely laid the foundation of a vast society, destined to develop on the spot the production of cotton by free labor in India, the Antilles, and Africa. Such was their answer; and if you knew their most secret thoughts, you would have no difficulty in discovering that the ambition of the South, its turbulent policy, and its aggressions without pretext, are far from exciting the gratitude of English commerce, or of inspiring its confidence.

Every one in England comprehends that, from the standpoint of interest, the separation of the South is a mortal blow dealt to the cotton production, which will henceforth have the aid neither of credit nor entrepôts, and which is advancing towards catastrophes which may involve a conflict of arms. From another and higher standpoint, the public opinion of England has not made us wait for its verdict: already its abolition societies have regained life and begun their movements; already, under the pressure of the universal feeling, the Court of Queen's Bench has revised the affair of the negro Anderson, to deliver into the strong hands of the metropolis a question before which the judicial authority of Canada hesitated, and to pronounce at length a verdict of acquittal.

The South has taken account in its calculations neither of man nor God. God especially seems to have been forgotten, though it placed itself formally under his protection. Who does not shudder at the enunciation of these unheard-of plans: we will do this, then we will do that; we will hold England through cotton, we will entice France through influence—we will have many negroes, much produce, and much money! And what will God think of it? Everywhere else but in South Carolina, this question would appear formidable beyond expression.

If the South has taken its wishes for realities in Europe, it has committed the same error in America. Its secession has some chance (and what a chance!) only on condition of drawing in all the glare States without exception; now it seems by no means probable that such a unanimity, supposing it to be gained by surprise, could ever be maintained successfully. The negro-raising States could not possibly regard the future in the same light as the consuming States. Their revenues are based on the value of the domestic slave trade, which bears no resemblance to that of the African slave trade. Ask Virginia or Maryland long to sustain a policy, the result of which would be to lower the price of her slaves in one day from a thousand dollars to two cents! This is so clearly felt in the extreme South, that the provisional constitution, adopted at Montgomery, is drawn up with an express view to reassuring the producing States on this point. They are afraid of the African slave trade! It shall not be reopened. They are anxious to sell their negroes! They shall be bought only of those States forming part of the Southern Confederacy. It belongs to them to ask now whether this Montgomery constitution, adopted for a year, really guarantees any thing to them, and whether it is possible that an attempt will not be made to revive the African slave trade, provided the Southern Confederacy succeeds in enduring. However this may be, they are held apart by so many causes, that they would only unite to-day to separate to-morrow. I know well that the passions of slavery rule in many of the border States, especially in Virginia, as violently as in the extreme South. I do not disguise from myself that the habit of sustaining a deplorable cause in common has created between the border and the cotton States a bond of long standing and difficult to break. But I say this: the impulses of the first hour will have their morrow; when the frontier States witness the commencement of those territorial invasions which must necessarily bring the African slave trade in their train; when they know what reliance to place on the fine promises made to-day to attract them; when they perceive that in separating from the North, they themselves have removed the sole obstacle in the way of the flight of all their slaves; when, in fine, they feel weighing upon them, and them first, the perils of an armed struggle and a negro insurrection, they will listen perhaps to those of their citizens who, even now, are urging them to turn to the side of justice—of justice and of safety. By the fewness of their slaves, by the nature of their climate, which resembles that of Marseilles and Montpellier, by the kind of cultivation to which their country is adapted, by the number of manufactures which are beginning to be established among them, it seems as if they must be led, or, at least, some day led back, to the policy of union. This is no discovery: the seceded States know it already; they form a separate band. America has not forgotten the retreat of the seven, which, a few months ago, dismembered the Democratic Convention assembled at Charleston. These seven were South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana; in other words, all those States which were the first to vote for secession. The same list, with the addition of Georgia and North Carolina, appeared again on the day of the Presidential election: these nine States alone adopted Mr. Breckenridge as their candidate.

Here, then, is a profound distinction, which attaches to interests and tendencies, which has manifested itself already, which will manifest itself more and more, and which will work, sooner or later, the salvation of the United States. The border States cannot unite with the cotton States definitively. They gave proofs of this in the last election. Five among them, Tennessee, Kentucky, Delaware, Virginia, and Maryland, at that time took an intermediate position by making an intermediate choice: Mr. Bell. Without going so far, Missouri protested at least against the nomination of Mr. Breckenridge by casting its vote for Mr. Douglas. Better than this, a declared adversary of slavery, Mr. Blair, was elected representative by this same slave State, Missouri, on the day before the balloting for the presidency; and on the next day his friends voted openly for Mr. Lincoln, while no one dared-annul their votes, as had been done four years before. Mr. Lincoln thus obtained fifteen thousand votes in Missouri, four thousand in Delaware, fifteen hundred in Maryland, a thousand in Kentucky, and as many in Virginia. The figures are nothing; the symptom is significant. The slave States of this intermediate region contain in their bosom, therefore, men who do not fear to attack the "patriarchal institution." Have we not just seen a Republican committee acting at Baltimore, in the midst of Maryland? Has not this same Maryland just rejected, by the popular vote, the infamous law which its legislature had adopted, and by virtue of which free negroes who should not quit the State would be reduced by right to slavery? When I remember these facts, so important and so recent, I comprehend how it is that a Kentuckian holds the South at bay behind the menaced walls of Fort Sumter, and how the cabinet of Mr. Lincoln has ministers in its midst, who belong to the border States.

People take the peculiar situation, of the border States too little into account in looking into the future which is preparing for America. They persist in presenting to us two great confederacies, and, in some sort, two United States, called to divide the continent. If any thing like this could occur, it could not endure. Doubtless, there are hours of vertigo from which we may look for every thing, even the impossible; and, who knows? perhaps the impossible most of all; nevertheless, the border States cannot attach themselves forever to a cause which is not their own. By the side of the manifestations which have taken place in Virginia and South Carolina, we have already a right to cite demonstrations of a different kind. Has not Missouri just decided prudently, that, in the matter of separation, the decisions of her legislature shall not be valid until ratified by the whole people? This little resembles the eagerness with which States elsewhere rush into secession. It is therefore probable that the United States will keep or soon bring back into their bosom a considerable number of the border States. By their side, the gulf States will attempt to form a rival nation, aspiring to grow towards the South. Such is the true extent of the separation that is preparing.

Suppose these projects to become, some day, realities, we may ask whether a real weakening of the United States would be the result. Suppose even that another secession, based on different motives, which nothing foretells at present, should take place beyond the Rocky Mountains; suppose that a Pacific republic should some day be founded, would the American Confederation have reason to be greatly troubled at witnessing the formation on her sides of the association of the gulf States, California, and Oregon? Look at a map, and you will see that the valley of the Mississippi, and of the lakes, and the shores of the Atlantic, are not necessarily connected either with the Gulf of Mexico, (save the indispensable outlet at New Orleans,) or the regions beyond the great desert and the Rocky Mountains, the land of the Mormons and the gold-diggers. Unity is not always the absolute good, and it may be that progress must come through disruption. Who knows whether instantaneous secession would not perform the mission of resolving certain problems otherwise insoluble? Who knows whether slavery must not disappear in this wise in the very effort that it makes to strengthen itself through isolation? Who knows whether it is not important to the prosperity and real power of the United States to escape from theories of territorial monopoly, those evil counsellors but too much heeded? Who knows, in fine, whether the day will not come, when, the questions of slavery once settled, new federal ties will again bind to the centre the parts that stray from it to-day?

I put these questions; I make no pretensions to resolve them. In any case, the imagination has had full scope for some time past. People have not been satisfied with the Southern Confederacy; have they not invented both the pretended Pacific Confederacy which I have just mentioned, and the central Confederacy, in which the border States will take shelter in common with two or three free States, as Pennsylvania and Indiana? Have they not supposed, in the bargain, (for they seem to find it necessary to discover the dissolution of the Union every where at all costs,) that the agricultural population of the West, discontented with the tariff recently adopted, and putting in practice the new maxim, according to which they are to have recourse to separation, instead of pursuing reforms, will seek an asylum in Canada? I need not discuss such fables. I am convinced, for my part, that the principle of American unity is much more solid than people affirm; I see in the United States a single race, and almost a single family: they may divide, they will not cease to be related. The relationship will take back its rights. For the time, however, secession seems to have a providential part to enact. It facilitates, in certain respects, the first steps of Mr. Lincoln; thanks to it, the hostile majority in the Senate is blotted out, the uncertainty of the House of Representatives is decided, the Government becomes possible. In the face of the senators and representatives of the gulf States, I do not see how Mr. Lincoln could have succeeded in acting. Did not the Senate, last year, adopt the proposition of Mr. Jefferson Davis in opposition to the liberty of the Territories? Congress would have trammelled, one after another, all the measures of the new administration. Now, on the contrary, the rôle of the victorious party will be easy; its preponderance is assured in both Houses; the Supreme Court will cease, ere long, to represent the doctrines of the extreme South, and to issue Dred Scott decrees. This is a vast change. General Cass, in truth, comprehended the interests of slavery better than Mr. Buchanan, when he demanded that the Government should arrest with vigor from the beginning the faintest wish of separation.

CHAPTER VIII.

PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS.

General Cass was nearer right than he himself imagined. In arresting from the beginning the development of the plans of the South, by a vigorous attitude, and by the blockade, then easy, of Charleston, the Government would not only have rendered it the trifling service of maintaining its means of opposition in Congress, but also the inappreciable boon of averting the dangers of war. What has happened, on the contrary? Precisely what must have happened, the human heart being such as it is. When on one side is found all the ardor, all the activity, all the resolution, and, into the bargain, all the apparent success, while on the other is found languor, hesitation, inaction, and disgraceful delays, it happens almost infallibly that the undecided are hurried away by the fanatics.

Let the United States take care! the chances of the future incur the risk, at this moment, of becoming more grave. To-day, the border States are on the point of declaring themselves; to-day, in consequence, it is important to offer to their natural irresolution the support of a policy as firm as moderate. Given over without defence to the ardent solicitations of the extreme South, they are only too likely to yield, particularly if the Federal Government give them reason to believe that the separation will encounter no serious obstacle.

We must remember that ignorant communities are here in question, who are ruled by their prejudices, and who have never tolerated the slightest show of discussion upon questions connected with the subject of slavery. Such communities are capable of committing the most egregious follies; panics, sudden resolutions, mistaken unanimities, are common among them. Formerly, kings were pitied who lived surrounded by flatterers, it was said (we have provided against that) that the truth never reached them; the, planters are the only men I see to-day that can be likened to these monarchs of olden time; neither books, nor journals, nor preachers, are permitted to point out to them their duties or their interests in the matter of slavery.

The slightest symptom of inertia or of feebleness in the Federal Government at this time, will, therefore, expose the border States to great perils, and, through them, the whole Confederation. As easy as it would have been, with a little energy, to prevent the evil, to confine secession within its natural limits, and to weaken the chances of civil war, so difficult has it become, at present, to attain the same end. Painful duties, perhaps, will be imposed on Mr. Lincoln. I wonder, in truth, at the politicians who advise him to a "masterly inactivity," that is, who urge him to continue Mr. Buchanan! Doubtless he does right to leave to the insurgents all the odium of acting on the offensive, but his moderation should detract nothing from his firmness, and it is even of importance that the means of action which he is about to prepare, should manifest so clearly the overwhelming superiority of the North, that the resistance of the South will be thereby discouraged.

Adversaries of slavery are not wanting, who are almost indignant at the adoption of such measures by the new President. Did they fancy then that a formidable question could be resolved without risking the repression of the assaults of force by force? Away with childishness! In electing Mr. Lincoln, it was known that the cotton States were ready to protest with arms in their hands; he was not elected to receive orders from the cotton States, or to sign the dissolution of the United States on the first requisition. Who wills the end, wills the means. No one, certainly, desires, more than myself, the peaceful repression of the rebellion. May the success of the blockade render the employment of the army useless! May the resolute attitude of the Confederation arrest the majority of the intermediate States on the dangerous declivity upon which they are standing! Once let them be drawn into the circle of influence of the extreme South, and little chance will remain of confining the civil war within the limits beyond which it is so important that it should not spread.

Then will appear the irrepressible conflict of Mr. Seward. Whether desired or not, if the two Confederations are placed side by side, the one representing all the slavery, the other representing all the liberty, the conflict will take place. It will take place perhaps now, perhaps a little later; however this may be, no one will have the power to hinder it. Suppose the South, thus completed, relinquish (and nothing is less certain) the opening by itself of a war in which it must perish, and its great plans of attack, against Washington, for instance, be abandoned; suppose the United States, on their side, avoid a direct attack, which might give the signal for insurrections; suppose they limit themselves to purely maritime repression of the revolt; that, after striking off the Southern harbors from the list of seaports, and declaring that custom-house duties cannot be legally paid there, they maintain this blockade, which Europe ought to applaud; would they have averted all chances of conflict? No; alas! However temporary such a situation might be, complaints, recriminations, and, ere long, violent reprisals, would be seen everywhere arising. Rivalries of principles, rivalries of interests, bitter memories of past injuries, such are the rocks on which peaceful policy would be in continual danger of shipwreck.

We must not cherish illusions; the chances, of civil war have been increasing for a few weeks past with fearful rapidity. If Mr. Lincoln has confined himself scrupulously to conservative and defensive measures, there has been, on the contrary, in the actions of the South, a violent precipitation which has surpassed all expectancy. It is the haste of skilful men, who attempt by a bold stroke to carry off the advantages of a deed accomplished; it is at the same time, and chiefly, perhaps, the haste of men who have nothing to lose, the ringleaders of the present hour. At the end of resources, the insurgent South has already increased its taxes inordinately; it has killed public and private credit; it has created a disturbed revolutionary condition, intolerable in the end, which no longer permits deliberation, or even reflection. Will the South pause on such a road? It is difficult to hope it. As to the North, its plan of action is very simple, and easily maintained: suppose even that through impossibility it should give over forcing the rebels back to their duty, who can ever imagine that it would suffer itself to be deprived of the mouths of the Mississippi, or that it would abandon to the rival Confederacy the capital itself of the Union, inclosed within the slave States? Let us see things as they are: the maintenance and development of slavery in the South will render the abolitionist proceedings of its neighbor intolerable in its eyes; if it has not been able to endure a contradiction accompanied with infinite circumspection, and tempered by many prudent disclaimers, how will it support this daily torture, a unanimous and well-founded censure, a perpetual denunciation of the infamies which accompany and constitute the "patriarchal institution"? The North, on its side, will be unable to forget that, by the act of the South, without reason or pretext, the glorious unity of the nation has been broken; that the star-spangled banner has been rent in twain; that the commercial prosperity of America has been shaken at the same time with its greatness. Let one of those incidents then occur, that are constantly arising, a Southern slave ship stopped on the high seas by the North, a negotiation of the South threatening to introduce Europe into the affairs of the New World, and directly hostilities will break out.

What they will be in the end, I scarcely dare imagine. If the planters are forced, at present, to mount guard day and night, to prevent the insurrectionary movements that are constantly ready to break out on their estates; if many families are already sending their women and children into safer countries; what will it be when the arrival of the forces of the North shall announce to the slaves that the hour of deliverance has sounded? It will be in vain to deny it; their arrival will always signify this in the sight of the South. There are certain facts, the popular interpretation of which ends by being the true interpretation. I have no doubt that the generals of the United States, before attacking the Southern Confederacy, will recommend to the negroes to remain at peace, and will disavow and condemn acts of violence; but what is a manifesto against the reality of things and the necessity of situations? There is a word that I see written in large letters everywhere in the projects of the South—yes, the word catastrophe is to be read there in every line. The first successes of the South are a catastrophe; the greatness of the South will be a catastrophe; and, if the South ever realize in part the iniquitous hopes towards which it is rushing, the catastrophe will acquire unheard-of proportions; it will be a St. Domingo carried to the tenth power.

One cannot, with impunity, give full scope to his imagination, and, in the year of our Lord 1861, set to work to contrive the plan of a Confederacy designed to protect and to propagate slavery. These things will be avenged sooner or later. Ah! if the South knew how important it is that it should not succeed, if it comprehended that the North has been hitherto its great, its only guarantee! This is literally true; a slave country, above all, to-day, needs to be backed up by a free country to ensure the subsistence of an institution contrary to nature; otherwise the first accident, the first war, gives it over to perils that make us shudder. Thanks to their metropolises, our colonies were able first to keep, and afterwards to enfranchise their slaves, without succumbing to the task. But let a Southern Confederacy come, in which the immigration of the whites will be naught, while the increase of the blacks will be pursued in all ways, and, in case of success, the moment will soon arrive when many States will see themselves placed, as is the case already with South Carolina, in presence of a number of slaves exceeding that of free men. Such a social monstrosity never existed under the sun; even in Greece, even in Rome, even among the Mussulmans, the total number of free men remained superior; the colonies alone, through the effect of the slave trade, presented an inverse phenomenon, and the colonies were consolidated with their metropolises in the same manner that the States of the South are consolidated with those of the North.

In this will be found, I repeat, a most important guarantee. The South in rejecting it, and imagining itself able alone to maintain a situation which will become graver day by day, deludes itself most strangely. At the hour of peril, when servile insurrection perhaps shall ravage its territory, it will be astonished to find itself left alone in the presence of its enemy.

And this enemy is not one that can be conquered once for all. Even after the victory, even in times of peace, the threat of servile insurrection will ever remain suspended over the head of the Southern Confederacy; it will be necessary always to watch, always to be on the guard, always to repress, and, to tell the truth, always to tremble. The planters, whether they know it or not, are not preparing to sleep on a bed of roses. To labor to accomplish an iniquitous work amidst the maledictions of the universe, to increase their estates and their slaves under penalty of death, and to feel instinctively that they will die for having increased them, to tremble because of European hostility, to tremble because of American hostility, to tremble because of hostility from without and within—what a life! That one might accept it in the service of a noble cause, I can comprehend; but the cause of the South! In truth, this would be taking great pains for small wages.

The South inspires me with profound compassion. We have told it, much too often, that its Confederacy was easy to found. To found, yes; to make lasting, no. Here, it is not the first step that costs—it is the second, it is the third. The Southern Confederacy is not viable. Let us suppose that, to its misfortune, it has succeeded in all that it has just undertaken: Charleston is free, the border States are drawn in, there is a new federal compact and a new President, the Northern States have of necessity abandoned the suppression of the insurrection by force, Europe has surmounted its repugnance and received the envoys of the great Slave republic. All questions seem resolved; but no, not a single one has attained its solution.

The policy of the South must have its application. Its first article, whether it declares it or not, exacts conquests, the absorption of Mexico, for example. The fillibusters of Walker are still ready to set out, and the first moment past, when the question is to appear discreet, it is scarcely probable that they will meet with much restraint, now that the prudence of the North is no longer at hand to counterbalance the passions of Slavery.

Admit that this enterprise bring no difficult complications. For these new territories, the question will be to procure negroes. The second article of the Southern policy will find then nolens volens, its inevitable application: the African slave trade will be re-established. The richest planter of Georgia, Mr. Goulden, has taken care to set forth its necessity; mark the language which he held lately: "You have hardly negroes enough for the existing States; obtain the opening of the slave trade, then you can undertake to increase the number of slave States."

Will the official re-opening of the slave trade be some day effected without bringing on a storm which will destroy the new Confederacy? I cannot say. In any case, I know one thing: that the value of the slaves, and consequently that of Southern property, will experience a decline greatly exceeding that by which it is now threatened, as it is said, by the abolition tendencies of the North. Already, through the mere fact of secession, the price of negroes has diminished one-half; and more than one intelligent planter foresees the time when this price shall have diminished three-fourths, perhaps nine-tenths. Southern fortunes are falling off, therefore, with extreme rapidity, and this arises not only from the anticipated effects of the slave trade, but also from the certainty of being unable henceforth to put a stop to the escape of the slaves. These escapes, taken all in all, remained insignificant, so long as the Union was maintained; there are not more than fifty thousand free negroes in Canada. But henceforth the Southern Confederacy will have a Canada everywhere on its frontiers. How retain that slavery that will escape simultaneously on the North, and the South? The Southern republic will be as it were the common enemy, and no one assuredly will aid it to keep its slaves.

It must not be believed, moreover, that it will succeed long in preserving itself from intestine divisions—divisions among the whites. If, at the first moment, when every thing is easy, unanimity is far from appearing as complete as had been foretold, it will, later, be much worse. We shall then perceive how prophetic, if I may dare say so, were the often-quoted words of Washington's farewell address: "It is necessary that you should accustom yourselves to regard the Union as the palladium of your happiness and your security; that you should watch over it with a jealous eye; that you should impose silence on any who shall ever dare counsel you to renounce it; that you should give vent to all your indignation on the first effort that shall be attempted to detach from the whole any part of the Confederation."

A very different voice, that of Jefferson, spoke the same language. A Southern man, addressing himself to the South, which talked already of seceding he described in thrilling words the inevitable consequences of such an act: "If, to rid ourselves of the present supremacy of Massachusetts and Connecticut, we were to break up the Union, would the trouble stop there?... We should soon see a Pennsylvanian party and a Virginian party forming, in what remained of the Confederation, and the same party spirit would agitate public opinion. By what new weapons would these parties be armed, if they had power to threaten each other continually with joining their Northern neighbors, in case things did not go on in such or such a manner! If we were to reduce our Union to North Carolina and Virginia, the conflict would break out again directly between the representatives of these two States; we should end by being reduced to simple unities."

Is not this the anticipated history of what is about to happen in the Southern Confederacy, supposing it to succeed in uniting with a part of the border States? The opening programme will last as long as programmes usually do. When the true plan of the South, veiled for a moment, shall reappear, (and it must indeed reappear, unless it perishes before it has begun to exist;) when the question shall be to increase and be peopled, to make conquests and to reëstablish the African slave trade; when the serious purpose, in a word, shall have replaced the purpose of circumstance, what will take place between the border States and the cotton States? The profound distinction which exists between them will then manifest itself, even if it does not break forth before. A new South and a new North will be formed, as hostile perhaps as the old, and less forgiving towards each other of their mutual faults, inasmuch as they will be embittered by misfortune. Nothing divides people like a bad cause that turns out badly. They think themselves united, they call themselves united, until the moment when they discover that they have neither the same end nor the same mind. I do not see why the victory of Mr. Lincoln will have transformed the South, and suppressed the divergencies which separated it into two groups: that of the Gulf States voting for Mr. Breckenridge, that of the border States voting for Mr. Douglas or Mr. Bell, and even casting ballots for Mr. Lincoln.

Not only will the Gulf States, the only true secessionists, never act in concert with the border States, but they will not be long in seeing parties spring up in their own bosom, which will be little disposed to come to terms. A sort of feudal question, as is well known, is near obtaining a position in the South; the poor whites there are two or three times as numerous as the planters. The struggle of classes may, therefore, break out as soon as the effected secession shall have banished to the second rank the struggle against the adversaries of slavery.

The impoverishment of the South will not aid in calming its intestine quarrels. European immigration, already so meagre in the slave States, (Charleston is the only large American city whose population has decreased, according to the last census,) European immigration, I say, will evidently diminish still more when the South shall have taken an independent and hostile position opposite the Northern States. Who will go then to expose himself lightly to the fearful chances which the first war with any country, American or European, may bring in its train? And credit will go the same way as immigration: to lend money to planters, whose entire property is continually menaced with destruction, is one of those hazardous operations from which commerce is accustomed to recoil. Deprived of the capital furnished it by New York, obtaining only with great difficulty a few onerous and precarious advances in Europe, the South will see itself smitten at once in all its means of production; and, after the harvest of 1860, which secures our supplies for a year, after that of 1861, which it will succeed, probably, in gathering, but which it will be more difficult to sell, it is not easy to divine how it will set to work to continue its crops. While the South produces less cotton, and we lose the habit of buying of it, the cotton culture will become acclimated elsewhere; the future will thus be destroyed like the present; final ruin will approach with hasty strides.

They tell us of a loan that the new Confederacy designs to contract! Unless it be transformed into a forced loan, I have little faith in its chance. They add that it will be only necessary to establish on exported cotton a duty of a few cents per pound, and the coffers of the South will be filled. But, in the first place, to export cotton, they must produce it—they must have money; it is almost impossible that the State should be rich when all its citizens are in distress; then the exportation itself will be exposed to some difficulties if the United States organize a blockade. And I say nothing of the bad effect that will be produced by this tax à la Turque—this tax on exportation in the very midst of plans of commercial freedom. Neither do I speak of the effect which this extra charge, which is termed trifling, but which is, in fact, considerable, will have on the sale of American cotton, already so defective, when compared with the average price of other cottons.

Poor country, which blind passion, and, above all, indomitable pride, precipitates into the path of crime and misery! Poor, excommunicated nation, whose touch will be dreaded, whose flag will be suspected, whose continually increasing humiliations will not even be compensated by a few meagre profits! The heart is oppressed at the thought of the clear, certain, inevitable future, which awaits so many men, less guilty than erring. Between them and the rest of the world there will be nothing longer in common; they will establish on their frontier a police over books and journals, essaying to prevent the fatal introduction of an idea of liberty: the rest of the world will have for them neither political sympathies, nor moral sympathies, nor religious sympathies.

Will they at least have the consolation of having killed the United States? Will a glorious confederation have perished by their retreat? No, a thousand times no. Even though they should succeed in drawing the border States into the Southern Confederacy, the United States, thank God! will keep their rank among nations. Where will the United States be after secession? Where they were before; for a long time the gravitation of their power has been tending towards the Northwest. The true America is there, that of ancient traditions, and that of present reality. If any serious fears might have been conceived as to its duration, they disappeared on the day of the election of Mr. Lincoln. On that day, we all learned that the United States would subsist, and that their malady was not mortal.

Great news was this! Did you ever ask yourself how much would be missing here on earth if such a people should disappear? It lives and it will live. Look at the calm and confident air of the North, and compare it with the noisy violence of the South. The North is so sure of itself that it does not deign either to become angered, or to hasten; it even carries this last to extremes. It has the air of knowing that, in spite of the apparent successes which may mark the first efforts of the South, the final success must be elsewhere. Let the South take care! to have against it both right and might is twice as much as is needed to be beaten. The North supported Mr. Buchanan because it was awaiting Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln came, the North still has patience, but will end by falling into line, and the serious struggle will begin, in case of need.

The final issue of this struggle can scarcely be doubtful. On one side, I see a confederacy divided, impoverished, bending under the weight of a crushing social problem, seeing constantly on its horizon the menace of insurrections and of massacres, unable either to negotiate, or to draw the sword, or to resolve any of the difficulties from without, without thinking of the still more formidable difficulties from within; on the other side, I see the United States, masters of themselves, unanimous, knowing what they want, and placing at the service of a noble cause, a power which is continually increasing.

The match will not be equal. I cannot help believing, therefore, that the triumph of the North will be even much more complete than we imagine to-day. I do not know what is to happen, but this I know: the North is more populous, richer, more united; European immigration goes only to the North, European capital goes only to the North. Of what elements is the population of the South composed? The first six States that proclaimed their separation number exactly as many slaves as freemen. What a position! Is it probable indeed that this confederation contrary to nature, in which each white will be charged with guarding a black, can afford a long career? The South, divided, weakened, bearing in its side the continually bleeding wound of slavery, reduced to choose in the end between the direful plans which must destroy after having dishonored it, and the Union which consolidates its interests while thwarting its passions—is it possible that the South will not return to the Union?

Something tells me that if the Union be dissolved, it will be formed again. A lasting separation is more difficult than is imagined. Face to face with Europe, face to face with the United States, the great republic of the South would find it too difficult to live. To live at peace is impossible; to live without peace is not to be thought of. The great Southern republic must perish surely by its failure, and still more surely by its success, for this monstrous success will draw down its destruction. There is in America a necessity, as it were, of union. Unity is at the foundation, diversity is only on the surface; unity is bound up with the national life itself, with race, origin, belief, common destiny, a like degree of civilization, in a word, with profound and permanent causes; diversity proceeds from the accidents of institutions.

Looking only at the province of interests, is it easy to imagine an irremediable rupture between New York and Charleston, between the valley of the Mississippi and New Orleans? What would the valley of the Mississippi be without New Orleans, and New Orleans, isolated from the vast country of which it is the natural market? Can you fancy New York renouncing half her commerce, ceasing to be the broker of cotton, the necessary medium between the South and Europe? Can you fancy the South deprived of the intervention and credit which New York assures her? The dependence of the North and the South is reciprocal; if the South produces the cotton, it is the North which furnishes the advances, then purchases on its own account or on commission, and expedites the traffic with Europe. In the United States, every part has need of the whole; agricultural States, manufacturing States, commercial States, they form together one of the most homogeneous countries of which I know. I should be surprised if such a country were destined to become forever dismembered, and that, too, at an epoch less favorable to the dismemberment of great nations than to the absorption of small ones.

Shall I say all that I think? When Anglo-Saxons are in question, we Latins are apt to deceive ourselves terribly; one would not risk much, perhaps, in supposing that events would take place precisely in the reverse of our hypothesis. We have loudly predicted in Europe the end of the United States, the birth and progress of a rival Confederacy, an irremediable separation: is not this a reason for supposing that there will be ultimately neither a prolonged separation, nor a rival Confederacy worthy of consideration? Free countries, especially those of the English race, have a habit of which we know little: their words are exceedingly violent, and their actions exceedingly circumspect. They make a great noise: one would say that every thing was going to destruction; but it is prudent to look at them more closely, for these countries of discussion are also countries of compromise, the victors are accustomed to terminate political crises by yielding something of their victory; in appearance, it is true, rather than in reality. Fully decided at heart, they consent willingly to appear less positive in form.

Here, I know that the extreme violence of the South renders a compromise very difficult, at least a present compromise. As it is accustomed to rule, and will be content with no less, as it knows that the North, decidedly emancipated, will not replace its head beneath the yoke, it seems resolved to incur all risks rather than renounce its fixed idea. For two months, the probabilities of compromise have been becoming constantly weaker. But if we have scarcely a right to count on them now, so far as the Gulf States are concerned, we must remember that the border States are at hand, that they are hesitating between the North and the South, and that certain concessions may be made to them, to prevent their separation.

Such is the true character of the discussions relating to compromise. Confined to these limits, they nevertheless possess a vast interest, for the party which the border States are about to choose, and that to which they will perhaps attach themselves afterwards, will have a great influence over the general course of the crisis. The point in question is no longer, doubtless, to retain Virginia, whose well-known passions impel her to the side of Charleston, but to induce the other States to take an attitude in conformity with their interests and their duties. It will not, therefore, be useless to give an account of the disposition that prevails among many Americans with respect to compromise.

What was produced by that Peace Conference, convoked with so much noise by Virginia, the ancient political State, the country of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe? Nothing worth the trouble of mentioning. A considerable number of States refused to be present at this conference, which, had it been general, would have become transformed into a convention, and have annulled Congress, in point of fact, then in session in the same city? Its plan, accepted with great difficulty by a factitious majority, never appeared to have much chance of adoption. The point in question, above all, was to decide that, below a fixed latitude, the majority of the inhabitants of a Territory could not prohibit the introduction of slavery, (disguised, it is true, under the euphuistic expression, "involuntary servitude;") this measure was to be declared irrevocable, unless by the unanimous consent of the States. Despite the support of Mr. Buchanan, and that of the higher branches of trade in New York, seconded, as usual, by some fashionable circles of Boston, the almost unanimous public opinion of the North forbade all belief in the success of such an amendment to the Constitution, which, in accordance with the Constitution itself, could be adopted only on condition of uniting two-thirds of the votes of Congress to the affirmative votes of three-fourths of the States composing the Confederation.

Another project was put forward: all the members of Congress were to tender their resignation, and the new elections were to manifest the definitive will of the country on the question of slavery. That is, from the intense excitement of the country, were to be demanded some final elements of reaction, some means of disavowing the election of Mr. Lincoln. In either case, it would have been thus proved by an exceptional act that an election which is not ratified by the South may rightfully demand extraordinary measures. Now, there is nothing but what is customary, simple, and right, in the conduct of the North; it knows it, and will not, I think, permit such an advantage to be gained over it. To allow talking, to allow propositions, and to go its own way, this is the programme to which it is bound to remain faithful. What makes its honor makes also its strength: this is the privilege of good causes.

The North has not to seek bases for a compromise. They are all laid down, and I dare affirm, whatever may happen, that to these bases, constantly the same, it will not fail to return, provided, at least, that the era of compromises shall not be closed, and that the South shall not have succeeded in imposing on the North a decidedly abolition policy. To speak truly, it has but one declaration to make: to proclaim anew the constitutional law, by virtue of which each State sovereignly decides its own affairs, and consequently excludes all interference of Congress in the matter of slavery. Perhaps, alas! it will join, if need be, to this declaration, which it has never refused, the promise to respect to the utmost of its power, the principle of the restitution of fugitive slaves, which, unhappily, is also based upon the Constitution. But, on this point, promises are worth what they will fetch, for doubtless no one will imagine that it is easier to constrain the free States to accomplish an odious deed which is revolting to their conscience since they have verified their strength by electing Mr. Lincoln. Lastly, upon the ruling question, that of the Territories, the theory of the North evinces justice and clearness; between the ultra abolitionists, who wish Congress to interfere to close by force all the Territories to slavery, and the South, which wishes Congress to interfere to open by force all the Territories to slavery, it adopts this middle position: all the inhabitants of the Territories shall open or close them to slavery, according to their will. It is the right of the majority, recognized there as elsewhere.

I am not ignorant that Mr. Seward has gone much farther in the path of concession, and it is not absolutely impossible that these counsels of weakness may prevail. We must be prepared for any thing in this respect. Nevertheless, the President has by no means continued the imprudent words of his future prime minister. The language of Mr. Lincoln was remarkably clear in his inaugural speech, to go no further back, indicating on the spot the true, the great concession which, till new orders, may be made to the South: "Those who elected me placed in the platform presented for my acceptance, as a law for them and for me, the clear and explicit resolution which I am about to read to you: 'The maintenance intact of the right of the States, and especially of the right which each State possesses to regulate and exclusively control its institutions according to its own views, is essential to that balance of power, on which depend the perfection and duration of our political structure; and we denounce the invasion in contempt of the law by an armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, upon whatever pretext it may be, as the greatest of crimes.'" Mr. Lincoln adds further: "Congress has adopted an amendment to the Constitution, which, however, I have not seen, the purpose of which is to provide that the Federal Government shall never interfere in the domestic institutions of the States, including those which relate to persons held in service. In order to avoid all misunderstanding concerning what I have said, I depart from my intention of not speaking of any amendment in particular, to say that, considering this clause henceforth as a constitutional law, I have no objection that it be rendered explicit and irrevocable."

Concerning fugitive slaves, the inaugural discourse cites the text of the federal Constitution, which decides the question for the present; but he does not ignore the fact that this constitutional decision is as well executed as it can be, "the moral sense of the people lending only an imperfect support to the law."

As to the Territories, Mr. Lincoln declares clearly that the minority must submit to the majority, under penalty of falling into complete anarchy. Neither does he hesitate on the subject of the decisions of the Supreme Court; these decrees, in his eyes, are merely special decisions rendered in particular cases, and detracting nothing from the right which the Confederation possesses to regulate its institutions and its policy.

All this is very firm, without being provoking. The limit of concessions is marked out, and a conciliatory spirit is maintained. It is above all in disclosing his line of conduct towards the rebellious States, that Mr. Lincoln happily resolves the problem of abandoning none of the rights of the Confederation, while manifesting the most pacific disposition, and leaving to others the odium of aggression. His doctrine on this point may be summed up in this wise: in the first place, the separation is unconstitutional, it should be, it will be combated, nothing on earth can bring the President to accede to the destruction of the Union; in the second place, he will not be the aggressor, he will endeavor to shun a war which exposes the South to fearful perils; in the third place, he will fulfill the duty of preserving federal property and collecting federal taxes in the South. In other terms, he will employ the means which should have been employed on the first day, and which would have then been more efficacious. He will attempt the establishment of a maritime blockade, in order to reduce the rebellion of the whites without provoking the insurrection of the negroes. Already, the vessels of war have been recalled from distant stations. Alas! I have little hope that the precautions dictated to Mr. Lincoln by prudence and humanity will bear their fruits. The South raises an army and is about to attack Fort Sumter, knowing that it will thus expose itself to a formidable retribution. Mr. Lincoln, in fact, has not left it in ignorance of this: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-citizens, in yours and not mine, is found the terrible question of civil war. The Government will not attack you; you will have no conflict, if you are not the aggressors. You have not, on your part, an oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government; whilst I, on my side, am about to take the most solemn oath to maintain, to protect and defend it."

Such is the respective position. Men will agitate, are agitating already, about the new President, to take away from his thoughts and designs this resolute character which makes their force. They attempt to demonstrate to him, not only that Fort Sumter, so easy to revictual under Mr. Buchanan, has now become inaccessible to aid, and that no other course remains than to authorize its surrender; but that Fort Pickens itself should be surrendered to the South, in order to reserve every chance of reconciliation and in no degree to assume the responsibility of civil war! I hope that Mr. Lincoln will know how to resist these enfeebling influences. After having demonstrated to him that it is necessary to deliver up the forts, they will demonstrate to him that it is necessary to renounce the blockade, which is not tenable without the forts; then, who knows? they will demonstrate to him finally that it is necessary to sign some disgraceful compromise, and submit almost to the law of the rebels.

Once more, it is prudent to foresee every thing, and it is for this that I mention such things. I count, moreover, on their not being realized. In electing Mr. Lincoln, the United States decided thus: Slavery will make no more conquests. What they have decided, they will ultimately maintain, even though they should have the air of abandoning it. They have respected and they will respect the sovereignty of the States; upon this point they will give all the guarantees that may be desired, and Congress, we have seen, has already voted an amendment to the Constitution, designed to offer this basis of compromise. But they will go no further than this; the North must feel that, of all ways of terminating the present crisis, the most fatal would be the disavowal of principles and the desertion of the flag.