. X^ -••- •^^ .j*^-^^. • * - ^O. .3> . . •■ ' • • ^^ .0^ » " • • '■'A/'^y' Ji fif *' "*i*^.* ■0,1 0^ :''^..^^t". '^o\^ o *%«. • I*- %.** .•^'' \/ •'^'*^'- ''".*'■ ' ■ c .•..sSS.V, o^ _v)* ..>-^'. V.4'' .v-^> V C'^-'^ THE AMERICAN TEN YEARS' WAR 1855-1865 BY DENTON J. SNIDER ST. LOUIS SIGMA PUBLISHING CO. 210 PINE STREET For Sale by A. C. McClorg & Co., Booksellers, CnioAyo, Ills. LIBRARY if CONGRESS Two Copies Received SEP 2 J iPOfi €ijr.t Entry :f7.f9oc C OPY e. ' Copyright bt D. J. SNIDER, 1906 NIXON-JONES PTQ. CO. 215 PINE ST., ST. LOUIS. Contents PAGE. Part I. The Border War (1855-8). Chapter I. — The Opening Conflict (1855-6) 5 The First Invasion 5 The Second Invasion 55 The Third Invasion 82 Chapter II. — The Presidential Year (1856-7) 92 Presidential Nominations. ... 98 Presidential Campaign . . . .119 Outlook 134 Chapter III. — The Struggle Re- newed (1857-8) 137 Washington 148 Kansas 154 The People 169 Retrospect . .179 (3) 4 coy TENTS. Part II. The Union DisuiMted ( 1858-61) 185 Chapter I. — The North 194 Abraham Lincoln 201 John Brown 219 Simeon Bushnell 244 Chapter II. — The South 262 The Slaveholders 290 The Non-Slaveholders .... 303 The Slaves . . . " 315 Chapter III. — The Process of Seces- sion 3?0 The First Alignment 337 The Second Alignment .... 350 The Third Alignment 365 Retrospect 425 Part III. — The Union Reunited (1861-5) 435 The Winning of the Unseceded Slave-States (1861-2) .... 485 The Winning of the Seceded Slave- States (New), 1862-3 .... 499 The Winning of the Seceded Slave- States (Old), 1864-5 .... 508 Retrospect 521 PART FIRST.— THE BORDER WAR. CHAPTER I. THE OPENING CONFLICT (1855-6). ^be ifirst llnvaeion* During the last days of March, 1855, a small army, some 5,000 men as the account runs, marched from the State of Missouri over its western boundary into the neighboring Territory of Kansas. There was no open proclamation of war, and the country generally supposed itself to be in possession of peace at home and abroad. Still here was a military organization in semblance, belonging to no State legally nor to the United States, commanded by Generals and Colonels and Captains, and accompanied by a train of wagons containing supplies of food and liquor and ammunition. The men were armed with guns and pistols; many of them showed their dis- tinctive weapon in a unicjue way : bowie-knives (5) 6 THE TEX YEARS' WAB. protruding fi*oin the tops of their boots. They had been recruited chiefly from the western counties of Missouri, which also contributed the main expenses of the expedition, deeming them- selves the vanguard of Southern civilization in the great conflict manifestly approaching and ready to break out on their border. Mighty was the enthusiasm, overflowing into multitudinous streams of oratory from the leaders, who were mostly politicians in line of promotion, and who had the power of evoking in their hearers volley after volley of profanity discharged against the Abolitionists over in Kansas and in the North. War in peace, then, we behold on the Kansas- Missouri border during these fair spring days; what does it portend? Such a mass of men could not have been gathered, drilled and organized without money and much previous effort. It is now known that they were members of a secret oath-bound society called the Blue Lodge mainly, though other names of it were current. A fixed, persistent purpose lies back of it, an idea, we must believe ; it bodes some struggle impending, whereof this is the first little, distant outbreak, the harbinger of might- ier events coming on. So these Missourians march across the border, totally unconscious of the colossal, world-historical drama whose first scene they are enacting. No doubt could be entertained concerninof PART I. — THE FIE ST INVASION. 7 their immediate object, for it was openly pro- claimed by all; they intended to vote in Kansas, though non-residents, and to elect a Territorial Legislature, which would transform it into a Shive-State. Their scheme was to seize hold of the law-making power by violence, and then render their illegal acts legal. A curious mental condition was this of the Missourians, yet their leaders upheld it by argument as well as by fervid appeals to conscience and to eternal justice, in- voking even the God of battles. March 30th the election took place. In a voting population of about 3,000, according to a census taken a few weeks before the election, 6,300 votes were cast, nearly four-fifths of them by Missourians who took possession of most of the polling- places, ousted any recalcitrant judges, and pro- ceeded to accept their own ballots for their own candidates. The result was a complete triumph of Missourians choosing themselves for Kansas legislators, who were 39 in number. The Gov- ernor, Reeder, had to canvass the returns, and, though an appointee of the Democratic Adminis- tration, did not relish the Missouri method of undoing the ballot through the ballot. Still he gave certificates of election to all but seven, look- ing into the muzzles of cocked pistols, it is said, which had also a significant power of speech, saying to him: We shall spit fire if you go be- hind the returns. In the seven districts where 8 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. ballots were thrown out on account of infor- malities too brazen, a new election took place which resulted in the choice of seven Kansas legislators for Kansas, who, however, were soon unseated by the Missouri members, as usurpers of the sacred rights of Missourians. Contemplating these events we have to ask ourselves : Is here a mere local trouble, a border foray of outlaws, or is this spirit getting to be general in the South? Is the ballot, the great Anglo-Saxon instrumentality for obviating vio- lence, to be set aside by violence? Is the ma- jority no longer to rule in this country? If so, war must come, since the means of all peaceful settlement between contending parties is broken into fragments and scattered to the winds. Ominous of 1861 is already 1855 in Kansas. The Missourians declared undisguisedly that their purpose was to make Kansas a Slave- State without any regard for the wishes of her people. To that end they had now seized the legislative power of the Territory, which rightfully belonged to its actual settlers. Already the Missourians supposed that they had both the executive and the judicial branches of the Territorial organization. The Gover- nor and other administrative officials were appointed by the President, Franklin Pierce, who was dominated by the shive power of which the head was already Jefferson Davis, PABT I. — THE FIRST INVASION. 9 Secretary of War at Washington, The Judi- ciary of the Territory likewise was a Presi- dential appointment, and would not fail to co- operate with the Missourians, as time showed. The scheme of the invaders, accordingly, was to get control of the Legislature, preventing the inhabitants from governing themselves, since they were manifesting a decided tendency toward wheeling Kansas into the company of the Free- States, from which most of them had come. Unfortunately Governor Reeder had legalized in form the illegal act of the invaders, through his certificates of election. Thus illegality was made legal and was enthroned not only as law, but as the law-making power of Kansas. Reeder will repent of his action, and will valiantly battle against the consequences of his own mistake, showing his deepest worth by making undone his own ill-doing, as far as lies in his power. Such is the fierce contradiction in the institu- tional order of Kansas, rending to pieces her ethical life and making her truly a perverted world. The established authority is used to dis- establish the foundation of authority, the con- sent of the governed ; the three powers of gov- ernment, legislative, executive, and judicial, are in the hands of those who intend to employ them for undermining their source, the will of the people. The forms of free institutions are turned into destroyers of freedom, and the law 10 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. is driven to the point of stabbing itself and let- ting its own heart's blood. In such a perverted institutional world man cannot live in peace. How can he be even legal when illegality makes the law? Still he must remain law-abiding till he can somehow re-make the law by which he abides. Over all these occurrences gleams the ques- tion : Was the act of the Missourians represen- tative? Did it reach beyond their State even to the Atlantic? Did it reveal the spirit and the rising purpose of the South? Many and loud were the exultations in the newspapers from Westport in Missouri to Charleston in South Carolina; the event was hailed as the certain triumph of Slavery. On the whole the Southerners made this deed of their borderland their own, approving it and setting it up for imitation. Still there were protests, some of them pronounced but most of them suppressed. The extremists were in the saddle and were bent on riding at the top of their speed. The con- servatives were carried along in the fateful sweep of the time, even when they feaw the stream plunging toward a Niagara cataract. We have called these invaders Missourians, since they were chiefly recruited from North- western Missouri, whose wind-lands, containiusf the finest soil in the United States accordinir to a competent observer, were occupied at an early PART I. — THE FIRST INVASION. H day by slaveholders, who became slavery's strongest partisans. But Missouri is a large State, and as a whole hardly approved of these border invasions instigated from the Platte Pur- chase. This inference may be reasonably drawn from Missouri's vote for Douglas and his Popu- lar Sovereignty in 1860, after his breach with the South just on this Kansas question. More- over Missouri had during these years (1856-60) an active minority in favor of making it a Free State. The question of questions, then, looming up over the Border is, Shall this new Territory be tilled with the labor of slaves or of freemen? The conflict has opened on the dividing line between the settled and the unsettled lands of the national domain, on the boundary between States already in the Union and those which are hereafter to come into the Union. We may well regard it as the visible demarcation of the present from the future ; indeed we shall soon see it transformed into a battle-line between the old and the new order, between the outgoing and the incoming civilization. The struggle will reach far beyond the confines of Kansas, will involve the whole United States, and will have an abiding influence upon the destiny of both Americas and of the entire world. So it must be said that in this remote border-land is enacted a scene in the grand drama of Universal History, 12 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. and that Kansas for a brief period rises to the point of making herself world-historical. Such a mighty birth lies ensconced in this seemingly insignificant border foray of a lawless horde — an event which otherwise would not be worthy of the record. But the years will speedily show it to have a meaning more than local or even national, and so the historic Muse, sitting at the inner shrine of Time's occurrences and watching their hidden movement, will dip her pen afresh for their deeper and more pregnant portrayal. Before the tribunal of all History, then, have appeared the two contestants with their pressing question : Shall this Kansas be a Slave-State or a Free-State? And under- neath yet along with it lurks another profounder interrogation : Shall this Federal Union hereafter brinff forth Slave-States or Free-States? And still more deeply may we catch a gleam of the oracle flashing fitfully upon the night of the future an affirmative response to the question whether or not the Free-State is to be universal. But limiting our vision to a smaller and more definite round of events, we can say that the American Civil War has now started, and it is not going to stop till the right and complete thing be done. On the Missouri-Kansas border during the vernal tide of March-April, 1855, with the coming. of the invaders the whirlwind rose, or, in PART I. — THE FIE ST INVASION. 13 Kansas phrase, " the bhzzard broke loose," strangely refusing to blow itself out into noth- ingness and be pacified till a great historic cycle had evolved itself into completeness. For its con- clusion we must look through ten years and note what is taking place during these same spring days in 1865. Sheridan is at Five Forks, Eich- mond falls, the Southern Confederacy collapses, and on April the 9tli is Lee's surrender at Ap- pomattox. The border blizzard has swollen up to an all-embracing national cyclone of war ; start- ing from its little spot in the distant West, it has swept through Missouri and down the Mississippi Valley, overwhelming all the new Slave-States and then all the old Slave-States, really the origin of the whole trouble, and burning up slavery root and branch along its furious path. Such is the end lurking in and unfolding out of this tiny starting-point, and interlinking with it in a kind of circular chain of events, which form one of the most important processes of the World's History. Let the reader note here at the be- ginning, its inner propulsion to get around to its primal source in the Eastern States, its cyclical tendency to come back to its origin and to trans- form that. A new Ten Years' War we witness on our Western Continent, not altogether unhke the far-famed Trojan one ending in the destruction of Ilium and the restoration of Helen. Again 14 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. every community will muster its contingent of soldiers and send them forth to the war under its leading man or hero, to fight for the great cause, which meant in the olden time that Hellas and not Troy was to determine the civilization of the future. But now a restoration is to take place far deeper than the Grecian or that of Helen ; the mighty struggle is now not for the ideal of beauty but for the ideal of freedom, though its bearer be not the most beautiful woman of the world but the homeliest mortal of God's creation, the black African, most un- Grecian as to nose and feature and foot and form. No Iliad singing rhythmic harmonies and moving with Olympian lines into plastic shapes of Heroes and Gods, can ever be born of such an ideal. No hexametral roll attuned to the sweep of sea and mountain and echoing the subtle concordance of nature and soul in the thousandfold play of its cadences can be evoked out of the prairie-speech uttered by the chief actors in this conflict. And yet an Iliad we may call the action, deepened and widened by the stream of the World's History down the Ages, with its tale of terrible but purifying expe- riences sent upon the Nation by the Divine Order. As the Greek during his whole national existence never could get rid of the eternal pother over Helen, but had to re-enact her and hers in his art, in his poetry, even in his PAET I. — THE FIB ST INVASION. 15 history imd religion, with the ever-recurriug con- flict between Greece and Asia from Troy till Rome, so the American seemingly cannot bring to an end the eternal pother over the negro after hundreds of trials, but has to spend his thought, his treasure and his blood, till this humblest and by nature most servile of the races of men be transformed and regenerated into a free being, capable of free institutions. Such a task, not willingly laid upon us by ourselves but by the Spirit of total Man, persists in lowering over us, not always to our comfort. Of this task our Ten Years' War is but a stage already past, and henceforth to be looked back at and ruminated upon with profit, and, it is to be hoped, with in- terest. For History is not merely a line of suc- cessive and fortuitous occurrences in Time, but the Soul of all Time, yea, the Soul which makes Time, uttering itself in the events of the past, voicing itself in the deeds and thoughts of men. To hear this voice and to commune with its meaning, may be regarded as the ultimate purpose of historic study. Such was the First Invasion of Kansas by the Missourians, the beo^inning of woes unnumbered to both the participants, and not only to them, but to all their countrymen connected by ties of sympathy and kinship ramifying through the 16 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. whole Nation, North aud South. We call it the first, though there was an earlier foray in the preceding year (November, 1854) when a band of Missourians crossed the border and voted for the Congressional delegate, Whitfield, who, how- ever, was not opposed by the people of the Territory. Thus it was a peaceful affair though a wrong with a nemesis lurking in it, even if for the present smothered. But now in 1855, the inhabitants of Kansas want their own Legisla-* ture, which is their right, and get ready to resist, whereat Bellona unties her bag of ills, not to be tied up again for ten weary, desperate years. The Invasion was an attempt to steal a right, the majority's right of determining their insti- tutions, the right of all others fundamental and peculiar to America's government, mak- ing her truly self-governed, and constituting the very symbol of her spirit, of her self-hood. Such was the portentous theft committed in Kansas on that spring-day, really our Ameri- can Rape of Helen, done by those Missouri borderers who tried to carry off by violence beautiful Freedom in the shape of the ballot, far more beautiful to Americans than beauti- ful Helen of old Greece, and we believe more virtuous in spite of many insidious at- tempts at her prostitution. And yet the fact must be recorded that these assailants of Free- PART I. — THE FllitST INVASION. 17 dom's honor were Americans, speaking English, peculiarly the hinguage of Freedom, just as those old Trojans, the captors and detainers of beautiful Helen, were of Hellenic blood, and spoke Greek, peculiarly the language of Beauty. So the old and the new, the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega of our Occidental History come together and interlink, rounding themselves out into that oft-noted cycle of events which therein are to be seen not merely moving forward to the end, but also o-oino; backward to the beginning. Only thus can we behold the present orbing itself with its own creative past and completing a great historic process, which, while it runs with Time on the one side, runs against Time on the other, returning to its starting-point and therein revealing that periodicity, which from hoary Egypt till now has been felt to be a manifestation of the omnipotent hand control- ling the World's occurrences. In a sense it may be said that the ideal of Freedom has hovered before man since the be- ginning of History, and that it is, accordingly, nothing new. Still it has been developing all the while and is ever taking new and more ad- equate forms. This last or American form of the long conflict between Freedom and Slavery puts its main stress upon the political institution, and regards the State as genetic or creative, that is, as productive -of other States. Now this ge- 2 18 THE TEN VEAliS' WAR. netic State or Federal Uuion, through its constitu- tion was made to be productive of two kinds of States, free and shive. This dualism is what is threatening to break asunder the Federal Union when the Ten Years' War opens, whose conflict may, therefore, be said to lie between Free- Stateisni and Slave-Stateism. And the future problem, which the popular mind (our American Folk-Soul) is in deep self-communion turning over within itself, may be summed up in the question : Shall henceforth our State-creating Union be the parent of free States or of slave States, or still of both? This we might call the theme or argument of our American Iliad, in which as in the old Greek one, through countless ills of both sides the Will of Zeus was accom- plished. It is evident that the problem turns upon Labor, and the two kinds of States ground them- selves upon the two kinds of Labor, that of the freeman and that of the bondman. The Free- State is really the Free-Labor State, and the Slave-State is the Slave-Labor State, though in the latter actual slavery was confined to the black race. Or, to reach down to the depths of the human soul, to the psychical being of man, we must conceive that all Labor is auact of Will, whose freedom it is just the function of the State to secure through its laws. But now we have a State which is to secure a Will enslaved, con- PAIiT T. — THE FlilST I.VVASION 19 tradictiug- therein its owu essence. And the American Union is to continue bringing forth such States — or is not — which shall it be? Such a question the American Folk-Soul has propounded to itself,, sounding its dee[)est abysses for an answer. But what oracle dwells there within to deliver such a response? Truly that Delphic voice which once spoke at rocky Pytho the words of the God is no longer audible on the outside, but has taken up its modern abode in the Folk-Soul, which receives the divine impress directly and acts from within, according to conviction. Such is the new Zeus, not quite the Homeric one, yet descended from him and inter-related with him through the successive ages. The American Folk-Soul is, then, going to school and is working at its problem which it sees but cannot yet solve. Kansas is about to give the first lesson, the preliminary course- lasting some three years or more; such was the discipline for the great coming task. But wlm prescribes this task? Again we have to go behind the curtain of the thronging, tumultuous, distracting events of Time, and gl!mi)sc the Spirit busied there; call it Civilization, Progress, World-Spirit, or even Zeus, if you like IIoiium's poetic way of imagining the divine order wliidi controls History. For the old Greek bard al>'> has his two worlds; the lower one of mortals 20 THE TEN YE Alt S' WAR. around aucl in Tioy, full of war, confusion, and cnprice; then the upper Olympian one, the serene abode of the Gods, above whom sits Zeus Supreme, voicing when at his best not only the soul of that little speck of Trojan Time, but of all Time. In some such way we would fain impress our reader with the thought that this Kansas conflict is not a mere bubble on the stream of the World's History, rising and bursting in the passing moment, but is that etream itself, the whole of it, for the present, till it flows else- whither on its ceaseless sweep to its goal. II. Having thus mustered the one side of the Kansas conflict, and caused it to pass in review, we must plainly do the same service for the other side. The assailants with their principle have been witnessed in their march across the border; but who are the assailed, aud whence and for what purpose have they come hither to the untamed prairie aud wilderness? Some account of these hardy spirits is next due. After the passage of the Kansas -Nebraska bill, the President of the United States had declared the territory of Kansas open for settlement on May 30th, 1854. At once emigrants began to pour in from all parts of the countr}', for the purpose of occupying the land. By far the PART I.— THE FIB ST IXVASIOJ^. 2l largest portion came from the Northern States of the West, which always had its pioneers whose nature was to tire of the more tliicklv settled districts and to o-o forth asjain to the frontier, as they and their ancestors had done for generations. As we have seen in more recent times the large crowds ready to rush across the border of Oklahoma, when this territory was thrown open for settlement, so we may conceive the numbers ready to cross into Kansas in the spring and summer of 1854. These early emigrants were largely though not wholly from the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. Nearly all of them came singly, or in small neighborhood groups. It was in no sense an organized movement. Each man expected to enter his tract of land and start to work on his own account and in his own way, clearing the soil and putting in his crop; then later he intended to send for family and friends. It was an individual emigration, this of the West to Kansas. These men were the first on the ground, and rapidly grew in number. Tumbling over one another they come like a flock of blackbirds, the rearmost flying above the heads of the rest and lighting down foremost, till these find themselves again in the rear, when once more they rise in flight for the front. Such were the human waves which came rolling out of the Western States over the Kansas border when 22 THE TEX YEARS' WAR. the barrier was removed. We may deem it au- other manifestatioa of that oUl Arj^an iustinct which has driven westward now for thousands of years, propelling its migrating peoples out of Asia, through Europe, across the Atlantic to America, in a succession of Oceanic undulations which have swept over the Alleghenies, and leaping the Mississip})i, have reached the boun- dary of Kansas, whose plains are now to be the scene of their last great overflow. They found the land ah'eady surveyed by the Government and divided into sections and quarter sections, each of which might become a farm with its industrious tenant, the like of whom had already filled the North- West with a thrifty, self-reli;int population, all of them makers of their own institutions and ready to fioht for these, if the call came. This is the class of men that began to settle down over Eastern Kansas, clustering at first along its navi- gable streams. Each little farm became a cell in an ever-increasing honeycomb, and contained a busy bee seeking to gather the honey of in- dustry, but pre[)ared to fly out and sting his foe if disturbed in his work or his freedom. Then these bees made a hive and many hives, which would swarm forth together against their troubler with wonderful celerity and undaunted courage. In 1854 alre;uly this mass of farms began to array themselves against the Missouri border in PAET I. — THE FIRST INVASION. 23 serried ranks one behind the other, not without many a contest over titles to the hind which the Missouriuns chiimed to have pre-empted. But tiie agricultural fortification of the country went on till it was inexpugnable, since each of these small homes held one worker and fighter at least, and sometimes several. Such was the wall of Hvinof valor with its free labor which was built or rather built itself as a bulwark against the slave-bringinoj invaders. This is, then, the first, the unorganized, in- dividual migration. But there is another which is organized, having a different source. New England, and a different character. The leader appears who establishes his Emigrant Aid So- ciety for the purpose of colonizing Kansas. The name of this leader rises into great prominence, so that the whole country. North and South, knows of Eli Thayer. His first band, 29 strong, left Boston July 17th, 1854, with a most lavish expenditure of noise. A great multitude gathered at the railroad station to witness their departure, which fact indicates that the fight w^as already expected in Kansas. The cheering crowds lined the tracks for several blocks. The coun- try through which the train passed was every- were roused, and ovations were tendered at several cities to these soldiers o-oino- to the war. A fortnight after leaving Boston they were in Kansas, and August 1st is given as the date of 24 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. their fouuding of Lawrence, destined for years to be the storm-center of the Territory. This first colony was soon followed by others from the Eastern States. Such w^as the deafening flourish of truuipets echoing from one end of the land to the othei*, which heralded the advent into Kansas of Eli Thayer's New England regiment of 29. From the prodigious hubbub made over them, people have supposed they were another small Mara- thoui in band marching forth alone to combat the countless host of slavery. But the fact is they found already hundreds of settlers in Kan- sas, mostly from tlie West-Northern States. The latter differed from their East-Northern nei^h- bors in a number of points, but both resolutely agreed on one point: Kansas must be a Free- State. Moreover these Westerners were fighters, no doubt about it; they came rather expecting a fight; they were chosen, by a kind of Natural Selection, to migrate to Kansas, every man with his trusty rifle in hand. At the same time they were farmers, and tradesmen, and artisans, de- voted to the works of peace, but ready for war if the time called for it. A strong courageous indi- viduality thej^ possessed, otherwise they would not have ventured into this troubled borderland. They remained the large majority of the Free- State people of Kansas and fought her battles during the whole Ten Years' War. PABT I — THE FIB ST INVASION. 25 In such fashion we must conceive the two great migrations, the unorganized and organized, the one from the West the other from the East. Both of them continued their activity for years and were united in the one great purpose of making Kansas a Free-State, which purpose was uppermost in eacli. But outside of this supreme point of unity there were many differences. The ^Yesterners as a whole were hardly anti- slavery, they disliked the negro, believed his presence to be a curse to the white man, and were determined to keep not only the slave but the free African out of the new State. In fact many non-slaveholders from the South who came to Kansas changed to Free-State men when they heard this view; Eli Thayer says a majority of them did so. However strange the expres- sion may seem to us now, it is probable that the hirger number of these early emigrants were pro-slavery Free-State men. They were inclined to believe that the natural condition of the negro was that of a slave, but he must stay in the old Slave States, and not come either as freeman or slave into this our white man's territory. This consciousness we uuist understand, as it alone explains nuich of 'the political conduct (^f these early settlers. Their first constitution allowed no black man, bond or free, to al)idc within the State. The New England emigrants, thouuh fewer in 26 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. number, had the udvantago in education, iu organizing power and in the ability to use all the modern implements of civilization. Hence they were the leaders from the start. In one of the earliest lot of colonists came Charles Eobinson, whom Thayer first saw in one of his New Eng- land meetings, and engaged as agent of the Emi- grant Aid Company. Of all the men who won distinction in this Kansas epic, Eobinson would have our vote to be pedestaled as hero. Not Lane, not John Brown, but Robinson was the savior of Kansas. He was the born leader, gauging aright the people whom he was to lead, what they would and would not do. He saw clearly that he could concentrate the most diverse followers, from North and South, from East and West, upon one thing and one thing onl}' : Kan- sas must be a Free-State. Moreover Robinson was an institutional man, he had untold trouble not merely with the pro-slavery enemy, but with the anti-slavery revolutionists and anarchists. The Garrisouians denounced him and sought to nullify his work. But he, though an abolition- ist in conviction, knew that his prime duty was to pluck the fruit within his reach. This he did with a determination and success which we nniy fairly call heroic. PAIir I.— THE FIEST INVASION. 27 III. But the chief difference between the unorgan- ized and the organized emigrants was that the former had no means of reaching the great public of the North, of whose cause they were the outpost. Their sufferings and their deeds would have remained quite unvoiced, had it not been for those tonguej Yankees with theirunparallcledgift of making themselves heard. These could all write and send letters home, which would get into print. They were not only well-schooled in speech, but had a native gift for talking and scribbling. Herein they were true to their inheritance. The early Puritans have set down their spirit's struggles and their history more completely than any other recorded colony ; not even the Greek who certainly had a tongue, ever used it with such an unceasing outpour, as the New Emjlander. Moreover the Emio;rant Aid Society had connections with the most important newspapers of the Eastern States. Eli Thayer knew Horace Greeley and could set that mighty fog-horn of the Atlantic, the New York Tribune, to blowing its very best, sending its reverberations to almost every hamlet of the North. Here lay Thayer's greatest work. He had a chief hand in oroauizino; that vast redui:)licatinur- suit ; they intercept tljo Slieilff who stopped too often along the road for refreshments, till finally he had to face the muzzles of squirrel guns and even some Sharpe's rifles. The argument was convincing, and Branson was given up without a shot. The rescuers, knowing that they had violated law, hasten to Lawrence to advise with the people there, friendly but seeking to avoid ever}' appearance of legal violation. Kobinson, the leading spirit of the town, said: " I am afraid the affair will make mischief." The people assembled in town-meeting and discussed the situation. They concluded that they could not harbor the rescuers, but must avoid aivintj anv pretext for invasion from Missouri, which they knew awaited them on the least provocation. So Jacob Branson and his friends pass out of Lawrence into some other place of hiding and out of view of History. This was the event which caused Lawrence to prepare for war, having heard only rumors from Missouri, and feeling the situation to be perilous. A committee of safet}' was appointed, the citzens were mustered and trained in guard dut}', and the town built fortifications on every side. They knew their foe, who was armed with the law of the Territory, and who had the government of the United States on his side. Still they felt PAET 1. — THE SECOND INVASION. 59 they wore the advance guard of Civilization, of the coming United States, not the present, and so they stood in a Marathonian strusfgle against the migUt}^ powers directed against their little hand, inspired, we may say, by the "World-Spirit. In their emergency the people chose Robinson to be their leader with the title of major-general though he was not a military man. Lane was made the second in command, though he had been an officer in the Mexican War. This se- lection we may regard as a judgment of the two rivals by the people, a judgment which the fu- ture has pronounced ^circumspect but correct, in view of the characters of the two men. With a parting glance at the rescuers hurrying off in one direction, we shall turn back to take a look at Sheriff Jones, slowly retracing his steps toward Missouri in the opposite direction without old Jacob Branson, whose only crime was to have made some threats against the assassins of his friend Dow. It was indeed humiliating; the Sheriff with his men cowed, thwarted, and wrath- ful, when alone, resolved at once to take revenge and sent to Missouri for assistance, his message even reaching the Capital of the State, Jefferson Citv, where the Legislature was in session. Through the Missouri towns the importunate cry resounded: Help, help to put down the new outbreak of the Al)olitionists against Law and Order. The Sheriff estimated that 3,000 men 60 THE TEN YEARS' WAH. would l)e required to do the work effectually. His hciited imagination saw in the rescuers an army, whereas they numbered just fifteen with cijiht ojuns in the crowd, and one human cata- pult, a Free-State man armed with two big stones in default of other weapons. The men whom we have seen encamped along the banks of the Wakerusa were those who responded to the Sheriff's request. At first he did not think of calling on the territorial execu- tive for aid, but somebody suggested it as the proper thing, and so he appealed to Shannon, the new Governor of Kansas, with a blood-curdling recital of outrages inflicted upon constituted au- thority. At this point is introduced into the present invasion a new element of which some account must be taken. II. AVilson Shannon, a well-known public man from Ohio, of good reputation, was appointed bv Pierce as the successor of "Keeder. He ar- rived September 3rd at Shawnee Mission, the ca})ital, was accorded a flattering reception by the pro-slavery party, and was at once com- l)letely benetted by their schemes. He took their view in regard to Kansas, denouncing Law- rence and Big Springs with their conventions, and Topeka with its Constitution and Legisla- ture, in terms which seemed to be put into his PART I.— THE SECOND INVASlOy. 61 mouth by the Missouriuii!?. To h)ok into the other side never entered his head, till it got a heavy knock. " The President is behind you," he cried out triumphing in a speech, " the Presi- dent is behind you," namely you the Mis- sourians, who had assumed the name of the Law and Order Party. Particularly the anti-govern- ment of Robinson was declared to be treasonable. Such was the entrance of Wilson Shannon into Kansas Territory, of which he was Gov- ernor. In these early words of his we catch the echo of the President's instructions to him, or rather those of Jefferson Davis who was at this time the power behind the Presidential puppet. Fresh from Washington these words seem to come, reverberating through the mouth of Shan- non. But is there no power behind Pierce and Davis and all Washington? If not, woe be unto Kansas and all of us. The truth soon comes out that in Kansas the executive and legislative powers combined were having no success. The Free-State men o()t along without both, by one makeshift or other, being reduced to an atomic condition. They made no attack, no resistance to the authority which, even if legal, was fraudulent in origin. The Missourians had destroyed the American State-making principle by violently supplanting the independent voter and settler. But the American did not propose to allow the usur[)ation 62 THE TEN YEAIiS' WAB, to pass unchallenged yiiice it assailed his deepest political oonsciousacris, and deprived hiui of his first right, that of making his own institutions. In this time of the declining Slave-State cause, there occurred the events already men- tioned: the murder of Dow, the rescue of Branson, and the Sheriff's call upon the Governor for troops. Shannon promptly responded, but not more than fifty men in Kansas could be found ready to sacrifice themselves in such a cause, which seemed peculiarly that of the Missourians, whose numbers and zeal have been already celebrated in the exploits along the banks of the Wakerusa. So Lawrence remained in a state of siege for many days; the besiegers did not dare attack, and the besieged kept strictly on the defensive from policy. At last a Committee from the town got through the lines of the enemy and reached the Governor, who, after spending his ill- humor in a severe lecture, was ready to listen to the other side. The Committee presented their case, the Governor showed something of an inner revulsion. " I shall go to Lawrence," says he — a visit which he ought to have made long since. But first he went to the camp on the Wakerusa, where he found an undisciplined mass of men frenzied by whisky and clamoring to attack the town in utter ignorance of its strength which, however, was well known to their FABT I. — THE SECOND INVASION. Go leaders. Shaunou dissuaded, iu fact, forbade by virtue of his office auy such movement. Then he went to Lawrence December 7tli. He must have been struck by the contrast. Here was order and sobriety, doubtless coupled with a strong determination. His demands were chiefly two: deliver up jour Sharpe's rifles, that awful goblin of the Missourians, and obey the law. The former demand was firmly refused with an appeal to the right of every American to bear arms, a rioht ouaranteed bv the Cousti- tution of the United States. As to the law, they were ready now, and always had been, to obey it ; they would even assist the Sheriff in execut- mor his writ against the rescuers, but he must not bring with him that drunken horde of Missouri borderers as his posse, thus exposing their town to murder and rapine. As to the rescuers, it was shown that they were publicly warned to leave Lawrence, which they did at once, and had not been seen since. Shannon felt these facts and arguments to be irresistible; he had even called the Missourians, whom he had now seen with his own eyes, " a l)ack of hyenas." Evidently he undergoes a kind of conversion there in Lawrence. Hence- forth his sole object is to bring about the with- drawal of the Wakerusa warriors. This must be done with great tact, else there might be an explosion. Atchison, the Missouri Senator, who 64 THE TEN YEAE>'>' UAL'. was present with his clan, aided the Governor in this work, saying, " The position of General Eobinson is impregnable ; his tactics have given him all the advantage as to the cause of quarrel." Atchison also saw the national import of the conflict: " If jou attack Lawrence now," says he to his disgusted comrades, " you would cause the election of an abolition President (in 1856) and the ruin of the Democratic party." A tiuce was patched up and the disgruntled Missourians set out for home with the Governor's words ringiuo- in their ears that " he had not called upon persons resident of any other State to aid in the execution of the laws," and plainly intimating that they were present without authority. Such statements were not pleasant to Sheriff Jones vrho had invoked their help, and he vowed that he would wreak vengeance yet upon the accursed town. Not an idle threat, but an outlook on the future, whereof time will furnish the confirmation. Jones knew somewhat of the inner workings of this Kansas business, and was well aware of his own power at the center in Washington, being Democratic i)ost- Muister of Westport, conveniently situated on the border. But Shannon is clearly going the way of Reeder whose career and fate he so ardently thought to shun. One-sided he began, intensely so; but now he knows the other side, and has treated it with some degree of fairness if not of PAETI. — THE ISECoyU INVASION, 65 8\iDpathy. He cjiu ne\or more be what he was at the start; he has ex[)erieuced a change of heart which totally unfits him, under the present administration, for the Governorship of Kansas. He can no longer be the pliant tool of the Missourians and he is a doomed man — a fact which Sheriff Jones seems to prognosticate, as he and his cohorts sullenly retire from their ex- ploits on the Wakerusa, still vowing revenge in the future. But Lawrence is safe and has won a victory without blood. The Sharpe's rifles were not given up, the Topeka Constitution was not renounced, the anti-government was not surrendered. Robinson had shown himself a strategist of the first rank. The citizens gave themselves up to rejoicings, of course with a great overflow of speeches. Only one of these struck a discordant note. A long lank*form mounted a store-box and began to denounce a compromise which sullied a great cause from fear of blood- shed. He was soon pulled down from his })erch by the jubilating crowd, and compelled to bide his time for a fairer opportunity. Who was it? Old John Brown: he had recently arrived in the Territory and had uttered there his first word, truly prophetic of his coming career. HI. Most of our information about early Kansas 6G THE TEN YEAES' WAR. comes from New Englaudei's, who do not fail to give full validity to their side and section. Mrs. Sara Robinson, wife of the Governor, heads the procession with recounting the trials of the early settlers in a very readable bo(jk, which helped the cause and gave her a name — a name which, by ardent admirers, was paralleled w^ith that of Mrs. Stowe, and which put her prominently into the considerable list of Puritan women who have set down in writing their experiences, inner and outer. And the Governor himself, though supremely a man of action, has left us an account of his stewardship in a book valuable for its facts, but from a literary point of view not so good as his wife's. And Eli Thayer, the great organizer of talk who disparaged talk, has very acceptably talked to t)osterity about his Kansas achievement in a printed volume. These we may deem the leaders in the procession of writers on Kansas, followed by many others vociferating with all their might to catch the public ear. Naturally we begin to ask for the report of the opposite side, in the interest of fair play. Let us now hear from the Missourians, if they have anything else besides that border yell for our instruction. But alas ! they have no voice of the literary kind; on the whole, they do not write or read writing; it is said that the majority could hardly read the printed page. So we have PAltT I. — THE SECOND INVASION. ()7 to take the account of them and their deeds fioni the pens of their enemies. Still of their general purpose no doubt can exist : they intended to make Kansas a Slave-State, and thereby perpet- uate a Union Slave-State producing. We have, therefore, to regard them as the protagonists of the Southern Oligarchy, which is making a desperate effort to keep its power, that of a minority, over the majority of the United States, the prize for which they grasp being one more Slave-State. No doubt it was a barbarous time and used a good deal of barbarous English, which the digni- fied Muse of History makes a wrj^ face at in spite of her dignity. Barbarians will use barbarisms and a barbarous time finds its corresponding expression in a barbarous dialect. Shocking it is to say the rude things of the Borderers in the presence of the Muse so daintily trained in these days at the University. Still we would like to catch some glimpse of the leaders of the Missouri movement speaking in their own right, and not through the lips of their Yankee antagonists. The best that we can do is to glean a few shreds of their speeches which have been preserved chiefly by Robinson in his book (The Kansas Conflict), and which were originally printed in the border newspapers. Atchison, Senator from Missouri and Vice- President of the United States after the death 68 THE T1:N YEARS' iVAR. of W. R. King, seems to have been the chief actor and spokesman in these forays. Here is a report of one of his utterances: " He was for meeting these philanthropic knaves peaceably at the ballot-box, and out-voting them. If we cannot do this, it is an omen that the institution of slavery must fall in this and other Southern States, but it would fall after much strife, civil war, and bloodshed." Such was Atchison's ensanguined vaticination of the coming struggle, very true, but possible to be made void according to him by out-voting the Kansas Free-Stat« men through fraud. Yet this w^as just the way which brought on the bloody conflict. Note, too, the peculiar consciousness here: if we can only seize the forms of the law, the right is of no great consequence. Atchison always claimed that his method was "pacific," and he "would not punish a man who merely entertained abstract opinions," even about slavery. On the other hand Stringfellow, the second leading chieftain, seems to have been the fire-eater, radical in his violence, quite to the point of disregarding the Executive: " What right has Governor Reeder," he exclaims, "to rule Missourians in Kansas !" He scores " those who have qualms as to violating laws, State and National," and his advice is "to vote at the point of the bowie-knife and revolver, in de- fiance of Reeder and his Mvrmidons." So the PART I. — THE SECOND INVASION. 69 two lenders, Atchison and Stringfellow, are evi- dently of an opposite cast, though both agree that Missourians must vote in Kansas, and make it a Slave-State. But the one says " peace- ably," while the other vociferates " at the poiot of the bowie-knife and revolver. ' ' Thus we catch notes of discord among the invaders ; evidently they have a radical and a conservative set also, and manifest differences of character and opin- ion, such as we see in the Free-State ranks. It is a phenomenon which repeatedly recurs : the anti-slavery extremist and the pro-slavery extremist reach, even if by opposite roads, the same camp of Disunion. Yancey could well have subscribed to Garrison's view of the Con- stitution as " an agreement with hell, and a covenant with death." Stringfellow exhorts: "mark every scoun- drel among you that is in the least tainted with free-soilism, and exterminate him." This has the true ring of tiie inquisition into })ri\ate be- liefs. On the other hand Atchison would not punish a man " for abstract opinions," as long as he does not attempt to carry them out. Such is the difference between the leaders, the one in his way is institutional, the other revolutionary; they are, as it were, inverted counterparts of what may be seen at Lawrence represented in Charles Robinson on the one hand and John Brown on the other, the latter being in this 70 THE TEN YEARS' WAE. reo-ard Stringfellow tibolitionized. No Mephis- topheles, corresponding to Lane, appears among the Missourians, unless they all be of his spawn. From Atchison, who had a genuine prophetic strain in his brooding soul, mast be cited an- other utterance which a patient historian (Rhodes, Hist. U. S., II., p. 100) has dug up from the vast mounds of the buried newspaper- doni of the past: " If Kansas is abolitionized, Missouri ceases to be a Slave-State, New Mexico becomes a Free-State, but if we secure Kansas as a Slave-State, Missouri is secure; New Mexico and Southern California, if not all of it, be- comes a Slave-State ; in a word the prosperity or ruin of the whole South depends on the Kan- sas struggle." This is a very suggestive prophecy, full of far-reaching presentiment which really antici- pates the doom of slavery. For Kansas is plainly not going to be a Slave-State even through violence ; not only will Missouri be lost, but "the ruin of the whole South " is impend- ino-, on account of this Kansas straggle. Atchi- son, however, seems to think that he can block the wheels of Civilization, if he can somehow steal the legal forms of government from the peo- ple of Kansas, But he is taking just the right way for driving slavery not merely out of Kansas :md the Territories, but out of th'e United States, out of America, and Hually out of the World. PARTI. — THE SECOND INVASIOX. 71 For it is beeoiiiiug numifest that the World- Spirit has decreed another way for training the backward peoples and races into civilization. Hitherto they have all passed through a period of slavery; every country in Europe has had it in some form, but has thrown it off. This was not so difficult, since the slaves were chiefly of the same race, often of the same nationality. But now the racial difference enters with its prob- lem ; the skin, nose, eye, hair, the whole physique proclaims the slave. Still he also is to be set free, and another way besides that of slavery is to be taken in order to ci\'ilize him and to make him capable of free insti- tutions. The pedagogical way we may call it; the backward man is to be sent to school and is to be educated by the civilized man, who is to impart to his less advanced brother his own institutional freedom as his greatest boon. In fact the World-Spirit has always kept a school for the nations, though more or less veiled; but now it has become unveiled, explicit, acknowl- edged. And education in such a school is not so much academic as institutional. IV. While the Missourians of the border were 13'ing in camp along the Wakerusa, the Thirty- fourth Congress met at Washington, the center, December, 1855. The President and the Senate 72 THE TEN YEAEti' WAR. Avere unchanged i)olitically, but the new House of Representatives was the product of the elec- tions of 1854 which showed in the North a strons reaction against the Kansas-Nebraska legislation. That year (1854) had been remark- able for a general dissolution of the old political parties, and the various attempts to unite the floating fraoineuts into new organizations. It was evident that a spirit was at work in the peo- ple, which showed them deeply dissatisfied with existing conditions. This spirit had been first roused by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, it had been kept active and indeed irritated by the First Invasion of Kansas, and now it was going through another paroxysm on account of the Second Invasion. Such was the public feeling when the national representatives met and tried to organize the House by the election of a Speaker. At once all the diverse, refractory elements of the time began to show themselves. The members could not be classified on former political lines; they truly represented, that is, imaged the state of the people. The House began seething like Kansas, which had transferred its conflict to the Capitol, and thrown it into a kind of Wakerusa War. Since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise :' strong dissolving process had been going on in t'lo country. Tiie Democratic, Whig, and even Free-Soil parties showed more or less disintegra- rABT I. — THE SECOND INVASION. 73 tion. Temperance entered politics, bands of women began to make crusades against saloons and destroy liquor. But the most peculiar m;in- ifestation of the great break-up was the sudden rise and success of the so-called Know-nothing party, followed by an equally sudden decline and evanishment. It was directed against the foreigner, and especially against the influence of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. It also de- clared hostility to German free-thinking and French infidelit^^ Its main doctrine was sum- marized in the pithy statement: "Americans should rule America." In so far as the Know- nothing party directed attention to the defects of the naturalization laws, and to the fraud and demagogy connected with the suffrage of the foreign-born element, it did good. But in prin- ciple it was thoroughly un-American, though it called itself the American party. Its members discredited their own ancestors who, not so many years before, had been immigrants. It ignored the great missionary function of the United States for the u[)lifting and enfranchising of the people of the old world who would come to our shores. Its method was even more un-American than its principle. It was a secret, oath-bound political association with grips, degrees, signs, and pass-words. It was more Jesuitical than th(^ Jesuits. Publicity, the great Amci'ican correc- tive of public ills, it shunned and took the way 74 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. of conspirators under a despotic government. The fact is suggestive that the chief men of all parties, anti-slavery and pro-slavery, Whig and Democratic, soon came to denounce it. The bloom of it hardly lasted a year; it too was rent in twain by the great coming question, both sides of which it sought to embodj^ Know-nothing- ism was hardly more than a transitional humor of the people in passing from an old to a new party. It was a caprice, a comic contradiction of the Folk-Soul, which, being soon recognized, passed off with a laugh. We may call it a comic inter- lude in the present great drama, for the very name of the party was a joke and productive of jokes everj^ where. There was a stream of mys- tery in it which diverted the people like the trick of a juggler, particularly at a time when their minds were at sea, and puzzling over what ought to be done next. Now the people in this mood had elected a national House of Representatives, which is the aforementioned body holding its first session at Washington and trying to elect a Speaker. Polit- ically it was a chaotic mass of Know-nothings, Democrats, Whigs, all of whom were still further divided into anti-slavery and pro-slavery fac- tions. Besides there were a few members already called Ecpublicans. It was soon seen that the old party divisions were vanishing into a new division, which ran a line of battle rART I. — THE SECOND INVASION. tb through the entire membership on the ques- tion: For or ao;ainst the Kansas-Nebraska bill? Thus the Kansas conflict had entered and was aligning the two sides of the House. The Wakerusa affair occurring contemporaneously and bringinsf new and exciting incidents all the while, w^rought powerfully upon the House in'its present fluctuating condition. Many candidates for Speaker — and in the Speaker's election lay the test — were taken up and then dropped. For nearly two months the hurly-burly balloting lasted, till on the one-hundred and thirty-third ballot Banks of Massachusetts was chosen. He had been elected to Congress as a Know-nothing, but that issue had dropped out totally, since the ground of his success lav in his statement thiU he favored the restoration of Missouri Compro- mise line of 1820, and that Congress should exclude slavery from Territories. Entirely visible does the new alignment of parties become in the first victory at the Capital. The Republi- can Party has now distinctly risen out of its local into its national career. It had already started at several points in the West sporadically ; but here it is, springing up in the heart of the Nation. Passing from the center to the border we chronicle a similar victory. The Missouri invaders, completely baffled by Robinson's strat- egv, had returned to their homes for the winter. The new Party has then actually appeared on 76 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. the floor of the Hoii.so of Eepreseiitatives, having o-one to the East from the West and nationalized itself at Washington. But where is its great leader? Local leaders it has in abundance, training for the struggle — but a towering na- tional leader? All were soon turning their eyes toward Seward as the supreme man, crying out, Here we are ready, lead us. But Seward hung fire. The hesitation lay partly in his own nature, and will rise up against him hereafter, but also partly in the political condition of the State of New York, which could not move as freely as the Western States. Chase, next to Seward in importance, was precluded from the national leadership of his Party by certain limitations of character as well by reasons of political expedi- ency. Sumner, the brilliant rhetorician of the rising Party, could hardly be called a statesman, and had no gift of great leadership of the peo- ple, since his speeches often left many in doubt whether or not he was thoroughly an institu- tional man, whether or not his anti-slaverj'ism did not outweigh and even jeopard his constitu- tionalism. At last in the fall campaign of New York Seward spoke and sounded the key-note of the new Party. But already in the fall of 1854, a year before Seward, the future leader of the Party, then quite unknown outside of his State, Abraham Lincoln, had arisen and had outlined in strong terse expressions the leading doctrines PAIiT I. — TUB SECoyi) INVASION. 77 of the new organization. Moreover he appeared in oratorical combat with his great competitor Doughxs, whom four years hiter he will meet again in a contest larger than national, so large that we must call it world-historical. But the time is not read}-, and perhaps he is not ready, for entering upon the great coming task. After having had two public tournaments, he and Douglas, at the request of the latter, agree to speak no more during the campaign. But his speech at Peoria (Oct. 16th, 1854) written out by him and printed in the lUinois State Journal , became the chief political document of the Party in the North-West, and prepared the way for Lincoln's leadership. Did Seward ever read Lincoln's speech? In the absence of direct tes- timony, who can tell? But one thing is certain: the coming Party had started in the West with its lines laid down and with its leader at the head a year before Seward waked up in the East. Thus Lincoln was getting his new house read}', while Seward was still debating whether he would stay in the old Whig house or move into the new one. As these two men are hereafter to be rivals for Republican leadership, we must con- sider the record of both. The great Democratic statesman of the North, Douglas, stands in a peculiar interme- diate relation to the rising Party through his doctrine of Popular Sovcreignt}-. He might 78 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. have stepped forwurd and Ijecome its leader; but he stood still, or })erchance stepped back- ward. As already indicated, he lost his first great opportunity of making himself the repre- sentative of the Spirit of the Age by not putting himself at the head of the Kansas Free-State men. The invaders violated Popular Sover- eignty, his special principle. A decided majority of the men who made the Topeka Con- stitution were Douglas Democrats, though their leader at first had no good word for tliem. Douglas bitterly assailed the Emigrant Aid Society, yet its whole policy was to settle slavery in Kansas by vote of the people. Eli Thayer, its founder, in his speeches planted himself squarel}^ on Popular Sovereignty, and asked nothing better than a fair chance through an honest ballot. But Douglas ignored his true sup- porters at the North, and thought that he must still bid for Southern assistance in the coming Presidential Convention (1856). V. In Kansas we may still see the Missouri borderers who took part in the Second Invasion, wending their weary way homeward in an ugly mood. Bafiied, humiliated, but more revengeful than ever, they are already planning some new method of catching and destroj'ing that elusive and even tricksy spirit which has so decidedly PABT I. - THE SECOND INVASION. 79 foiled them. But how can the thing be done? Evidently the Free-State leaders who have shown themselves such consummate strategists, must be gotten hold of in some way, and then leader- less Lawrence can be destroyed. Particularly Robinson, whom Atchison acknowledges to have completely out-maneuvered the Missourians, including himself, has to be reached, lest " his tactics " again give him " all the advantage as to the cause of the quarrel. ' ' Such was the problem haunting the Missourians as they crossed the border in their backward march. The fact is, the anti-government with its shadowy existence but very real power perplexed those dazed Missouri champions. And there was some mystery, soul-harassing, in its subtle operation. For we Missourians have the actual government, plain and palpable, in the Territorial Legislature and in the United States officials with Washington at their back; and yet it shows itself wholly insubstantial compared with that phantom government which the arch-magician Robinson has conjured up and made appear as a very substantial reality for rallying and inspiring the Free-State men. How can we catch, and then stab or shoot that spectral shape which cen- ters the opposition to our authority? Impossible is such a task; being a spirit, it cannot well be reached by bowie-knife or bullet, but has a strange power of employing and direct- 80 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. ing weapons on its own behalf. For the anti- government represents the spirit of Law, though now deprived of its body. Wrong having be- come formally legal, Eight rises up as its ghostly counterpart, though formally illegal, and makes the anti-government. Thus a phantom govern- ment which is the reality, the truth, marches forth in open daylight, and grapples with a real government which is a })hantom, a fraud. No such encounter has hardly happened among mor- tals since that ancient combat on the plains of Troy when the Greeks and Trojans fought around the image of a hero in their midst when he him- self had been borne elsewhere by the aid of the favoring Goddess. And now we may see the valiant Kansans fighting; around and for a shadow which is real, against a reality which is a shadow. And on the other side the embattled Missourians are hurrying over the border with a grandiose display of war to defend a reality which is but a shadow, against a shadow which is the reality. Such is the mixture of ghosts and corporalities along that Kansas-Missouri line, a veritable see- saw lasting for years between Spirit and Form, or Soul and Body : the dis-embodied Soul trying heroically to get i)ossession of its own Body, and the dis-souled Body trying to lay or even kill its own haunting and tormenting Soul. Thus the Missourians and the Kansans keep up an ever-recurring contest out there on the PABT I. — THE SECOND INVASION. 81 border: the one being whoU}^ unable to get or even to get at the other's Soul, and the other in turn being equally unable to get or get into the one's Bod}^ till at last on a day the hour of re- demption strikes and the straying Soul (of Right) slips into its bodily counterpart (the Law) and becomes incorporate. Whereof the account is given in a future chapter. But this happy consummation cannot yet be, the grand Kansas discipline of Soul-wandering is still to continue. A cunning scheme is hatched to rob the Free-State men of their leaders, through a new device of the legal machine which has been so successfully made to work injustice in the name of justice. Then the wolves having banned the shepherds can easily take possession of the flock and wreak their savagery upon it in a fresh invasion of Kansas. , 6 82 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. ^be ^bir^ Unvaeton. The winter of 1855-6 ia Kansas seemed to sympathize with the invaders by inflicting hard- ship and suffering upon the ill-housed and ill- prepared settlers. Mrs. Eobinson, a daughter of New England and used to icy blasts, expressed herself thus: "To face a Missouri mob is nothing to facing these winds which sweep over the prairies." External nature environing man appeared to pre-figure his social condition and even his mental tumult. It is indeed a Per- verted World without and within ; the violators of Law are its executors, the innocent are the vic- tims, the unjust not only escape but have all the instrumentalities of justice in their power, per- verting them to the purpose of injustice. The Judiciary is now to be dragged into conflict, and brought to employ the form of legality for sla}'- ing its soul. The pitiless winter did not wholly stop activity on either side. Robinson wrote in January, 1856, that he had knowledge of extensive preparations in Missouri for the destruction of Lawrence and all the I'ree-State settlements. He sent his information to the President, to Congress, but especially to the Governors of the Northern States, nearly all of whom were now PART I.— THE TIIIIiD IXVASIOy. 83 sympathetic with the Free-State aspiration of Kansas. Six men went East to buy munitions of war iind to raise an arnij' " for the defense of Kansas and the Union." In the spring when the weather had removed its ban, a stream of emi- grants from the North began again to flow across the border and spread out over the plains of Kansas, each one taking his place with gun in hand somewhere in that longitudinal line of farms erected as a barrier against Missouri and the South. But Missouri and the South were not idle. Bands of men from the Southern States began to come, the largest and most notable of which was organized in South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, by Colonel Buford, consisting of 280 people whom we shall soon find among the in- vaders. Both sections, North and South, were openly preparing for the contest. Still Robin- sou hoped and believed that he " could conquer without bloodshed " if his suggestions were acted upon in the Northern States. His strategy had once made the invaders face about and take the back track into Missouri. He thought he could perform the same maneuver again with success and avoid war. But a blow now descended upon him and his party from a source which he apparently did not take into account. The pro-slavery officials con- cocted a scheme of setting rid of the Free-State 84 THE TEX YEARS' WAR. leaders who had so often baffled them. They utilized for this ))urpose the Judiciary of the Territory whose Chief Justice, Lecompte, has won the distinction of being called the second Jeffries. He instructed the grand jury that those who resisted the Territorial Legislature were guilty of treason against the United States and were to be proceeded against by law. This was a blow aimed at the entire Topeka move- ment, and the anti-government of Eobinson. The grand jury indicted at once Robinson, Lane, and Reeder, with other prominent Free- State men, for treason. The same grand jury declared two newspapers of Lawrence and its Free-State Hotel to be public nuisances and recommended their abatement. In this way the Federal Marshal was brought into the contest, and opposition meant resistance to the United States. The result is that Lane decamps secretly, Eeeder escapes from the Territory in disguise after thrilling adventures, and Robinson is captured on his way to the East at Lexington, Missouri, and is brought back the captive of his foes to Kansas for trial. The work of Lecompte succeeded in making the Free-State men leader- less and hence helpless. This was the opportunity for a new move against Lawrence, which, being without a head, can now be beheaded by the chivalrous border- ers. There must be a pretext for the attack. PAET I.— THE Tin no IXVASIOX. 85 and this pretext Sheriff Joues w.'is to furuish. lie went to the town for the purpose of arrest- ing Wood, one of the chief rescuers of Bran- son. He was foiled in the attempt, and then tried his hand on others, one of whom gave him a stinsiuo; ship in the face. That was enough. He demanded of the Governor a detachment of Federal soldiers to assist him in executing his writs. He succeeded in heating the enmity of the Free-State community to the boiling point; during the excitement a frenzied youth shot him in the back, the wound not being very serious. Soon the news flew up and dowu the Missouri border that Sheriff Jones had been killed at Lawrence, rousing an intense feeling of ven- geance against the hated town. But the citizens of Lawrence, in town meeting assembled, dis- owned the act, and offered five hundred dollars reward for the apprehension of the culprit. At this juncture the United States Marshal, Donaldson, comes upon the stage to play his part. He summons a posse to arrest the traitors of Lawrence, and to abate the condemned nui- sances. This was the golden op[)ortunity, and again the Missourians responde.l, making their third armed Invasion of Kansas. Lavvrence, leaderless and utterly paralyzed, offered no re- sistance and yielded every point with a prayer for mercy. Some of the citizens charged with 86 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. treason were arrested, and the printing-presses were thrown into the river. The final act, however, was still to come. A crier announces: Marshal Donaldson is done with jou. Sheriff Jones now summons you for his posse, as he has something for you to do. Here was the pivot of the whole scheme, evidently gotten upby the Marshal and the Sheriff together. Jones had attained the long-sought end of wreak, ing vengeance upon Lawrence. The Free-State Hotel, already dismantled, was bombarded and blown up, and then the torch was applied to the ruins. Stores were rifled, houses were pillaged, the residence of Governor Robinson was given to the flames. In fine the town was gutted, ])utthe people were left; the threats to exterminate the Free-State men were not yet carried out. Such was the deed known in History as the Sack of Lawrence, the outcome of the Third Invasion. But the victory had a number of consequences which wrought worse than defeat. It introduced dissension into the ranks of the invaders. Two Colonels from the distant South openly disap- proved of the conduct and work of the malignant Jones. Atchison was again present and exerted himself to restrain the outrages, " riding on horseback to the different companies and making speeches in the interest of peace." But Jones was their hero and they followed him. Gov- ernor Shannon c(nidemned the Marshal's posse, PART I.— THE THIRD INVASION. 87 SO did President Pierce, doubtless beholding in his mind's eye the Democratic Convention ready to meet. Even Judge Leconipte thought that Donaldson's action was illegal. It was evident that the invaders were breaking loose from the control of their leaders, and that this Missouri plan of making Kansas a Slave-State must be abandoned. All the higher officials disclaimed the deed of violence, which seems to have been concocted b}^ the Marshal and Sheriff in secret concert. The Topeka Legislature met not long after these events, but it was dispersed by United States soldiers — which act, however, was dis- approved even by the Administration at Washington. What now has become of Robinson's anti- government with its machinery broken, its capital sacked, its leader a prisoner of his foes? Strange to say, it has won a victory more com- plete than ever before. The principle of these Missouri invasions is now seen in its true char- acter and purpose, and is discredited, temporarily at least, even by the Administration. Though another invasion takes place, it will be turned back and thwarted by the great United States Government itself instead of the little outlawed anti-government, and a real Governor, Geary, will do the work of the shadowy Governor, Rob- inson, now more shadowy than ever in the prison of his enemies. 88 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. But the chief effect and the great historic purpose of the Sack of Lawrence was the mightj response of the Northern Folk-Soul to the woes of Kansas, which kept agitating it, and working it over and kneadinsf it throuo;h nnd throuo;h with a new conviction that not only Kansas must be a Free-State, but that there must be no m»re Slave- States in this Union. A little over a year has passed since the First Invasion, and now the Third has spent itself, bringing results freighted with the future. We may deem it the first year of the Ten Years' War which is the theme of the present book. We have seen the irritation going forth continuously from Washington, fol- lowed by the agonies of Kansas, which, echoing from press, pulpit and [)latform, have been the school of the North preparing it for the great task looming up ever more distinctly in the future. And that small town of Lawrence — what a burden has been laid upon it by the time, by the Spirit of the Age, which seems to have chosen and trained it as the bearer of the conflict ever getting more visible. It was born in a war of titles; the very land was contested; when the Northern settler avouM begin to work upon his property, a Missouri counter-claim would be sure to appear. Thus the soil, after it was bought and cultivated, had to be won anew and freed from the foreign invader. But the greater, universal task was the institutional one: to PART I. — TIIL: rillBD INVASIOX. 89 secure the Free-State. Of this task Lawrence was the very soul as well as the ra(>st euergetic performer; no wonder that the enemy thought that if they could destroy her, the cause itself would be destroyed. Truly Lawrence dur- ing this period was the World-Spirit incarnate, the little town had in it the presence of Histor}', yea of Universal History, at whose behest she seemed to be moving and suffering. But tell us, ye Powers, will there be no re- quital for these deeds of violence? Lies it not in the Divine Order that the Missouri towns and counties which have sent forth and maintained these men of wrong, will see an invasion coming the other way? Wait; a little more than half a decade will pass when the Kansas borderers, trained by these acts to rapine and murder, and burning for revenge, will feel that their turn has come and will be let loose u})on the Missouri side, sweeping down upon it under the command of the Devil himself called uj) from Inferno by these iniquities — Mc{)hist()pheles Lane — in whos^ path the site of thriving villages will be marked by charred ruins and a few standing chimneys in the desert. Still further we may carry our outlook in this matter. Amorig these invaders we hear of con- tingents from South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, which States seem to lie far away from the scene of danger, quite out of the reach of 90 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. retribution. But Nemesis has long arms, and can stretch them, given her time, to any point on this terraqueous glo])e. Not a decade will pass before Sherman will be in Georgia at the head of an irresistible arniy which rips open the State from North-West to South-East, and then passes to South Carolina which also is to get a taste of the return of the deed u[)on the doer. Thus we again behold an interlinking of the beginning and end of the Ten Years' War, in a circling chain of events ; there is an inner con- nection between the first invasion of Kansas and the last counter-invasion of the South by Sher- man. A great national house-cleaning has started on the Western border, not to be held up till every Slave-State, new and old, has been wMped out and made over into a Free-State. But just now what a trouble in getting Kansas free, that small first link in the great chain of the total War ! Another result of the Sack of Lawrence may be here noted. John Brown has already been observed making a protest against the Wake- rusa peace. Deeming himself the divine instru- ment of vengeance, he has gone forth to begin his own war against slaver3\ According to Brown's reckoning five Free-State men had been murdered in his locality ; God's justice de- mands five victims of the opposite party. The result is the Pottawatomie massacre of five Shive-State men at the hands of Brown and his PAR T I.— THE THIRD INVASION. 9 1 confederates. Such was the bloody deed of per- sonal retaliation begotten and nursed by these Missouri inva'sions in the half-crazed soul of a religious fanatic, the sanguinary prelude of John Brown's coming drama. Only too plain is the fact that the Furies of the godless Deed are now born on the Kansas-Mis- souri border, rearing and hissing in vengeful wrath which is involving the innocent with the wrong-doer in a common fate. Ancient Aes- chylus, evoking his dreadful Erinyes from the abysses of the guilty soul, would himself stand aghast at the spectacle of retribution now enact- ing and still more bloodily to be enacted in this Ten Years' War. Already over the Sack of Lawrence every eye can see the face of Nemesis with a dark frown of vengeance turned toward the source of this deed of wronsc and ffettincr ready to pursue its perpetrators to their own hearthstones, which will be reddened by the heart-drops of the just and the unjust in that day of wrathful requital. But now we may well divert our look else- whither. Overlapping these Kansas events a Presidential year has arrived, giving very dis- tinctly a new turn to affairs, through the elec- tion of a new Chief Magistrate by the People. This furnishes a fresh opportunity for observing the throbbing occurrences of another annual cycle, and for seeking to find their historic process. CHAPTER II. THE PRESIDENTIAL YEAR. (1856-7.) The Kansas War has histed hardly more than a year, but it has ushered in a new era. It has brouofht home to the American Folk-Soul the supreme question of the time, which must be settled before anything else can be seriously thought of. The old Union, half slave and half free, is to be voted on by the entire Nation, con- sciously for the first time. Is it ready? Does it hear with distinctness the behest of the World- Spirit? Or must there be longer waiting and more discipline? This is the issue which we may now watch winding through the political events of the present year and catch the answer in the outcome. More particularly we may ask. Is Kansas to get relief, or is there to be more torture? Her animated longitudinal farm-wall, embanked against the Missouri line, is still held and guarded with vigilance and valor. \92) PART I. — THE rBESIDENTIAL YEAR. 03 But is this Border "War to continue? Let us hear the response of the American electorate which has uow the cause before its tribunal for decision. Ill 1856, an election for President was to take place, which event would determine whether the central authority of the Federal Union was to favor the creation of the Free-State or of the Slave-State out of Kansas specially, and out of all the Territories generally. The principle of the single conflict on the border with its two sides was raj)idly making itself universal, involv- ing all the States and dividing them into Northern and Southern by a line, or rather by a chasm growing deeper and deeper, which ran from Kansas to the Atlantic. The line existed before, even from the adoption of the Constitu- tion, but uow it has become a foreshadowed battle line along which the contending forces may be seen in the mind's eye to be gathering for the onset. The occurrences of this year are somewhat com- plicated, for the whole country is seething and struggling with its- problem, which is perpetually shifting about and taking unexpected shapes. How can we catch and fix the underh'ing move- ment of all this hurly-burly? Undoubtedly the Presidency is the central determining point round which everything turns. Hitherto in the Kansas conflict we have had mainly to fix our eye upon 94 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. two leadinw; elements : the tjovenimeat at Wash- ingtoii and the strife on the border, the one being at the center and the other on the circumference. But now the whole area of the country lying between center and circumference has the stress, and is swept into the whirl of the conflict by having to elect a President. So we must take into account three main elements each of which has its own movement, while they all unite in forming one great movement characteristic of the Presidential year. The most significant and lasting event of the present fermentation is that a new party is shap- ing itself out of the ruins of previous parties, such as the Whig and Know-Nothing, with mau}^ a boulder breaking off and floating in from the still living and lively Democratic party. On the 22nd of February a convention containing dele- gates from twenty-three States assembled at Pitts- burg and demanded in their resolutions " the repeal of all laws which allow the introduction of shivery into the territories once consecrated to freedom, and furthermore we demand the imme- diate admission of Kansas as a free and indepen- dent State." Very distinctly is now the Republi- can party born and endowed with a national ac- tivity, being called upon to send delegates later (June 17th) to Philadelphia for nominating a candidate for the Presidency. This party has al- ready given many a sign of itself sporadically, PART I. — THE PRESIDENTIAL YEAR. 05 SO that its origin is variously timed aud located. At Pittsburg, however, it leaps into the arena fully panoplied with its principles. It has a great destiny before it, probably greater than that of any other political party, since it is to fight the battle for the Union and win it, and to destroy slavery not only in Kansas but in every other State of the Union, new and old, giving it a mortal blow in both the Americas and seem- ingly for all futurity. Quite unconscious of any such far-extending destiny at present, it will simply insist upon the Federal Union being- hereafter the mother of Free-States only, with- out disturbing slavery where it already exists. And after fifty stormy years this party still lives and works with its hand u[)on the helm of State, grappling with vast new problems and duties. Even its enemies will hardly fail to look upon it with some degree of admiration, wonderinof what has given to it such a perdurable vitality and governing power. The three elements already mentioned — Wash- ington (the center), Kansas (the border), and the entire Country lying between center and bor- der — are in a process together, in a perpetual whirl of agitation. The irritating cause has its seat in Washington, being the Administration of President Pierce, which not only supi)oris but secretly encourages the invasion of the Mis- souriaus in the interest of slavery. Then Kan- 9<) ' THE TEN YEARS' WAR. 8;is being struck, wronged, violtited in its ten- derest part, would give one of her piercing shrieks, which, being re-echoed and redupli- cated tenfold from that line of sounding- boards great and small, the newspaper press with its reverberator in every village of the North, would send a thrill of sympathetic horror through all hearts from East to West. Thus the round kept going, wave after wave, till the whole People were brought to share in the Kansas-pain and began to cry out for relief, which they did not and could not get. For these Free-State men, as already observed, had a voice n\diicli bore their wrono-.s and suffering-s on the wind, and repeated them in every hamlet. It is no wonder that the people of the North, tortured with their own sympathy and shocked in their feeling of right, began to propound the question: Can we not transform that Washing- ton center of perpetual irritation, and let these Kansas people finish in peace building their State? More pressing does the question become, since the Presidential year has arrived, and the Convention for nominating the candidate draws near. Such is, then, the task of the time : to get possession of the source of the trouble and to make it over, if possible, into a fountain of healinof. The nominating Conventions of the two parties may be regarded as the culmination of PAirri.-- TIII-J VUESIDENriAL YE Alt. 97 the year. Hence we .-liall lirst look at the swirl of events leading up to them, and then following after them till the election is over. In other words the events of the year move in two main processes separated by the Conventions. Thus we see each side first putting itself into trim for the contest, and then the contest between the two sides. When this is over, we may well take a look backward and also forward, to see if we can measure the work which the Genius of History has accomplished. 7 98 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. ipre0tt)ential 1Romination9. It had become the conviction of the North that the Washington Administration was the generating cause of the disorders in Kansas, inasmuch as this was determined not to be a Shive-State. Hence arose the movement of the Northern peo[)le to reach the seat of the malady by changing the central Administration, for which the opportunity is now at hand. But there was also the counter movement of those in power for keeping their grasp on the government. Thus the two Parties, Republican and Demo- cratic, begin their preliminary maneuvers for the coming appeal to the final tribunal of the land, the People. Amid all sorts of eddies, currents and counter- currents, the one fundamental historic movement can again be seen embracing all the diversities of the turbulent stream of events. We shall still follow the round which starts from Washington, passes to Kansas, then returns upon the People. Both parties began to show certain changes of conduct in anticipation of the approaching con- test before the People. Particularly among the Democratic leaders a new adjustment was noticeable. Pierce was a candidate for re-elec- tion. As he had favored the South, he looked PART I. — rUESIDENTIAL MjMINATIONS !'!> to that section for his chief support in the a[)protiching ConCeution. Still the South nloiio could not nominate him, so he had to conciliate a part of the North also. Another candidate was Douglas who had made his great bid for Southern support in his Kansas-Nebraska bill repealing the Missouri Compromise, which, how- ever, had lost the North to the Democratic Party in the Congressional election. The hostile House of Representatives was already in session at the beginning of 1856 and was balloting for Speaker. Banks, a Republican, w^as finally elected, and a new source of antagonism had to be reckoned with by the Administration. The first round of events we shall summarize as follows : — 1. Washington, The President in his com- munication to Congress takes the Southern side in reference to slavery generally, and in reference to Kansas specially. He blames the Emigrant Aid Societies for the troubles on the border, though he faintly censures " the illegal and reprehensible counter-movements" of the Mis- sourians. But when he comes to the main issue, he asserts the legality of the Territorial Legisla- ture, as its members had Reeder's certificates of election, while the Topeka Constitutional Con- vention was wholly without the warrant of law. And yet the former was a fraud, and the latter was an expression of the will of the People. LOFC. 100 THE TEN YEAIiS' WAB. Thus the Pref^ideut in the interest of slavery turns the formal law ngainst rio;ht and uses established authority to destroy its own original fountain-head. Douglas took substantially the same position, assailing the Emigrant Aid Society, and championing the side of legality against equity, of a wrong which was formally legal against a right which Avas formally illegal. Surely it is the duty of the legislator to reconcile such a contradiction when it has arisen. As a new party was appearing and (n-ganizing itself, many speeches were made at this time, which was felt to be epoch-making. Particu- larly the Republican Senators gave expression to the dawning idea and its conflict in well-phrased turns which were printed in the great journals of the North and distributed far and wide. This expression was the counterpart to that of Kan- sas with its cry of pain, appealing more to the reason than to the emotions. The formulation of the Eepublican creed was completed and made universal in the doctrine that in all the Terri- tories Congress is to prohibit slavery. It was a great service and prepared the minds of the people for the coming platform of the Republi- can Convention. Still this universal doctrine would hardly have found such a strong response in the hearts of the People, unless a particular and soul-harrowing illustration of it had been brought daily before their eyes through Kansas. PAUT I. — PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATIONS. 101 The most famous of all these speeches was that of Sumner entitled the "Crime against Kansas." It was a furious, at times frenzied tirade, though carefully written out beforehand and committed to memory. Most readers to- day will condemn both its spirit and style; it is the work of a rhetor rather than of an orator, and sounds more like a rhetorical exercise of the later Greco-Roman schools than a Demosthenic philippic. But wonderful was its power over young heads; in this field lay its iniiuence which its very extravagance increased. But its chief fame springs from the fact that it provoke d the brutal assault of Brooks, a Representative from South Carolina, who thus made himself the counterpart of the Missouri border-ruffian at Washington. The parallel to ^Kansas came home mightily to all, and was recognized at once both in the North and South, in the one case for reprobation, in the other for glorification. The Missouri border was transferred to Washington, to the very Capitol, and the armed Southerner smote the unarmed though stronger Northerner, as the latter sat at bis desk occu})ied in writing. Moreover there was the same alignment of the sections, the North taking sides with the stricken man, and the South on the whole a})proving and making the act its own. Of course that huo-e sounding-board was again set in operation, and the whole North "from the ice-bound coa.-^^t of 102 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. Maine to the o()kleu gate of California" was made to shiver in sympathetic throes begetting horror and anger and the deeper passion of revenge. Already we have spoken of the means of inter- communication extending through all parts of the North and constituting a very important element in its present political process. Without the railroads rapidly bringing succor to Kansas, without the telegraph disseminating its news over the land in a day, without the press car- rying the words of the leaders to the millions, there could have been no successful conflict for a Free-State along the Missouri border. The instrumentalities of Civilization fought for Civil- ization. The South had not developed them, and could not develop them in a high degree. It is not too much to say that the railroad, the telegraph and the printing press enlisted as sol- diers and foujjjht on the side of free Kansas, giving her at last the victory. They had already unified the North years before the first shot fired at Sumter. Through them the most distant Northern States were closely bound together. Space could not separate where Time was so nearly obliterated. The Presidential campaign of 1856 pushed ;!:ese means of intercommunication to the 1 ghest intensity then possible; especially did it ' irll forth the powers of- the printed word in J'AE T I. — rEESIDENTIAL XOMINA TIOXS. 1 03 book, magazine, but above all, iu the newspaper. Though the storehouse of imagery be ransacked, we seek in vain to catch an adequate illustration for this peculiar intlueuce. We may go back to the Homeric Gods and call up Mars who, when hit and wounded before Troy, utters a cry like that of nine or ten thousand men — a divine meg- aphone. Or let us think of ^Mercury fleeting over sea and land with the message of the Gods — the Olympian telegraph, or perchance the tele- phone which is to come after the war. Or pass- ing from classic to more homely comparisons, let us conceive the newspaper press along the North- Atlantic coast as an enormous fog-horn or per- chance sounding-board throwing back upon the People and intensifying the deeds of wrong and the cries of agony transmitted to it from Washington and Kansas. Such is the process of reaching and stirring the Folk-Soul in its depths through these most modern instrumentalities, which have the power of associating men living a thousand miles apart, as if they dwelt in the limits of a single city, and listened within the range of the voice of their leader. Of all these far-sounding fog-horns the greatest and the loudest at this time was Greeley's Repub- lican Tribune, set up in New York City. It had a prodigious circulation throughout the Northern States, and became a kind of oracle which the farmer and the villager would consult every 104 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. week with longing expectation and with implicit faith. The whole family would read it, husband, wife, and children, with many an interjection of joy or wrath ; then it would be passed to the neighbor who would subject it to the same process. Particularly would it be sent to the Democratic neighbor, being used as the vehicle for missionary work in his case. While it might not make him a Republican, it would lead him to question the doings of his party in Kansas. When the breach came, he was ready to side with Douglas against the Administration. Greeley was at this time in the meridian of his powers and of his usefulness. He probably addressed every week half a million of readers, each of whom in most cases became a little center of propagation. His style, his mental horizon, and his political attitude were just suited to the time and his audience. Then he gave the key-note to the thousand smaller news- papers, which echoed and re-echoed his thoughts and his words, till they reached the remotest nooks of the North. The shops, the stores, the street corners of every village became the arena of local' disputants who would engage in a political tussle before an interested crowd of spectators. The South had for the most part no such ' :;ans and no such system of reveuberators. Tiie South did not read as a people, could not. PAR TI. — PRESIDENTIAL NOMINA TKjNS. 1 05 Education of the white masses was neglected and of the black masses was not permitted. Of course there were many highly educated men and women in the South. But the modern training of the Folk-Soul through the printed page was not theirs to any great extent; the People still got their political infornuition orally, or did without it. Such was their backward condition in this respect ; they depended on the spoken word and themomentaiT impression given to it by the personality of the speaker. They were not disciplined to read in their privacy the cold type, and weigh the significance of what was thus imparted ; they were exposed to the passions excited by the flaming orator without the cor- rective which comes from the silent perusal of his statements. Hence there is during this period a passionateness in word and act, a thoughtless impulsiveness, a headstrong violence which could not have come upon a nation of readers. They would hear but one side on the slavery question, and that was their own. For this reason many have held and still hold that the South was dragged igiu)rantly into a conflict by their leaders, who used them as means for ambition. The assault on Sumner by Brooks introduced a kind of Border "War into both Houses of Con- gress, of which the Senate was Democratic aiul Sontheru, and the House of Representatives Ee- 106 THE TEN YEABS' WAR. publicau and Northern, in majorit}'. The Kansas subterfuo;e again was made to do work. The Southerners in both Houses through the reports of their Committees pleaded a want of jurisdic- tion, and supported their views with legal techni- calities. Legality was put into the saddle and was forced to override justice. Eight is illegal or at least powerless, while wrong is legal, or at least powerful. Such seems now to be the method, or indeed the very consciousness of the South. The House of Keprescntatives gave a majority, but not the requisite two-thirds, for the expul- sion of Brooks. He resigned, went home, and was immediately re-elected by his South Carolina district, six votes only being recorded against him. But in eight months after his assault he was dead ; in a little over four months more, his uncle, Senator Butler, in vindication of whose honor be had made the assault, passed away. Meanwhile Sunmer was slowly recover- ing. The New England religious world saw in these events the hand of God ; from them many a minister took his text for a discourse concern- ing Divine Judgment wreaked upon the enemies of the Lord's chosen people. The assault of Bi'ooks matle Sumner a greater man than he ever was before or afterwards. It made him the hero of the hour; it reflected the action of the South in Kansas far more effectively than his speech, which was full of bitter taunts PART I— PRESIDENTIAL NOMINA TIONS. 1 7 and personalities repugnant to many a reader on his side. Sumner gives the impression of an athlete physically and mentally, vain of his prowess, with his nostrils distended, his hair thrown back, his herculean frame assuiiiino- the gladiatorial attitude. He was intrinsically a negative, critical spirit, not a builder, not a statesman, hardly institutional enough to take the oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. Later in his nassfinof and earn- ing at Lincohi the true character of the man appears as capable of little more than negations". A kind of Roman rhetorical athlete set down upon American soil in a time needing construc- tive power, he showed almost no response to a vast opportunity for State-building. That he receives conspicuous mention in History to-day, he largely owes to the cane of Brooks, who beat him most cruelly and outrageously into a mo- mentary world-historical prominence. 2. Kansas. Passing from the center to the border, we tind that the year 1856 produced a more plentiful crop of violence and irritation than ever. It was the time of the Third Inva- sion, already described. Tlie Judiciary was now dragged into the conflict and the P'ederal judge, Lecompte, declared the Free-State leaders, Rob- inson, Reeder, and Lane to be guilty of treason against the United States. This stroke was intended to deprive the Free-State men of guid- 108 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. auce, and undo their work tlirouii:li the aid of national troops. The outcome has been already seen in the famous Sack of Lawrence by the pro- shivery borderers acting under the coh>r of law. This took place May 21st, and soon the news started fresh pulsations of horror and wrath throuo^h the North. The result was a renewed determination to send men and money to Kansas. More emigrants began to pour in, ccnnino; down through Iowa when their passage through Missouri was stopped. From the East men came in colonies, such as were seen in the early settlement of New England ; from the West they emigrated mostly as individuals, rely- ing on their own personal will to meet any emergency. The South likewise sent some settlers, but they were few in comparison. For what slaveholder would take his slaves into a place where they were likely to be lost? Yet what is slavery without slaves? A Southern leader, our notable Stringfellow, called fran- tically for 2,000 slaves, }et, it is said, not 200 ever entered the Territory. It was then left to the poor white man of the^South to tight a battle not his own. Many of them refused when they saw the situation, and became Free-State men, not from love, but rather from hate of the poor darkey, who was to be wholly excluded from this paradisaical white man's land. But after the Sack of Lawrence a new and PART I — rUESWEYTIAL NOMINATIONS. 10. » iiioi'e dreadful clement begins to weave itsolf into tiie already complicated tangle of Kansas troubles. This was personal retaliation which appeared with all its horror in what is known as the Pottawatomie massacre l)y John Brown (see preceding p. 90) On May 24th five pro-slavery men were taken from their cabins in the night and murdered. It is now known, though it was for a long time denied, that this was the work of Brown, who through his border experience is getting ready for his national attempt at Har- per's Ferry. Thus Kansas seems in this period to be germinal in everything, to be the par- ticular which is to make itself universal every- where in the Nation. As far as bloodshed was concerned, the Pot- tawatomie butchery far surpassed the Sack of Lawrence, where only one person was accident- ally killed by a brick falling from the Free- State Hotel, and he was a pro-slavery man. But what a difference in the fame of the two events at the time! It is true that there rose in turn the cry of pain from the pro-slavery settlers, many of whom started back to the Missouri line in a hurry. But these people had no voice echoing through their own land in fearful reduplicated tones; the South pos- sessed no fog-horn on the Atlantic, only at most a little tin horn in comparison, which had small power of reverberation. It umst 110 THE TEN YE MIS' WAR. be confessed too that the Northern fog-horn was arranged solely for catching uj) and echo- ing the Free-State shriek of Kansas; it had no organ, yea no heart for throbbing in response to the pro-shivery shout of pain. Even the Re- publican members of the Congressional Inves- tigating Committee, Howard and Sherman, refused on a technicality to investigate the Pot- tawatomie Massacre, though they made a very voluminous report on the outrages of the Border Ruffians. So Congressman Oliver, the pro-slav- ery member of the Committee, investigates on his own account and submits a minority report, which, however, quite lacked the power of awakening any resonance from the press, though it is now recognized to be full of important facts about the awful butchery. For the huge North- ern fog-horn is so cunningly adjusted that only Free-State wind can make a noise through it, while the sighs and groans of the other side seem to be swallowed up in the mighty rever- berations of the Sack of Lawrence, or produce merely some faint flurry of inarticulate air- waves. Already we have seen Brown in a protest against the peace made in the Wakerusa affair. Through the study of the Old Testament he had become thoroughly Semitized in mind after the ancient Hebrew pattern ; even his face seemeil to 1)0 of a Semitic cut. With that long beard PAIiT T. — PRESIDENTIAL NOMIXATIONS. 1 1 1 of his aud lowering features, telliug the prophet's world-pain, his picture reminds us of Michel Angelo's Jeremiah. But now we must pass from these scenes of violence and blood on the border to the People as a whole, and see what effect Kansas has pro- duced upon them. In two Conventions they meet, divided according to party, and give ex- pression to their views in two political platforms, as well as in two nominations for the Presidency. Kansas is really the subject-matter of both Con- ventions, though looked at from diverse points of view. We observe that the rent on the bor- der between Kansas and Missouri has extended through the whole Union and divided it into two political parties, which are now to declare their principles and test their strength against each other by the peaceful ballot. Clear it is that Kansas has nationalized its conilict in a year. 3. Tlie Two Conventions. The Democratic Convention for nominating a Presidential candi- date assembled at Cincinnati June 2nd. The delegates had been chosen and many of them were on their way when a double blast, one out of the East and one out of the West, miet their ears, with a detonation which nmst have shaken them to the center. Within a fortnight before the Convention, Sumner had been assaulted and Lawrence had been sacked. The Republican newspaner press of the North was making the 112 THE TEN YEABS' WAR. air resound with maledictions upon the Adniiuit,- tration and its haughty Southern dictators, and particularly its truckling Northern Democratic supporters. It was clear from the start that no man from the South could be thought of for the Presidency; indeed, the Southerners had fwr years given up that ambition. Taylor was their last, and he rather turned away from their extreme views. Their present policy was to find a Northerner who would do their biddinsf. Two such men they had now had, Fillmore and Pierce. Fillmore had completely undone himself in his own section, and was cast aside; the same fate was evidently hanging over Pierce. Douglas also had lost the grand prize of his life through his part in the repeal of the Missouri Compro- mise, which was the beginning of all the Kansas woes. Both these Northerners, Pierce and Douglas, had been running a race for Southern support as the chief political boon. Meanwhile both of them lost the support of their own sec- tion, which was necessary for an election. Hence the South, for which they had sacrificed so much, threw both of them overboard at Cincinnati. For the Southerners knew that the Northern man who had shown himself most devoted to their cause, was justthe person whom they mustreject. They had to punish their best friends for such friendship, to scourge devotees with the keenest agony for being devoted. They were and had to PAE T L — PREi>ID EX TTA L NOMINA TIONS. 1 1 3 be the very instrumeut of retribution upon their own followers. They could not help playing the part of Satan in the Universe, who first tempts the sinner, and then inflicts uponhimthe penalty of sin. Pierce and Douglas, being human, must have had some such reflections as the foregoiug, and have felt the dagger of their own deeds turned back upon them by their own friends. But both suppress their emotions and accept the situation. Particularly Pierce as a harmless sort of a man, did not and could not harbor much retaliation, yet he must have had a little, per- chance. Certain it is that he was, after the Convention, not so vigorously Southern in his policy toward Kansas, though this was also dic- tated by the critical situation of his party in the coming election. But how is it with Douglas, so full of vitality, and so pugnacious, and so capable? He is now well aware that the South will never take him, as its candidate, perchance suspects him for just what he has done in its favor. One may well predict that, if the oppor- tunity presents, he will turn upon it and settle with it for what he deems in his heart to be its treachery, having received on the first ballot in the Convention only fourteen votes from the Slave-States. On the whole the Convention adopted a Douglas platform in affirming the repeal of the 8 114 THE TEY YEABS' WAR. Missouri Compromise, and the non-interference of Congress in the territories. But hud it ac- cepted at the same time, the doctrine of squat- ter sovereignty? To this question two answers could be construed, and out of this dualism is to unfold the party conflict of the future. The pivotal clause runs: " Resolved, that we recognize the right of the People of all the Ter- ritories, including Kansas and Nebraska, acting through the legally and fairly expressed will of a majority of actual residents, and whenever the number of their inhabitants justifies it, to form a Constitution with or without domestic slavery, and be admitted into the Union upon terms of perfect equality with the other States." The obvious meaning of this clause was violated by both Pierce and Buchanan, unless the Mis- sourians expressed "the will of a majority of actual residents" when they seized the legal machinery of the Territory by violence. Doug- las will defend the usurpation up to the time of the Convention, but after it he gets new light and changes his mind. The clause is not, when fairly interpreted, ambiguous, still out of it grew or continued to grow the Kansas collision between the wrong which is legal, and the right which is illegal — the one side appealing to legality (law and order), the other side to primal justice. The nominee of the Democratic Convention PABT I. — rUESIDESTIAL XOMl.V.iriOys. 1 15 was James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, which was regarded as the pivotal State, and which had never before furnished a President, and has never since, and seemingly will not soon again. It was through and through a politic nomina- tion of a politician who had made many an old Quaker of William Penn's State believe that he was a Free-Soilcr, and yet he had signed the Ostend manifesto in the interest of extending the slave-power to Cuba. He had been out of the country during the Kansas-Nebraska excite- ment, as Minister to England. He was getting old, but had ridden so dexterously two horses all his political life that his very expertness rec- ommended him in the present emergency of his party. It was rumored in the North that he was favorable to making Kansas a Free- State, But the South know their man, and took care to know that they knew him. In the North always the uncanny question kept rising : How will Buchanan, if elected, carry out the platform, especially that plank so deftly mor- ticed together of two such different sorts of wood? This question, however, did not seem to trouble the South very much, its security being born of knowledge and buttressed by pledges. A fortnight after the Dcnocratic Convention, came the turn of the Re[)ublicans to nominate a candidate for the Presidency. Who shall it be? . lin THE TEN YEARS' WAR. McLean and Cha.sc were mentioned, but had little chance from the t^tait. But how about Seward, the acknowledged leader and mouth-piece of the new party, on the whole the able.-?t public mania it, as far as could at present be seen? To this day Seward's attitude is problematical; it seems that he hardly knew himself whether he wanted the nomination or not. Of course he would have liked to be President, but he doubted whether he or any Republican could be elected in 1856. The question seems to have taken this shape in his mind: If I run and am beaten now, will it improve or injure my chances in 1860, when victory appears probable? It is said that the influence of his friend and chief adviser, Thurlow Weed, determined him to decline the present nomination in the interest of the future. At any rate Seward lost his opportunity. He refused the place of supreme generalship in his party's first great battle, thinking of his own success more than of the cause. It was a test of the dec})est fiber of his character, and could not help being so regarded by the thinking heads of his party. He abdicated leadership in the pres- ence of the enemy, when the importunate call came to him and he heard it, not once upon a time but for many months. Never can he be President now ; the nomination will never come to him again, begging; when he wants it, he can- PA Itr I. — PRESIDENTIAL NOMINA TIONS. 1 1 7 not get it, by the judgment of his own Deed confirmed by the Gods. Who, then, shall lead us? is the crushing question of that half -dazed Convention, finding itself leaderless in its grand emergency. It casts about, groping blindly for the wanted man, and clutches in the dark yet with all its might — an adventurer. For such a term is not too harsh for John C. Fremont, when we consider his career and character. Can mortal sagacitj' fathom the reason why such a Convention should choose such a man, the most unfit ever nomi- nated by a great party for the Presidency, if we consider the perilous crisis threatening the laud at that time? Yet the Convention has been de- clared by good authority to have contained a greater number of able, pure, conscientious men, to have had in it fewer self-seekers and ofiSce- seekers than any known Convention of any party before or since. The practical politician is at hand with his explanations : Too many idealists, theorists, dreamers, reformers, Heaveu-and- Earth regenerators ; too few of practical men like myself. We cannot accept this as an expla- nation in full of the phenomenon ; still it con- tains a grain, possibly two grains of truth. But looking back through fifty years we quite invol- untarily bend the knee and thank the Lord for His })rovidential mercy when we consider what might or rather must have happened, had Fre- 118 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. mout been elected President by the callow Ee- publican party, which showed itself then such a political greenhorn, so totally unable to govern the country. For after all, it is the successful Party which must rule, not so much the Presi- dent. PART I. — THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN. 119 n^be II^re0i^enttal Campaign. Each side through its Conveutiou has now pre- pared itself for the political struggle which in- volves the whole People. That little actual war on the border with its two opposing principles has widened out into a national contest, as yet peace- ful, between these same principles. The two Par- ties, Republican and Democratic, have substan- tially taken the place of the two protagonists of the Kansas combat, the Free-State men and the Slave-State men. One Party supports the Kan- sans, the other the Administration ; thus the rent on the border is cleaving the whole Nation. As the majority is suppo.sed to rule, each Party is seeking to win that majority constitutionally, although we hear again menaces of secession from the South, in case of the election of Fremont. More and more do we see that the little civil war of Kansas was the prediction and indeed the epitome of the Great Civil War, for which the alignment is already taking place in the poli- tical campaign of 1856. Kansas has nationalized itself in one year's time, and bids fair to univer- salize itself. Its sturdy pioneers are holding the advanced fortress of civilization with the valor of the old Marathonian soldiers, dimly conscious 120 THE TEX TEABS' WAR of doing not only u national, but :i world-histori- cal deed. Accordingly the first part of the pivotal year of 1856 may be regarded as having completed its round or cycle with the tsvo Conventions. Now follows the second part of the year, the Campaign, proper, with its multitutinous assem- blages of the folk listening to speeches and debates, with its noisy blowing of horns, par- ticularly of fog-horns, large and little, with that vigorous churning of the masses to make them realize their Constitution and Govern- ment — all of which a Presidential election brings and ought to l)ring. Still underneath this seemingly chaotic multiplicity of doings, there is an order, yes a process which is simple enough, and which has the same fundamental character as the one just given, though different in details. This underlying historic process is what we shall now briefly present. 1, Was]iingto)i. In view of the approaching Campaign, the Administration sought not only not to irritate but to calm the Kansas troubles, which had shown such a reverberating power in the North. It was freely said by Democrats that Buchanan could not be elected unless Kansas was pacified. Accordingly the President sent a new Governor of the Territorv, who was to bring peace at all hazards. Robinson, the Free-State leader, after four months' imprisonment, was PART I.- THE rUESIDENTIAL CAMPAWy. 121 released on bnil, and the legal ban of treason was removed by Jndge Lecoinpte himself, its originator, doubtless by orders from Washington. The new Governor, Geary, arrived in September and found work enough. Still he had remark- able success. Before the national election he could send forth the statement already cited, that peace reigned in Kansas. But it was only a temporary lull in the storm, though Geary was honest in his opinion, and showed himself both a courageous and a fair-minded man. More- over Judge Lecompte, called the Kansas Jeffries, was removed. President Pierce, having lost the grand prize, was minded to be not quite so sub- servient to his masters, who on their part had resolved to tr}^ a new tool, this one being quite broken to pieces in their service. But the most significant attempt to get rid of the Kansas burden was the bill introduced by the Georgia Senator, Robert Toombs, a few daj^s after the Republican Convention (June 24th). As we look at this bill now, it is eminently fair; in fact it seems to give up the Kansas fight, and to recognize the triumph of the Free-State prin- ciple. It provided for a census of the actual inhabitants who alone were to have the right to vote, and who were to choose delegates to a con- stitutional Convention. The whole was to be under the direction of five competent persons appointed by the President and confirmed by the 122 THE TEX YEABS' WAR. Senate. The Convention was to form a Consti- tution preparatory to the admission of Kansas as a State. There was to be clue protection asfainst illegal votino^ that there might be " an honest expression of the opinion of the present inhabitants." There is still a question as to the motives which lay behind this remarkable bill. It seems to indicate a change of Southern attitude, a sud- den unaccountable transformation. Was it sim- ply an electioneering document to take the wind out of the Eepublican sails? So the Republicans deemed it, and sought in every way to keep for themselves the magazine whence came their best campaign ammunition. It will never do to let the Democrats, and particularly these Southern- ers, crowd us out of our place and make Kansas a Free-State. The chief stress of attack was on the appointment of the five commissioners by the President, but this objection could have been easily obviated. The Toombs bill was a con- summate political move. If the Republicans accepted it, the Democrats got the credit; if they refused it, they would go before the country as wishing to keep Kansas in a stew, in order that her screams might benefit the party. Even Douglas was roused to sudden emulation, and in- troduced a new bill rivaling that of Toombs in its liberal provisions for the Free-State voters. But let us hear the outcome: the Senate passed PART I - THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN- 123 the Toombs bill by 33 to 12, the nays beinof Republican; the House, since it was Republican, never took the bill up. Accordingly we hear the charge by the Demo- cratic campaign speakers and newspapers that the Republicans did not wish to have the trouble settled, that they were not ready to stanch the wound of " Bleeding Kansas " but rather sought to make her bleed the more for political effect. Her shouts of torture, echoed from that enor- mous Atlantic fog-horn of journalism, and reiterated now from the thousand throats of political orators with sympathetic eloquence, were transmuted into a ceaseless roll of campaign thunder whose detonations quake us still in memory. No wonder that the Democrats wanted some offset to stay that overwhelming avalanche of the spoken and written word, which was sweeping everybody in the North off their feet. Moreover the same implement, that marvelous reduplicating printing-press, is to be employed by the other side ; so we learn that 20,000 copies of the Toombs bill were ordered by the Senate to be printed, for the purpose of being circu- lated as an electioneering document. But what a little piping sound that would make in com- parison with the Republican fog-horn, in whose sounding sea it was literally swallowed up! In these calm days the historical reader is in- clined to look upon the Toombs l)ill with favor. 124 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. Whateverbe liis [)()litic;il sjMiipiithies, he will cujo}^ t he complete discomfiture of the Republicaus, when their own thunderbolts were deftly removed from the party armory, and began to be turned against their former custodians. No wonder Seward and the rest were badly upset, crying as old Dennis once did in the theater: You have stolen my thunder. Such an unblushino; theft was enough to make grrave Senators turn red with indiojnatiou, and to cause the Republican Representatives to smother the illegitimate bantling at its very birth. And as to the deeper motives of the Southerners we are left in the dark; we cannot help suspecting them, though we believe that Toombs Avas honest when he drew the bill, even if afterwards he was led to change his mind. For after the Dred Scott decision, the Southern line of [)o]icy indicated by the bill was wholly altered, if indeed it was ever seriouslj^ intended by the leading spirits of the Oligarchy. 2. Kansas. Passing from the center again to the border, after the Sack of Lawrence we find that there was still trouble enough between the pro-slavery party and the Free-State men. Shannon, the Governor, fled from the Territory and left his authority in the hands of the Secretary, Daniel Woodson, who was of the violent pro-slavery type, and friendly to the Missourians. At once word was sent to the latter that their opportunity had come. PART I. — THE rUESIDEXTIAL CAMPAIGN. 125 For the town of Lawrence, after its Sack, had revived and again had begun to be a center of military activity on the part of the Free-State men. The vicinity of the phice was guarded by several small forts or block-houses held by its enemies for the purpose of cutting off supplies. Food became very scarce in the Free-State citadel, whose })eople sent out forces to capture these hostile places. Thus the siege of Lawrence began to be raised, and further warfare seemed to come to an end in a peace patched up by Governor Shannon. This was the conclusion of his gubernatorial career, being succeeded bv the above mentioned Secretary Woodson in the interim. The latter at once started the war anew by issuing a proclamation which declared the territory to be "in a state of open insurrec- tion and rebellion." He called upon all patriotic citizens to rally to the defense of " Law and Order," which was the cloak for afresh invasion, the fourth. The strongest and best equipped force which Missouri had ever sent out over tlie border, began to approach Lawrence about the middle of Sep- tember. Its members reached 2,500 men armed and organized, with infantry, cavalry and artil- lery. They had come not to vote but to tight, and their first objective point was Lawrence, and then Topeka. These two Free-State towns were to be wiped out complete! \', and the settlers 126 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. driven from the country. It was to be the grand final stroke of the border conflict. But some days before this (Sept. 10), the now Governor, Geary, had arrived. Lawrence wa.s in a helpless condition, though Robinson (who had been released) and others tried to put it into a state of defense. Word was sent to the Gov- ernor at Lecompton who at once ordered Federal troops to the scene. These arrived just in time to intercept the march of the Missourians toward the town. The Governor himself at once fol- lowed and called to a parley the leaders of the iinasion, of whom Atchison was the chief. The result was that the whole force turned back to Missouri, Atchison stating that "he (the Governor) promised all we wanted." The conduct of Atchison in these border forays causes many a reflection as to his motives. A case mio:ht be made out that he went along with the extremists in order to restrain them from excessive violence, perchance to thwart their policy. Stringfellow, on the other hand, was the bitter partisan and revolutionist who proposed to destroy his enemies without mercy, and with- out regard to existing autliority. The compai'i- sou again recurs that he was the John Brown on the Missouri side. Thus the Fourth Invasion, at first the most threatening of all, is completely nullified and undone, not by Robinson's phantom auti-gov- PART I. — THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN. 127 ernment, but by Geary's actiuil government. A great step forward for the Free-State men ; the illegal right is oetting legal, being enforced by constituted authority. The last Missouri in- vasion has taken place when it has to meet United States soldiers in its path. There re- mains, however, the fraudulent, but legitimated Territorial Government, with its legal body but illegal soul, having the letter of the Law with- out its spirit. Under these circumstances the auti-govern-ment has still a reason for not dying, and so keeps up its shadowy existence. What Geary said is not fully known, though there is no doubt he impressed upon the minds of those leaders the political effect of another Sack of Lawrence in the heat of a dubious Presidential contest. He must have threatened them with his own personal opposition as well as that of the Administration. Then he had at his back a troop of United States soldiers, the most convincing argument of all. At once the Territory became, if not quiet, at least quiescent, and Geary could report that he had brought peace to Kansas, at present sorely needed for the Democratic campaign. The Re- publican orators could now be partially answered, and Lawrence, instead of sending shrieks of pain for reverberation through the mighty meg- a})hone, gave forth joyful cries of deliverance, which sounded more joyful to Democrats than 128 THE TEN YEARS' WAU. to Eepublicans. But it was a narrow escape. As sure as the sun rises to-morrow, if those Missourians eater and sack Lawrence again, Fremont is elected. Let the United States dragoons ride at a gaHop down the road from Lecompton, and the foot-soldiers fol- low at double-quick, to intercept the invaders now deploying in sight of the seemingly doomed town. And thou, O Geary, bestir thyself with all dispatch toward the same point, for the course of America's History, perchance of all History, turns on the delay of a day, possibly of an hour. Fremont elected ! Eide, ride with unchecked rein, in obedience to a mightier command than thou hast ever heard before, since the coming President of the United States is to be chosen by thee, yes by. thee, in the next few hours. So Geary makes his ride to Lawrence, under the very pressure and urgency of the World- Spirit, whose behest he is fulfilling. Buchanan can now be elected President, and the Great War be deferred another four years. 3. The Country. We may next glance at the third item in the present movement along with Washington and Kansas, namely the Country as a whole. This- is now undergoing the turmoil of a Presidential campaign, which echoes in an enormous volume of words the strife in Kansas. The two Conventions, as PAET I. — THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN. 129 already set forth, have Dominated the candidates upon their respective phitforms. The campaign was profoundly educational and ultimately was based upon an interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Did this give the power to Congress to control Slavery in the Territories? The affirmative was maintained by the RepubHcans. The People were thus thrown back to reflect upon their organic law. The formulated ex[M-ession of what made them a Nation must not only be studied and explained, but unfolded into its consequences. Two different interpretations of the Constitution grappled and struggled for the possession of the future. The one as- serted that this genetic law of the Federal Union made it the generator of Free-States, the other of Slave-States as well, if not alto- gether. The prodio-ious advantage of the Northern orator was that he could appeal to the undying passion of freedom in the soul of his hearers. Vague enough was such feeling, but it was very real and very powerful. A famous philosopher has said that the great goal of History, of the total historic movement of the race, is the realization of freedom. The pursuit of this end is what has united all mankind from the beginning, and thus made humanity a unit. The Republican speakers and writers could justly appeal to the deepest [)assi()n of the human heart. 9 130 THE TEN YEABS' WAU. The Democrats hud to ai)ol()gize, to scoff at the freedoiu-shriekers, and to satirize the ex- travag-ances of iadividuals. Then came that pathetic theme of Bleeding Kansas, beaten, tor- tured, woe-hiden in the cause of freedom. The opposition were put on the defensive, could only excuse or deny the facts, or promise better things when the new Administration came into power, of which an earnest might already be seen in the success of Governor Geary. This was, however, a losing game unless the Democrats could find some positive ground-theme for the support of which they could appeal to the People. Fortunately for themselves, they laid hold of a subject which would stir the heart of the People quite as deeply as the note of freedom. This was the love of the Union. Buchanan in his letter of acceptance gave his adhesion to the Kansas policy of Douglas and Pierce ; but he also put special stress upon the Unionism of the Democratic party in contrast with the sectional- ism of the Republicans. Both their candidates for President and Vice-President were from the Free-States. There was in the South no Repub- lican vote; this la}' wholly north of Mason and Dixon's line. Since the Free-States had 176 votes in the electoral College and the Slave States but 121 — nearlv the ratio of 3 to 2 — thecharge lay near that the Republicans were a sectional party, from which fact the inference was drawn PAirr I — THE PUESIDEXTIAL CAMPAIGN. 131 that their supremacy endaugered the Uiiiou. This was reinforced by the open threats of disunion on the part of leading Southern- ers in the case of Fremont's election. One might well ask, which side contained the dis- unionists in view of such menaces? Still the appeal to love of the Union in the hearts of the People was very effective, and prob- ably decided the election. Once more the Northerners in sufficient numbers paid heed to these threats, but the next time they will not listen. The experience, however, will not be thrown away, and the logic will be relentlessly drawn: if the South threatens disunion when it cannot have its own way, being in the minoritv, then they are the disunionists. This is what the coming four years are to prove. The election of President by the legal majority is now fore- shadowed to end in secession. Already in 1856 the South mentally was getting ready to go out of the Union. Such was, however, the result of the conflict in Kansas. That small local border between it and Missouri running longitudinally has now been extended into a dividing line from the "V^'est to the Atlantic, splitting open the Union between North and South which begins to gape wide all along Mason and Dixon'sline. Still the rent will seem to close after the election. The love of the Union, however, now so strongly inculcated l)y 132 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. the Democrats, will have its true effect when four years hence it will rise in the North with a mighty outburst against the Southern disunionists, who are thus hel[)ingforge thunderbolts against them- selves for future use. Now we may see that the Democratic party, especially in the North, re- ceives a great training in Unionism through the campaign for Buchanan — a training which will bear fruit in 18G1. The Democratic platform and speakers depre- cated the agitation of the slavery question. The Southerners must be let alone in their extension of black servitude. The ever reduplicating voice of the press was indeed their chief foe, to whom they could only cry stop ! They had no adequate means for counteracting it; they could not get at the Northern megaphone, and could not con- struct one of their own. So it kept sounding in their faces and drowning their voices. Still the People of the North were not yet sufficiently united to defeat the Southerners. Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the East, Indiana and Illinois ill the West, and California on the Pacific, all of them Free-States, joined with the sum total of Slave-States, except Maryland which voted for Fillmore, to elect Buchanan, who received 174 electoral votes to Fremont's 114. A large major- ity of the Northern States chose the Republican candidate, yet each had a decided Democratic minority, so that Buchanan in the popular vote of PAUT I. — THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN. 133 the Free-Stiites fell behind Fremont a little more than 100,000. On the other hand there was no Republican minority in the South except a hand- ful inthe Border States, not reaching 1,200 votes in 1856 all told. Very distincth' does the Presi- dential election of 1856 show a disunited North against a united South upon the great question of the time : Shall the Union continue to be Slave- State producing? Not yet ready is even the Northern Folk-Soul to face the responsibilities of victory. Fremont is not the man, and the Repub- lican party is too inexperienced for political rule. 134 THE TEN YEARS' WAB, ©utlooft. The Republican party which cast such an aston- ishing vote in 1856, was barely one year old, and must be sent to school. Young and vigorous as a hickory sapling, it is very verdant and altogether too sappy ; the infant, though a Hercules, must be put under severe training, in order to conquer the Giants of Darkness at the next great contest. Four years more this new schooling must last, till the Folk-Soul graduate fully prepared for its work. Not yet sufficiently indurated and indoc- trinated in its principles is the North, which has still to take up into its very being that the Union must indeed be preserved, but shall produce no more Slave-States. The work of Kansas is, then, not yet finished ; her throes must again be roused from Washington in a final supreme effort to make hers a polity enslaved, in opposition to her des- perate struggles. So the North has to undergo the discipline of defeat, painful but salutary. It has not been united upon the great duty of the Age ; it has not obeyed fully the behest of the World-Spirit. Olympian Zeus, or his modern representative in A nerica, declares to the Northern Folk-Soul now .' jnmoned into his presence and given an out- lo(!k upon the far vaster coming })lun in his PART I. — OUTLOOK. 135 bosom: <'Not only must you stop producing Slave-States, you must now think of undoing slavery in the new, and then in the old Slave- States, if you wish to win the favor of the Gods." Replies the American Folk-Soul: "I cannot touch slavery in the States where it is already established by law." Whereupon Zeus frowning answers: "Then I shall turn against you, and scourge you, and humiliate you with defeat, till you do fulfill the decree sent from above." Such is the discipline of defeat often recorded in that old Greek as well as in our American Iliad, the peculiar training from the hand of Zeus himself, meted out even to the people whom he favors till they do the right thing. And by way of counterpart it must be added that the South also is in trainins; throu2:h these events; indeed she shows herself trained already to a fixed purpose by her long possession of national power. We have to believe that she thinks she must rule in any case, rule by violence if necessary; though now clearly a minority, she deems that the government of the Nation is hers by a kind of hereditary right. She will use the Law as long as she can; but when she can no longer administer it in her own interest, she will defy it and revolt. In Kansas we have seen how she employs legal forms to bolster her supremacy against the majority. Really this has been her study for many years loG THE TEN YEABiS' WAB. ill ruling IheNaliuii, in fact ever since the ISOrlli began to outstrip her in numbers and wealth. We can now see that she put altogether too great faith, lawyer that she was, in formal legality, paying too little regard to the spirit of the Law, to that elemental justice which is the original of all Laws and gives to them even their forms. So the South as well as the North, in this bitter Kansas testing of souls, shows her character and her deepest consciousness, giving also suggestive glimpses of what she will do in the future. But the year 1856 has given to the South another quadrennial lease of power, though with many a sharp admonition, which she would do well to heed. The cry of an endangered Union, raised by her and her supporters, has been listened to by a sufficient number of Northern States to keep her still in her national supremacy. But is she really honest in her anxiety about the Union, or is she merely or mainly threatening? That is what she is now given an opportunity to prove. The sincerity of her love for the Union is already questioned just through her menaces. She must expect that the real lovers of the Union will the next time reply : The Union cannot let itself be threatened, particularly by its friends. CHAPTER III. THE STRUGGLE RE- NEWED. (1857-8.) The peace which Geary brought to Kansas in 185(5, is destiHed to turn out delusive. Invasion from Missouri has indeed shown itself unsuc- cessful so often, that it is given up, at least on its large scale; but another method has been excogitated at Washington, which is to renew the old struggle bv applying fresh instruments of torture to the })eople of Kansas that they be compelled to adopt slavery. This is essentially a return to the beginning of the contest in 1855, all of which has to be fought over again. There was at first a cessation of political excitement in the North after the election, as it was generally thought that Buchanan would give to Kansas self-government, which of course meant that she would be a Free-State. And such was doubtless Buchanan's early purpose. But when he was fairly launched on the sea of (137) 138 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. Washington pro-slavery influeucc, he began to change. Moreover that duahsm in the Demo- cratic pUitform starts to opening wider and wider, and he has to take sides. He, weak in himself, is borne forward by the stronger current of his party. In his inauguration address, the President alludes to a judicial decision soon to be given, which would settle "the whole territorial question upon the principle of popular sovereignty." Thus Buchanan knew beforehand of the Dred Scott decision, and of its interpretation of popu- lar sovereignty. Did he have any hand in bring- ing about that decision? Seward and Lincoln thought so ; but in view of his character the probability is that he simply accepted the scheme which the Southerners had forged in their own inner circle. And now we come to the great new move of the slave-power to destroy the Republican party and to keep their domination against the ever- increasing majority of the North, and specially to make Kansas a Slave-State. The National Judiciary is to be dragged into the political con- flict, as the Territorial Judiciar}' of Kansas had already been made to protect and to assist the Missouri invaders. Two days after Buchanan's inauguration Taney, the Chief Justice, gave the opinion of the majority of the Supreme Court in the case of the neo;ro Dred Scott. Without PART L— THE STRUGGLE RENEWED. 139 going into the many collateral points of this famous decision, we shall select the following : (1) There is no difference, according to the Constitution, between slave property and any other kind of property; both kinds are entitled to the same protection. Still the Constitution, (we may here interpolate) did make a distinc- tion, when it never required the return of escaped horses and cattle, but did require the rendition of a person held to service. (2) A free negro whose ancestor was a slave is not a citizen within the meaning of the Constitution and cannot sue in the United States Courts. (3) The Missouri Compromise of 1820 is un- constitutional. Congress having no power to pass it. (4) The Declaration of Independence re- ceives also judicial interpretation. The famous clause " that all men are created equal," was not intended to apply to " the enslaved African race." Two members of the Court dissented, one of whom, Judge B. R. Curtis, made himself for a time the protagonist of freedom, and turned the Court against itself, causing it to show the dual- ism of the time. Curtis proved historically that in a number of States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution negroes were not only citi- zens, but were voters. The Judge then traversed the opinion that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional by citing eight distinct instances 140 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. in which Congress excluded Slavery from the Territories, and six distinct instances in which Congress maintained Slavery in the Territories. He also gave it as his opmion that the Fathers were not liable " to the reproach of inconsistency when they declared that all men are created equal;" they did not intend to except the black man. Another effective blow: " Slavery being contrary to natural right, is created only by municipal law." This may be deemed a re affirmation of Lord Mansfield's famous doctrine that when a slave sets foot on the soil of En- gland, he is free, there being no municipal law supporting slavery. On the other hand it was a true inference from Taney's decision that in the Union slavery existed in every State ; thus it was made national. When a slave set foot in a Free- State of the Union, it became logically a Slave- State. On this side, however, the South, as the sup- porter of State Rights, overstepped itself, for the individual State could no longer constitution- ally exclude slavery. This inference was not explicitly drawn by Taney, but remained for the future, enough having been done for once. But we shall see Lincoln drawing it and calling it in advance the second Dred Scott decision. Thus the nationalization of slavery in accord with the doctrine of Calhoun had been declared to be the highest law of land. Still that utterance PAR r I.— THE S TB UG GLE BENE WED. 1 4 ! revealed the deepest kind of a rent in the Supreme Court itself. A far weightier inference is that the Republican party has been decided by the highest Tribunal to be unconstitutional. What is to be done? Obc}' the hnv and let Slavery take all, or is the alter- native revolution? The new problem set many a Northern head to thinking. At this point the words of Ju(lo;e Curtis aoain furnished lio;ht. The decision of " this or any court is not bind- ing when expressed on a question not legitimately before it." The negro's citizenship, as well as the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise were alien matters dragged in by extra-judicial considerations. Properly then, nothing has been decided, and the case should be dismissed " for want of jurisdiction." Again the reverberation of the press began making a noise equal to that of the Presidential campaign. The legal aspects of the decision were discussed and explained to the People, who had now to go to school again to the Constitu- tion, which is to be overhauled in the popular mind from its very foundation. This decision so ominous, can it not be changed? The answer of Lincoln was that the Supreme Court had often reversed itself and can do so again. But what about this Constitution itself — who made it? At the very beginning of it the People could not help finding this clause: " We, the People, do 142 THE TEN YEABS' WAR. ordain aud establish this Constitution." More- over a special Article (the Fiftli) was found which prescribed the manner of changing the Constitution itself. So the People begin their training, not merely toward reversing the deci- sion, but transforming the Court which made it, yea toward transforming the Constitution itself. Such a discipline was initiated by the Dred Scott case; it made the People more and more legal-minded through the study of their organic law. It compelled the Folk-Soul to take back into itself the Constitution, which once sprang from it, and to begin making this over in accord with the new spirit. It has been brought to deny that the negro is a human being with rights which can be vindicated by the established law. If that is the case, the whole Constitution must be re-committed to the People whence it came, and be wrought over and at least be amended in the defective portions. Such is the outlook upon the coming years, for this work cannot be done in a hurry. In a little more than a decade, however, the Dred Scott decision will be com- pletely reversed by the People (Amendments XIII and XIV), and the Constitution trans- formed according to the Constitution. The Dred Scott decision was a two-edged weapon, which could certainly be turned ui)on its friends. If it undid the Republican party, it assailed equally the basis of the Popular Sover- PART I.— THE STRUGGLE RENEWED. 143 eionty doctrine of Douglas, The People of a Territory or its legislature had uo right to keep out the shiveholder \yith his property, and let in the farmer with his horses and cattle; that would destroy the eqality of the States in the common domain of the Union. But the decision went further: it assailed the Southern doctrine of State-Rights, since any State by anti-slavery legislation would disturb that same equality. Possibly, however, State-Rights were only for the South, and not for the North. Judge Taney had a high view of his office, so high that he deemed that the World's His- tory was controlled by the decision of the Su- preme Court. But it is not the Supreme Tri- bunal of the Ages, still less is it the Supreme Tribunal of the United States. The People created it, and ultimately every decision must be referred back to them for confirmation, and perchance the Court itself may have to be referred back and be re-established. Taney's delusion belonged to his class and his section ; both refused to see the trend of the Age and sought to stop the movement by a Pope's bull against a comet. In its deepest tendency the decision nullifies itself, destroying instead of supporting Slavery, undermining in- stead of bolstering State-Rights. In the Court itself this self-nullification was manifested strongly in the dissenting opinion of Curtis, 144 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. which traversed the jadgineiit of the Chief Jus- tice at every leadiug point, and even denied the Court's jurisdiction in the case as presented. Even as to hiw, the consensus of the best lawyers to-day seems to be that Curtis was right and Taney wrong. Douglas accepted the Dred Scott decision with an air of triumph, since it vindicated his repeal of the Missouri Compromise, for which so much ob- loquy had been poured upon him by the North. It now turns out, so he declares, that he had simply done away with an enactment unconsti- tutional from the beginning. But how was he going to reconcile his Popular Sovereignty with the decision? The right of the slaveholder to his negroes holds good in the Territories, says he, but it is worthless unless protected by the local legislature and its police regulations. These depend on the will of the people. This view really nullifies the decision and makes a distinc- tion between slave property and other property. Thus Douglas brings to the surface the dualism inherent in his repeal of the Missouri Com- promise, since he asserts its two conflicting sides, sovereignty of the People of the Territory and equality of the States. Curiously it may be said of Douglas that his negative was affirmed by the Supreme Court, but his affirmative was negated. The last is what will bring him into opposition with the South and split the Democratic partv. PAET I. — THE STRUGGLE BENE WED. 145 The split lay already slumbering, though unborn, in the Kansas-Nebraska bill of Douglas (1854), a clause of which declares that the people of Kansas and Nebraska should be left ''perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.'^ The italicized words contain the coming trouble. To be "subject to the Constitution" is to be subject to the interpretation of it by the Supreme Court, which might not permit the People to exclude slavery, or to be "perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way." This was the pivotal fact upon which the Northern Democrats thought one way and the Southern Democrats thought the opposite way. It is said that there was an agreement in caucus between the two sides to leave the interpretation of the phrase " subject to the Constitution" in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, to the Supreme Court, which has now (in 1857) rendered its decision hostile directly to the People's right of excluding slavery from the Territories, and indirectly to the People's right of excludino; it from the Free-States. This really annihilated the People as institution- maker, the fundamental trait of the American. Here it was that Douglas missed another great opportunity, perhaps the greatest of his life. Ver}^ distinctly at this point appears a bridge 10 146 THE TEN- YEABS' WAR. over which he could have passed to the leader- ship of the North, and have carried a large portion of his party in the Free-States along with him. Many of his party soon went without him. But DougUis lagged behind the Sprit of his Age, he did not commune deeply with the Folk- Soul of his Nation and sympathize with its aspirations. But now, just now steps forward the man who is to take the place which he passes by, Abraham Lincoln, whose form begins to rise prominently out of the obscurity of his humble life. In a speech at Springfield, Illinois (June 26th, 1857), he sets forth the grounds and also the limits of opposition to the Dred Scott decision. Douglas put himself out of tune with his time by being indifferent whether slavery were voted up or down in Kansas. He dwelt upon the in- feriority of the negro, with the implied conclusion that the iuferior race ought to be enslaved. This smote in the face the trend of the North and of the civilized World. The Judgment of the Tri- bunal of the Ages could already be heard that the backward race was no longer to be enslaved by the superior race, even if this had been the method of the past. Here again Lincoln far more truly represented his epoch. Such was the Dred Scott decision whose first and most direct effect was to renew the Kansas struggle. It seemed as if the field must all be PATIT I.— THE STRUGGLE RENEWED. 147 fought over again, the people being suddenly thrown back to the beginning of the conflict in 1855. Though the method of attack was different, it was not less dangerous. Yet the Kansans had no notion of giving up the contest. The task which the World-Spirit has imposed upon them is still untinished ; they have to vindicate their Free-State against all the power open and hidden, which slavery, though it be in authority, can summon against them. Kansas continues to be the protagonist of the new Union as producing Free-States only. The result is, she will again have to suffer. The historic process underlying the occurrences of this year (1857-8) will, therefore, be the same as before. We shall again see the irrita- tion coming from Washington under the new Administration; then the suffering and resist- ance of Kansas ; finally the People of the North responding sympathetically, and ruminating upon the rising crisis. 148 THE TEN YEARS' WAE. Masbington, The first year aud some months of Buchauaii's Administration are still occupied with Kansas, whose troubles and duties do not end with the Presidential election or with the Dred Scott decision. The pro-slavery party centering at Washington evolves a new insidious scheme for making Kansas a Slave-State. This scheme is known as the Lecompton Constitution which was to take the place of the Missouri Invasion, the latter having completely failed in its purpose. A day (June 15th, 1857) had been appointed by the Territorial Legislature to elect delegates of a Convention for making a Constitution. The Free-State men refused to participate in this elec- tion on account of its unfairness as well as its fraudulent source. Pro-slavery men were of course chosen, and they made a pro-slavery Constitution. This was the instrument which was now to be employed, particularly at Wash- ington to destroj'^ the freedom of Kansas. There is no doubt that this scheme was first suggested by the success of Robinson's anti- government with its Topeka Constitution. The present period of Kansas history is, therefore, the battle of the two Constitutions, which re- peats in a new form the same old conflict between PART I.- Washington: 149 the right which is formally illegal and the wrong which is foj'mally legal. Somewhat more than a year, from Buchanan's beginniugs till August 2nd, 1858, this war between the two constitu- tional phantoms lasted, with many fluctuations. Finally the people of Kansas got the chance to vote upon the Lecompton Constitution fairly and legally, when they slew it with such an overwhelming majority that not only it but the whole Kansas strife came to an end. And with this end is coupled another end: Kansas con- cludes her most important chapter, and her events drop back into the common stream of local history ; her contributions to the World's History cease in a decidedly abrupt finale. Washington, the center of the country, be- comes now the center of irritation for the Peo- ple directly, as well as for Kansas. From the national Capitol goes forth the decision which means the nationalization of slavery. The Folk- Soul is not so much stirred to action as to reflec- tion; there is not the incentive of a political contest, but the appeal to the deepest instinct of human nature as well as to reason. The po- litical literature changes; there is an enormous distribution of the decisions of the Supreme Judges, as well as of the Constitution and of the Declaration of Independence. These form the text of the speeches, articles, dissertations of the 150 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. time. Not to Will but to Intellect is the word now spoken, as well as to Feeling. In consequence of the Dred Scott decision, the Southern party takes new hope of making Kansas a Slave-State. Both Houses of Congress are democratic. All the branches of the General Gov- ernment, executive, legislative, and judicial are in the one party's hands. To be sure, the North- ern democrats, even the President, had won their places l5y holding out the belief that Kan- sas would be a Free-State, in accord with the wishes of its inhabitants. Hence arose an omi- nous division : the Southerners formed an inner circle, a party to control the party, of which Jefferson Davis, now a Senator from Mississippi, was the leading spirit. In this way was laid the foundation for a division in the governing party, indeed for several divisions, since each divison will again divide, this being the ten- dency during Buchanan's wliole administra- tion. In other words, the spirit of secession was working in the«Democratic party long before actual secession. It is now generally considered that this inner circle of Southerners at Washington became the government and determined its policy, without paying much regard to Buchanan. In fact, it seems to have acted repeatedly in administrative measures without his knowledge. At least two members of his Cabinet (Cobb and Thompson), PARTI. — WASHINGTON. 151 and perhaps more, belonged to this cabal, usurping his place when his total lack of will- power became manifest, and not even caring to inform him in certain cases what his own Ad- ministration had done or had resolved to do. Hence came the contradictions between what Buchanan said and what the Government act- ually did during this year, especially in its earlier portion. The President repeated again and again that the people of Kansas should have a fair vote upon the Lecompton Constitution ; but this was just what the Administration bent every effort to thwart. The President was for Gov- ernor Walker, the Administration was against him. Thus the President and his Administra- tion moved in two quite different spheres. The relation of Buchanan to this governing cabal necessarily fluctuated. He could not help finding out that things had been done in his name and by his authority without even his cog- nizance. What would he do? Submit to such proceedings and even sanction them, or make some kind of a stand? Let us note the leading stages of his conduct in regard to this matter. 1. We may take the first stage to be when Buchanan urges Walker to accept the Governor- ship of Kansas, and agrees to Walker's condi- tion, namely, an honest ballot for her people. At the same time the cabal must have been at work with the opposite purpose. For we can- 152 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. not think that Buchanan was lying all this while and trying to deceive Walker. Thus the dis- tinction between the President as talking figure- head and the real though secret Administration develops itself, till the cabal is ready to force the President to adopt its policy in Kansas. 2. When this took place, or what were the means used, it is not easy to tell. To Forney Buchanan once said that the Southerners threat- ened him with a dissolution of the Union unless he abandoned Walker and free Kansas. At any rate he became the mouth-piece of the cabal in its most extravagant pretensions. Already before the meeting of Congress in December, 1857, it had been noised abroad that the Presi- dent favored the Lecompton scheme. But on February 2nd, 1858, he completed his act of self- stultification by sending the Lecompton Con- stitution to Congress, and with it a message in which he declares that slavery exists in Kansas as much as in South Carolina or Georgia, a fact which has been settled by " the highest judicial tribunal known to our laws. " Unless this were so, "the equality of the sovereign States com- posing the Union would be violated. " Further- more this equality demands that Kansas be a Slave-State, since that will restore the equilib- rium between North and Scuth, there being now one more Free-State than Slave-State. All of which means that the South will not surrender PABTI. — WASHINGTON. 153 its domination over the Federal Union, even though far outstripped by the North. But this act of Buchanan and the cabal brings about the most important occurrence of the pe- riod : the split in the Democratic party led by Douglas. The division bet^^een South and North passing from Kansas to Washington, cuts in twain the very support of Buchanan. The rup- ture will not only last but increase, determining the next Presidential election and contributing powerfully to bring on the Great War. 3. The Lecompton scheme was defeated in the House of Representatives in spite of the efforts of the Administration. But a final attempt to foist it upon Kansas was made in a bill intro- duced by William E. English, a Democratic member of the House from Indiana. This measure, known popularly as the Bill-English bill, proposed to submit the Lecompton Constitution to another vote of the people of Kansas ; if they adopted it, they were to receive Statehood at once by proclamation of the President, and in addition a hirge tract of government land. If they rejected it, they were to remain a Territory without the gift of the land. Such was the alluring bribe held out by the Congress of the United States. It is amusing to this day to see with what indignation Kansas rejected the bribe. 154 THE TEN YEARS' WAE. At this poiat we shall pass from the Center to the Border, and observe the movement of the events of this first year of Buchanan, in which starts afresh the old irritation, though not in the old way. Still the President at first seems to have cherished a good intention toward Kansas, which he brought from his Northern home. He selected two excellent men for the leading offices — Walker of Alabama for Gov- ernor and Stanton of Tennessee for Secretary. Both were from Slave-States and were pro- slavery in sentiment; it may be added that they went to Kan-jas with the prejudice of their section and their party against the Free-State people of the Territory. About these they had a great lesson to learn, and a still greater one to learn about their own people. The new Governor was a fair-minded man and proposed to secure to the Territory an honest vote of its inhabitants. He did not wish to take the position; already he could count three political graves of Kansas Governors since 1855, not to speak of one acting Governor officially beheaded. It was an uncanny, grew- some business to enter and orovern in such a gul)ernatorial graveyard. Nor did his wife waut PART I. — KANSA S. 155 him to go. But his and her scruples were finally overcome through the personal inter- cession of both Buchanan and Douglas. 1. Walker reached Kansas May 26th, 1857. He saw a large emigration pouring in from the Free States, each man both a settler and a fighter. But he saw few, if any slave-holders coming with their slaves into the Territory ; not two hundred .slaves could be counted. Quite a number of non-slave-holding Southerners were arriving, but they had a pronounced tendency to turn Free-State men, since not a few of them had left the South because of slavery. Most of these men were Democrats, and they formed a decided majority of their party in the Terri- tory. Walker, looking over the situation, esti- mated the Free-State Democrats at 9,000, the Eepublicans at 8,000, pro-slavery Democrats at 6500, pro-slavery Know-Nothings at 500 — 17,000 Free-State men to 7,000 on the other side. This settled the future of I^ansas in Walker's opinion: it would be a Free-State. Equally cer- tain was the fact that it was decidedly democratic. Walker, as partisan, sought to reconcile the two Democratic factions on the basis of a Free-State policy. Herein is the point at which he began to collide with the inner circle at Washington, who cared nothing for the Democratic party ex- cept as a tool of slaver}^ A scheme for a constitutional convention had 156 THE TEN YEABS' WAB. been framed by the preceding territorial legisla- ture. The election (already alluded to) took place June 15th but was shunned by the Free-State men, less than one-fourth of the registered voters par- ticipated. The result was the Lecompton Con- vention with its Constitution. Thus Kansas had two Constitutions before it, the Topeka and the Lecompton. From now on we witness the strife of the Constitutions. Again the old trouble ap- pears: the one had the formal right, the legality, while the other had the People with it, but was informal, even illegal. Kansas seems unable to get out of that ever-recurring see-saw between the right which is unlawful and the wrons^ which is lawful. Indeed we may say that this is the conflict going on throughout the whole nation. It was the spiritual conflict brought to conscious- ness with the keenest intensity by the Dred Scott decision; slavery is legal but wrong, anti- slavery is illegal but right. Which principle is to be obeyed: Conscience or the Constitution? Which shall rule the man, the moral or the insti- tutional? Both ought to rule him, each in its sphere harmoniously guiding him. Yet they have become not only discordant but bitterly antagonistic, and refuse to co-operate making every man's soul the arena of strife. The Invasion of Missourians being at an end, the inner circle at Washington saw a way of using the Lecompton Convention with its Con- PAR TI. — KANSA S. 157 stitution as the chief meaus in a new cani})aign for Southern domination. It was known that if this Constitution were submitted to the People, it would be rejected by an overwhelming majority. Hence it was not submitted as a whole. Still the voter had the alternative of declaring, " with " or " without slavery." But the Constitution " without slavery " had in it the f(^llowing state- ment: the property in shwes is as inviolable as any other kind of property, and the owner of slaves has the same right to them everywhere and of course in Kansas. Again the Free-State men abstained from voting (Dec. 21). The Consti- tution with Slavery carried b}- 6,226, of which nearly one-half were shown to be fraudulent. Meanwhile the Free-State men succeeded in get- ting another ballot upon the Constitution as a whole (Jan. 4, 1858) when more than t(m thou- sand votes were cast against the Lecomptou instru- ment. Both elections were investigated, and the investigation brought out even more emphatically the overwhelming sentiment of the Territor}^ against slavery. Of course this second ballot completely thwarted the inner circle at Washing- ton, and brought about the removal of acting- Governor Stanton who had permitted it to take place. This act of Stanton's, with what led up to it, forms the turning-point in the destiny of Kansas, and deserves special consideration. 2. Many a sign indicates that we have come 158 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. to the bes:inniuff of the end of thi8 Kansas con- flict. Its character has been often noted: the forms of Law have been seized by the pro- shivery party, and employed to put down tlic Will of the People. Thus the conflict has been concisely stated as that between the right which was illegal and the wrong which was legal, each side taking shape in a ruling power. Hence a double authority arose in Kansas, which we have described as the government and the anti-government, or more fully, as the real gov- ernment which is the phantom, and the phantom government which is the reality. Between these two shapes has been the struggle, hitherto without victory on either side; the real government has never been able to get hold of its phantom which is indeed its spirit, and the phantom government has never been able to make itself real, to clothe itself with the forms of Law, which have been persistently purloined by the other side. Thus the Free-State men have been compelled to see and to follow and to be governed by a Spirit without any Body, which Spirit the Slave-State men have pursued and fought, seeking to run it through or shoot it or take it prisoner, all to no purpose. Each is rightly the counterpart of the other, and both belong together ; but each as if bewitched, rejects the other with scorn, yea with downright battle. PART I. — KANSAS. 159 and so they remain not only separated but com- pletely alienated and combatting each other. Into this struggle, however, a change is now to come through two acts of the United States officials. October 5th, 1857, a new Territorial Legislature was to be elected to succeed that old one elected two years before by the Missouri invaders. The Free-State men were persuaded to take part in it by Governf)r Walker, who promised a fair election, and who honestly fulfilled his promise by rejecting two gross frauds perpetrated by the pro-slavery party. The result was a Territorial Legislature with a decided majority of Free-State men who were now legal!]/ chosen, and who held their certifi- cates of election from the constituted authorities. Thus the Missouri-elected Legislature vanishes with its mere legal form, and the Will of the People has at last gotten its body in the Law. Is it not plain that Right, so long flitting about bodiless like an unhappy ghost on the plains of Kansas, has reached its first stage of legal incarnation? The jubilant Kansan may now have a wedding celebration of that shadowy pair, so necessarj'^ to each other, yet so long se[)arated and mutually combative. That primal dualism, product of the first invasion of the Missourians more than two years since, and cause of so much trouble, is overcome, and the two warring counterparts. 160 ' THE TEN YEARS' WAR. original Right and formal Legality, have rushed together in hearty embrace, and are actually married, henceforth to remain harmonious and inseparable after their long trial. So let Kansas celebrate in speeches, sermons, and in immeas- urable talk, for surely a new dawn has appeared. But the second instance is in several respects, though not in all, more decisive, showing an honest ballot upon the Lecompton Constitution under the sanction of established authority, both National and Territorial. Governor Walker, having gone to Washington on leave of absence, the acting-Governor, Stanton, at the urgent re- quest of the People coming to him "in great masses," convoked the Territorial Legislature now having a majority of Free-State men, for the purpose of appointing an election day on which Kansas might fairly express by ballot her opinion about the Leconi[)ton Constitution. January 4th, 1858, was the day appointed, when, in exact figures 10,226 votes were cast against that instrument absolutely, 138 for it with slavery, 24 for it without slavery. Such was the emphatic, indeed passionate, rejection of the Lecompton Constitution by the irate People. Thus two ballots had been held upon it, just a fortnight apart, the one being a fraud, a phan- tom again, the other being real and now legal. Still, at Washington the inner circle of the Oli- PAB T I.~ KANSAS. 1 6 1 giirchy, wielding the power of the Administration, bolsters the fraud with its power, claiming still Legality, which, it says, is derived from its au- thority alone. So Legality itself gets divided in this Kansas strife; two Legalities appear and start to fighting. Hitherto we have seen the struggle between the Spirit and the Form, which twain ought to be one assuredly. But behold ! Now the Form separates within itself and be- comes twofold, one set of leoal Forms uniting- with the Spirit, the Right, the other set remain- ing apart and hostile. The two legal Forms, or Legalities, are now named Lecompton and anti- Lecompton, the one upheld by authority in Washington, the other by authority in Kansas, which has thus taken another great step toward getting her ideal right made real, toward legal- izing the spirit of her people. Still the tran- sition is not yet quite complete till that new Le- compton phantom be banned from the Territory. But now for a serious counterstroke. The acting-Governor, Stanton, who had granted to the People of Kansas the foregoing opportunity for self-expression through a fair ballot, was at once removed because he had thwarted the Washington cabal. The Lecompton Constitution was to have full sweep of legality, both national and territorial; but here rises, through the act of Stanton, an anti-Lecompton legality con- founding the whole pro-slavery program. He 11 262 THE TEN YEAItS' WAR, has honestly tried to transform legality from a phantom into a reality, but in the process it hiis transformed him from a reality into a phantom, so that he too is thrust down into the Hades of disembodied Kansas Governors, now getting pretty crowded. And there are more to come. Governor Walker, being at Washington on busi- ness, learns of Stanton's fate, and recognizing it to be his own, resolves to follow him at once below. He sends in his resignation, seeing that the pledge under which he had accepted the oflBce, had been violated, and that Buchanan had completely succumbed to the cabal which had determined to force the Lecompton Constitution upon the people of Kansas. Though both Stanton and Walker were pro-slavery in con- viction and from Slave-States, yet they were honest men and good Americans, who could not be driven or cajoled into assailing the primordial right of the People to self-government. Peace be to their ghosts. Strangely unique and thought-provoking is the appearance of this fleeting, spectral procession of Kansas Governors and acting-Governors, no less than six in three years, rising and vanishing so rapidly and so insubstantially before our eyes. What can be the matter? AH were caught in that everlasting Kansas mill now running at high speed, and were ground between its upper and nether mill-stones, between the legal which is not PAR T I. — KANSAS. 163 right and the right which is not legal. Honest men they were, even if appointees of slavery, who came with a deep-seated delusion, very natural and true elsewhere, that legality is or ought to l)c also right and that illegality is or ought to be wrong. But they soon find that just the opposite is the peculiar case of Kansas, and, being honest, they at once start to rectify the difficulty, seek- ing to unite legality with right, harmonizing it with the Will of the People, its true source, and thus making it real. But that would undo the Slave-State cause which they, as Democratic appointees and Southerners, were sent out to uphold, but which rested upon just that phantom legality which they tried to put down. This phantom, however, being intrenched at Wash- ington, is mightier than they are, and in the struggle puts them down. Thus the phantom, instead of being banned by the Governors, bans them, turning them into phantoms from actual living magistrates. For the Democratic Gover- nor of Kansas must be governed by the phantom, and not try to govern it, which is gotten up at Washington and is manipulated thence in the in- terest of Slave-Stateism. If he dares disobey its behest, it will turn upon him and change him to a phantom, harrying him out of Kansas in a hurry. So it comes that every Kansas Gover- nor, with the exception of Woodson, has perished in a fight with formal legality, which, though 164 TIUJ TEN YEARS' WAR. a ghost, has shown the power of making him a ghost, and hunting him out of his official exist- ence. And it may also be said of Woodson that he perished through a gliost, but this belonged to the other side, being a Free-State ghost, namely Robinson's anti-government, which we have already often seen as a phantom bodiless, but very real and man-compelling. Such was the uncanny line of gubernatorial ghosts which stalked forth on the plains of Kansas to meet the incoming Governor just appointed by Buchanan. How this new Gov- ernor, Denver by name, received their saluta- tion, is not recorded ; but he could hardly help, though a brave man, feeling his flesh crawl dui-ing his journey through such a fresh-made grave-yard of his predecessors, and entertaining religious reflections on the transitoriness of earthly glory. But this is not all. He could likewise hear the strident cry of the counter - ghost, that phantom Legalitj^ which had made ghosts of all these Governors, and which was defiantly shouting in his ear the words of Ham- let: "Unhand me, or by Heaven I'll make a ghost of him that lets me." So insolent had it become in view of its success in Kansas, but just this insolence prognosticates its approaching end. Mere Legality has had its ghostly day, and must be laid ; the unholy strife between the law which is not justice and the justice which PAR TI.— KANSA S. 165 is not law, is what must next be overcome. Law and Justice are not only to cease being enemies, but are actually going to get united again, and the reader, happy at the prospect, we hope, will be invited to attend the re-union, the first one of the kind in Kansas. 3. Accordingly we now come to what must be considered the final act of the Kansas struggle. Already we have noticed at Washington the last scheme of the Administration known as the English bill, \yhich in substance offered a bribe of land to Kansas if she would accept" the Lecompton Constitution. This bill, after con- siderable difficulty, was gotten through Congress, and was presented to the voters of Kansas for adoption or rejection. The interesting point here is that the ballot was to be both fair and legal, under the auspices of Congress, and even of the Administration which now for the first time drops its phantom legality, employed by it for more than three 3'ears, and accepts as legal the fairly expressed will of the People. Certainly this looks as if we were getting to the end of the long Kansas see-saw already so often di scribed. But what will Miss Kansas do, the refractory Western beauty? She gathers up her skirts and turns haughtily from such a debasing proposition ; with scorn on her nostrils and vengeance in her eyes she flings the Bill-English bill from her 166 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. with a hurricane of votes (vota, here vows of execration), summing up more than 11,000 (exactly 11,300 out of 13,088). Such was her defiant and wrathful answer to all Washington, both Congress and Administration, for trying to buy oif her honor. That was the end of their trifling with what she deemed her sacred virtue, in defense of which she gives them this slap which resounds through the whole land on that summer-day (August 2nd). Congress makes a sorry sight of itself in this business, the only redeeming circumstance being that it gives to Kansas the first real opportunity for self-expression. And she certainly took advantage of the opportunity to speak her mind: Possibly some members supported the bill for this reason. The majority of them must have admired her indignation at their proposal, when the affair was over. There is no doubt that many a chivalrous gentleman of the South in Congress secretly applauded the act of Kansas, even if he voted for the English measure under the supposed exigency of party. Senator Ham- mond declared publicly at home in South Caro- lina that in his opinion "the South herself should kick that Constitution (Lecompton) out of Congress," and not leave the kicking to Kan- sas, and still less attempt to bribe her not to kick. The act of Kansas in this matter was received PABT I. — KANSAIS. 1G7 by the North not only with a mighty shout of applause, but with infinite amusement, yea mer- riment. The Folk-Soul itself had to laugh at that stinging but well-deserved slap in the face from the irate maiden. From every village and farm-house, from man and woman, rose great roars or little cachinnations of delight, which, being taken up and reverberated by that long line of sounding-boards, large and small, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, caused such a univer- sal and overwhelming guffaw that the whole People rolled and shook in it as in an earthquake. Nor did it stop at once, for with that peculiar power of reproducing itself again and again which lurks in the laugh of the crowd, it would come back in repeated paroxysms and start afresh. Earely has there been on this planet such a colossal fit of merriment, surely not since ancient Homer set all the Gods on Olympus, and with them, we must suppose, the whole Universe, to laughing, from which divine source has rolled down to the present in great undulations through the intervenino; ao;es the Homeric lau^h, most famous thing of the kind and still contagious from the poet's song. Thus the American Demos in its vast theater bounded by two Oceans, and over-canopied by the blue Heavens for three thousand miles and more, split its sides at the representation of a national comedy, quite as that old Athenian Demos in its little walled-up 168 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. theater on the slope of the Acropolis roared like the little sea at its feet in response to the comic Muse of Aristophanes holding up its own picture to itself. But the pivotal fact now is that the long tribu- lation of Kansas, threatening for years to become a tragedy, has reached its end in what may be called a national comedy with inextin- guishable laughter. Thus the conclusion of the drama, after many a sorrowful stroke and hope long deferred, may be deemed happy, and the American People can turn to something else, for a mightier problem than the Kansas one has come up before them for solution. PART I. — THE PEOPLE. 169 ^be people. After this comic interlude, the People turn back into their serious vein, which always at the present time springs from some phase of the slavery question. The subject becomes intoler- ably wearisome on account of its never-failing presence in talk and writ ; but it cannot be ban- ished, cannot be crushed out, being the very theme and thought of the Folk-Soul in which every individual of the land participates. The impress of the Spirit of the Age cannot be wijied out of the brain of any rational man at will ; there is no flight from the task of the time with- out a self -undoing. 1. In Kansas the moral element arose and was active, but it did not there reach its deepest tension. Her people had before them the prob- lem of making Kansas, this particular Territory, a Free-State; bevond such immediate end the majority of them, being Douglas Democrats, and believing in Popular Sovereignty, hardly looked. But when the Kansas question passed outside the limits of Kansas and entered the Northern States, it deepened to the thought of making all the Territories into Free-States. There was no reason why Kansas should bo an exception; in fact, it was only a special instance of the general 170 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. principle of Free-Stateism, which had now be- come conscious in the mind of the People. Such, indeed, was the chief fruit of the training which the North underwent through the grand Kansas discipline. The doctrine of the exclusion of slavery from the Territories had already been enounced in the platform of the Eepublican party in 1856. The Dred Scott decision, however, declared the doc- trine unconstitutional, and thus started a new and deeper questioning in the Folk-Soul of the North. What shall we do with our palladium of liberty, the Constitution, which we have so long loved and adored, if it makes slavery uni- versal — not only nationalizes it but universal- izes it, compelling the Union to be productive of Slave-States only? In some way that deci- sion must be reversed — but in what way? That is indeed the problem which time is to solve, and toward this solution the movement now starts. Slavery is declared to be the universal lavT of the land, all enactments and constitutions of the single States to the contrary notwithstanding; Judge Taney has made the law, usurping or at least supplanting the legislative function. This drives mightly against the moral conviction of the North; the result is the conflict between the moral and the institutional in man, a conflict deeper and more desperate in its outcome than that of Kansas. PART I. — THE PEOPLE. 171 2. After these abstract statements, it will be well to glance at the great leaders of this rising movement, who are also aspirants for the Chief Magistracy of the Nation. In whom does the growing; conviction of the Northern Folk-Soul to to most adequately incoi-porate itself? Now is the time for the hero to appear. It is to be marked that Douglas voted against the English bill with the Republicans. He was now at the nearest point of his sweep toward Republicanism, in the middle of the bridge, as it were. He had quit defending the formal wrong, though he had not yet asserted the informal right. Will he go over? Both sides watched him with most intense interest. The inner circle of the South had come to hate him worse than they did Seward ; he had divided their party and threat- ened their domination. Certain Republicans were getting their throats ready to hail him as a leader. Some New York newspapers began to forecast the new party, accepting his Popular Sov- ereignty and reverberating his name through the land as the coming Northern candidate for Presi- dent in 1860. But he still has a little stretch of bridge to cross before he can reach the Repub- lican hosts. Will he stop, turn back, or go on? It is evident that Seward felt his chances for the coming prize to be jeoparded. He began to separate from his associates in the Senate, and voted against them on the Army bill and with the 172 THE TEN YEABS' WAB. Administration, saying "I care nothing for party." He gave as his reason for his vote: this battle is already fought; it is over. *' We are fighting for a majority of Free States; they are ah-eady sixteen to fifteen, and before one year we shall be nineteen to fifteen." Here we catch a glimpse of Seward's view of the conflict: Which side shall dominate the Nation? So also the South conceived it. Seward likewise spoke favorably of Popular Sovereignty in his speech on the Lecompton affair. Clearly he is leading off somewhither; what is his motive? Certainly a breach is threatening the Eepublican party as well as the Democratic. Both Douglas and Seward seem to be breaking from their old connections, and to be forming an independent following of their own. Could Seward be seeking to ingratiate himself with the Administration which so hated Douglas? There was maneuvering between these two astute politic- ians for the right position, which might be the key to 1860. But Douglas had a nearer motive: the election of an Illinois legislature this very fall (1858) to return him to the Senate. Illinois had shown a tendency recently to go Republican. His success was doubtful without Eepublican sup- port. He had already won influential Republican newspapers and politicians in the East to favor his re-election to the Senatorship. Seward called Douglas slippery, but Seward PART I. — THE PEOPLE. 173 was open to the same charge. Both were patriots at bottom, yet both were politicians, deeply versed in what is often called practical politics. Prob- ably neither was personally corrupt in the use of money, but they had friends who were not so tender-conscienced, and at whose doings they connived. Both changed, shifted positions, and readjusted themselves to catch the direction of the popular breeze. Some excuse may be found in the fact that their time was a time of transi- tion and of dissolution of parties, when every- body had to make a new alignment. Neither of them was a rigid moralist as to political means ; both would probably say with Cassius : "In such a time as this it is not meet that every nice offense should bear his comment." At this point when both parties and both their chief leaders seem to be balancing in a kind of equilibrium uncertain of their way, the man of destiny, Abraham Lincoln, appears and is soon to overtop both Douglas and Seward. Here we may emphasize by contrast his straightforward- ness, which the popular mind caught up first of all, giving to him the title of Honest Abe, which title men never gave to Seward or Douglas, though they were not dishonest men, and though Lincoln too had his secrecies and subtleties. The first struggle of the new issue before the People is to take place in the West on the soil of Illinois between Lincoln and Douglas, the two 174 THE TEN YEAES' WAB. ablest public men of the State. We may see Lincoln advancing to the keystone of the brido^e where Douglas is standing and hesitating, stop his further advance, and indeed turn him around. For the two men and their doctrines are quite different, and soon get to be opposite. Kansas may (or may not) become a Free-State through the doctrine of Douglas, but it must be a Free-State through the doctrine of Lincoln — and not only Kansas but all the Territories. (See speeches of Lincoln, at Springfield, June 16, and at Chicago, July 10, 1858.) At this point the world-historical career of Lincoln starts, and never drops from its lofty position until after his death ; in fact it moves on an ascending plane from his first leap into the arena with Douglas till its sudden conclu- sion when it had reached its highest mark. Lincoln bids fair to become the most interesting character in all History to the People. He knew the Folk-Soul by long study and intimate ac- quaintance, he went to school to it during his earlier years; then he became its voice, its ex- pounder to itself, whereby it grew conscious of its supreme purpose ; finally it went to school to him as master, who brought to it a still higher message than its own. 3. We may also add, by way of contrast, that about this time the world-historical career of Kansas comes to a close, having enacted her PART I. — THE PEOPLE. 175 final scene in the rejection of the Leconipton Constitution. To be sure she will continue to have her local history, and a good deal of it, bloodier than at first ; but it is not of universal import, it can no longer be recorded in the Book of the Ages, the great Presence leaves her when her unflinching grapple with slavery is over. Never since has she attracted so much attention, though she has sought to do so, nature even helping her to specks of tran- sient fame by drouths, grasshoppers, and cyclones. Struggle has indeed continued in a small way, political fights, temperance crusades, and pitched battles over county-seats; but the stake has not been large, being local, not even national, still less has it been world- historical. Desperate have been the efforts of Kansas to keep herself great; but that has been shown to be beyond her power. Over her birth the World-Spirit presided, coming of its own ac- cord and staying three years, as a kind of super- nal god-mother; then the task being fulfilled, it passed elsewhither on its errand, and seem- ingly has never revisited its god-child up to date, almost half a century having now elapsed. But whither has it gone? We shall find it again, that being just the function of the World's History to follow it up, to trace its presence, and to record its doings. It is not going to leave the country ; its hand must be seen directing the 176 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. movement of the whole Ten Years' War. It takes possession of individuals and inspires whole peoples; primarily it impresses itself upon the Folk-Soul, and impels the same to realize its far- reachinff designs. But it is now done with Kansas, and so is completed the First Part of our American Iliad. PAB TI. —HE TBOSPECT. 177 IRetroepect* It is generally agreed that a peculiar force or energy lies in the early Kansas conflict just described; what is its nature? Can we catch the power which seems to be lurking and working in these tumultuous occurrences, hold it fast and give to it some kind of a shape? Here is indeed a tangled skein of events out of which the his- toric process must be evolved and formulated. And not only one but many of these processes must be seen unfolding, conflicting, and then intertwining into a supreme process which unites them all. Thus what may be called the historic organism rises into vision, defining itself in certain distinct outlines. 1. The reader will probably have observed already that we are not trying to write an ordi- nary historical account of matters cotemporane- ous in place and successive in time, simply set- ting them down in their external order. Uu- doubtedly, the facts must be given, and given with exactness, but these spring up more or less separated, disconnected, whereas the mind must have connection. Hence we seek for /Ae Process running throus-h and interlinking these events which are iji ap[)earance consecutive merely, but really are rounding themselves out into a cycle 12 178 THE TEN YEABS' WAB. or indeed many cycles self-returning while going forward. Primarily historic happenings are suc- cessive in time, but secondarily they are moving in a Process also, which Process clothes itself in the ever-flowing folds of these on-sweeping events. But this historic Process of happenings in time is by no means the end of the matter ; it has a deeper purpose than itself, it reaches out beyond its own immediate reality, and has as its object the training of the People, of the associated Whole, into the new idea or conviction. We have often dwelt upon the historic Process starting from Washington, passing to Kansas and thence impressing itself upon the People. This is indeed the grand discipline of the Folk-Soul for its approaching task. 2. Repeatedly has there been mention of the Folk-Soul whose conception must be grasped. Every People may be said to have a soul of its own, a spirit which governs it, and which con- stitutes its essential character. Such an idea undoubtedly is derived from the soul or spirit of the individual man. In the American Revolution the Folk-Soul was united upon the separation of the colonies from the mother-country. But in the present epoch we have seen it dividing within itself and becoming dualized into Northern and Southern. Still even in this state of division rAR T I. — n E TR S PE C T. 1 7 9 it is not without a strong impulse toward re- union, which will finally be brought about. The Nation feels, thinks and acts as a unit, as one Soul or Mind, which animates its total or- ganism. Many common expressions imply this. We often hear of Public Sentiment, or the Peo- ple's Feeling on certain matters; then again, the Popular Will is spoken of, indicating what the Folk-Soul intends to do ; Public Opinion signi- fies what the People think. All these terms imply a Folk-Soul feeling, acting, knowing, though it be made up of many individual souls, each of which feels, acts and knows. 3. But now comes the fact that there are also many individual Folk-Souls, many scpnrate Peo- ples, each with its Folk-Soul on this globe of ours. These are in a process with one another, at least that is the case with many of them. They are, however, of very different values at different times; they rise, bloom, and decline in the course of History, which shows a line of ascent and descent in Nations. What is it that brinss about these changes? Here we must glimpse an Energy regnant over the Folk-Soul and determining it, which we call the Worhl- Spirii, the Supreme Power of Histor}'. Other names it has more popular, but more vague, such as Civilization, Progress, the Logic of Events. This World-Spirit is what impresses itself on 180 THE TE^ YEARS' WAR a given people or Folk-Soul, and makes the same the upholder and defender of its purpose or idea, which usually takes an ethical form or becomes a moral conviction. A peculiar fact concernint two were of the white race, the third of the black; hence the difference of race entered into this Society, :nul had a tendency to harden the distinctions of Class into the impassible limits of Caste. Un- doubtedly the three Classes merged at the edges, but their separation was very pronounced, and up to the time of the war was deepening and crystallizing. Any taint of negro blood threw the person into the third Class, while the second Class on the whole was sinking into a more hope- less poverty and ignorance. While the separation of Classes was becoming wider, their production was becoming narrower. The South was limited to one chief occupation, agriculture. There was little manufacturing on an extensive scale. Not the diversification of industries but their confinement was the eco- nomic law of this Society. Even the one chief occupation, agriculture, was not diversified, but had a tendency to limit itself to a few products. In the extreme South, cotton, rice and sugar, were quite the sole products deemed worthy of the planter's regard; they may be called the aristocratic product of the South- 286 THE TEN YEAMS' WAR. ~ PAET It. ern soil, reflecting, while also moulding the character of their producer. Indeed these staples showed within their exclusive circle a tendency toward the domination of one — cot- ton. This fact was expressed before the war in the pithy statement: cotton is king. So the aristocracy of production in the South revealed a movement toward a monarchy of production. But a democracy of production through a many- branched industry, such as was seen in the North, did not and could not exist in a Society of this kind. The first brings a concentration of Power into the hands of the few and fewer, and ulti- mately of the one ; the second signifies a distri- bution of Power into the hands of the many and the more, and ultimately of all who will work. Thus the South in its social system has developed a kind of hierarchical order which moves from the top downward, descending from the highest to the lowest ; while the North in its social system moves in the opposite direction, from the bottom upward, the lowest having an open road to the highest. The foregoing thought we may formulate in the following way : the South tended to homo- geneity of production, but to heterogeneity of Classes participating in this work of production; the North, on the contrary, tended to hetero- geneity of production, but homogeneity of Classes which diversified this production. The South: CHAPTER IL — THE SOUTH. 287 one product (or few) with hierarchy of unequal Classes ; the North : many different products with one equal Class essentially. In 1858 these two opposing social systems had quite fully unfolded their respective characters and purposes, and were aligning themselves for the great fight over the control of the destin}^ of the Nation, Social intercommunication could not be highly developed in the South. Roads were poor, rail- ways were few, the methods of transportation primitive. The mansion of the great planter stood alone in solitary rural grandeur, or in the vicinity of the hovels of his slaves. It was an image of its lord, separate, independent, atomic, unassociated with other houses on an equality in urban fashion. The principle of human asso- ciation was not a universal force in the South, but limited chiefly to the great slaveholders, who organized themselves into a compact body for their supreme political purpose. The South, through its exclusive agricultural bent, made itself immediately dependent on Nature. It accepted what came with reliance on Providence; it was religious and conservative, attached to old ways, proud of its ancestral lin- eage, studious of the genealogical tree, unfriendly to new ideas, especially to the new-fangled ideas of New England. No manufactures trans- formed Nature, and therewith transformed the man, giving a consciousness of superiority over 288 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART II. Nature. The wealth of the South came from its raw materials, which were sent out of it, often to be returned as finished products for its use. Thus the South with all its feeling of independ- ence was really very dependent, first u[)'m Nature then upon other nations. Self-dependent or self-sufficing as a whole it could not be called — a fact which the War brought home to it p;iin- f ully. It had refused to learn to supply its own wants though a diversified industry. The small artisan and the small merchant were indeed pres- ent, but limited to the limited needs of the one class, the agricultural. There was no multifa- rious communal life with its varied consumption and production, and with its members quite upon the same general level. On the contrary the South openly proclaimed that its society and all rightly constituted society had to have a Class for its menial duties, was in fact built upon a Class of this kind as its mud-sill. Says Senator Hammond: "Such a Class you must have, or you would not have that other Class which leads progress, civilization, refine- ment. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand." Thus the two main Classes of the South, at least in the mind of the Oligarchs, were those of master and slave; the non-slaveholding Class though white and the largest, was seldom spoken of, and iiad, as Helper complains, almost no political weight; CHAPTER II. - THE SOUTH. 289 still it was present aud was emphaticall}' " classi- fied " ill contrast with the two other Classes. This tendency of the South to Classism had not escaped the observation of Lincoln, who had inculcated that all the States and all the People of the States should be ultimately homogeneous as regards freedom. Douglas, however, main- tained in his Debate with Lincoln that States and People should continue both slave and free, thus producing a happy diversity in our land instead of the dull uniformity of liberty. Again, Lincoln in a letter characterizes the Southern tendency ds " the supplanting of the principles of free government, and the restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy." (Cited in Nicolayand Hay's Life, II, 182.) Accordingly, the fundamental point of view from which we must look at the South is its Classism, or its distinctions of Class which have become so pronounced in its social organization. Each of these Classes has its own process within itself, yet also with one another, and finally all of them are in a decided process with the North. The three mentioned Classes will now be con- sidered separately. 19 2dO THE TEN YEAUS' WAR. — PART II. Z\)t Slavcbol^ere. The great political function of the slaveholding Class was to rule majorities, and to keep from being ruled by them. This was carried so far that the slaveholder himself was not ruled b}'^ a majority of his own Class, but by a minority of it which constituted the Oligarchy. This form of government we have already seen springing from the relation of master and slave, especially when the master is of a different and superior race. The slave-owner of black men is born and trained to be a minority ruler. This fact is manifested already in the Constitution of the United States, in which the ownership of negroes confers political power upon the master, though he does not cast their votes directly. He may own 1,000 negroes and 1,000 blooded horses, the values of both being equal ; but the negroes mean 600 votes in the apportionment of national political power to his State and to his Congres- sional District. He might be conceived to have enough slaves to make a District of his own, or perchance even a State. Thus he is created an aristocrat, if not an autocrat, by the Consti- tution, at whose formation he was already strong enough to compel such a provision, against the wishes of a majority of the Convention. This THE SOUTH. — THE SLAVEHOLDEBS. 291 w:i.s his first great minority triumph in the Nation, just at its birth, which he threatened to prevent, unless he were granted that minority power. Still further and by the same principle, in his own slaveholding Class the possessor of 1,000 slaves is endowed with far more political power than the possessor of 100 or of 10 slaves, other things being equal. Hence there arises an aris- tocracy within an aristocracy, which has been already named the Oligarchy, whose objeet is primarily to concentrate within itself the political power of its Class. Looking at this slaveholding Class as a whole, we may grasp it as a series of concentric circles which move outward from the center of Power, diminishing till they vanish into the non-slave- holding Class. In a general way the number of slaves determined the rank of the owner, though his influence depended also on his ability. The central circle had a membership of 8,000 nearly, who were the owners of fifty slaves and more (census of 1850). As there were some six mil- lions of whites then in the South, one out of seven hundred and fifty would belong to this central circle of Power. The second or middle circle may be taken to include those who owned five or more slaves and less than fifty. It was much larger than the pre- ceding circle, as it must have contained in 1850 some 165,000 slaveholders, most of whom did not 292 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART II. labor with their hands, but followed at a distance the .style of the great slaveholders, whose circle the}^ were ambitious to enter and thus attain the highest social and political rank of their S3^stenl. Such was the general trend though with many exceptions doubtless. The third or lowest or outermost circle of slave- holders embraces those who had one to four slaves. In 1850 there were 68,820 owners of one slave, 105,683 owners of two, three and four slaves, making together 174,503 persons who belonged to this circle, which was thus more than half of the entire number of slaveholders (reported at 347,525). This circle began to show consid- erable differences from both the preceding circles. It had not the means nor the servants to keep up the traditional splendor of the wealthy Southern- ers. Its members, especially those who followed agriculture and engaged in no profession or other business, had to labor with their hands; perhaps a majority of this class worked in the fields with their one slave or more, and thus became distinct in character and aim from the Southern gentle- man who occupied himself chiefly with social and political functions. Here, then, the break starts in the ranks of the slaveholders themselves, who in this outermost circle begin to fuse with the laboring non-slaveholding Class. Such were the three circles which we have sought to look at in their descending or oligarchic THE SOUTH. — THE SLAVEHOLDEBS. 293 order from the highest to the lowest, or from the center to the outer rim. But the leaders belonged mostly to the first two circles, though with leadershij) another princijjle plays in, talent. The Soutli selected its ablest men and sent them to the seat of government continuously. Hence arose at Washington a new circle, that of the political leaders, whose head in the Fifties already was Jefferson Davqs, and whose connec- tion with the Kansas troubles has been already narrated. So we have to think that within the three circles of the aristocracy ramifying the South everywhere was the controlling circle centered at Washington, whose power wielded every department of government, legislative, ex- ecutive, and judicial, and ruled the whole Nation. It is this ruling power ba Union we have to deem her from the beo;innino:, so that by the time of the Great War heredity had repeated and confirmed this trait of her 872 THE TEN- YEAB8' WAIt. - PART Jl. character till it had become the mainspring of all her political action. South Carolina, at her withdrawal in 1860, adopted a Declaration of Independence which was fondly supposed to rival that of Jefferson in 1776, and which proposed to give the grounds for her separation from the Union. Leaving out mere assertions about the legal right of Se- cession, and about the nature of the Constitu- tion as a simple compact between the States, we may note the two or three complaints. First is that the North, through her Personal Liberty Bills against the Fugitive Slave Law had broken the compact, and hence " South Carolina is released from her obligation." Here she makes herself judge of an infraction which belongs to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States — a very commou disregard of the Constitution in the South at this time. Yet a South Carolina statesman had once said that the Fugitive Slave Law was uncon- stitutional through its violation of " States- Rights. The same doctrine had been affirmed by the Judiciary of Wisconsin, but Wisconsin did not propose to secede because it thought that one of its rights as a State had been violated. This plea was only a pretext for do- ing somethmg which had a deeper though un- spoken reason. Another c()m[)laint was that the North had elected a man as President who " had CHArTEB III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 373 declared that this Government cannot endure half slave, half free." And yet was not every act of South Carolina at present fulfilling the prediction? Indeed every word was, in spite of her growls. Every convention, every public- meeting resounded with speeches: Now we shall have a Government all-slave, entireh' homo- geneous. Says R. B. Rhett, a chief mouth- piece, in an address: "Our Confederacy must be a slave-holding Confederacy; we have had enough of a Confederacy with dissimilar insti- tutions.^^ So we see that South Carolina, while in the act of cursing Lincoln's prophecv, is ful- filling it both in word and deed far more rapidly and completely than Lincoln ever dreamed to be possible. Still another complaint is that the North has " denounced as sinful the institution of slavery." The Northern conscience must surrender its conviction as to the wrongfulness of slavery and believe as we do, or we shall break up the Union. There can be no longer tolerated any difference of opinion upon that point, not only in the slaveholding South, but even in the non-slaveholding North. Toleration may be allowed in religion, but in politics its day is over. How the best and most liberal minds of the South could become so intolerant upon the sub- ject of slavery is still one of the staggering psy- chological problems of that era. We can onlv regard it as one of the ever-increasing spiritual 374 THE TEX YEABS' WAB. — TART II. effects of the domination resulting from relation of master and slave, seeking as it does to dictate even the moral conviction of the individual not only in the South but also in the North. Such was South Carolina's Declaration of In- dependence, destined never to have its Fourth of July, or to be a landmark of humanity's libera- tion. Not so much is there declared in it an independence of the Union as of the whole world ; not so much a separation from the North as from civilization; not so much a defiance of Lincoln as of the World-Spirit. It was in speeches ac- knowledged "that the sentiment of Europe is against us." A stronger declaration was that, "we are isolated from the whole world." It was also recognized that the commonwealth was in decay, but this decay was attributed to the decline of slavery in the Nation. Gleams of confession, though unintended and indirect, reveal the undercurrent of opinion that South Carolina is falling to the rear in the grand march of the States. And for this, of course, she blames not herself but the Union. Though South Carolina has seceded, her action involves the entire Nation, with which she neces- sarily begins to be in an exciting process. The center of irritation is her leading city, Charleston, in whose harbor lie three forts belonging to the United States, and commandnig the citjMvith its approaches by sea. Hence in Charleston rises CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 375 practically the question of Coercion, tne supreme Southern question next to that of Secession. After seceding, South Carolina claimed the right of determining how she should be treated by the United States. Hands off, let me take the National property which is within my limits, or within what I assert to be my limits. Otherwise there is the Coercion of a Sovereign State. For, to tell the truth, I, South Carolina, possess not only sovereignty over my- self, but over the government of the United States, at least so far as to have the right to dictate what it shall do in my case. Otherwise I shall cry out Coercion, at which diabolic w^ord all the devils in the other Slave-States will begin to dance and grimace and spit fire in an uncon- trollable frenzy. It is strange how the spirit of domination nestled in that little category Coercion, whose magic spell had the power of sending many a soul to Hades and even of thrusting whole States down into the Purgatory of Disunion, there to undergo a painful peniten- tial discipline till they be regenerated into free- dom and true equality. Accordingly we shall glance at the elements of this process, which are these: Charleston as the active, irritating center of Secession, now the Prime Mover; then the Government at Wash- ington as the irritated counterpart dealing with the problem of Coercion ; finallj^ The 376 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART II. People of the North, the silent bearers of Nationality, looking anxiously at the rising trouble and testing the various schemes of conciliation and compromise. Quiescent, rather dazed is the North during these two months, brooding gloomily over the future which threatens to bring forth such a furious progeny of ills. (a) Charleston, still the chief city of South Carolina, had been once the chief >2ity of the South, if not of the whole Atlantic seaboard. Its trade extended far into the Northern States. Philadelphia at one time is said to have obtained its finest imports through Charleston instead of getting them throuo-h New York or through itself. As had befallen the whole State, Charles- ton was a much more important city in 1760 than in 1860, its commerce being not only rela- tively but absolutely greater in the former than in the latter period. If South Carolina felt itself to be a sinking State, Charleston even more decidedly felt itself to be a sinking, if not a sunken city. Its chief bloom lay in its colonial epoch, before the formation of the Federal Union. As stated already, it came to hate that Union which had brought it into the baleful embraces of the North, and which it deemed to be source of its decline, to be a vampyre fast- ened upon its vitals and sucking its life-blood. Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, in a pri- vate letter, written early in 1860, and since CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. ^11 printed, betrays the true underlying conscious- ness of his State and its chief city: "The North without us would be a motherless calf, bleatinor about, and die of mano;e and starva- tion." Here lies the real motive lurking in all this secession business, bared of its pretexts and its rhetoric: The South (and especially South Carolina) is the mother-cow which is be- ing milked to death by its hungry calf, the North. Moreover the same Senator cannot help " regarding this Union as cramping the South," particuhirly South Corolina — wherein we may well hear the cry of the Oligarchy at the limits put upon its extension of slavery. This is what it called " Northern aggression against the slave- holder," who, though in a minority both in his own section and in the nation, felt something like a divine right to his domination. Charleston was, therefore, of all Southern cities, the one best prepared to start the work of Disunion. Aside from this inner condition, the outer or phj'sical situation of the place invited or perchance impelled the peoi)le to quick action. The harbor of Charleston had three forts be- longing to the United States, which guarded its entrance, and one of which commanded the city itself. Thus the Government had the place padlocked ; could it be made to deliver up the key peaceably? Or could it be hoodwinked till the Secessionists were ready to grasp the prize? 378 THE TEN YEABS' WAR — PABT II. That was the problem which the administration of Buchanan had to face, rendered doubly diffi- cult by the President's cataleptic terror at every appearance of the goblin called Coercion, which the South Carolinians and other Southerners did not fail to dance before his eyes in season and out of season, for the purpose of paralyzing him with fright. Every step in the swift movement toward sep- aration at Charleston was made the occasion of festivity and rejoicing. But there was also the counterstroke in the secret throbbing of fear lest the negroes, that silent majority both in the city and in the State, might rise and baptize the new- born infant. Secession, in the blood of its par- ents. To be sure, there was small cause for such fear; the blacks under far more favorable opportunities during the War, never revolted. Still the terror existed just the same, and became the hidden Nemesis avenging the enslaved in the very soul of the white master, when there was not and could not be any external vengeance (see [)receding, pp. 316-8). So the record comes down to us that Charleston, always patrolled by a guard as a security against its negroes, feels secret thrills of anxiety during these days in the midst of its wildest exultation over the new dawn of the empire of slavery. The Convention which passed the ordinance of Secession is declared to have been composed CHAPTEU III. — THE TIIIED ALIGNMENT. 379 of graj-haired men of the highest standing social!}' and intellectuall}', not of hot-headed youths quick to ])rccipitate revolution. What is the meaning of this fact? To us it says that Secession is nothing new with South Carolina but very old in idea, nothing sudden but long since deliberated, in fact transmitted through o;eneratious. Indeed these old men have in- herited from their fathers the hate of the Union, the belief that it is the curse which is dragging down their State, and which the long-expected opportunity has now come to smite to the dust. As soon as the ordinance had passed, the enthu- siasm was boundless, people en)braced and some- times wei)t, amid the universal exclamation: Thank God, deliverance has come to us at last. One of the peculiarities of this political jubilee was the relij^ious strand which wound throueh it everywhere. Not only were the sessions of the Convention opened with pra3'er, but public meetino;s, ix^le-raisings and tlao-unfurlino;s beo;an ))y invoking the blessing of God. Probably nowhere in the North outside of Oberlin was there such an incessant outpour of divine suppli- cation in secular concerns. The minister would declare in substance that God is on our side. With equal fervor Oberlin sent up its petition to the same God, feeling sure that He was on its side, which was certainly opposite to that of Charles- ton. Or shall we again in our American Iliad 380 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. — TART II. help ourselves out with old Homer's concep- tion of two Gods or more, antagonistic, one taking part with the Greeks and the other with the Trojans, each getting ready to join battle on Olympus? In this con- nection it should not fail to be noted that Charleston like Oberlin had its Higher Law too, which defied the Enacted Law. The crew of the slave-ship EcJio were tried at Charleston in 1858, for violating the United States Law against the slave-trade, and, though caught in the act, were set free by a Charleston jury. Such a Law being contrary to the sentiment of the State, could not be executed in South Carolina, said her conscientious United States Senator. The same sentiment seems to have existed in all the Cotton States. So we behold two Higher Laws, a Northern and a Southern, the one refusing obedience to the Fugitive Slave Law, the other refusing obedience to the Law against the slave- trade. Douglas estimated that in one year fifteen thousand Africans had been smuggled into the country in violation of Law, which number was much greater than that of the runaway slaves in the same time. Very impressive and deep-seated has become the dualism between North and South : two Higher Laws yet just opposite, the one pouring more negroes into slavery, the other dragging them out ; yea two Gods, bitter enemies both and getting ready to CHAPTER in. — THE THIRD ALIGN'MENT. ."'U clutch each ot-hcr in a far mightier war than that old Olympian one over Greece and Troy. As the Statehood in our American Union is getting cleft in twain, so is the Godhood conceived to be which is presiding over it; whereby the dual- ism of the Nation has reached its most intense contradiction, being carried up by both sides to the judgment seat of the Almighty Himself for adjudication. How will He decide? That is not yet to be told ; gladly would each set of peti- tioners hear the decree notv; but the Supreme Tribunal of the Ages is not in a hurry to render its decision in such an important trial, at least not till there be the great new compliance with the Divine Law by both sides, Law at present hardly visible and certainly not realizable. (&). Passing to Washington the center, we find that the Administration is being harried far more by the South than it ever harried Kansas. Charleston is avenging Lawrence, the Southern- ers are brino;ing home to the President the re- taliation of the Free-State men. Those whom Buchanan has served most faithfully have be- come his punishers. The Executive at Wash- ington is no longer the active cause of irritation, but its agonized recipient, no longer the torturer but the tortured, and that too by those in whose interest he inflicted torture upon his own section. He was declared during these days to be in a pitiable plight, " spending his time between 882 Tin-: TEN YEARS' WAli. — PAIiT TI. praying and crying." Yet his c(nitoniporaries had little pity for him, and posterity up to date is quite as unrelenting in its jiidgnicnt of him, even if not in its feeling After the election of Lincoln, Buchanan spent his first two months in subserviency to the South, yielding to its demands as he had done for four years. No reinforcements were sent to Charles- ton Harbor, though Major Anderson, the com- mander, called for them, and General Scott at first had urged the same view. Nothing was done, though every day brought news of the activity of the secessionists. Congress met in December, and the President sent his usual message, not only -a weak but contradictory doc- ument. He denied the right of Secession, yet at the same time denied the right of Coercion. The Government cannot rightfully put down a wrong against its own existence, but must in peace let itself be destroyed wrongfully. Such a doctrine of non-resistance was never before ap- plied to any State ancient or modern by its own ruler. Buchanan even called Secession revolu- tionary, but our American Government cannot meet revolution, having no right to assert its right, and would do the greatest wrong if it dared suppress the greatest wrong. So spoke the Executive Power of a great Nation ; after such an exhibition there can be no wonder that contempt has been Buchanan's lot from North CHAPTER III. — THE THtBD ALIGNMENT. 383 and South. The message, however, shows the two contending sides in the cabinet, the one maintaining the right of Secession and the wrong of Coercion, the other maintaining the wrong of Secession and the right of Coercion, or at least of what the South called Coercion. Buch- anan seemed to have clapped the two negatives together, giving a specimen of his method of reconciliation, by denjang the right of both Secession and Coercion. Still Buchanan has his place in the grand his- toric evolution of the Ten Years' War. We are to see that the World-Spirit used him, even in his weakness, as its instrument to bring about its purpose. Suppose he had been a strong, firm, clear-headed man, ho might at least have deferred the conflict. Andrew Jackson would probably have nipped Secession in the bud at Charleston by filling Castle Pinckney with regu- lars whose guns would have swept the city, and by manning fully the other two forts. But could even he have permanently ended Seces- sion in 1860, as he did Nullification in 1832? Not at all. The conflict had to take place, the question had to be settled whether this Union shall henceforth produce Slave-States or Free- States. The starting-point might have been elsewhere, the time might have been a little later, but not much, the agony might not have lasted so long or even have lasted longer, with 3«4 THS TEiV rEAUti' WAH. — VAUT 11. less or more bloodshed ; but what boots it to speculate about incidentals? The essential ele- ment is the World-Spirit, which controls all these external events in Time and Place, mould- ing them obedient to its purpose which is to make the Union productive of Free-States, not simply out of the Territories but even out of the Slave-States new and old. Given the Oligarchy with its domination through the extension of slavery, given the North with its conviction against the extension of slavery, the appeal to arms cannot be obviated. Buchanan, then, through his imbecility pre- pares the way for Secession at a given moment in a given locality, yielding like putty in the hands of the Secessionists for about two months, the last of the year 1860. But we are to see that both he and they, quite unconsciously, are in the clutch of a mightier Power which is using them for its end. Or, if our American Iliad might once more call up that Olympian world of the Greek bard, we should again see and hear Zeus in the council of the Gods uttering his decree prefiguring the outcome of our Ten Years' War, though bringing woes unnumbered both to the victors and vanquished. Meanwhile during these two trucklinsr months (November and December), the cabinet of Buchanan showed signs of separation and seces- sion. Early in November, Black, then Attorney- CHAPTER III. — THE TRIED ALIGNMENT. 385 General, advised the President to send strong re- inforcements to the forts in Charleston Harbor. Cass supported the same view, which was opposed by Cobb and Thompson. Thus the division of North and South, of Coercion and Secession, has split in twain .Buchanan's advisers. December 8th, Cobb leaves the cabinet — secedes we may say, since Buchanan in his message to Congress had denied the right of Secession. Three days later Cass resolves to quit, since Buchanan in that same message had denied the right of Co- ercion, and had refused assistance to the forts at Charleston. Whereupon Black becomes Secre- tary of State, and begins to get his grip upon the rudder of the helplessly drifting ship. But the pivotal event came when Major Anderson secretly removed his troops from the indefensible Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter well protected against attack (Dec. 26). South Carolina felt itself com- pletely thwarted by the move, and all the South- ern secessionists, at Washington, blazing with in- dignation, pitched poor Buchanan, their wretched tool, into a fiery furnace during this holiday week of 1860. Certainly the Furies were serving up to him quite a little bit of his own Inferno. The great struggle now is, will the President order Major Anderson back to Fort Moultrie? To force him to such an act, the whole Southern pressure is whelmed upon him at once. But the counteracting power liiis now come to the front 25 386 THE TEN Yh'ARS' WAI! — PABT II. in the cabiuet. During this same holiday week Joseph Holt is made Secretary of War, while Edwin M. Stanton has already succeeded Black as Attorney-General. Thus the strong Union Trio appears, Black, Stanton and Holt, the re- deeming glory of Buchanan's entire administra- tion. The course of Major Anderson is approved and he is to be reinforced. A new hope for the Union dawns, and the country begins to look up from its night of despair, the darkest in its history. But Buchanan is no longer really President, being reduced to the fitjure-head which he in fact is. A strong Triumvirate has taken his place with his consent and governs in his name, yet with a wholly different spirit. Two months, more this kind of rule is to last, till he steps out ; but during these two months a new whirl of events rises to the surface on the maelstrom. (c.) Ere we pass on, however, we must take a glance at the North, the third element in this movement, along with South Carolina and the Administration at Washington. Its people read the news from the South and the Capital in an ever-increasing state of painful suspense, and the gloom kept thickening from early November till the holidays. It saw but too plainly the total imbecility of the President in the face of the coming danger, and trembled lest the govern- ment would simply go to pieces without any CHAPTEB III — THE 7HIBD ALIGNMENT. 387 attempt to b(jld it together. The cabiil of seces- sionists in the cabinet controlled him till they seceded, and let the Triumvirate come into power when a new policy began to cheer the depressed Unionists. And now we are to consider the various atti- tudes which Northern leaders beg-an to assume toward Secession. Undoubtedly the people of the North were at first taken aback that the Southern menace, so long flourished over their heads, should be carried out in the deed. They listened eagerly to their guides in their puzzled state of mind, and the first result was that they were more puzzled than ever on account of the diversity of the advice, and the lack of firmness in the advisers. First we may cite the opinion of Greeley, who proposed in his Tribune to let the erring sisters depart in peace. He took strong ground against Coercion early in November, when South Caro- lina and the Cotton States were preparing to secede. " We shall resist all coercive meas- ures," he says in his paper. That is, Greeley was a passive secessionist, a man after James Buchanan's own heart, and if he had had any con- sistency he would have supported the President. Still we must not be too severe upon poor Greeley. He was a journalist, editor of a daily newspaper, which often has to adjust itself anew every twenty -four hours. When the time comes he 388 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. — VAliT II. will make a turn iii the other direction. This does not necessarily proceed from corruption (though it may), nor exactly from fickleness, but from the very nature of the journalistic con- sciousness, which Greeley possessed, through training and instinct, more completely than any other man in America. Greeley took his first adjustment from New England, toward which he always faced at the start, being a New Englander himself. There is no doubt that a large element in that section was willing to see the Shive-States secede. The Gar- risonians of course rejoiced, since they were dis- unionists from the beginning. But the New England preacher, the chief influence in every community, seemed to lean in the same direction. The greatest one of this class that ever lived was now in the meridian of his influence" and trans- cendent powers. Henry Ward Beecher openly exulted in the separation of the Free-States from the Slave-States. It must be confessed that New England leaders had little idea of or feeling for the Union. Their moral sense was very strong, but one-sided; their institutional sense was very weak, even if not wholly lost. For if Secession be admitted as a principle what is to become of the North, even if we leave out the South? It too will go to pieces, dissolve into its constituent elements or States extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The dissolution of the Union CHAPTER III. — THE THIBD ALIGNMENT. 389 means logically not merely separation of the North and South, but universal separation, in the North as well as in the South. This thought pervades many statements of Lincoln (see, for example, his Inauguration Address). New Eng- land, therefore, needs an institutional regenera- tion; the original home of outspoken Secession and of the menace, it still holds to passive Seces- sion , and proclaims the same during these two months so deeply separative. But we must not forget that it will quickly change this attitude at the call of Lincoln. Passing from New England to New York we find a different atmosphere and observe a differ- ent principle at work. The great word here is Compromise. To be sure the same word with its conception was frequent in Boston and else- where in New England. But the commercial spirit of New York was terrified at the loss of Southern trade. The Republicans became aston- ishingly weak-backed, and were getting ready to crouch down under the South. Thurlow Weed, friend of Seward and editor of the Albany Even- ing Journal^ proposed a compromise which was in substance a surrender of the main plank of the Republican platform, that in regard to slavery in the Territories. Other leading Republican news- papers supported such a compromise. Seward was silent, but i)robably favored it till he heard from Lincoln through Weed, who visited the 390 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART II. President-elect at Springfield. Crittenden of Kentucky on December 18th introduced into the Senate his famous compromise measure, whose chief clause likewise sacrificed the distinctive re- sult of the Republican victory of 1860. Now comes Lincoln to the rescue. In a letter of December 11th he says: Entertain no propo- sition for a compromise in regard to slavery. In consequence Seward gets some backbone, the New York newspapers, like the Times, stiffen up, and even Greeley begins to change from a passive secessionist to an active unionist. Lin- coln has started to transform the Eastern States, one of his chief tasks at present. As he made them Republican in 1858, turning them from Popular Sovereignty, so he has to make them true Unionists in 1860, turning them from their tendency to compromise away the main purport of their victory. All can now see that Lincoln in this matter was the true representative of his party, and voiced aright its world-historical mission. The old Free-States, with their present leaning toward compromise and even separation, this Western man had to hold to their new duty. It is true that the Republicans began to stand aghast at the consequences of their victory. They had thought that the threats of the South were only bluster. But when South Carolina was certain to secede, and then actually went out, the vast CHAPTER III. — THE TIUBD ALIGyMENT. 391 coming task began to rise on their minds — nothing less tlian to meet these acts with arms. For there was no question that Lincoln had been fairly and constitutionally elected. The North had submitted to Buchanan; now the South ought to submit to Lincoln. The North began to feel it a point of honor to defend their prize. Still there was enough in the outlook to cause hesitation. The large vote for Douglas in the Presidential election showed a divided North ; it must first be united before any decided action could be taken looking toward armed mainte- nance of the Union, or Coercion as it was called. Another division in the North had begun to make its appearance, that between the East and the West. But South Carolina has started the blaze which rages furiously. Already that Commonwealth is getting a lesson that it is not a Social Whole within itself ; tradehas ceased, banks have stopped payment, the question of the necessaries of life has risen at Charleston. This one State finds itself not self-sufiicing, and so seeks to involve other States, which may have collected like materials for a political conflagration. Will it escape its own fire-brands? From these days of early 1861 we cannot help looking forward to the same days of 1865, when Sherman with his *' horde of Vandals," quite unresisted and irre- sistible, breaks into the State from the south 392 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. — PART II. and mows a wide swath of desolation through its whole length ; Charleston burns, Columbia burns, and the Nemesis of History celebrates one of her most striking: festivals of retribution. Or shall we interpret this return of the deed to the doer as a mere accident of war? Or that the line of retaliation has by no means yet come to an end, that the turn of South Carolina is still to rise up in some future whirl of the cycle of the World's History? At any rate it is manifest that South Carolina is bringing about just the opposite of what she intends — Coercion, the destruction of Slavery and the Primacy of the Union. She is in the hands of a mightier Power than herself, a Power which uses her as its instrument in spite of her- self; her effort, her wealth, her passion and her blood are poured out in a cause which she thinks her own, but which destroys every object which she holds dear and has sought to realize. To herself she is tragic enough ; to the World- Spirit she is comic, pursuing an end which is absurd, nugatory, self-annihilating; while tr}^- ing most to be just herself and nobody else, she is strangely metamorphosed into the opposite of herself, and is oil the time undoing what she is furiously bent upon doing. Such is, indeed, the bloody sport of the World- Spirit not only in South Carolina but elsewhere, yea in the whole movement of history. The CHAPTER in. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 393 question seriously comes up : Cannot a stop be put to it by the institutions of man now dawn- ing? We believe so; but let this matter be at present deferred, for the case of South Carolina has become contagious and is passing to other States of the South, which are all destined to catch that same madness of undoing the very work which they are trj'ing hardest to do, of destroying the very things which they make the most heroic sacrifices to preserve. Accordingly we pass not merely to another State but to a whole belt of States which madly start to dancing the same Devil's dance to the tune set to playing at Charleston. 2. Secession of the Lower Tier of Slave- States. These with South Carolina are usually called the Cotton States, after their one great staple. Cotton, which has become not only an aristocrat hut a monarch in the realm of South- ern production, and seems to be moulding in the same direction the character of its producers. Moreover these States are all marine States, with their chief commercial cities lying on the sea and with their people cultivating separate river-valleys which run down into salt water. Thus each State of Cottonia has its own connec- tion with the rest of the world through the Oceanic highway, and is separative and inde- pendent by its physical character. Here it may be said that Geography not only favors but 394 THE TEX YEAES' WAR. — PART II. cultivates Division, Separation, Disunion. Very different are the geographic situation and character of the States of the vast Missis- sippi Valley of the North, being interlinked by many rivers debouching into one great River, which fact not only suggests but produces unity and Union in the hearts of the inhabitants as well as in their outer lives. Along that seaboard it may be said that Nature herself contains a streak of Secession, and develops strongly the individuality of the separate State. The same is true of the North Atlantic States, as their history shows. At this point too we may catch a gMmpse of the grand totality of the Ten Years War: that Western people of the great Eiver Valley must first sweep down it and clear it of disunion, and then must pass to these separative States of the Atlantic coast and transform them into a new Union, which transformation will embrace not only the old Slave-States, but also the old Free-States, regenerating the Old-Thirteen from top to bottom. We have, then, come to the second Secession, continuing that of South Carolina, which is on fire and communicates its flames to the entire Tier of inflammable Cotton States, from Georgia to Texas. The whole Southern sky of the United States seems ablaze, one State after another tak- ing fire in the month of January, 1861. More- over the separation begins to get organic, the CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 395 seceded States soon form a Confederacy and adopt a Constitution, electing a President (Jef- ferson Davis) and a Vice-President (A. H. Stephens). We must note too that while the example of South Carolina is followed, there is a decided counter-current of reaction against her, a fear of her precipitancy, and possibly a touch of jealousy. Charleston, so active and so deserving, one would think, is not chosen as the seat of the new govern- ment; military control is at once taken from South Carolina and handed over to Beauregard ; the Confederate Congress hastens to re-enact the tariif of 1857, South Carolina's great bug- aboo, and one chief reason of her Secession, though she now votes for it ; President and Vice-President are not of her citizens. Her leadership in her own movement is discredited and taken away, and she feels a restraining grip upon what she has hitherto called her freedom, that is, her boundless caprice. Such is her first lesson in the Confederacy. But what made this Tier of States running westward along the saltwater border follow her in such haste without waiting for their more Northern sisters in slavery's domain? Infatu- ated with cotton, and inebriated with the domi- nation which they thought it gave not only over the North, but over Europe, yea, over the world. Listen to one of their more temperate Senators 396 THE TEN YEAES' WAE. — PART II. (Hammond), who taKes this modest view: "I firmly believe that the slaveholding South is now the controlling power of the world, that no other power would face us in hostility." But whence comes this terrestrial omnipotence? Cotton chiefly, with our other staples, " commands the world, and we have sense enough to know it," and what is more, we propose " to carry it out successfully." Evidently a world-empire hov- ered entrancingly before the imaginations of the ardent Southerners in these exciting days. They conceive that they have cornered not merely the North but the whole Earth if not the Uni- verse itself, winning their absolute supremacy, not thiouo;h armies but through cotton, which net man alone but God Himself needs for get- ting along. If moderate, quite prosaic, grave men of affairs could take such flights into the Elysian fields of uncontrolled domination, what highly colored pictures would not be drawn by the mighty gasconaders of the South, gifted with a romantic idealizing power and luxuriating in a semi-tropical poetic etflorescence of speech? An orator like Wigfall, who was the devoted spokes- man of cotton in its native States at this time, found alwaj's a strong response in the people, and is still instructive for this reason, as well as amusing. Time has proved tliat there never was a greater delusion. But did all the people even of the CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 3!)7 Cotton States, share it? Perhaps not; one is inclined to some doubt in the matter. But the Oligarchy as a whole did thiuk and talk thus, being the victims of their ruling passion, the love of domination. Value of the cotton export 76 millions ; value of all other exports 60 mill- ions ; these are the figures which set on fire the Southern imagination and made the Oligarchy see universal empire, having already the peculiar psychological aptitude for taking such a view. Eeally, however, the South was dependent on external production for supplying many of its conmionest wants ; it was far less self-sufficing than the North, having almost no system of diversified industries. Accordingly in the month of January, 1861, the row of the most Southern Slave-States — Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana — pass ordinances of Secession, Texas following them early in February. All of them are salt-water States, witii separate rivers cutting them up and pouring down into the sea, a geo- graphical stamp of Disunion. In the course of several months they succeed in dragging after them two fresh-water States (Tennessee and Arkansas), not without much protest and diffi- culty. (a.) When the act of Secession was accom- plished, the Cotton States came together to or- ganize a provisional Government and to adopt a 398 THE TEN YEARS' WAE.— I'AUT II. Constitution. In four days after the meeting of their Congress, the Constitution was ready and was accepted. The next day the President (Davis) and the Vice-President Stephens were chosen (Feb. 9th). The Constitution forbade the shive-trade, which was such an act of self-denial on the part of the Cotton States, that the motive is always looked for. It was certainly not on account of moral scruples, and we believe, not out of regard for the opinion of Civilization, as is often stated, which had been already defied. The prohibition of the slave-trade was meant for the more North- ern Slave-States, and particularly for Virginia, which as slave-breeder for Cottonia enjoyed a considerable annual revenue. Hence the excep- tion in the Constitution: " the importation of negroes from any foreign country, other than the slave-holding States and Territories of the United States, is forbidden." Still such a favor may not always continue: hence "Congress shall have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of this Conf ederac3^ " This is clearly an admonition if not a threat to the other delaying Slave-States. Also there is in it a rebuff to South Carolinians and other extremists, who always maintained that each State should regulate the slave-trade and not the Constitution. Jeiferson Davis had also proclaimed the same doctrine. CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGXMENT. 399 Another point emphasized is in the Preamble: ** We the. People of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, \\\ order to form a permanent /etZerrt? government," is the Southern view of the old Constitution with the assertion of State sover- eignty, and with consequent right of Secession. Moreover the same Preamble introduces the word God, the lack of which had so often made the old Constitution a subject of reproach, in the phrase " invoking the favor of Almighty God." The President was elected for six years and could not succeed himself. It is also significant that the word delegated was substituted for the word granted in the first section of the Constitution, which speaks of the " powers herein granted." More fully than in the old Constitution the genesis of the new State is recoonized as a fundamental function. " The Confederate States may acquire new Territory" out of which new States can be formed. " In all such Terri- tory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recog- nized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial Government." So the new federa- tion is also State-producing, but Slave-State pro- ducing. And the admission of the new State is so hedged about that it had to be a Slave-State to get admitted. The Confederacy thus is Slave- State producing only ; it is no longer double and 400 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PAET II. SO has fulfilled on its side Lincoln's prophecy : " This Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free, it will become all one thing or all the other." In looking back at this movement of sable Cottonia and her leaders, an impartial judgment must affirm that there was not a single far-seeing statesman among them. Their party had both Houses of Congress in the old Union, with every chance of a reaction in their favor. They held the Supreme Court in a firmer grip than ever, since Judge Curtis had resigned and Clifford had taken his place. The slaveholders could not by any enactment of Congress be excluded from the Territories. In substance they had quite all that they asked, with the two branches of Gov- ernment, legislative and judicial, in their hands. But the executive authority was not theirs, and that was just the pinch. So every leading South- ern statesman makes himself an actor in that colossal tragi-comedy of the World's History in which the South is led to root out and destroy with all speed that which she most sought to preserve. Hence rises the question : What could have been the motive? In looking into the psychol- ogy of this matter we must seek for some hid- den spring of action, often unuttered and in- deed unconscious, yet the deepest and most powerful. As just stated, the South really had CHAPTi:i! HI. '- TUB TliinD ALIQ^^MSNT, 401 all that it asked for, still there was something which it did not ask for, but which it wanted more than anything else — rule, authority dom- ination. The love of slavery was not its deepest love, nor even the love of State sovereignty. It must have control of a nation, if not of the whole United States, then of its Southern half. Jefferson Davis never mentioned slavery in his inaugural. His wife reports him saying just before the War: " In any case I think our slave property will be eventually lost." This seems to mean that in his opinion slavery would perish even if the South should win her independence. Thus Davis went into Secession openly for the sake of slavery but secretly with another motive. Many of the leaders were quite like him in this respect. Hence when outvoted in the Nation, they flew into revolt under the pretext of "danger to our peculiar institution, slavery," but really because they, though the minority, would not, indeed could not give up national rule. Some of them, like Davis, foresaw that slavery was likely to perish in the appeal to arms, but did not expect to lose independence too. But they lost the whole stake, and by their course annihilated the very thing they went after. Sad and tragic enough on its individual side is the drama ; but to the eye of the World- Spirit these passionate leaders are comic char- 26 402 THE TEN YEARS' WAU, — PART 11. acters rushing with vengeance to saw off from the tree the limb on which they are standing. (ft.) The Administration at Washington is still the irritated object, which this second Secession in the South is worrying. The action of the Cotton States is, however, now met by a decided counter-action of the Cabinet with its Triumvirate in control. Its power is still further secured by the appointment of John A. Dix as Secretary of the Treasury (Jan. 11th). Dix is best remem- bered for his stirring order which thrilled the North and expressed the new will in the Cabinet : " If any man attempts to haul down the Ameri- can flag, shoot him on the spot" — an order said to have been sent without the knowledge of President Buchanan, who is now really sup- planted by men whose function it is to tide over the remaining two months till the adv^ent of Lin- coln. It is interesting to note that all these strong members of the Cabinet have had also a striking and rapid evolution of their own. They all had been devoted followers of Buchanan, up- holders of the Kansas policy and of the Dred Scott decision, and supporters of Breckinridge. They seem to have gotten their eyes open in these two months, and to have first seen the Southern tendency toward Disunion. Of course they were Union men to the core, and had to undergo a great inner experience before taking the present attitude. And they forecast what en APT Ell in, — THE riiiiw altg.\ment. 403 attitude the majority of their party will take in the a[)proaching struggle. One of the results of the new policy of the Triumvirate was the sending of the steamer /SVar of (he West with soldiers and provisions for Fort Sumter. When the vessel entered Charleston harbor, she was fired at by a masked battery on Morris Island. Her officers thought it dangerous to proceed, as she was unarmed, and they backed her out, no signal from Sumter having been displayed. Still Anderson saw the ap- proaching steamer, and after getting ready did not fire. The whole business was badly man- aged, but in view of the time and situation, the bungling was a part of the higher control. Not yet, not yet, says the World-Spirit in its way of talking. South Carolina is indeed on fire; but can we not confine the flame to it alone? By no means, is the decree ; whatever is inflammable, must now take fire and burn, till it burn itself out and the ground be made clear for a new order. Anderson in a note to Governor Pickens de- clared the shooting at the Star of the West to be " an act of war." This it was, the first act, still there was no uprising after it, both sides lapsed into their former quiescence. The time was not yet ready. The Administration of Buchanan was not the chosen means for carrying on the war. The new man must be at the helm. 401 THE Tisy y/!:ars' wam. -- part it. Aud the North was not jet ready, uot yet quite convinced that Secession would propagate itself outside of South Carolina. But the events of this month will convince it and compel it to make up its mind. Meanwhile a kind of truce prevails, during which the Peace Convention blows several iridescent bubbles, which, how- ever, explode of themselves, and various schemes of Compromise are cunningly devised and float for a brief moment before the People, but find no permanent lodgment. (c.) What of the North in these two months? Though Compromise be still at work, the chief one, that of Crittenden, is killed liy the senatorial vote of January 15th, which means that no Com- promise is necessary. Indeed the nature of these Compromises, which signify that the people of the North must somehow recall their Presi- dential vote of 1860 and even apologize for it, is getting to be plainly perceived. Moreover, a distinct division begins to appear between the two great parts of the North — the East and the West, the old Free States, and the new Free States. The West headed by its Leader who is the new President is ready to say that there can be no Compromise on the essen- tial matter. Also there must bo Coercion in the right sense — the holding of the forts, the keep- ing of national property and the collecting of revenue. CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 405 And now the curious fact comes to light that the Drecl Scott decision also stands in the way of Compromise. Congress, according to it, has no power to prohibit slavery in any Territory, Northern or Southern, and cannot constitutionally make any law upon the subject. Any Compro- mise must therefore be in the form of an amend- ment to the Constitution — quite along and uncertain process amid these hurrying events which require immediate action. Thus the decision of Judge Taney became the chief obstacle to the cause which it was intended to bolster, and finally rendered the Crittenden Com- promise or any other like it quite impracticable. Davis and Toombs would have accepted it with the words slave and slavery intrenched in the instru- ment, as then the boast that " the word slave does not occur in the Constitution," would be no longer true. But the last Compromise with slavery has been made, and the decision of Judge Taney is brought to further the decree of a still higher Tribunal. Moreover slavery is showing itself more and more allied with the dissolution of the Union. The result is the Union begins to move into the foreground and to align its supporters, who were anti-slavery and pro-slavery and indifferent to slavery. The Triumvirate of Buchanan's cabi- nate had called forth powerfully the sentiment of Union in the country among all parties. This is the salient fact of these two months: the trend 406 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART II. toward the unification of the Union men of every sort in the North and in the Border Slave-States. Moreover Lincoln grasps this fact fully and will harmonize himself with it, making it his starting- point. It has become clear that the battle must be fought primarily for the Union and not against Slaver3^ Lincoln's home, the North-West was more for the Union and less against Slavery than the North-East, whose anti-slaveryism squinted toward disunion, and whose unionism squinted toward compromise. On the other hand these two months (Jan. — Feb., 1861) bring the Nation more closely to the verge of dissolution than any other time in its history. State after State drops out, with no decisive attempt to stoj) the breach on the part of the Government, and no united manifestation against it on the part of the People. Upon the razor's edge the Union stood balancing and tip- ping — will it fall? The Triumvirate valiantly try to stay the dissolving process, and succeed in bringing it to a temporary halt, which, however, seems to l)e but a truce, till the new Administra- tion steps in. At this lowest point of national disintegration Lincoln appears and takes hold. His advent, however, soon brings on a new Secession and the last. But this is just what calls forth the mighty reaction towards the Union, sweeps away all Compromise, and steels the Nation's heart to the point of Coercion- CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 407 3. Secession of the Middle Tier of Slave- States. — This is the third act iu the drama of Secession, but it follows the second act by no means so rapidly as the second followed the first. Some two months and a half pass before Vir- ginia secedes (April 17th), trailing after her North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Eleven States have now gone out of the Union, seven belonging to the lower Tier four to the middle Tier. This is the end of the movement, which dashes in vain against the upper Tier of the Slave-States — Delaware, Maryland, Ken- lucky and Missouri, to which four West Virginia is soon to be added. Such then, is the final Alitrnment of States for the Great War — eighteen Free-States and five Slave-States against cloven Slave-States. Hitherto we have seen the South as the irri- tant, the Prime Mover. But with the advent of Lincoln, a change occurs, the new President takes the initiative. The Government shows itself no longer as passive, letting itself be assailed. Not only is the doctrine of Secession denied, but the right of Coercion is asserted by the Executive Power of the land. It is in this last point that Virginia through her Convention grapples \vith Lincoln and ends by turning secessionist, carry^ inff with her the middle Tier of Slave-States. She assumes to i)rescribe conditions for the con- tinuance of the Union. She puts uj) herself as 408 THE TEX YEARS' WAR. — PART II. sovereign, and will act regardless of the compact. This is the very idea which is to be taken out of her by war. Says she in substance : Give up your political victory of 1860, guarantee us against any similar victory, and we will remain in the Union. Thus Secession begins its final realization with the act of Virginia, having occupied four months of Buchanan, and six weeks of Lincoln. Since the inauguration of the latter, the struggle has really been between the new President and Vir- ginia. Which of the two will yield? Neither. It is true that Charleston continues fortifying, and the problem of Fort Sumter is pressing ; also the Southern Conferacy with capital at Mont- gomery keeps organizing and preparing for war. But Virginia has grappled with Lincoln's idea of Coercion, as declared in his Inaugural and pro- poses to make him take it back. Vain is the attempt. If Virginia had pos- sessed a statesman like some of her old ones, statesmen whose souls throbbed in harmony with the movement of Civilization and communed deeply with the World-Spirit, she might have been diverted from her present tendency. She loves the Union in her eminently respectable, formal way ; but a new problem has arisen which brings this love to the hardest test. Which will you choose, O Virginia, Coercion or Disunion? For such is the dilemma before you. The answer CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 409 of her Unionist Convention sitting at Richmond is, Disunion. Very well, spake a voice out of the future, you will have to be made over, even your Unionism must be re-born. Thus Virginia, attempting to stop the confla- gration, takes fire herself, being inflammable through her passion against any Coercion of the Single-State, even when it is smiting the bond of the Union with all its might. She loves the Union tenderly as her very child ; but when this child is lying at death's door, she repels violently the only means by which its life can be pre- served. With a sincere but strangely contradic- tory utterance she declares : Not that I love the Union less but I hate Coercion more, and I am going to follow not my love but my hate. I have made my choice : Disunion without Co- ercion I take to my bosom and fling away the Union with Coercion. And now with a little inner adjustment we, every one of us, even the humblest, can hear the voice of the World-Spirit replying to these words of Virginia with a kind of ironical modula- tion in its note peculiar to it when it makes men, States, and whole Ages self-undoing through their own deeds: Yes, go on, Virginia, 3'ou are doing just what I wish you to do, and I need your help. My whole aim and end is to destro}' slavery, to tear it up by the roots and to burn it to yshes. But I also wish to reconstruct this old 410 Tllb: TEN YEAIiS' WAH. - PAItT 11. Union so nncerttiin of itself, actually not know- ing whether it is on top or underneath any re- fractory member of its household. Follow me and revolt; do not take up with Lincoln's Ad- ministration and yield to your petty emotion for the Union; refuse to be placated, and force the fight upon the unwilling and perchance cowardly North. Then you are mine wholly, and I can do my will with you as I may. Virginia listens in a kind of delusive dream, not unlike that of Agamemnon before Troy when he had a lying vision which Zeus scut him, since he was internally ready and even calling for it, that he was going to capture the Trojan city at once. So Virginia dreams Disunion in oider to be completely brought back into a new-born Union ; she rejects Coercion and so has to be coerced tremendously by the decree of the Gods; she battles for slavery but bravely bayonets it to death, her weapon being strangely turned around and thrust into the heart of what she is fighting to save. In this way we may cast a fleeting glance for- ward upon the coming conclusion. But now returning from this outlook we shall watch the wrestle between Virginia and Lincoln, a kind of gladiatorial combat between a man and State, or rather between their respective ideas. Such is properly the first conflict of the CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGXMENT. 411 incoming President, still peaceful but preluding the shock of armies. («) On the ^th of March, 1861, a great change takes place at the capital city of the land, Washington — a change we may call it of Prime Movers, of the central directive agency of the government of the Union. Hitherto the South- ern mind has been the controlling political power since the Constitution first set the machinery in motion, some seventy years before; but hence- forth the North, under its chosen leader with its ruling idea, is to direct the destiny of the Nation. Accordingly this new Prime Mover in the per- son of its chief representative, mounts the plat- form in front of the Capitol and voices its pur- j)ose not only to the assembled multitude, but to all futurity, in a Presidential inaugural. It is now generally acknowledged that Lincoln rose equal to the occasion. The Primacy of the Union is the ruling idea of the address, though he docs not elaborate this idea upon the disputed point of how it shall be interpreted in its details. He declares that the Constitution and the Laws will be his guide, and that he will execute the Fugitive Slave Law. Yet hefully recognizes the moral wrong of Slavery as the real cause of the whole trouble: " One section believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, and the other believes it wronsj and ouo;ht not to be extended." He denies the right of Secession : " the Union is 412 THE TEN YEABS' WAR.— PABTII. [)erpetual." He asserts the right of Coercion in its just limits: he will "hold, occupy and possess the property and places bek)nging to the Government, and collect the duties and imposts." Then the Law of Conscience must submit in the matter of the Fugitiv^e Shive Law, to the Con- stitution, and bide its time. That is Lincoln as we have already known him. Moreover the decision of the Supreme Court can be reversed by the People, though it is " binding in any case upon parties to a suit," till it be re- versed. Likewise " the central idea of Seces- sion is anarchy," logically ending in the dis- solution of all government. Nor does he fail to strike deep when he says that "the rule of the minority is wholly inadmissible," since " they make a precedent, which will in turn divide and ruin them," and hence are self- undoing. State caprice is unconstitutional : "no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union," and thus break up the same. " I consider that in view of the Consti- tution and Laws, the Union is unbroken," in spite of all acts of Secession, and " I shall take care that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States," in spite of the doctrine against Coercion. Gently but firmly, with hand of iron in a glove of velvet, does the new President as- sert the Primacy of the Union. At once the helm of State feels the fresh firm CHAPTER in. - THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 413 grip of the Inaugural of Lincoln, who now begins his brief and only period of jDeace during his entire magistracy. A little more than a month it lasted, and he, in feeling the most peaceful of men, was destined to prosecute to the bitter end one of the bloodiest wars in History. Very clearly do we hear the note of the new Prime Mover in contrast with Buchanan's lust four months, or even with his whole admin- istration. The old dualistic Union, half-slave and half-free, is coming to an end through its own inner self -negating contradiction, and its last and most vacillating President, the very embodi- ment of it put at the head of Government, has stepped out of the White House into private life. But now a new scene of the drama rises : a State, the oldest State of all, will try to wrest the place of Prime Mover from Lincoln and the North, seeking to be this herself, and at the same time whirling rapidly toward a denial of the Primacy of the Union, which culminates in her Secession. (b) Virginia, hitherto somewhat in the back- ground, now steps to the front and becomes the main pivot of rebellion. She has to decide the momentous question whether she will secede and go with the South, or cling to the Union. Events have brought her to the position of being the center of the Secession movement. 414 THE TEN TEAMS' WAU. — TAUT II. If she does not come to its support, it will col- lapse ; if she does, it will take a new lease of life. The Southern Confederacy is wooing her with every sort of blandishment, not sparing threats; but she holds back and refuses to go out on the inauguration of Lincoln. Four weeks after it (April 4th) her Convention votes down an ordi- nance of Secession by 89 to 45. Still it refuses to dissolve and send its mem- bers home. Why? She believes in the Union, but will resist Coercion in the Lincoln sense. Secession is wrong or at least impolitic, still the Government cannot put it down. Here lay the grand fatality in the Virginia consciousness ; we may deem it her tragic guilt for which she is to suffer more than any other State. At least this is the political idea which is to be Avashed out of her soul with the blood of her own children. Nay, the contradiction will rend her Statehood itself atwain, and transmit her cleavage to the future in two Virginias. During the month of March the issue becomes settled clearly and definitely between Lincoln and Virginia. He holds to the Primacy of the Union and says so in his Inaugural. Virginia on the contrary maintains the Primacy of the Single- State. Lincoln was a grandson of Virginia and sought to treat her with the greatest regard. He waited for the Convention to dissolve, but it would not; he even summoned its leading union- CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 41.J ist, Suuiniers, to Wasliiugtou for consultation, but he would not come, though he sent a substi- tute who made a bad impression. Lincoln now saw that this Virginia Convention of Unionists were also employing the Southern menace : Do so and so or we'll secede; above all no Coercion of seceded States. Thus Virginia, just in her manifestation of Unionism, assumes to be dictator over the Union, and to prescribe to the consti- tutionally elected President what he must do not onlv in her case but also in regard to the South generally. Here is Lincoln's summary of the matter clinched with a striking metaphor: " Your Convention in Richmond has been sitting nearly two months, and all they have done is to shake the rod over my head." Is not this the very disease, the grand Southern malady, which Lincoln has been called to eradicate? So the Virginia L^nionists are soins; to dominate the Union and its President, or become Disunionists. Certainly theirs is not the Primacy of the Union, out of which they will soon be driven by their own logic as well as by passion. It has become plain that such Unionism must be transformed, after being smelted in the fiery furnace of war. Lincoln has to give up Vir- oinia and with her the middle Tier of Slave- States. That Convention of her Unionists has struggled for four weeks to make him eat the words of his luausural which afHrmed the Pri- 416 THE TEJSr YEARS' WAR. ~ VAIiT 11. macy of the Union. He has not done it, is not going to do it, and so the appeal to force nec- essarily results. Thus Virginia will not accept majority rule in the Nation, and is getting ready to assail the Union as Free-State producing, whereby she makes herself the chief means of bringing this principle down upon her own head with a bloody thwack, and of becoming a Free- State herself. This outcome she ought to have foreseen, but she no longer produces statesmen with foresight. Really the Convention of Unionists has put their State and themselves into the power of the Secessionists. Their attitude gets to be more and more that of the menace: if you, O Lincoln, dare lift your finger to coerce South Carolina, out we shall go at once. Can Charleston have a more pressing invitation to open fire on Sumter? The fact is a Virginia secessionist of the first water now rushes down to that city and makes a speech to its people : "I will tell your Governor what will put Virginia in the Southern Confed- eracy in less than an hour by the Shrewsbury clock. Strike a blow! " For if you strike a blow, Lincoln will be forced to eat his Inaugural (which he will not), or strike back, and this will be Coercion, against which even Virginia Unionism has staked its existence. Strike a bloio is the talisnianic utterance of the crisis, expressed at the right moment by Roger A. CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 417 Pryor of Virginia. Though Major Anderson said that in three days he would have to evacuate Sumter, unless he received in the meantime sup- plies or " controlling instructions from my government," the order to fire was given by four aides, three South Carolinians and one Virginian, the mentioned Pryor, whose prophecy in refer- ence to his State was at once fulfilled. Beauregard, the commandant at Charleston, did not directly order the act, nor did Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy. They both defended the act after it was done, but both, if they had been consulted, would prob- ably have waited till Major Anderson's sup- plies were exhausted, and have permitted him peaceably to evacuate the fort. But South Carolina again seized the initiative, and the first blow of war was struck. Again she per- formed her function of precipitating the con- flict, of determining on what day and in what place it should begin. But the conflict itself was not hers alone, but that of the whole South, and sooner or later had to be fought out. Lincoln answered at once by issuing his call for 75,000 men, and the North rose in a body. Of all the Southern Statesmen whose declarations have come down to us, Toombs showed the clearest foresight as well as gave the best utterance in regard to the future. He was Secretary of State in. the Confederate Cal)inet, and at its session 27 418 THE TEjV YEAIiS' WAR. — TART II. poured forth the following inightilj-worded pro- test, according to his biographer: "The firing upon that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen. * * * At this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from moun- tain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary, it puts us in the wrong, it is fatal." Just about the wisest words spoken in the South during these hot passionate days : Toombs, addicted at times to grandiose bluster so tempting to the Southern orator of this period, shows himself here in his best character, commingling a vein of far- sighted prophecy with lofty poetic expression. Since the War, Southern and Northern writers have fought over the firing on Sumter, using their pens as weapons, the question being, was this the first blow, the first act of open aggres- sion? Davis, Stephens and many others of the States-Rights school say No ! that attack was simply resistance to aggression; the attempt of the United States to provision its own fort in Charleston Harbor was already an act of aggres- sion against the sovereign right of the State of South Carolina. The North did not regard it in that lio;ht and does not still. Of course, if one is hunting for grounds of quarrel, each side can fish up a long string of provocati(ms from the CIIAPTEU III. — THE TIIIRn ALIGNMENT. 419 l)ciiinuiuij; of the Govcnniieiit down. Slill that shell fired upon Sumter at 4 : 30 in the morning of April 12th, 18i)l, from a mortar of the Confed- erate Fort Johnson was the primal deed starting the niightv train of blazing gunpowder which kept ex})lodiug for four years all over tlie South. It must be confessed, however, that the real train, the train of explosive ideas, had long been laid throughout those Southern lands, and was ready or soon would be ready to be touch'ed off in a thousand localities besides Sumter and Charleston. The settlement had to be made, the first gun had to be fired, if not just now at Fort Johnson, then next week or possibly next j-ear somewhere else. The World- Spirit has issued its decree for the grand arbitrament of arms between two desperately contending princi- ples ; the exact time and place of the opening struggle is a matter of less consequence, being largely the element of contingenc}' in the move- ment of History. The dualism of the Union as productive of Free-States and Slave- States is to come to an end, but not without a w^hirlwind of war enveloping the entire land. Who began it? Well, who did? it is going to begin anyhow, settle the question as you may. (c) The North now becomes the Prime Mover in its turn, taking the initiative under the lead of Lincoln and never letting it drop till the center of all the preceding irritation has been reached 420 THE TEN YEABS' WAB. — PART IT. and thoroughly cleuused of its irritating ])o\vcr by the abolition of slavery and its oligarchical rule. Such is the great new step taken by the Northern Folk-Soul, which has hitherto allowed itself to be ruled by Southerners, often with good reason, for the}' were the best statesmen. The South declared that it simply wished to be "let alone" — that is, to be given a free hand in dissolving the Union, and in making Slave States out of Territories. Undoubtedly against these proposals the new Administration had to take a positive stand or ignore the prin- ciple which called it into being, ignore the voice of the Age which commanded it to make the Union Free-State producing, in accord with the vote of the People. Lincoln, forbearing to the last and willing to yield in non-essentials and accidentalities, never faltered in asserting the essential point. It may be truly said that in these days he spoke for the Genius of Civiliza- tion, becoming the incarnation of the World- Spirit. Many su})pose that the People of the North, in their first disinclination and horror of Civil War, would have voted for the Crittenden Compromise. But Lincoln would not let them surrender their own deepest principle. And we shall find that his main function was to hold the People to the War, not through external force but through inner sympathy, by means of which he could always call them back afresh to their CHAPTEli III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 421 long laborious task. The deepest straud of his nature was to keep in touch with the Folk-Soul and to mediate it with the World-Spirit. He could not be brought to compromise the Union as Free-State producing since this was to him the plain decree of the World-Spirit, and was the distinctive thinoj which he had to do. Thus he became the guide, the leader, truly the oracle of the People, and was not simply guided by them. He knew that the work must be done now, otherwise it would have to be started again under far harder conditions. He knew that in the school of the Nations the schoolmaster did not spare the rod, and that any faltering or pal- tering would not go unpunished. At the same time he would not and could not go faster than the People, and he would take all along in his movement — all who could be persuaded to join the flag of the Union. He annulled the procla- mations of Fremont and of Hunter till the Bor- der States were ready to adopt his own far more sweeping proclamation of the doom of slavery. Thus we must grasp Lincoln in his deepest character as a mediator, mediating between the World-Spirit and the Folk-Soul, both of which he has to know, following both in a way, yet controlling both to one great harmonious result. It is true that the Folk-Soul had already re- ceived the impress of the World-Spirit, as this book has stated more than once ; still this 422 THE TEN YEAB8' WAB. — PART II. impress is as yet subjective, ethical, not actual- ized ia the institutions of the hind. To make it actual and institutional is the work of the Hero or Genius — here Lincoln, who has to transform into actuality the new Union out of the old, bringing into active existence the Union as Free- State producing henceforth and forever. Lincoln's call for 75,000 todefend the Union, met with an immediate and overwhelming re- spouse of the People and is the prototype of his part in the whole War. He hears the voice of the World-Spirit commanding the new idea on the one side, and he is also deeply communing with the Folk-Soul on the other. The supreme question with him is : Are the people now ready to execute the behest which I hear from above? If not, then I umst wait, and even restrain the too precipitate spirits, for the whole pe()[)le nuist back the World-Spirit with their conviction and will ere its purpose can be realized. Hence we call him the mediator between these two some- what shadowy but very puissant entities — the World-Spirit and the Folk-Soul, and he in a manner obeys while directing both to the one grand consummation — the Free-State which generates Free States only. So it comes that Lincoln's words fl\'ing from the capital through the nation to its outermost borders and talking to the Peoi)le are the most signilicant utterances of the time, and seem to possess an Olympian CHAPTER III. — THE THIRD ALIGNMENT. 421? power, as if Zeus the Supreme God were speak- ing and proclaiming the final judgment of the Tribunal of the Aojes. With the firing on Fort Sumter the sweep toward Diiiuuion reaches its extreme point; our federation in its long-continued deflection from the central Sun of the whole System has touched its very aphelion, and the pending question is : Shall it henceforth fly off into infinite space, each member wanderinsf after its own fashion through the future, or shall it make or be made to make a quick turn back toward the source of light and unity? Just at this turning-point stands the form of Abraham Lincoln, and bids the hitherto victorious centrifugal movement cease, or rather gives ita sudden whiskand whirl, and thenbowls it around toward the central lumiuar}', out of the sphere of whose influence the entire System of States seemed about to rush into original Chaos. Such is the gigantic historical position of the man at this moment when, in answer to the attack on Sumter, he issues his call to the Nation, which gives a response equally gigantic, and gets ready to march. Accordingly from the outermost limit of our political World the return begins, not to stoj) from that day to the present. This is now the centripetal movement, sweeping sunwards till it reaches its perihelion, when possibly a hei'culcMn effort of the contrary kind will have to be made, 424 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART II. namely to keep this political world of ours from flying into the all-consuming sun. At present, however, we are occupied not with the future, but with the past, and are to cast our look to the opposite side of our political orbit, and sharply mark that turning-point from Chaos back to Cosmos, from Disunion back to Union. It is manifest, that the Second Part of the Ten Years' War, which we have named the Union Disunited has passed its last stage and wheeled about into a new sweep moving in the other direction, which leads to the Union Re~uniled. This will give a new Part, the Third, lasting some four years and filling the land with the clash of arms. CIIAPTEBIII.—BETBOSPECT. 425 IRetrospect. The facts of History muy be likened to an army and its organization. Primarily it is com- posed of individuals, of separate unordered atoms, which are similar to the crude unorgan- ized historic events of a period. Then must come their training and multifarious discipline till they be marshalled into companies, battal- ions, regiments, brigades, divisioDS, corps and armies. Each has its own leader and order, even if one fundamental principle runs through and unites the whole multitude of men and facts. But this is not all. Over the entire national army, and over the complete array of historic events is placed a Lord paramount who controls both the Army and the History of the Nation unto his purpose. This Supreme Lord we have often, sought to glimpse and even to name, under various titles, chief of which is the World-Spirit. With Him it is the main function of written History to make the reader acquainted; at least such is our conception of the matter. Accordingly we are trying t© find the inner ordering of this vast multiplicity of historic de- tails, on the outside so elusive and evanescent, by arraying them in companies, regiments, brigades and the like, and putting them all finally 426 THE TEN YEABS' WAB. — PABT II. under the cotmiiaud of their highest leader, the world-historical Generalissino already mentioned. We repeat that there is no attempt here to set down the fullness of the mere events of History as they bubble out to the surface of the Time- stream ; they are not to be left just as they ex- ternally appear without their inner process. On the contrary they are to be drilled singly first, then companied, regimented, brigaded until they can be seen marching in the Grand Army of the Supreme Orderer of the World's History. 1. One of the best points at which to observe the incoming presence and authority of the World-Spirit is the equally firm belief of both North and South in the rightfulness of their re- spective causes. Conviction fought conviction, conscience was pitted against conscience, and in a sense it was God against God. Still one side had distinctly the decision of the Highest Arbiter in its favor. Who is this Arbiter above both, delivering judgment after and through conflict? It is the President over all History, soverning it, and directing it toward its enil unto which each important epoch is a step or stage, which can be or ought to be formulated when the historic conflict is set down in writing. Historiography, then, is the exposition of the World-Spirit clothing itself in the occurrences of Time. These occurrences in the present con- nection are political, belonging to the State as CHAPTER III. — BETROSPECT. 427 one of the forms of human association. Ac- cordingly we seek to look through these appear- ances called events, and to behold wli;it controls them and also unto what end they are controlled. We may likewise consider the two sides as two Folk-Souls, Northern and Southern, into which the one national Folk-Soul is split, having evolved itself into a moral separation as regards slavery. Two hostile convictions we witness; each is still subjective, in the individual, but is seeking to be objective, in the institution, and thereby rule the land. Such are the two con- testants, two Folk-Souls, each appealing now to the World-Spirit as Supreme Judiciary of History for a favorable decision. 2. The present question, then, cannot be set- tled at the forum of conscience ; it is something more than a moral question. Both sides are equally conscientious, are equally devoted to their duty or what they take to be such ; yet they are in complete opposition and antagonism. Each side thinks that it is right and the other wrong, and they appeal by arms to the Supreme Arbiter, called also the God of battles. His answer is given in the form of defeat and victory. Permanent defeat of a cause is a nega- tive judgment of the Tribunal of the Ages, ren- dered after due trial. The lost cause means the condemned cause, condemned at the forum of History, but not necessarily at the forum of Con- 428 THE TEN YEAR ^' WAR. — PART II. science. Yet these two grand adjudicators of Time's greatest Causes must somehow be brought into agreement at hist, and unite in rendering- judgment. Hitherto in History the final decision of the World-Spirit has been through w^ar — certainly an external decision. This may be accepted by the defeated side, perchance has to be accepted; still it retains an element of violence which is alien to victory itself. Accordingly there is the persistent search for some mediating principle between Conscience and the World-Spirit, which may eliminate war and drive it out of History, which it has heretofore dominated. Such a principle must -be embodied in an Institution which the conscientious individual has to be con- tinually re-making, that it make him conscien- tious. No conflict between Conscience and the Constitution, such as we have already seen, will then be possible. 3. As we behold them at present in the North and in the South, one of these warring Con- sciences is in harmony with the Genius of Civil- ization, the other is not. One may be said to bear the impress of the World-Spirit, the other not. One keeps step with the movement of the Age, the other runs counter and often says so, with a kind of defiance. Or call them the two Folk- Souls into which the soul of the once whole Nation has been rifted: one of them is chosen CHAPTER III. — RETROSPECT. 429 to realize a great stage of the World's History; the other is not only not chosen but is even made to serve the purpose of its opponent. This calls up for notice the way in which the World-Spirit deals with the uuchosen, the de- feated peoples of History. These are made to bring about, often through pouring out pro- fusely their own blood, the very thing which they have most opposed. In their mightiest doing they are mightily undoing themselves, and thus seem to be writing a comedy in their own gore. As already noted repeatedly, the Southern States are taking the very means to destroy what they seek to maintain and perpetuate. The de- lusive dream of domination it is which the World- Spirit sends upon those whose cause is to be wiped out of History. Herewith, however, the voice of protest begins to be heard against this method. The World- Spirit is put to the question, and its way of deal- ing with the Nations is cited before a new Tribunal. It has hitherto appeared as Fate, external, arbitrary, even if rational. The World- Spirit is not now exempt from judgment ; it also is to evolve, is to be transformed; in a word it is to become institutionalized. Somehow it must be gotten inside the State, no longer re- maining outside and destroying the same. 4. It has been repeatedly declared that the World-Spirit has an end, which it is seeking to 430 THE TEN TEARS' WAR. — PART II. realize in its historical movement. What is that end? Evidently the free man or free humanity, each having to attain its ever-widening sphere of freedom through institutions, since these not only embody but secure man's freedom. It may be said, therefore, that the World-Spirit has a great interest in the present American struggle as it is a very important stage in the his-torie progress of man toward institutional liberty. Though the United States was justly called a free country from the start, it has reached a point at which it must take a new step toward the goal of History. It has run upon a serious limit to freedom which it must transcend. It can no longer remain half-slave and half-free, and produce both Slave-States and Free-States. Nor can it longer rear slaves and freemen to- gether. Such was the behest of that Superior Power over the two Consciences and over the two Folk-Souls, which Power we have often called the World-Spirit. This, in the course of Universal History hith- erto, has ai)peared an outside power, outside of the individual and the State. Evidently its destiny is to become inside the })()litical process of Nations, determining the people still by its decree but-also being determined by them. In other words the Tribunal of the Ages is to be instituted as a part of popular Government. 5. In the very name of World-Spirit ib indi- CHAPTER III. — lUJTROSPECT. 431 cated thut it is but una foiui or phase of Spirit as universal, or of the Absolute Spirit. This has its manifestation in History as well as in other ways, such as Art, Science, Religion and Philos- ophy. By its very nature it has to reveal itself, and this self-revelation in the present case takes the form of historic events in Space and Time, and under this form it is called the world-histor- ical Spirit, or the World-Spirit for short, which in its spatial and temporal succession seeks after universal freedom, or the freedom characteristic of the Universe as self-conscious. The World-Spirit has as its end the completely free man in a free Universe made institutional. Neither of these freedoms is yet here, is yet realized, though we have to grnsp all History as the path -way leading to both. G. History has its counterpart in Biography, especially in political Biography, which shows us a great soul filled with the World-Spirit, product of it on the one hand, yet producing it and realizing it on the other. The life of the great genius as statesman reveals the Nation moulding him, then reveals him moulding the Nation. He is first to become the very Norm or Type of his people and their institutional world, then he is to unfold this Norm, in accord with its own inner nature, into its new historical stage as decreed by the World-Spirit. He is both the child of his age and its father ; begotten by it, he nevertheless 482 THE TEN YEABS' WAB. — PART II. begets it ill its new birth. Just this process of the individual of his epoch Biography is to set forth, when it gets to performing its highest function. History (political) gives the evolution of Na- tions into the world-historical process, as they appear going through a long line of rise and fall in Space and down Time. But the Nation has to be functioned by an individual or individuals, directing it so as to make it realize the World- Spirit in its career. Thus we have the salient historic phenomenon of a world-historical Nation and a world-historical Man uniting to produce events which must also be called world-historical. Now History puts its stress upon the side of the Nation and its world-historical events, while the Man is subordinate, though present and active. But Biography puts its stress upon the Man, as the pivotal agent who is the mediator between the Nation and the World-Spirit. There is no doubt that Abraham Lincoln more completely than any other man represents the epoch of the Ten Years' War in its world- historical significance. Purely the product of the American People, and trained by their in- stitutions, he becomes in turn their supreme trainer and leader to a new institutional order. Step by step he breathes into the Folk-Soul when ready the World-Spirit giving its ultimate command through his voice. With it he com- CHAPTER III. — RETROSPECT. 483 munes till he is schooled to speak its speech to the people, who feel the utterance as their own, as that of their highest selves, and at once obey, knowing this, as old Homer would say, to be the word of the God, who appears and appears only to those who are ultimately ready to hear the divine voice. 7. The great pivotal events of History are, accordingly, to be seen and to be portrayed as revealing three spiritual elements in gradation. Primaril}^ they take place in a given Nation, they are national ; secondly they are also world-his- torical, being of the World-Spirit, which is above Nations yet embraces and rules them ; finally they are to be carried up to the highest source, higher than the World-Spirit, to the Absolute Ego or Self (Pampsychosis), of which they must be seen to be one form of revelation in the world of Space and Time. Thus the events of History are a manifestation of the Universe as Self (pampsychical), as well as national and world-historical. It has been often recognized that History is a manifestation of something higher than itself as a simple succession of events. We have had many a Philosophy of History, which term at least indicates that History has its Philosophy, whatever that may be. But Philosophy itself with its line of systems is seen to be in its turn a manifestation of something lying beyond itself, 28 434 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART II. of some deeper Discipline which is completely self-defiDing and therein self-revealing. History likewise must be carried back to its profounder sources in such a Discipline, which is surely dawning. 8. The foregoing are some of the general principles underlying this present History in common with all History. Ultimately we have to see the American Ten Years' War, taking its place in the grand march of the supreme historic events of the Nations. The spiritual Totality of History must be viewed at last as that which is determinininsf each of its Parts. But now we shall pass to the last sweep of the present theme. PART THIRD.-THE UNION RE-UNITED. THE GREAT WAR (1861-18G5). If the previous Part Second had as its leading theme the Union Disunited, and if it kept mov- ing more and more deeply toward separation and disintegration till the shot at Sumter, with the call of Lincoln the current sets in strongly the other way, namely toward Union, or rather toward Re-union and Rediutes^ration. So it comes that a new fundamental chord is struck which runs through and holds together this Part Third, as it moves with many an up and d©wn slowly but persistently toward the Union re-united. The statement may be made here at the stait that this cannot be the old Union, or, in the speech of the time " the Union as it was." The prodigious travail of the World-Spirit is for a new birth of the Union, a veritable palingenesis or regeneration of it which will no longer per- (430) 4S6 THE TEN" YBASS' WAE. — PART III. mit it to remaiu half-slave and half-free, pro- ductive equally of Slave-States and Free-States. This is the rending contradiction which it must now slouoh off throuo;h the fierce ordeal of bloody war, just about the bloodiest in the World's History. That cleft Folk-Soul, whose cleavage has been always getting wider and more threatenino; throuijh the cancerous growth of slavery, is to undergo along and painful surgicid operation that the Nation be once more healed and whole. And the Northern conflict between the two duties, the moral and tlie constitutional, is to be solved by getting rid not only of the Fugitive Slave Law, but of the slave himself seemingly for all time in our country. Also the Classism of the South with its minority rule will be shivered to fragments in the earthquake. And the decision of Judge Taney meets with a tremendous reversal throu";h another and hioher Justiciary who instead of confirming the decree making slavery national and universal, makes it zero. Thus arises a homogeneous Union as re- gards freedom, having gotten rid of th6 ever fighting dualism with which it came into beins:. The last compromise between the two incompati- ble sides has been made, seeking to reconcile that which is at bottom irreconcilable. The transformation of the Slave-State into the Free State begins, of course with fierce resistance and mighty uproar, yet there is a new harmony rising THE GREAT WAR (1861-1805). 437 out of the clash of arms and the thunder of cannon. The North, long doubtful and unwill- ing, and indeed leaderless, has at last nerved itself up to the point, not of subjugating but of assimilating the South by a bold excision of the one great difference under the new leader born for just this supreme work. Thus our Ten Years' War enters upon its third and final stage, still working at its grand problem which we have so often emphasized : Shall this Union continue to be the parent of both Slave-States and Free-States, or of Free- States only? The problem, however, is assum- ing a new phase ; it is no lon2:er what it was in Kansas, which sought to make this one Territory free; it is no longer what it was in the North, whose purpose reached out to make all Territories free. The Union with its principle of producing Free-States is now on the march southward into the region of Slave-States themselves : Will it apply its principle to them also? Undoubtedly a principle, if it be true, must show itself universal. I. In order to catch the full sweep of the Great War as well as to fathom its deepest meaning, we must see first its geographical conditions. Already the latitudinal division (known as Mason and Dixon's line) between the two opposing sections has often been men- tioned. But there is likewise a longitudinal 438 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. — PAST III. division from North to Soutli, which is quite as important as that from East to West, though it lias not been duly noticed by historians. This division separates the old States from the new, the Original States from the Derived, the sea-board States from the river-valley States. The Allegheny mountains in general constitute the dividing-line drawn by Nature between these two parts of the country, and form a physical limit much more pronounced and obstructive than the one running East and West and separating the Free-States from the Slave-States. Let it be noticed that the principle of division in each of these two cases is very different: in the one this principle is freedom and slavery, in the other it is origination and derivation. Now these two lines — North to South and East to West — maybe conceived as crossing each other (which they actually do at that peculiar piece of territory called the Virginia Pan-handle) and as dividing the entire country into four Groups of States which we shall designate as follows : (1) T]te East-lSrorthern Group of Slates: these are the Free-States of the Original Thir- teen, seven of them, to which we shall add the two admitted subsequently, Maine and Vermont, these being simpl}'' portions of old States made into new ones. Of the mentioned seven States the characteristic upon which we now are to place TEE GREAT WAE (18G1-18G5). 439 chief stress is that they assisted in originating the Union" and Constitution, hence we shall often call them by way of contrast the Original or Originative Free-States. Though Rhode Island absented herself from the Convention (in 1787), she ratified the Constitution and became a mem- ber of the primal Union. ( 2 ) Tlie East-SoiitJiern Group of States : these are the Slave-States of the Original Thirteen, six of them altogether, and every one directly connected with the Atlantic Ocean, which is also the fact in regard to the old Free-States. The present group likewise took part in forming the Union and Constitution. Four of them will go into the rebellion, the two northerly ones never seceding (Delaware and Maryland). The two preceding groups comprise the Old- Thirteen, the Colonies which separated from Great Britain during the Revolutionary War, won their independence, and established the new Government. They all have the common trait of being parties to that first Compact, Covenant, Partnership, Federation — whatever be the name one chooses to call it — which made the United States or the Nation as a Government distinct from yet sprung of the Single-States composing it. In this regard there is a strong contrast with the two following Groups. (3) The We&t-Southern Group of States: these are the Slave-States derived from the Union 440 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART III. made by the Old Thirteen, nine in number, three Tiers of them running from East to West. Seven will secede, two refusing. Children of the Union are these seceding New-States, whose territory in several cases had been bought by the parent and defended in battle. This Group dis- tinctly divides into two sub-Groups, inner and outer, or fluvial and marine States (four and five respectively). Passing northward we complete the circle of the States in the following final division. (4) The West- Norther n Group of States: these are the Free- States derived from the Union, eight in number (including Kansas and leaving out California and Oregon which belong to the Pacific Group and had little to do with War directly). These eight lie in the Valley of the Great River, and are interconnected both in geography and in spirit. They are the free children of the State-producing Union, and have a peculiarly strong attachment to their Mother as the origin of their freedom, whom they long to liberate and make wholly Free-State producing. Thus we have two Groups of Derived States, slave and free, as we had of the Original States. We must note, however, that the Derived State is the equal of the Original State under the Constitution, being a full member of the Union and participating in its State-making function. That is, the originated State also originates TEE GBEAT WAB (1861-1865). 441 States, having become both originated and origi- nating through the Constitution. On the other hand the Old-Thirteen are simply the originating States (hence their title of original^ having originated Union and Constitution. Let the reader mark attentively this distinction between the two kinds of States, for it influences pro- foundly the entire movement of the approaching War and runs a line of transformation through the Union after the War. Here it may be per- mitted to cast one brief outlook upon the future : the original (or originating) States, the whole of them. North as w^ell as South, are to be made over and to become originated also as members of the new Union. All four of these Groups, accordingly, have distinct characters ; each has its own decided individuality, being born with a special political bent. Four different characters, then, we be- hold, necessary products of the different com- mingling of the four political elements already mentioned : freedom and slavery on the one hand, on the other the Union-begetting and the Union-begotten elements. Diversely do these principles enter into and constitute the four pre- ceding Groups, which from the present point of view may be looked at in a kind of circle and characterized as the Original Free-States, the Original Slave-States, the Derived Slave-States, and the Derived Free-States. 442 THE TEN YEARS' WAB— PART III. II. And now the question rises : Which of these four Groups is to take the leading, creative victorious part in the Great War just at hand? Or, to state the same meaning in a different way : Which of them is the chosen representative of the World-Spirit in the grand contest? Or, in a still different form : Whose character is to rule, whose principle is to prevail, of the four? Looking backward, we can definitely exclude the two Groups of Slave-States from the problem. But there are likewise two Groups of Free- States deeply participating in the common con- test, each with its own political character and principle. Which is to take control and to guide the whole movement, and finally to realize its own essential spirit in the completed result? Already the finger of History has drawn the preliminary outline of the answer to the forego- ing question in recording the political struggles of Kansas, of Illinois, and of Ohio, all of which States belong to the West-Northern Group, and have sounded the key-note of the Great War. Moreover out of this Group has risen the Leader of the new Order, the Great Man of the Epoch, who has been selected to go to the Capital of the land, and from that center to control the collid- ing masses, and to evolve gradually out of the old Union the new one, whose creative soul is to be Free-State producing henceforth and forever. Such is, then, the round which we have traced, THE GBEAT WAB (1861-1865). 443 starting in, the North-East, and passing down the Atlantic coast to the South-East, thence turning to the South-Wesst and mounting up to the North-West. It is the grand cycle of the States of the Union, through which the path of victory during the War moves, though in a reverse way, sweeping from the North-West Southwards down the Mississippi Vallej^ then Eastwards to the Atlantic, and then Northwards. This is the geographical framework of the entire conflict now to take place. In only one of the preceding Groups of States has the Union hitherto shown itself as Free-State producing. Now this is the principal which is to be realized and made universal. The West-North- ern Group thus is the Norm or Type, after which the Union is now to be patterned. The other three Groups are to be more or less transformed in this regard, are to be assimilated to the new Norm of the Union. The principle upon which the War turns is the genesis of the State, and this principle it is which puts the American struggle in line with the greatest and deepest struggles of the World's History. The genetic act of a Nation must be its most significant act and test of all other acts. What kind of a State can it produce out of itself? Better or worse than it is? The American Union as State- producing has produced two kinds, Free-States and Slave-States : one is better and one is worse 444 THE TEN YBABS' WAR. — FAB T III. than it is itself. We speak the verdict of His- tory when we say that the Derived Free State is better as a political organization than the Derived Slave-State, yea, better than its parent the Union as begetter of States, half of them slave and half free. So it comes that the Derived Group of Free States furnishes in their own deepest character and origin the Prototype or Norm which is to transform the other three Groups, and also the Union. We have already noted that Lincoln had to hold his party to its fundamental principle, if not to transform it in the East-Northern States. In fact he has done this twice : first as to Popu- lar Sovereignty in 1858, and secondly as to Compromise in 1861. The same character he is soon to show upon a far wider field. III. Nature has sharply engraved her lines of difference upon the two Northern Groups of Free-States. The Eastern are marine States, bordering upon the Ocean and its bays ; each of them is thus connected separately with the rest of the world. Such a situation gives them a certain independence, yea particularism, whose evils were a prime motive for making the Con- stitution. Its rivers for the most part flowed down from the mountains in single streams with few affluents of any size, and emptied into the Ocean. Up these detached river valleys the people migrated and formed their earlj^ settle- THE GBEAT WAE (1861-1865). 445 meuts, which had their own outlet into the great World. Thus the Atlantic States became sepa- rative by nature and sharply individualized; each rayed out independently from the great reservoir, the sea, which commercially was their main con- necting element. Such was the physical basis of the Old Thirteen, Northern and Southern, and formed a kind of mould for their political character. But when we cross the AUeghenies, a wholly different prospect, yes a different world physio- graphically unrolls before our eyes. ^Ye enter a series of great river-valleys, which unite and form one River Valley greatest of all, or rather it is all of them together. The streams, ever com- bining and then re-combining, constitute at last a single vast system of rivers which produce finally the one supreme River, affectionately called by its own Aboriginal people the Father of Waters. Truly Union is stamped upon the very face of this enormous territory. Very different is the word which the rivers and their adjacent valleys speak on the Atlantic coast, with little or no inter-connection. In such a land a new kind of States will arise, primarily by the decree of nature herself. The States springing up in the River- Valley exclu- sively will certainly present a contrast to those springing up along the Ocean. The fluvial States, inter-locked by their navigable streams 446 THE TEN YEABS' WAR. — PART III. into one mighty totality for thousands of miles from the Rockies to the Alleghenies, cannot be a series of uninterconnected Commonwealths lying alongside of one another as they must exist on the seaboard ; on the contrary they will form an organic whole more completely devel- oped than is possible under other conditions. The old States have indeed established the Union, but the new States will re-establish it, transforming; it and even transforming the old States which made it. Note the grand gather- ing of the Rivers flowing in a westerly course from one line of mountains, and in an easterly course from the other line of mountains, till they all join in the common stream hastening southward to the Gulf. In the middle months of 1861 the people are rising along these streams and following them down to their junction with the one great River, along with whose waters they intend to sweep to the sea, in defense of the endangered Union. The mustering of the Rivers of the West-Northern States not only images but suggests and even urges the mustering of the inhabitants, beckoning them on to their task. We may also see how the East-Northern Free- States could show such readiness to compromise the new Union won by the Presidential election of 1860 as something not altogether their own, as quite alien to their political consciousness. In fact they were not born of the old Union, THE GREAT WAR (1861-1865). 447 though they helped make it ; they could not have the same affection for it as the West-Northern States, since it was not their parent, and not altogether their child. The true future character of the Union could only be inherited by the off- spring. So we have to put stress upon the mountain- ous watershed, so strongly emphasized by Nature, which separates the Oceanic from the Eiver- Valley States, the physically intercon- nected from the physically divided Common- wealths. It is not said, however, that these physical characteristics make the new State, which rather finds them and is unfolded through them from its germ to its flowering. The seed of the State has to be brought to the favoring soil, like other seed. Man carries his institu- tional world with him in his migrations, and plants it first of all. In a propitious environ- ment it will flourish and come to its full matur- ity, otherwise it is Hkely to lag and wither, never realizing what lay potentially in the germ. Properly, then, it is Institutions which migrate and therein develop more and more toward their end which is freedom actualized. To be sure these Institutions must have reached a point at which they can master and utilize both the extent and the configuration of the territory to which they have come. The North-American Indians, the first occupants, never did and never 448 THE TEN YEARS' WA2i. — PART III. could bring out the sio-nificauce of the Missis- sippi Valley in the World's History, which is verily its highest significance, because they had not the Institutions to do it. The Anglo-Saxon backwoodsman took with him not merely his ax and gun, but rude and uncouth as he was, he bore in his brain a new institutional order, and therein was likewise the bearer of the World- Spirit, who presides over the birth of all great epoch-turning States, as they have appeared in Time. Thus the forthcoming State or Union of States finds its physical counterpart in the Mississippi Valley, its terrestrial abode prefigured by Nature's own hand. This abode, as already noted, differs decidedly from the Atlantic home of the old Colonies. The Earth's architecture, erecting the first edifice for man, is here of another style, and is adapted for another guest. Still we must not think that Nature makes the State; this we can say just as little as that the State makes Nature. In the present case we can see that both have been evolving for each other and into each other for long historic and prehistoric aeons. Moreover, we can also see that both were created thus evolving toward a common end, in which each, for the present at least, attains its highest destiny. IV. We have, therefore, to take notice of the physical contrast between the two sets of THE GUEAT WAIt (1861-1865). 449 American States, those lying along the OoeaH and those interconnected in the River Valley. But we are also to observe that this same gen- eral difference pervades the entire course of the World's History, from the Orient through Europe to the Occident. Looking back to the distant Past we see Ori- ental States rising and flourishing in the great River Valleys, the Nile and the Euphrates, for instance. But even when these States bordered on the Sea they obtained no mastery of it; their civilization was fluvial, not marine. Not till Phenicia is reached, does the sea begin deeply to determine man's life and history. Moreover, Oriental government was autocratic, despotic we call it, even if it sprang from the consciousness of the people. On the great rivers of the East the first cities were built by large bodies of men associating and thus civilizing themselves. But when we come to Europe we find a strik- ing change. Civilization moving along the North Mediterranean, takes possession successively of three peninsulas, Greece, Italy and Spain, till it reaches the Atlantic. Following the Ocean northward, it becomes modern and then ad- vances eastward toward Prussia and Russia of to-day, having completed seemingly the territo- rial circuit of Europe. The Mediterranean was indeed the trainer, the teacher of the sea's con- quest — an instruction which the Orient did not 29 450 THE TEX Yb'AIiS WAU. - PAUT III. have. Tli(;se were Mediterraneuu sailors who performed the first great Oceanic feats, the dis- covery of America, the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, and the circumnavigation of the Globe. Europe's civilization did not develop in great River Valleys like that of the Orient. The employment and mastery of the Sea and Ocean play into it from beginning to end. Rome was indeed on the Tiber and London on the Thames, but each of these rivers sinks into insigni- ficance, when the one is compared in historic value with the Roman's Mediterranean and the other with the Englishman's Atlantic. The rivers of Europe as a whole radiate from the center, are centrifugal, and flow down into the seas, to the North, South, East. Thus they put a separative stamp upon the face of the country. Crossing the Ocean, we find in the United States both characteristics, the marine and the fluvial, combining in a manner Europe and the Orient. That is, we note the presence of a vast River Valley which is again to determine civili- zation, and also the presence of sea-coast States cut through by separate streams flowing down from a system of mountains. Such are the two supreme physical characteristics of the land — the one allying it to the Orient, the other to Europe. Nature herself thus suggests a new synthesis of man and his institutions. So the World's History, after starting in the rilE GREAT ]yAU (lb61-18(J5). 451 fluvial civilization of the Orient, and parsing through the essentially marine civilization of Europe has again settled down in another River- Valley larger than any Oriental one, larger than even Europe's marine territory — Southern, Eastern and Northern. Such is the great Occi- dental River-Valley which is busied in this Ten Years' War with its own distinct world-histori- cal problem. For it has, in the first place, to cleanse itself of slavery ; then it must sweep around into the marine States, which are not only to be enfranchised where necessary, but are to be transformed and re-constituted into a new Union, which is to embrace both the hitherto dominating elements of civilization phy- sically considered, that of the Ocean and that of the River-Valley. Europe has indeed many River-Valleys and some large ones, but they are essentially diverg- ing, radiating mainly from a common center, as already suggested, if we exce})t Russia and two or three other borderlands. But the Mississippi Valley, or rather system of valleys, is essentially converging, centripetal we may say; especially is this the case in the "West-Northern Group of States. On the other hand the great River- Valleys of the Orient, such as those of the Nile or Euphrates, show little convergence, but are mainly long lines from the source of the river to its mouth, to which its people cling directly, 452 THE TEX YtJAI.'S' WAR. — PART III. shuuiiing the sea and other peoples. The Mis- sissippi Valley is verily a federation of many Eiver-Valleys with their streams, and in its physical form calls for a corresponding form of Government. Therein it differs from the Orient as well as from Europe. Moreover this feder- ated River- Valley has also its line of sea-board Territory on the East and South, and also on the West. V. If we now turn to the spiritual or institu- tional origin of this West-Northern Group of States, we find a surprising parallelism with the physical character of the land. If Nature has stamped Union upon its face. Institutions have written the same word upon its heart. These States were born united by deeper ties than any other Group. They were brought forth by Mother Union as Free-States, freedom being their peculiar endowment from her by birth. They accordingly know the Union as Free-State producing in their own case, and reverence her with the gratitude of free-born children who have risen to a consciousness of their inheritance. Moreover this is the only Group which were begotten free by the Union, wherein the latter shows its genetic soul to be productive of Free- States. Hence this Group had to assert its birthright transmitted from the Union as Free- State producing, which became its strongest THE GEEAT WAB (1861-1865). 453 principle of action, being its very character and genesis. The East-Northern States had no such origin and consequently no such institutional character. They were indeed free, but in the matter of slavery they had been freed through themselves individually and not through the Union. Thus it lay in their character to leave each Single- State to free itself. They made the Union indeed, and made it State-producing, but this profoundest genetic act of it had to be left double, indeed contradictory, in the fact that it was the creative source of both Slave-States and Free-States. Now mark the result. The Free- State child of this Union made dualistic by the Old-Thirteen is born free of its mother's contra- diction, being liberated therefrom by its birth. As far as it is concerned, the Union is Free-State producing — wherein lies its deep political differ- ence from the East-Northern Group. Still the Derived Free-State having become a member of the Union, sends its representatives and senators to Washington, whereby it shares in the State-producing process of the Union which still begets both kinds of States, slave and free. Thus it too becomes whelmed into that original contradition of the Constitution, till one day a new political party arises, saying: No more Slave-States out of our Territories. Tiiis principle we have already seen unfolding west- 454 THE TEN YEABS' WAB.— PART III. ward and eastward till it elects the President, and thus makes itself national. But it is not going to stop half way on its career. A principle is universal, and when it once gets started, its innermost necessity is to make itself universal. The Union as Free-State producing is such a principle, which is now bent upon universalizing itself. It may have been first promulgated elsewhere and even long ago, but it belongs creatively to the West-Northern Group of Free-States, which must impart their own deepest principle to the rest of the States and even to their creator, the Union itself, which has to be re-created in the very soul of it, namely, in its creativity, being made no longer creative of Slave-States. Moreover this Group must feel the original contradiction of the Union more keenly than any of the other three Groups. The West-Northern Free-State, born of the double Union, has to produce or share in producing Slave-States, when it becomes, as it must, a member of that Union. Thus it has, though born free, to beget slaves — from which act it must internally revolt as deeply repugnant to its birthright and perversive of its innate character. Instinctively it has to medi- tate about transforming such a Union, which the East-Northern States made or had a hand in making. Suoh a transformation of it is, how- ever, not to destroy it, but is its higher evolution. THE GREAT WAE (1801-1865). 455 Accordingly, the only Free-States produced by the old Union were the "West-Northern Group, which will now wheel about and sweep back to their central source, and make it Free-State producing on\y — make it alwaj's produce Free- States like themselves, calling forth thereby the sole true Union, homogeneous in the matter of freedom. That being settled for once and for all, it can be otherwise as hete- rogeneous as it pleases. Each section can still have and assert its own special character, and each State can develop its individuality to the fullest extent, provided that it commit no wrong upon its neighbor or upon the common weal. But when any State hereafter shares in the gen- etic process of the Nation, it must take part in generating a Free-State ; never again can it help produce a Slave-State. Thus the creative soul of the Union is transformed, is re-created just in its deepest and most essential [)oint, namely in its power to create new States and thus to renew perpetually itself. And in this respect the old Free-States, as well as the old Slave-States, have been transformed, being made now to produce through the new Union, not two opposite kinds of States, but one concordant kind and one only. It may be said, therefore, that the West- Northern Group of States have the principle of political unity and of Union deopl}' grounded in their origin and character; tluT ha\c it more 456 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PAST HI. decisively than any other Group of States. The result is they show a common spirit, which is not hampered by State lines to the same degree as elsewhere. Among them the inter-State feel- ing seems quite as vStrong as the State feeling. Still a dead uniformity does not prevail in these States; they show great differences, much variety, which, however, does not lie so much between them as within them. This fact too must be looked at. VI. We are now brought to consider the remark- able diversity of inhabitants who make up this West-Northern Group of States. The migration thither had its own peculiar character. It may be deemed a new phase of that great Wandering of Peoples which has accompanied the World's History down Time and forms its primal sub- strate. This migration was North European, it could show hardly a drop of Latin blood. The old Teutonic stock was again moving, and set- tling vast territories, in obedience to that pro- found migratory instinct which long ago drove it out of Central Asia, through Europe Northern and Southern, across the Ocean to America, where it is now lighting down in great flocks upon the virgin soil of the Mississippi Valley. Again the Norseman, the German and the Anglo- Saxon, hoary warlike shapes of old dominating Europe's History, appear in a new arena, bent upon a new conquest. Not now with battle-ax THE QBE AT WAR (1861-1865). 457 and sword but with that other kind of edged weapons, the wood-ax and the ploughshare, they come not in massive armies, but individually for the most part; they have not to seize and hold the laud by violence, but they receive it almost as a free gift from a new institutional order of which they are at once members, and which they feel to be their own from the start. Still they have not lost their old fighting qualities, which they are soon to show on many a bloody field, in another mighty world-historical contest. These are indeed remote outlooks into the dis- tant Past of historic origins. Now we shall drop down into our own era again, and take a glance at the immediate sources of this population pour- ing into the West-Northern country. Three main streams of it may be distinguished. (1) The first was the foreign migration, coming largely from Germany and Scandinavia, ahd settling in the congenial climate of the North West. It was made up of hardy farmers and mechanics who could dare the intervening Ocean for the sake of bettering their own con- dition and that of their families. Their leaders were mostly liberals who had abandoned Europe. Many Germans flocked to the free West after the failure of the revolutions in 1830 and in 1848. They shunned the Slave-States with two excep- tions, Texas, where they could and did occupy whole counties, and Missouri, which had a strong 458 THE TEy YEARS' WAR. — PART III. native element hostile to slavery, and in whose chief city, St. Louis, they had become a con- trolling political power. This migration from Northern Europe was a kind of repetition and renewal of the old inva- sion of England from the same quarter. The English still show a strong infusion of Scandi- navian and German blood. But this second great migration of Teutonic peoples westward (which is still going on), skipped their first lauding place, Great Britain, with good reason, and crossed the sea to the New World, and largely to the newest part of it, watered by the atHuents of the Mississippi. The Teutonic element was already powerful in 1860. It sided chiefly with the party hostile to the spread of slavery. It doubtless gave the State of Illinois to Lincoln in his contest with Douglas both in 1858 and 1860. It furnished to Lyon and Blair the regiments which held Mis- souri firmly in the Union at the outset of the War. (2) The next stream of migration here to be mentioned came from the eastern Free States, particularly from New England and occupied in the new territory a northern belt from East to West. These people brought the Yankee thrift, the democratic habit, the religious feeling of the Puritans, but above all the moral spirit which had been strongly impressed with wrongfulness THE GREAT WAR (1861-1865). 459 of slavery. Also the}' could get excited over the temperaDce question and the observance of the Sabbath, in which matters considerable friction was begotten between them and their Teutonic neighbors, though both agreed on the great over- shadowing question of slavery. Still these New England people far back were of the same Teutonic blood and speech, even if their ancestors had set out from the common Fatherland twelve or perchance fourteen centu- ries before the new migration had begun to budge from the original home. But both migratory streams had at last flowed together on the same distant spot of Earth, the one reaching it through a stretch of English History which long ante- dates Alfred, the other reaching it through a stretch of German History which long antedates Charlemagne. A very different historic devel- opment, therefore, lurks in each, and is certain to show itself. In both, however, lies the European movement out of barbarism to civiliza- tion, out of the old Teutonic tribe to the mod- ern State, though this movement proceeded on diverse lines going from the same general source to the same general end. Noticeable also is a native, German-American I migration, quite distinct from the foreign one, that of the Pennsylvania Germans, who moved on a line westward from their State to and be- yond the Mississippi. Almost wholly agricultu- 460 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART III. ral were these people, quite inaccessible to new ideas though religious and simple-minded, exceed- ingly tenacious of old habits, one of which was to vote the Democratic ticket, be it what it may, in contrast with their foreign kindred recently arrived. Among the latter the names of Schurz, Hecker and Sigel became distinguished for the strong support given to their adopted country. (3) It is, however, the third great stream of migration to the North-West which specially in- terests us at present. This came mostly from the old Slave-States, particularly from Virginia, though the new Slave-States, notably Kentucky, furnished a large contingent. To all these Southern emigrants must have been present a choice of future residence, that between a Slave- State and a Free-State, and they chose the latter, for one reason or other, but chiefly through some dissatisfaction with the svstem of slavery. So they filled up southern Ohio, In- diana and Illinois, and even pushed across the Mississippi into Iowa, through which we have seen them pouring down into Kansas. They formed a distinctively Southern belt in the East Northern group of States, though other elements were not absent and sometimes dominated in localities. It is not said, however, that they were all anti-slavery, or even a majorit}' of them, siuce they were apt to bring from the South a dislike THE GBEAT WAli (1861-18(J5). 461 of the negro, free or slave. The abstract hu- manity of the German and the New Englander was not theirs. Still the greater number of them became Free-State men, and furnished a large part of the early Kansas fighters. We have already noted the effect of this Southern migration upon the South itself (see preceding p. 310). It unquestionably lost in this way many of its choicest people, the most progressive, aspiring, freedom-loving. Doubtless this migra- tion was the main reason why the early emanci- pation movement, at first very strong, gradually declined and finally ceased altogether in the States of Virginia, Maryland and Kentucky. It was much the easier thing for those who were dissatisfied with slavery to pack up and move into an adjacent Free-State than to wage a doubtful fight in their own State. What they wanted lay near at hand, without any contest. Southern apologists have often said that emanci- pation was blasted by the agitation of the Abo- litionists in the North, who were regarded as trying to interfere in a matter which was none of their business. The argument implies that the Southerners, at first inclined to do the right thing, changed to the wrong thing from s[)ite. We think too much of them to believe that this could have been their leading motive, even if it may have prevailed with some persons. Another important fact about this Southern 462 THE TEN YEARS' WAR.— PART III. migration to the West-Northern States is the large number of leaders it furnished them, herein surpassing decidedly the other two elements. The New Enghmd consciousness was more moral and less institutional, which fact made it the mother of good preachers, but not of so good statesmen. The truth is the Puritan never fully recovered from his primal revolt against the con- stituted authority of his English home. This revolt was indeed what made him, was his creat- ive act. On moral and religious grounds he broke with his State and ruler. He may have been jus- tified in his revolt, probably was ; still the twist it gave him remained ever afterwards and he bore it with him to the new world and to the new West. Virginia, largely sprung of the Cavalier, never had such a bent in its birth ; from the start it was more institutional and less moral. It produced a marvelous harvest of lawyers, judges, states- men, who organized and governed the country; but its crop of preachers and writers was much inferior in size and excellence. We can well ponder the fact that the greatest leader the North ever had was a Southerner. Lincoln was born in Kentucky, his family came from Virginia. Many of his most prominent as- sociates in Illinois were from the South. The best gift Virginia ever had, greater than that of any other State, namely the gift of political leadership, migrated also into the North-West THE GEEAT WAB (1861-1865). 463 and showed itself there among her children, when it had declined at home. The Southerners also were chiefly of Anglo- Saxon blood; they therefore belonged to that same Teutonic stock of which the Puritans were members. In England the division between the two parties had taken place, and this division they had transplanted to America, in separate Colonies however. But now these two diverse parties had come together again into the same State and into the same series of States, and were in the t)rocess of being brought to co-ope- rate for an end greater than either has yet had. Emphasize, then, we must, for the sake of bringing out the continuity of History, that the descendants of the Cavalier and the Roundhead are entering a new country in comhion after their bitter separation in Old England some two centuries before. But the stranger fact is that along with both of them are com- ing the direct descendants of their hoary Teutonic ancestors, from whom the separation took place more than a dozen centuries before, as if the old stock of their race had been tapped to get a fresh supply of its blood for the popu- lation of the new land. This we may deem a concentration and re-union of various Teutonic branches which had long been separated and even hostile. Our next point must be to find what unites 464 THE TEN YEABS' WAB. — PABT III. these hitherto discordant elements, and gives them their common end. German, English, and even American writers appeal to the pri- mordial Teutonic love of freedom manifested al- ready against the Roman in the forests of Germany. But this love of freedom has shown the opposite tendency also : it separates quite as much as it unites. Hence there is need of con- sidering the special form which the common impulse of freedom has taken so that it has overcome the somewhat centrifugal Teutonic Folk-Soul, which far down in its deepest depths underlies nearly all the diverse strata of popula- tion in the West-Northern group of Free-States. VII. These three streams of migratory peo- ples — the Foreigner, the Easterner, and the Southerner — could be united, in spite of their diversity, upon one political principle, that of stopping the extension of slavery to the terri- tories. They had all chosen to migrate to a Free- State instead (»f a Slave-State. This choice could be made the point of their association into an active party. What determined their migra- tion could be brought to determine their politi- cal organization. To be sure time was necessary for the fruit to ripen. Still we can see that the West-Northern Group of Free-States simply organized their own principle of existence into a new party, which soon took possession of a decided majority of their people. i THE GREAT WAR (1861-1866). 465 Another effect of different belts of population located within the same State, 3'et running across State boundaries into other adjacent States, was to join the States so belted together into a new sort of Union. The result was that State lines did not mean so much as in the old Colonial States, or even in the new Slave-States. For instance, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois are more decidedly united by their belts of population than they are separated by their political limits, which are purely artificial. On the other hand, Kentucky, a new State, has substantially but one belt of homogeneous population from East to West. It has no heterogeneous belts of people breaking over its political limits, and finding their own kin and kind beyond the latter. Hence Kentucky has developed a unique State pride or State love, which cannot be found in Ohio, Indiana or Illinois. Of course the State limit is a great matter everywhere in the South and was emphasized by the doctrine of State Eights. Such a doctrine never did and never could flourish so prodigiously in the West-North- ern States, where separate political limits would not take deep root in the emotions of her strati- fied inhabitants. This State pride is found in the East-Northern States also, notably in Massa- chusetts, being there an inheritance of the col- onial period. Ohio, for instance, looks across the river at Kentucky, and sees her at this 30 466 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. —PART III. moment celebrating a grand reunion of her children from every quarter of the whole country and hears them singing with an enormous outlay of emotion " My Old Kentucky Home." — But Ohio has only to say : I can't do that; I haven't the song, and I haven't the feeling which origin- ally made it and sings it still with so much fervor. So it must be confessed that in the West- Northern Group State patriotism is the weaker and Union patriotism is the stronger force. This fact lies in their very genesis. The Old- Thirteen were children of England and of Europe; they are so still in many respects, being not yet fully made over. But the new States of the West are children of the Union, having no other parent to love ; hence their single-hearted devotion to that parent so strikingly manifested in the War. Moreover upon this West-Northern Group the Union had bestowed her best gift, freedom. As already often declared, the State- producing Union in their case alone produced Free-States, and thus imparted to them in their origin a peculiar character, which is destined to transform all the States, new and old, and even the Union itself. VIII. When we regard the manner of settle- ment in this Group of West-Northern States, we find it to be quite different from that of the other three Groups. It was almost wholly an individual settlement of Towns, Counties and THE GEE AT WAR (1861-1 805). 467 States, all of which were built up quite con- sciously by the act of the settlers, each co-oper- ating with the rest. In New England, on the contrary, the oriainal colonists came in con<>;re- gations usually, and established communities headed by the minister. So also largely in Pennsylvania and other East-Northern States. Thus the already organized Village Community with its members was still the tj'pe of settle- ment, as it had been in Europe from time im- memorial. In the South the slave-holder, mi- grating with his slaves into the new Slave-States carried with him his institution and established a kind of aristocracy, of which he was the center. Nothing of the sort could exist in the free North-AVest, to which men came as individuals, entered their piece of land already surveyed hy the Government, and started at once building their local institutions. Never before in the World's History was the founding of the State so completely bethought and prepared for by its people; the origin of Government was brought back directly to the individual who was to live under it. Thus man has become for the first time a con- scious iustitution-builder ; he is no longer to be put into his institutional world from the outside but he has to make it or rather re-make it, for undoubtedly he has the pattern of it primarily in the Constitution of his country, and also in 468 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. - PART lit. his own brain. He is now a self-orgauizer, which trait the armies of this Group of States are to show in the forthcoming contest. It might be supposed that the free man would not be amenable to military organization, but he will not only take it but make it over anew for him- self, since his freedom is itself organized and organized by him, being not an arbitrary but an institutional freedom. It may be added that these people are also used to firearms, being not afraid of a gun and knowing how to handle it effectively and what it is made for. The European peasant cannot be supposed to have any such power of self-organization, and he as soldier has to be drilled into an intimate acquaintance with his nearest friend, the slioot- ino- iron which he must carrv. Such was the individual character of this Western migration, even if communities some- times migrated as wholes, especially religious communities, as Shakers, Quakers, Dunkards,and others of the kind. The settler usually acted through himself, and, taking the initi:itive, moved to the new country from his old State, not as a member of a tribe, or congregation, or of any form of the Village Community — the old Teutonic and even Arjan way of migration. The self-determinating individual has become the unit of association, and begins to build his in- THE GREAT WAR (1861-1865). 469 stitutional home consciously rather than by instinct. The cities of the West Northern Group of States had their own stamp in being river-cities, lying mainly on the one great stream or its affluents, which became lines of commercial inter- connection between them. But in the East- Northern Group the chief cities were sea-cities, each lying on the Ocean independently, and being an outlet or inlet to and from Europe, to which they turned their face. In general we can see that the East-Northern Group and in fact the Old-Thirteen as a whole look outward, into and across the sea, while the Mississippi Valley States as a whole look inward, are introverted if not introspective. We can truly say that even their physical aspect shows a tendency to look to themselves and not abroad, which fact is also indicated and emphasized by their manner of settlement. Thus we note two distinct tendencies pertaining to this matter. In the West the indi- vidual starts with himself and creates his institu- tions from the bottom up to the General Gov- ernment ; while in the East he did not create but was born into his institutional world — the com- munity and the State were given to him. Un- doubtedly he has made them over partially ; but not till he breaks loose from his community and State, is he reduced to his individual Self which has to make anew all his institutions. Thus he 470 THE TEN YEARS' WAB. — PART III. goes back and recreates out of himself all his social presuppositions. We are therefore, to note that the Free-States of the West are inhabited by a people or by their descendants, who left their State and its local feeling behind, an act not favorable to the main- tenance of State ties. Often these people have removed a second time from one State to another, the new generation seekino; a new State further westward. But everywhere the emigrant found the Union, which had gone before him, surveyed and secured his new home. So he knew and loved the Union better than he did any particular State, whereas the inhabitantof the Old-Thirteen knew and loved his State better that he did the Union and originally before the Union existed, which was indeed made by them. This fact will show its significance and its power in a unique way during the War. The Northern and Southern members of the Old- Thirteen were the makers of the Union by mu- tual agreement; hence the thought lies near that the same parties might unmake it by mutual agreement. Such an opinion was largelj'^ held in the North as well as in the South, as we have seen. But the old States are no longer the sole parties to the compact (if compact it be), are no longer the sole determiners of the Union, which has be2otteu a numerous and couraijeous offspring, the new States, who do not pro[)()se to THE GREAT WAR flSGl^SeS). 471 let the source of their being perish without a struggle, or even be remodeled without regard to their existence. On the contrary they must do the remodeling, or rather it must be done in accord with the spirit of the new and not of the old States. The argument for separation might be valid for the old States but it cannot be accepted by the new States, which will return to the beginning and reconstruct the argument itself as well as the States. The genetic princi- ple of their existence, the State-producing Union, these new States cannot allow to be made a nullity without self-nullification. In fighting for the Union they are fighting for their principle of creation. So they have much more at stake than the Old-Thirteen can have, since the latter existed before the Union. Wherewith another duty rises to view : the new States must really make a new Union, and re-unite with it the old States, thus unionizing them anew. A striking, indeed a startling reflection of this fact will be seen in the course of the war it- self. The old States dividing into the Northern and Southern Groups and raising great armies, will fight each other desperately, yet neither can conquer the other. A line of permanent sepa- ration seems drawn between them, over which neither can pass without the penalty of defeat. In like manner the new States also dividing into tile Northern and Scaithcrn Groups and raising 472 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PAET III. great armies, will light each other desperately, but with quite the opposite result. The line of separation between them keeps moving further southward and vanishing more and more, till it is quite obliterated by the soldiers of the West- Northern Group. These points we shall set forth more fully. IX. If we look at the military movements of the War — the most impressive visible manifest- ation of it — we observe four distinct armies, one for each of the above-mentioned divisions of the whole country. The scheme will then be as follows : — 1. The East-Northern Army. 2. The East-Southern Army. 3. The West-Northern Army. 4. The West-Southern Army. These four armies were chiefly made up of men from their respective sections. Each of these large bodies of soldiers showed a distinctive char- acter corresponding to their separate localities. The first two were arrayed against each other during the whole \^'ar, and the scene of fighting was substantially one small piece of ground lying between the two Capitals, Washington and Kichmond. The second two were likewise arrayed against each other, and the scene of their fighting was every seceded State of the Union but one, the whole of which the West-Northern Army overran, pursuing its defeated antagonist. Thus it re- THE GREAT WAB (1861-1865). 473 duced or neutralized ten out of the eleven States in rebellion — all except Virginia. We may con- sider its line of battle as that of a radius drawn from the Capital as center and circling about the entire revolted territory, even if Texas was left largely to itself, being quite isolated after the fall of Vicksburg. The sweep was that of a huge arm, the arm of Mother Union reaching out to the extreme border and bending around to em- brace her rebellious children, still dear though naughty. On the other hand the Eastern military movement seemed fixed to one little stretch of Territory, in which there was no vast State-em- bracing sweep but a kind of sea-saw between the two armies, with a continued equilibrium of defeat and victory for each side If the East- Northern army passed a certain line — we may call it a line of separation between the North and South — it met with a bloody repulse ; the same repulse came to the East-Southern army, if it passed that same line, whose limits cannot be laid out exactly to the spot, but are none the less real. Now it is this line of separation between the two sets of States and their armies, which is the most striking fact of the entire Virginia cam- paign. Washington cannot take Richmond and Richmond cannot take Washington, though but little more than a hundred miles apart. The same fate meets the one army getting to the 474 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PAET III. James and the other armv orettino; to the Poto- mac. Or, more technically stated, if either army takes decidedly the offensive, it is driven back ; if it remains on its side of that line of separation, it is victorious. Each wins on the defensive, but loses on the offensive. Such is the persistent fact of that Eastern struggle, though exceptions occur both ways. We may regard Antietam and Gettysburg as bloody warnings to the Southern host; more numerous and more sanguinary are the warnings to the Northern host from Manassas, iredericks- burg and the Peninsular battles. Both hosts have transgressed, have sought to cross the for- bidden line, for which act each gets a blow like that of Fate itself. But what })rescribed that line? Who laid down this peculiar prohibition and for what reason? Some Power over both yet of both, we have to think; it uses these two hosts as means for its end, which, however, is also the supreme national end. It is manifest that the Old-Thirteen are di- vided into two parts, Northern and Southern, and each is fighting the other with the greatest valor and endurance; yet neither can finally and fully get the better of the other. Neither can possess itself of that strange elusive line of sepa- ration; the South cannot conquer it and hold it and thus win Disunion by fixing this line, and the North cannot conquer it and hold it and thus THE GREAT WAR (1861-1865). 475 will Union by obliterating this line. Both sets of these States once made the Union, working together; one set, the Southern, wishes to with- draw; the other set, the Northern, seeks to pre- vent such withdrawal but has not succeeded. The result is or must be that the East-Southern army, being really on the defensive, has made good the line of separation in the Old-Thirteen. This can only mean, if they alone are concerned, that the Union is dissolved. But such is not the case, for not in the old but in the new States lies the decision of the conflict. X. Thirty-four States are members of the Union during the War, if we count the eleven which have seceded. Twenty-one of these are new or derived States, all of which are western ex- cept two. Thus a decided majority of the States are new and western. These children of the Union, according to the majority rule, must be its controlling element finally, and re-make it after their own highest principle, which is spec- ially the work of the West-Northern Group of Free-States as already indicated. At present, however, we wish to see the main sweep of the West-Northern army during the War. In the first place its military movement is an offensive one from beginning to end, in contrast with that of the East-Northern army, whose main act was a defensive one, that of de- fending Washington. The onward march of the 476 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART III. western soldiers continued practically to the close. Of course there were refluences and regurgitations breaking through the ever-ad- vancing line, like those of Bragg in 1862, and Hood in 1864, but they were temporary. Repeatedly has this western military move- ment been designated as circular in its general contour, sweeping down the great valley to the South, then to the East, then to the North, and embracing both Tiers of the seceded States ex- cept Virginia. Such was indeed the positive act of the War. When the Confederacy was no more, ten of its States being held by the West- Northern army, Richmond could no longer be defended, and Lee surrendered, giving up the Capital when it was no longer a Capital, But this vast circular sweep is trul}^ significant; it brings before us one mighty image of the whole War on its offensive and positive side, with the West-Northern host ever pushing forward and wheeling on the left, till it has picked up all the parts of the dismembered Union and holds them in its embrace. The estimate has been made that fully one- half of those slain in the War, and of those who were wounded spilt their blood in the small area of Virginia soil. Here too was spent fully one-half of the cost of the whole conflict. Brave, patriotic, conscientious were these men, but the tragedy makes the nation shudder still. THE GREAT WAR (1861-18G5). 477 That gory see-saw comes up before the imagiua- tiou as a blood drinking monster placed between the two armies and demandincr from both its quota with surprising regularity. What had those two sets of old States done that each be- came such an awful Nemesis to the other? But neither is able to put an end to its antagonist ; when exhausted each takes breath for a time in order to recuperate, but new strength is only new food for the Furies, who seem always getting ready for a fresh carnival somewhere on that piece of insatiate earth between and around the two Capitals. The other half of the grand outlay of blood and treasure must be assigned to the "West- Northern army. Its opponent, the West-South- ern army, though of unquestioned braver}-, does not persistently impede its advance. Outside of soldierly qualities, which were quite the same in both armies, and outside of any superiority of numbers or material, the two causes in the West seemed unequal from the start — the one being inherently the stronger and advancing, the other inherently the weaker and retreating. This is in striking contrast with the equilibrium of the two armies in the East, and it would also seem, of the two causes. Here a couple of problems arise : first, why such a difference between East and West; secondly, why such a difference between the West-Northern and West- 478 THE TEN YEARS' WAT!. — PAIiT III. Southern armies and also their causes? Tlie last question we shall consider first. The new Slave-States, the West-Southern Group, which had seceded, were also children of the Union. Now they are trying to slav their parent. Of the four Groups of States already mentioned, this Group alone is seeking to destroy the source of its being. Its act has accordingly a parricidal character. This cannot be charged upon the old Slave-States, the East-Southern Group, Avhich have also se- ceded, for they are not the children of the Union, and their relation to it is different. Now let us turn our look to the West-North- ern States, also children of the Union, which however, they are pouring out their heart's blood to save. Save from whom? From that other group of children who are seeking to destroy this same parent. Which of the two groups of children has the higher principle, from this point of view — the loyal or disloyal, the defend- ers or the assailants of the common parent? Such is one g-round of difference between the two causes, and we cannot help thinking that it en- ters into the spirit of the two contending armies. Then another ground of difference : that West- Northern army is fighting for a Union which produces Free- States, while the West-Southern army is fighting for a Union which produces THE GBEAT WAR (1861-1865). 479 Slave-States, this being the character of the Southern Confederacy and their own also. In fact, the mentioned Group of new Slave- States in trying to undo the parent who brought them forth as Slaves-States, have become logi- cally self-undoing. Also they are unconsciously avenging upon the Union its act of producing Slave-States. The irony of the World-Spirit, very frequently one of its subtlest weapons, not in the word but in the deed, is serving up to them a draught of their own conduct. For if they succeed in doing that which they are trying with all their might to do, namely, to slay the Union, they are destroying that which made them Slave-States, and it may be added, for making them Slave-States. Thus the Union also comes in to receive its stroke of retribution for bringing such children into existence, which children are transformed into its punishers, who in their turn are likewise to be punished. The vengeance which they wreak upon their parent, even if guilty, is itself to be avenged. They turn back upon and assail the source of their creation for creating them what they are. That is, the Union-produced Slave-States are smiting with all their might the Sla\e-State producing Union. And yet they proclaim and honestly think that they are fighting for a Union pro- ductive of Slave-States. Self-negative they are in their deepest spirit, and really are taking the 480 THE TEN YEARS' WAli. — IWUT III. shortest road to destroy just what the}' arc lav- ishly and devotedly pouring out their blood to save. It is this inner self-contradiction which lames their cause, the war within cannot help bringing defeat to the war without. No such self-contradiction is felt in the cause or in the soul of the West-Northern army which marches out not to destroy but to defend its parent Union, and also to perpetuate it as Free-State produc- ing. Pondering on these two very diverse parts of the two Groups of new States, Northern and Southern, in the colossal world-drama playing before us, we cannot help thinking of another world-drama of the literary sort, Shakespeare's Lear. In it likewise are the two groups of children, faithless and faithful to the parent, one group of whom, the faithless, brings back to him his tragic violation, which act is in return avenged by the faithful group, who thereby restore j^eace and harmony to the deeply disturbed institutional order. Of its ways we catch many a glimpse like the following: I told him the revenging Gods 'Gainst parricides did all their thunders bend. XI. We have to keep peering back of this struggle of armies to see what it means, what is its propelling principle or Idea. Quite dis- tinctly does this Idea have a voice during the THE GREAT WAR (1861-1865). 4^1 War. The People must hear it and thereby be- come aware of that for which they are spending their treasures of life and money ; in other words they must get to know the decree of the World- Spirit, and be brought to support it with all their energy. Already we have emphasized the fact that Lincoln is supremely the voice of the World-Spirit to the People as well as the execu- tor of its behests. He is the incarnation of the Idea of the Union (which is to be made over as producing Free-States only), while the military and naval forces show that Idea armed and realizing itself, the People furnishing the means in men, money, and also votes. In this way the inner process of the vast and intricate maze of events begins to manifest itself. Lincoln must be regarded as the vehicle of the World-Spirit, and he thus becomes the central figure of the War, keeping the People in touch with the supreme purpose of History, with what may also be called its Idea. At the same time this Idea has to go through its various stages of development, it has to evolve both in Lincoln and in the People. Not of a sudden is the great work done, or even seen; it starts simply with preserving the Union, then moves forward to emancipation, then to recon- struction. Such was the inner process lurking in the events of the War, as well as in the soul of the People, but obtaining its most complete 31 •182 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. - TAIi F III. utterance in the words of the Leader, who.se supreme function was to harness the Nation to Civilization, and to keep it thus harnessed till its task be done. Overwhelming is the mass of occurrences during these four years of military and political activity, if viewed externally. The interior lines of their movement must be brought to the surface and described if we are ever to escape from the chaos of historic details bubbling up synchronously and in succession over areas ex- tending thousands of miles. Now as this whole War shows the Union re-united or re-won, we shall observe three chief periods in the process or three Winnings which may be designated in advance as follows : I. The Winning of the unseceded Slave- States — old and new — which gives the first Period of the War (1861-2). The expressed end is the simple preservation of the Union as it was. II. The Winning of the seceded Slave- States — new — which gives the Second Period of the War (1862-3). The expressed end is now the emancipation of the Union from its dual condition, half-slave and half-free. III. The Winning of the seceded Slave- States — old — which gives the Third and final Period of the War (1864-5). The expressed end is the reconstruction of the Union, which is THE GREAT WAR (18G1-18G5). 483 a return to its birth as State-produciug, and makes it reproduce each Shive-State, new and old, as free. Thereby appears or begins to ap- pear the new Union formed of Free-States only. These three Periods are not each of the same length of Time, nor are their limits fixed to a a day. That upon which our thought should be centered is the process revealing itself in these stretches of Time, which is but its outermost garment, and which may be now a little longer and now a little shorter. It is evident that the cycle of the Ten Years' War completes itself by making the Union Free-State producing com- pletely, by making it embrace not only the Future in the matter of Territories, but also the Past in the matter of States. In fact the Union itself is re-born; there is a return to its first birth, and a re-creating of it as creative. Thus the round is finished and all the seceded States are re-won — an external restoration at first, which, however, is to be made internal with time. But we must also notice that in each of the mentioned Periods is found a similar process, which runs in this way : first the Idea of it will be stated generally by the President in address or message, at the seat of Government, and then formulated in law by Congress ; second is the Idea armed in the military and naval powers, and thereby realizing itself; third is the Idea backed by the People who stick to their great task and 484 THE TEX YEARS' WAB. — PART III. follow the words of Lincoln, answering his re- peated calls for fresh troops and more money, as well as supporting him by their votes. Such is the process of the Idea of the Union directing each of the three designated Periods, of which it is the soul or formative energy. In such fashion we seek mentally to seize the whirl of Time's events, though moving with an enormously accel- erated velocity, and throwing off in a year such a multitude of important actions, that they would ordinarily require a century for their happening. TEE FIRST WINNING — 1861-2. 485 ZTbe Mtnntna of tbe lansecc^e^ Slave^States (©It) an^ 1Rew) 1861-2. The first great problem iu 1861 was to hold in the Union the upper Tier of Slave-States after the two other Tiers had seceded. Maryland with little Delaware belonging to the old group, Kentucky and Missouri belonging to the new group of Slave-States, had in their borders con- siderable bodies of active secessionists who sought to join these Commonwealths to the Southern Confederacy. But a decided majority of the population in each of them was favorable to the Union. Still this majority had to be handled with great circumspection. Neutrality became for a short time the favorite policy in these states, especially in Kentucky. Thus a barrier would be interposed between the two combatants. Northern and Southern, and war might be averted. It soon became manifest, however, that such a })olicy meant the success of rebellion, since the seceded States would be protected by a wall of neutrals, and could not be co-erced. In Baltimore troops hurrying from the North to the defence of "Washington were assailed and stopped for a while. In both Kentucky and Missouri, the Governors denounced Lincoln's 486 THE TEN YEAK-i' WAR. — PABT HI. first call for volunteers, and refused compliance, but their opposition was unavailing. West Vir- ginia would not accept the ordinance of Seces- sion from Richmond, and began the making of itself over into a new State. Thus the gap was filled between Maryland and Kentucky, and the Tier of unseceded Slave-States reached in an un- interrupted line from the sea-board to Kansas. We shall seek to outline the first Period in its process, which embraces the events from the besinnins of the War, in 1861, till Autumn 1862, Thus AA^e can catch a view of the first round of occurrences, in which is seen the fundamental process lurking in the vast diversity of happen- ings before us. Such is, indeed, the movement of the World-Spirit itself, or Ave may call it the Idea, the stages of whose process we shall put together as follows: (I) The Idea formulated by President or Congress usually ; (H) The Idea armed by the naval and military Pewers ; (III) The Idea realized^ being taken up and backed by the Nation. In each of the three mentioned Periods we shall find this same process repeating itself; and in each stage of this process we shall likewise find essentially the same movement. I. The Idea formulated . We have to look to the center, to Washington, for the creative Idea or Thought Avhich leads to the result. Lincoln in his Messages and Addresses sounds the key- note: the Primacy of the Union. This is the THE FIE ST WINNING— 1861--2. 487 doctrine which finally wins the Border States, at first balancing between the two opposing tend- encies, and somewhat uncertain which way to go. Sparing their feelings, Lincoln keeps in the background the slavery question till they are ready to meet it. He will at the start restore the Union, the old Union as double, with its States both slave and free. He does not take back his doctrine of stopping the extension of slavery to the territories, but he does not dwell on it in the presence of a more pressing question. His first work is to lead these doubting States away from the Primacy of the Single-State to the Primacy of the Union. In this his success is emphatic. To be sure, they cannot stop long at such a })oint; the Union cannot remain half- slave and half-free. The State-producing Union has been productive of both sorts of States hitherto, but just this is what cannot continue. The contra- diction must work itself out to the surface and be eliminated. How can a Union half-slave and half-free produce wholl}^ free States? For a time it may do so, but not permanently, accord- ing to Lincoln's most famous utterance. At present, however, the Border Slave-States can be brought to take this first step of maintaining " the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was," which is quite a stride for them. So it comes that the third or upper Tier of Slave-States remains in the Union, the wave of 4»8 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PAR T III. Secession breaking in vain against it. Three sorts of States are included in it. (a) Two of the Original Thirteen which helped make the Union, remain faithful — Delaware and Mary- land. (6) Two of the Derived Slave-States, Kentucky and Missouri, refuse to go out with the other seven of their sort, (c) One State of this Tier (West Virginia) is peculiar, it may in a sense be considered both orio-inal and derived. It was a part of old Virginia, and hence assisted at the birth of the Union and Constitution ; yet it becomes a new or derived State, the child of the Union and Constitution. It is born anew, being made over from a seceded into an unse- ceded Slave-State, which, however, is in time to free itself of slavery. Thus it has within itself the process which forecasts the Union as Free- State producing universally, enfranchising not only the Territories, but the Slave-States them- selves, new and old. West Virginia from this point of view may be said to reveal the widest sweep of the War, the transformation of the Original Thirteen into the new order, and specially of the old Slave-State into the new Free-State. The act is probably outside of the Constitution, which thus is made to go back to the start and re-make not only itself but its makers — the States which made it. II. I'.'h' Idea armed. This is the element of manifestation in the War, its colossal spectacular TEE FJIiST WINNING — 1861-2. 489 element, its thought realizing itself in action over the vast area from the Atlantic to the Rockies. It is that part upon which History dwells and dilates with a peculiar fondaess, picturing the deeds of armies and of individuals in all their diversities and fluctuations. The central Idea now rays itself out into a multiplicity of events in which the mind gets lost unless it be continu- ally brought back from their mazes to their genetic clew. In the briefest manner we shall seek to desig- nate the indwelling process of the armed con- flicts of the War. These take place on sea and land; the Idea is equipped with two kinds of weapons, military and naval. The military is by far the largest and most important branch of the nation's service, the most impressive disjr play of the People's Will to defend and preserve their Union. So we shall divide the army into two parts, the Eastern and Western, each of which has its own special task, and also unfolds its own peculiar character. The one (Eastern) is essentially defensive, while the other (West- ern) is essentially offensive; the navy is essen- tially preventive. Yet each can and does at times play the part of either of the other two. We shall begin with the work of the navy. (a). As the South had almost no ships and not many sailors, there could be little offensive or defensive warfare of the naval sort. The 490 THE TEN YEABS' WAB. - PABT III. chief duty of the navy was, accordingly, of a preventive nature, that of blockading Southern ports and harbors. Ships could keep the out- side world from supplying the wants of the States in rebellion, which had little diversifica- tion of industry, and badly needed munitions of war. In this early period of the struggle may be placed two famous events in which the navy took the offensive. On March 8th, 1862, the Con- federate iron-clad Merrimac steaming into Hamp- ton Roads disabled and destroyed the blockading ships. The next day the Monitor, also iron-clad, appeared on the Federal side, and succeeded in putting an end to the career of the Merrimac. On the closing days of April, Flag-officer Farra- gut captured New Orleans, the chief seaport and largest city in the South. Both these events had a strong deterring influence upon those nations of Europe which were previously inclined to break the blockade and recognize the Southern confederacy. (6). Of the two great military movements, the defensive one around and between the capitals comes next in order. As soon as Washington was reasonably secure, there arose in the North the cry : Forward to Richmond. Leading news- papers, especially the JSfew Yor^k Tr'ibune, be- came very importunate. The result was the first battle of Bull Run, in which the Northern armv THE FIBST WINNING— 1861-2. 491 fled from the field in ji pimic, back to the de- fenses of Washington, July 21st. This was the first important battle in the East, and was a typ- ical one prefiguring all which were to follow. The Capital was successfully defended ; but when that East-Northern army passed from the defensive to the offensive, it was defeated. It went beyond the line of separation between North and South at Bull Run and received its first penalty, re- peated again and again till the close of the war. In this same battle appears for the first time the employment of the Shenandoah Valley for a strategic purpose. A line of mountains cuts off this valley from Eastern Virginia whose area stretches between the two Capitals. Thus the Southerners had a flanking machine created by Nature herself , which they used with astonishing success till the last months of the War, when it was completely broken up by Sheridan and turned against Richmond, somewhat as it had been turned against Washington. General J. E. Johnston works this strategic machine at pres- ent, and by means of it changes the tide of battle at Bull Run. But the name and fame of Stone- wall Jackson are chiefly associated with its em- ployment. Its dexterous manipulation had the power of throwing the Federal army back upon the defensive from its offensive operations against Richmond. And now let us skip a little more than a year 492 THE TEN YEARS' WAB — PART III. till August 30th 1862, on which clay the second battle of Bull Run is fought. McClellan has taken the offensive and has Avound up his Penin- sular campaign ; the Seven Days Battle has been fought, he has retreated to Harrison's Landing under the protection of gunboats. His attempt on Richmond has failed and he has been thrown back on the defensive. But the worst failure is himself, and his army is withdrawn from the James to the Potomac. General Pope has command in front and is badly defeated by Lee. Thus is repeated the same result as in the first battle of Bull Run. The East-Northern army taking the offensive is overwhelmed onevery side by a smaller army, and driven back to the de- fences of Washington. Moreover, that same strategic machine is put to work again with marvelous success. Already in early May Jackson is rushing down the Shen- andoah Valley gathering supplies, defeating Federal troops, frightening Washington and keeping re-inforcements from McClellan. Then he hurries back toward Richmond and takes part in the Seven Days' Battle (June 25th to July 1st). The siege being raised by McClellan's retreat and the recall of his army, the Confed- erates start toward the Potomac with Lee at their head, who hurls back his antagonist over that peculiar line of separation between the North and THE FIB ST WINNING— \m\-2. 4;t3 South SO emphatically marked already at the iirst battle of Bull Run. But now rises for the first time the like prob- lem ou the Confederate side. If Lee takes the offensive and transgresses that same line of sep- aration, M'ill he receive impartially the blow of Nemesis in his turn? We shall watch. He crosses the Potomac, invades Maryland and pro- poses to sweep still further northward, wdien he is met at South IMountain and Antietam by the Federals. The result is Lee's army defeated re- crosses the Potomac and after some delay is found in position behind the Rappahannock. So the East-Southern army has had its experience of fail- ure underits greatest general, who has dared take the offensive and go beyond the fated line which divides Union and Secession. Ls it not plain, as far as these two armies ai'e concerned, that neither can conquer the other, that the Union if it be won at all, must be won on other fields? The same lesson is enforced anew in December of this year by the battle of Fredericksburg in which the Federals, taking again the offensive, are bloodily repulsed by Lee. Such is the sanguinary see-saw between these two armies, during what we may deem the first Period of the Great War, lying in the main be- tween the first Bull Run and xVntietam, and re- vealing the military type of the whole struggle in the East, which we shall see repeating itself 494 THE TEN YEAUS' WAB. — PART III. again and again in the form of this terrible pen- dulum of the Gods oscillating victory and defeat impartially to both sides. (c). We now pass to the West-Northern army whose military character is to take the offensive against its antagonist. First a battle line was secured, somewhat irregular to be sure, extend- ing from West Virginia along the Ohio river through Missouri to Kansas. In the latter part of 1861 this battle line began to move south- wards, and soon met the corresponding battle line of the enemy. The opening victory was won at Mill Spring in Eastern Kentucky, (Jan. 19, 1862), by General Thomas. The fall of Fort Henry on the Tennessee followed (Feb. 6th) ; then the surrender at Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, (Feb. 16th), one of the great victories of the war. The line, like a long radi- us reaching out from the center at Washington, moved rapidly into the State of Tennessee, which the Confederates abandoned, taking up a posi- tion at Corinth, Mississippi, from which point they advanced and fought with the Federals the indecisive battle of Shiloh (April 6-7). A chief obstruction in the Mississippi river was removed by the capture of Island No. 10, with several thousand prisoners (April 7th, second day of Shiloh). Through the taking of New Orleans in the last days of this April, the great river might have been opened all the way to the sea, THE FIRST WINNING — lS6\-2. 405 as Vicksburg had not jet been fortitied. But then comes dehiy, of which Halleck bears the chief blame, so that another year of fierce conflict passed before the Mississippi is cleared of all hindrance to its navigation. In this campaign the character of the leading General (Grant) on the side of the Union showed itself ; also two other great commanders at this time manifested their military ability — Sherman and Thomas. A resurgence of the Confederates takes place, breaking over and around the advanced line of the Federals, and swelling up into Kentucky, almost reaches Louisville and Cincinnati. But it is met and the West-Southern army returns substantially within its old line. This resur- gence takes place along the whole battle-line of the War East and West. In September, 1862, the Confederates have overrun central Kentucky quite to the Ohio Eiver, and Lee has crossed into Maryland. This month Confederate fortune touches its highest point during the War. Only in Grant's line is there no serious break, though two vigorous attempts are made by the enemy (atluka Sept. 19th and at Corinth Oct. 3). Thus at the end of this Period of the War the military situation has declared itself in the East and West. In both sections the strong Confed- erate resurgence of 18G2 is met and pushed back to its old limits essentially. But there is also a decided difference between the two sections. In 496 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART III. the East each side is arrayed ou the same old battle-line of separation, with nothing won by the North ; in the West the new battle-line is kept, with all the gained territory behind it, which includes a large part of the seceded Slave- States, Tennessee and Arkansas, as well as the whole of the unseceded Slave-States, Kentucky and Missouri. This we shall see to be not an accident, but typical of what is to come. The outline of the military movement of the entire War is distinctly foredrawn in this first general movement. III. The Idea realized hy the Nation. We must not leave out of the historic process of the time that the War in all its great demands was maintained by the People. In fact the Folk- Soul made itself felt not only at the seat of Government but also in the armies, since there was a continuous interflow between the soldier and his family at home. Nearly every North- erner in the ranks could write, and of course did not fail to give the echo of his part of the army about commanders, politics, and things in general. This epistolary stream between the front and home was very influential, even if not on the surface. It often reached and revealed the heart of the situation better than the news- papers, which were inclined to have their favor- ites, military as well as political. The corre- spondents of the Press were for the most part at THE FlliST WiyNiyG — 1861-2. 497 the headquarters of the General, and usually oave his version or at least his coloring to events, which was not always that of the soldiers. The People of the North in spite of reverses and discouragements, stood as a whole loyally by Lincoln, The demands made upon them were certainly great — they furnished the blood, the money and the will. (a). Men were called for in great numbers to offer their lives for the Union. They could only come from the People, who had to make and did make this living sacrifice willingly for the cause. By the hundreds of thousands they were -required and appeared. (b). Money, which stands for the toil and industry of the People, was needed in vast quan- tities, and was always forthcoming. Bonds were issued and disposed of at home and abroad ; legal Tender was issued, a national necessity even if an economic folly. (c) . The People's Will, expressed at the ballot box, supported the measures of the Government. Herein was shown the unique, transcendent power of Lincoln. He never appealed to the Folk-Soul in vain, though its response varied in volume during the four years of War. The one Will of the President was backed by the National Will in spite of his mistakes. So the People gave him unstintedly what he wanted for attain- 32 498 THE rK>! VBA}i.s' WAit. -PAHT/ir. ing his cud, since that was their end as well as that of Civilization. Such is, then, the round here manifesting it- self continually : the People's Will returns and interlinks, as it Avere, with that of the President, who in his turn directs the mighty forces, the army and the navy, into fulfilling the purpose of the AVorld-Spirit, and then comes back to the original fountain of his authority, the People, for approval and renewed support. TUK t;i:c(>sj> WIXXISQ — 180'^~3. 4ns ^be Minning of tbe Scce^e^ Slave Statc0 (1Rew) 1862-3. Already in the previous Period the Wet^it- Northern army had obtained a secure footing in Tennessee and Arkansas as well as in Louisiana, all of them new or derived Slave-States which had seceded from the Union. Seven of these States had gone out, and now the whole seven are to be overrun during the present Period, which we tix as the second of the "War, including Vicksburo: and Gettysburg as its central military events. They foreshadow the end of the struggle and seem the mighty response to Lincoln's proclama- tion of emancipation, as well as its confirmation. Undoubtedly these seven new Slave-States, as children of the Union which they are trying to slay, have in them that parricidal strain already mentioned which provokes the tragic blow from "the revenging Gods" more speedily than the act of secession of the old Slave-States. Thcv are the first of the revolted Commonwealths to be subdued. Lincoln and with him the "War and the Peo()lc move out of the preceding stage and take a great step forward. The attempt is still to preserve the Union, but notexactlv as it was; it is hence- 500 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. ~ PAJiT III. forth to be an eniunciptited Union, having freed itself of slavery. It is getting to be productive of Free States not merely out of territories, but out of Slave-States new and old. Its dualism is beginning to disappear, and it promises soon to be no longer half-slave ®r half-free. I. The Idea^ formulated. The central Idea of the present period of the War is now generally recognized to be that of Emancipation, which found its decisive expression in the proclamation of January 1st, 1863. This may well be deemed to be the culminating act of Lincoln as voice not only of the Nation but of the World-Spirit. It expresses the doom of slavery in the United States, on the Western Continent, on the Globe. Europe and America will extirpate it from those countries of Asia in which it still has a foot- hold. The great world-historical act of Lincoln was this Proclamation. It was not a sudden thought, but one of slow growth. He knew from the start that the War, if continued, would destroy slavery. But the People as a whole had to unfold till they were ready to take the step with him. Here again we see Lincoln as mediator between the Folk- Soul and the World-Spirit. On June 22d, 1862, he declared his purpose to his cabinet and read his first draft. As it was a time of depression in the North, of defeat for the Union armies, Seward, though believing in THE SECOND II'AVAV.Vt? — 18G2-3. 501 it, urged him to wait for a victory before he sent it forth. Lincohi acceded to this view, and after the battle of Antietam he published his preliraiuary warnino- to the States in rebel- hon that he would free their slaves unless they returned to their allegiance by January 1st, 1863. They did not return, of course, so on that day the Proclamation went forth. He says that his paramount object was to save the Union, not to save nor to destroy slavery; that the proclamation was a war-measure to which he had been forced to resort; that it was not the end but a means to the end. II, The Idea armed. It may be said that the Idea of the War is now definitely uttered ; the Union is Free-State producing universally. The Proclamation proposes to ti'ausform the Slave- State into the Free-State, and thus voices the de- cree of the World-Spirit. The result is that the Idea now gets armed and fairly to work ; hence in this period take place the decisive victories of the War, andthe turning-point toward the victor- ious outcome can be marked almost to a day (July 4th, 1863, bringing the victories of Vicks- burg and Gettysburg). (a). The navy is doing more and more effect- ually its preventive task in keeping foreign sup- plies from the Confederacy, which thus revealed the weakness of the former Southern policy. If the South had possessed a fair degree of 502 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. —PART III. economic independence, it would have had a much better chance of winning political indepen- dence. But it had confined itself almost wholly to agriculture, and to a few staples of agriculture, cotton, sugar, rice. The Gulf States had been largely fed from the North, and were possessed of no manufacturing works. The missing food it could supply, but not the missing mechanical industries. Yet the South in the beginning thought that it dominated the whole economic world of Europe and America through its cotton. The navy in this period has brought home to the Southern States the shortsightedness of their economic system. (5). The military movement of this Period is still essentially defensive in the East, and brings out the former see-saw repeating its bloody work. The attempts of Burnside at Fredericks- burg, Dec. 13th, 1862, and of Hooker at Chan- celorsville, May 1st to 4th, 1863, show the East- Northern army taking the offensive, and over- whelmingly repulsed. Again they sought to cross that invisible line drawn between the North and South of the Old-Thirteen, and re- ceived a blow more severe than ever before. The warning written in the blood of thousands seems to rise from that line of separation and speak in a kind of wrath the decree from above. It is now the turn for the East-Southern Army to try its fortune by crossing that same THE SECOND IT7,V.Y7.A^(?— 1862-3. 503 fateful line. Will Lee take the offensive again and invade the North? And if he does will he meet that same blow so impartially delivered by Nemesis to either when it transgresses the pro- hibited line? Let us see. lu about a month after Chancelorsville Lee starts his army, sending into the Shenandoah Valley to work the strategic machine the corps of General Ewell, as Stone- wall Jackson had been killed. Toward the end of June Lee's whole army crossed the Potomac into Maryland and Pennsylvania. In this last State was fought the battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3), the result of which was a repulse for Lee, and a retreat back into Virsinia. Again he is allowed to take substantially his old position in front of the Federals. Thus is re-enacted the same general movement which we have already seen repeatedly in the East. Neither army there can conquer the other; more and more emphatic has become the line of separation dividing the Union, at least as far as the Old-Thirteen are concerned. (c.) For relief we again have to look at the West-Northern army which still is keeping up its name of taking the offensive against the enemy with success. It moves forward under Grant and captures Vicksburg, thereby opening the Mis- sissippi, since Port Hudson falls with Vicksburg. Thus the Confederacy is cut in two, and the 504 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART III. western liue of battle is ready to sweep east- ward around its circle. The time and the situation compel a compari- son between Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Pri- marily the one on part of the North is a defen- sive act in general and in particular ; the other is an offensive act in general and in particular. In the one case the North is invaded and an unse- ceded Free-State is the battle-ground; in the other the South is invaded and a seceded Slave- State is the battle ground. Gettysburg says that Secession cannot conquer the North, but Vicksburg says that the North can conquer Se- cession. The one is at best a negative act, hindering another deeply negative act but not destroying its doer and thereby preventing repeti- tion ; the other is a positive act, tackling Seces- sion in its home and undoing its power. The present Period includes another offensive movement of the West-Northern army, which wheels on its pivot and sweeps to Chattanooga, where is the gateway to the Southern States of the Old Thirteen. Grant reached there Oct. 23, 1863. The battle of Missionary Eidge (Nov. 25th) ended in the total defeat of the Confeder- ates, who had now lost substantially all of the new (or derived) Slave-States which went into Secession. It is worthy of notice that the four greatest generals whom the North produced dur- ing the war, participated in this series of battles THE Si:COXD WINNING — \%(^2-?i. 505 around Cliattunooga. They were Grant, Sher- man, Thomas, and also Sheridan, who was in command of a division. III. The Idea realized by the Nation. Here we must again take note of the People, that orig- inal protoplasm out of which everything in this War and every W;ir is to be formed. First of all the men to do the fighting were furnished, on the whole with readiness, though with opposition in localities. Money too was forthcominof, vet the financial burden was very heavy, and the fluctu- ations in the price of gold followed the ups and downs of the army. The most peculiar fact of the economic situation is that property advances, trade flourishes, and even population increases in the North along with the enormous expenditures of blood and treasure. The Secretary of War makes a strong point in his annual report which speaks of our former dependence on foreign nations for arms and munitions, whereas " now (1863-4) all these things are manufactured at home and we are independent of foreign nations not only for the manufactures, but also for the nuiterials of which they are composed." Thus the War is having a new and unexpected effect upon the North, making it self-sufficing in the matter of supplying its own wants, and endow- ing it with economic independence. The fullest and most pointed account which Lincoln renders to the People in regard to his 506 THE TEN YEAItS' WAR. — TAUT III. stewardship, is coiitaiued in his letter to a mass meeting of his friends at his home in Springfield. The letter is dated Aiignst 26th, 1863. Il-e convincingly shows that only two kinds of })eace are possible, with or without Union. There is no compromise or middle way; the peace party is pursuing a delusion, since the South is fighting for absolute separation. Lincoln also defends his Proclamation as a war measure and buttresses it with some facts, declaring that it cannot be retracted. " For the great republic, for the principle which it lives by and keeps alive — for man's vast future — thanks to all" who have been willing to give their efforts, and their lives if need be, to bring about the grand result. To such an appeal with its keen-edged logic which at times breaks over into lofty poetic utterance, the response of the people was immediate and overwhelming. Of this the most significant in- stance was the defeat of Vallandigham in Ohio for Governor by a majority of more than a hun- dred thousand. Still there were unjustifiable things done in this Period by some military com- manders, such as suppression of newspapers, arbitrary arrests for free speech, and suspension of Habeas Corpus where there was no need of it. Few if anv of these acts can be traced di- rectly to Lincoln, who, however, felt that he had to support his subordinates, particularly in cases THE SECOND WINNING — 1862-3 507 in which it seemed more necessary to uphold authority than to correct a mistake. In such fashion we mark off the second Period of the War with its process, in which the new or derived Shive-States which went into Secession, are brought back into the Union by power, not being permitted to stay out both for their own sake and for the sake of the grand totality of States, North and South. Moreover this idea of an emancipated Union has been voiced by the President, made victorious by arms and adopted by the People. A great stride, not only of the Nation, but of the World's History, we think; with high hope we can turn to the final act. 508 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART I/I. Zhc Minntna ot tbc Sccc^e^ Slave*State9 (®l^) 1864-5. The last great sweep of the War, the third Period of it, as we look at it, has been reached. General Sherman has said that the War pro- fessionally began after Gettysburg and Vicks- burg, and that military science was then for the first time applied in a thorough manner. Un- doubtedly the years had furnished their expe- rience, and the conduct of battles and cam- paigns was more scientific. Still the fact persists that this last Period has substantially the same process underlying it as the two Periods already considered, the same fluctuations of de- feat and victory, the same military character of the movements in the East and in the West, with the same general results. The East- Northern army fights again over that bloody area between the two capitals, and makes it more bloody than ever; the line of separation is drawn afresh with an emphasis which seems final. The West-Northern army in its turn starts on its customary offensive career, but in another sort of ter^itor3^ Hitherto it has been confined to the new or derived Slave-States which have seceded. But now it breaks over THE THIUD n-LXXLYG — 18G4-6. 509 into a different Held of lebellion, into tlie old Slave-Strttes which seceded, but which have not yet felt the presence of actual war at their doors. This must be the last act of the great drama. That circular movement, which, starting from the North-West, has swept victoriously down the Mississippi and then eastward to Chattanooga, is about to enter upon its last curve, which ir- regularly cuts through Georgia, South Caro- lina into North Carolina, when the war closes. Following in the track of tlie "West-Northern army is a new stage of the i)()litical development of the War: Reconstruction. If the second Period gave us an emancipated Union, the pres- ent third Period is to start into existence a re- constructed Union. This also is the work of Lincoln. Emancipation having become a fact, the slower and more difficult task of restoring these seceded States to the new Unicni is to fol- low. Thus the political process involved in the War will have completed itself. We recollect that the first stage was the preservation of the Union, the second was its emancipation, the third is now to be its regeneration and restoration, usu- ally called its reconstruction. This last work, however, Lincoln will not live to finish, though he makes a good beginning. We shall now for the third and last time out- line that process which we have found determin- ing the entire conflict. 410 THETEyYEAIiS'WAli.-~rARrin. I. The Idea Formulated. More aud more Lincoln becomes the voice of the Period. He is nominated a second time for the Presidency and is elected triumphantly by the People. His thought is now specially to bring the Slave-States back into the Union, emancipated and recon- structed. He urges unseceded Slave-States to make movements toward the abolition of slavery. Then he seeks in every way to cause the adoption of the Amendment to the Constitution prohibit- ing slavery — the Thirteenth Amendment. In this part of his work we see him trying to evoke the State-making instinct of the Southern People who are to build anew the local govern- ments in the seceded States occupied by the Fed- eral army. Particularly in Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee he endeavors to bring the citizens to undo the work of Secession. He is careful not to dictate, he distinctly declines to re-make the State governments by an autocratic exercise of power. To be sure one condition is put upon them: the abolition of slavery. Thus even the Slave-State is transformed, is brought first to make itself free, and thus becomes Free-State producing. This is the essence of Lincoln's Reconstruction: these Slave-States, hitherto in rebellion, must show themselves in their own case productive of the Free-State ; then they can come back and live harmoniously in the new Union which is Free-State producing only. It THE THTUD )r/.V.Y/.V(? — 1864-5. 511 is Reconstruction, tlicrefore, which is to bring about that iuuer homogeneity of the Union, which removesthe original ground of separation. At this point, however, Lincoln encountered opposition in his own part}'. Suuiner in par- ticular insisted upon unlimited negro suffrage as a condition of restoring the seceded States to their place in the Union. Lincoln became afraid of Congress, of its radicals, who really sought to destroy the South's Statehood, which he would "reanimate, " and whose governments he would "get in successful operation before Congress comes together in December." Says he as reported by Welles: " There is too much of a desire on the part of our very good friends to be masters" — the grand fatality of the South, for which indeed it has received the penalty. Now the love of domination is getting hold of the North in spite of Lincoln, who sees the danger of his own party acquiring that same spirit of arrogance so fateful to the South, and of falling into the same transgression in turn, 'with the consequent punishment. So Lincoln has begun to formulate the Idea of Reconstruction, and to bring it before the People in spite of Congressional opposition. There is little doubt that he would have again won the Folk-Soul to his plan, if had lived to develop it fully and to carry it out. Indeed the probability is that he would have gained the best 612 THE TEN YEARS' WAli. — rAL'T III. of the Southern leaders for his work, and have spared the Nation the painful period of Congres- sional Reconstruction after the war. Still his Idea despite some years of obstruction wrought itself out to completeness, and made the Slave- State not only a Free-State but also Free-State producing, as a member of the Union. II. The Idea armed. This still shows the same general process as before, having the same three implements, which we have named the pre- ventive, the defensive, and the offensive. (a). The task of prevention has already been described as allotted to the navy, and its work lies on the watery element. During this Period however, it takes the offensive also and captures the defences of Mobile as its chief prize. The blockade was always getting more effective. The gun-boats of the western rivers were closely connected with the military department, co-operating chiefly with the armies in the field. Thus they rendered the greatest service in open- ing the Mississippi and its affluents and keeping them open. Also they took an important i)art in the battles fouo;ht on the banks of navigable streams, as at Donelson, Shiloh, and many other places. (6). Now we are to witness a new phase in the career of the East-Northern army. General Grant, the successful commander in the West, is to try his hand on that uncanny piece of Vir- THE THIRD WINNING — UV,\-b. ^\^ ginia soil, which has been so deadly to supreme chieftains as well as commou soldiers. The past compels the query : Will he be able to change that which has hitherto seemed the pre-destined course of things? Can he bring that East- Northern army to take the offensive without get- ting the furious back-stroke already so often delivered ? Let us see. Grant crosses the Rapidan and on May 5th begins the battle of the Wilderness. What can it be called but a sanguinary defeat? Still Grant hammers away at the very walls of Fate, and on May 11th sends his famous dis- patch back to Washington : " I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." He seenis to have become conscious of that line of separa- tion in the East which he thinks he can cross as he did in the West. So he still keeps hammer- ing away at the line for three weeks longer, when the last attack is made at Cold Harbor with appalling bloodshed. The command is given for another assault, but the soldiers refuse to stir, and General Grant has found a limit which he never touched before, and which he seemed to think did not exist. He loses during the campaign more men than Lee had at the start, and neither destroys Lee's army nor cap- tures Richmond. It must be pronounced the greatest failure of the war, and from it Grant's military reputation has never recovered. He 33 514 THE TEN YEAJiS' WAH.— PART III. moves south of the rJnmes and takes up the same general position which McClellan reached in 18G2. Thus the commander who does not fight and the commander who fights reach the same point locally, and the line of separation in the East is drawn more emphatically than ever. Even Grant the bull-dog has to let go, in spite of his resolution "to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." The bloody see-saw has repeated itself, only far bloodier than ever be- fore. To complete the correspondence with the two former Periods, the strategic machine of the Shen- andoah Valley is again set to work by the Con- federates. General Early with his army arrived at Winchester, July 2d; thence he crossed into Maryland, putting to flight opposing forces. Washington had its usual scare along with Bal- timore and Harrisburg. But somehow again that old fatality smites the invaders in their turn, they have transgressed the limit and seem strangely paralyzed. Fully 20,000 Confederate veterans un- der Early and Breckinridge had the choice of the Capital or Baltimore, and, like the ass of Buridan, could not take either. Meantime Federal troops began pouring into Washington from the South, and the enemy retreated into Virginia. The same epithet can be applied to both sides in the affair: Utter incompetency. But now comes the supreme act of Grant in his Eastern career; THE THIRD WINNING —mA-o. 'y\b he sends Sheridan, wh«)ni he had called from the West to the command of thecavahy in the Army of the Potomac, to take charge of the Shenan- doah Valley. This officer, after defeating Early in several pitched battles, will smash to smither- eens the strategic machine, doing as the last act what ought to have been done first. He will even use the valley as a means of approach toward Richmond, after having been employed so long just the other way. For the present, then, we shall again have to turn away from the two op[)osing armies of the East, Northern and Southern, with that invisible line of separation drawn between them as impas- sible as ever. (c). In the spring of 1864 the West-Northern army is starting on a campaign against the old Slave-States which have seceded. It enters the upper part of Georgia, and moves victoriously along a line of battles to Atlanta, which it cap- tures (Sept. 2nd). Soon it divides; one part of it under Thomas remains behind to look after the Confederates under Hood ; the other part under Sherman starts November 12th for Savannah, and reaches this city December 10th. Thomas wins the battle of Nashville (December 15-1(3), routing Hood's army and pursuing its fragments into the far South. This has been declared the best-fought battle of the War, and the fame of Thomas has steadily increased since it tookplace. 516 THE TEX YEARS' WAR. — FART III. The result i.s that iu all the new receded Slave- States there is no army capable of taking the field against the Federals. The other grand division of the West-North- ern army under Sherman, fulfilling its function of briuo;ing the War home to the old seceded Slave-States, starts from Savannah and plunges into South Carolina, regarded as the home of Secession. There is no doubt that a feeling of retaliation vras perceptible in that army. Charles- ton was burnt, catching fire from the blazing cotton which the Confederates were destroying. Columbia was also burnt; by whose hands the conflagration was kindled is a question still under dispute. Drunken negroes, Sherman's bum- mers, Wheeler's cavalrymen, who also are known to have done some plundering, have all been blamed. One thing is certain: the Furies from all sides, not excepting the Southern, seem to be ligrhtino; down on South Carolina, and flav- ing her in vengeful wrath. Sherman in South CaroHna is the most impressive object-lesson of the War. A mighty irresistible mass is let loose upon the whole State with no appreciable power of resistance. The South itself could hardly help recognizing the return of the deed, and seeing the sliot at Sumter shot back thous- andfold over the State. All society seems dissolv- ing. Nemesis is in control and appears bent on wreaking retribution, the cycle of human action THE THIRD WIN ^flNG — \?>U-o. 517 insists on rounding itself out to the full. What did South Carolina herself think at this awful apparition? She could hardly help going back four years and interlinking in one chain first and last. But let this fact be added : she was by no means destroyed, but rather helped by the visitation; her population has doubled since then, and her wealth much more than doubled. The war's vengeance upon her was really what saved her, destroying her destroyer, of course against her will. Thus the West-Northern Army has completed its circular sweep and has practically assailed Richmond from the rear, rendering further help impossible, and taking away the sustenance from Lee's soldiers. Its offensive career has brought it quite to the Capital of the Confederacy, which now falls before the Army of the Potomac. That fateful line of separation from which it has been so often driven back, is now obliterated, and is crossed for the first time by it in the last great battle of the War. So our defensive army has finally become offensive and is crowned with suc- cess ; from this point of view it has gotten a new character corresponding with that of the West- Northern host now near at hand. As Sherman's array moved into North Caro- lina there was in it a perceptible change of feel- ing, since that State belonged to the second Tier of seceded States, and was almost forced out of 518 THE TE.V YEARS' WAB. — PART III. the Union by the conduct of Virginia. But the great fact is that the West-Northern army in its various branches has marched through and holds in its power ten of the eleven seceded States, narrowing the rebellion mainly to a part of Vir- ginia. Then Sherman is stopped in his advance northward toward Richmond and goes to City Point for a conference with Grant and Lincoln (March 27-8). "One more hard battle will have to be fought," is the opinion of both generals. The silent Grant is resolved to fight that battle with the army of the Potomac. Two days after Sheridan is at Five Forks and in ten days occurs the surrender at Appomattox. Nine days later. General Johnston, following Lee's example, surrenders to Sherman in North Carolina. III. The Idea realized by the JSfation. The supreme manifestation of the People's approval of Lincoln and his work took place on that No- vember day when he was re-elected President of United States by an overwhelming majority. In the most unequivocal manner the Folk-Soul put its seal upon what he had. done and upon his character. Of this indeed he was well aware. Says he in his message, Dec. 6th, 1864: "The most reliable indication of public purpose in this country is derived through popular elections." The Will of the People expressed by the ballot had indeed adopted his acts as their own, and he felt that to be the true harmony of his life. Well THE Til Hi D WIXMNG—l%a-b. 619 could he declare that the purpose of the People within the loyal States to maintain the integrity of the Union was never more firm or more nearly unanimous than now, after nearly four years of Hghting. Lincoln also noted that there were more votes cast in 1864 than in 1860 in spite of the great drain of the War. "We have more meo now than we had when the War began; we are not exhausted nor in the process of ex- haustion." Moreover the public debt, though great, "is held for the most part by our own people," and should be as nearly as possible dis- tributed among all. "Men readily perceive that they cannot be much o])pressed by a debt which they owe to themselves." At the same time the President re-afBrms that "I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclama- tion." At a serenade Lincoln dwelt upon the deeper side of the recent election, which he looked upon as the hardest test of free institutions. "It has demonstrated that a People's Government can sustain a national election in the midst of a great civil war. Until now, it has not been known that this was a possibility." Hitherto civil war has called out the strong hand of the mili- tary dictator who has suppressed liberty. But a new event has been enrolled on the pages of the World's History : the free exercise of popular suffrage in the heat of internecine strife. It is probable that somebody had suggested to Lincoln 520 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PABT III. to put off the election till a time of peace, but he answers, "if the rebellion could force us to fore- go or postpone a national election, it might fair- ly claim to have already conquered and ruined us" — which seems to carry in it an admonition to some headstrong military men. There is no doubt that Lincoin was keenly alive to the dan- ger-signal erected by History, ancient and mod- ern, and pointing warningly at the great and successful general. But in his conception the supreme act of a free Government V7as that the People should by their ballots stamp the ruler's Will as their own. Lincoln lived in and through and for the Folk-Soul, without whose confirma- tion and sympathy he could not think of exer- cising power. Thus Lincoln felt and saw the Idea of the Age, the Decree of the World-Spirit, saw; it real- ized by the Nation, having been himself the chief instrument of such realization. On this height we behold him a few months before his death viewing the Promised Land to which he had led his People, but which he is destined not to enter. Still the cycle of his career is complete. That prophecy of his, striking so clearly and pro- foundly the key-note of his whole public life and of the age, has been fulfilled: "I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, but I do expect it will cease to be divided." RKTBOSPECT. .521 IRetrospcct. There can be uo true conception of History unless its movement in Periods is seen, and not only seen, but made an integral part of our thought, nay of our very Self-hood. Events are not and cannot be understood till they are be- held unfolding in harmony with the law of our own consciousness. Historiography leaves much to be desired, if it is satisfied simply with record- iug events successively in Time, or throwing them together into external divisions usually called chapters. Rightly to periodize History is the profoundest task of the historian. He is to bring out the one supreme process of his total theme, and interlink with it all the lesser pro- cesses, which not only compose it, but reflect it in the small and smallest. We shall according- ingly, in this our final retrospective act, look back at the periodicity which runs through the whole work, and orders the occurrences of the time into one great totality as well as into its many subdivisions. It may be said that in this way the man of thought, contemplating the outer events of an epoch, enters into and communes with the Gen- ius of History, with that S[)irit which we have 522 THE TEN TEARS' WAR.— PART III. often sought to glimpse in the foregoing ac- count, and which has been repeatedly called the World-Spirit, into whose workshop (so to speak) we have now and then peeped for the purpose of limning some feature of that grand Artificer who manifests himself in the historic acts of States and of their Great Men. 1. With the surrender of the Confederates un- der Lee and Johnston in the spring of 1865, armed resistance to the restoration of the Union has substantially ceased, and the Idea of the North, enforced by the naval and military pow- ers, and wrestling so long and so desperately with its foe, has triumphed and proceeds to its full realization. So the Period of national War lasting four years conies to a close. The movement of this Period nmst be seen to be toward Re-union, out of the preceding Period of Dis-union, in which the trend was toward a dissolution of the federation of States ( 1858-61). Thus the nature of the whole time is the getting back, even by force at first, to that from whi(?h there has been a separation. We behold, ac- cordingly, a return to what had before existed, namely, the Union, which however, must be a new Union, having taken uj) into itself and over- come its own deeply separative character. 2. We have, therefore, to emphasize that the Great War looked at by itself, is but a part or stage of a still larger process, which it indeed RETROSPECT. 523 completes. This is tlie Ten Years' War, which began on the plains of Kansas in 1855 with the first invasion of the Missourians for the pur- pose of making the adjacent Territory a Slave- State. To such a purpose there is a strong and obstinate resistance on the part of the settlers, and we behold the first part or stage of the con- flict which is destined to last a decade. Moreover we now hear the thought or the theme of the whole Ten Years' War distinctly enounced in its simplest form : There shall be no more Slave-States. To be sure the hardy Kansans fought to keep their own Territory from the clutch of slavery, they had enough to do without thinking much about the future of other Territories. But the North, not being engaged directly in the struggle and having the opportunity to think the matter over, came to the conclusion that Congress can and should ex- clude slavery from the public domain of the United States (expressed in the vote for Fre- mont, 1856). Thus the popular conciousness of the North begins to reach the conviction that the Union must henceforth be productive of Free- States only. The Slave-States already existent can remain as they are and develop as they may ; but hereafter their reproduction must cease in our Union. The mentioned exception also will in time be shorn away, and the Government, in its su- 524 THE TEN TEARS' WAB. —PART III. preme genetic act supported by armies, will transform the already exiscent Slave-States, making them free, and thus apply its new prin- ciple to the past as well as to the i'uture. The theorem or formula of the whole Ten Years' War now comes to light in its fullness and may be stated as follows : The Union is to be made Free-State producing universally . In its deepest act, which is the genesis of States, such it will be; of course it will do other important things also. When such a Union is fairly established, the Ten Years' War, having fulfilled its mission and completed its cycle, comes to a close. It has its own periodic character taken by itself, as a whole ; but it also reveals subordinate Pe- riods, each of which is a part or stage of the grand total, yet has also its own special process. That is, the Ten Years' War has its own unique sweep and meaning; but it is divided, or we may say, divides itself into the stages which are desig- nated as the Border War in the Union (1) which small war has the power of unfolding and manifesting the Union Disunited (2), out of which is the movement in the Great War to the Union Reunited (3), and also transformed. Yet each of these divisions or stages has its own process, and therein not only mirrors the whole of which it is a part, but interlinks with the same in the one general process. 3. Nor should we foroet the thouo-ht in this EETROSPECT. 525 connection that the sweep of the Ten Years' War is but a stage or part of a still greater move- ment, that of the Federal Union from its begin- ning till the present. Being in Time it has a be- fore and after. And the entire development of the Federal Union is itself but a portion of a greater historic totality. Thus we may, or in- deed must, go on widening our view till we reach the conception of Universal History, whose es- sential process is to be present in all its parts even the minutest, otherwise they could not be parts of it. Ultimately History as a whole or as universal must be seen creating each of its stages or epochs or events ; and the reader who gets its deepest lesson has to commune with this creative power of it, and re-create it in thought as it brings forth the pivotal occurrences of Time. To use the expression already often employed, the World-Spirit must be witnessed at last as the inner generating power of all History. Accordingly, local or national History, if it be worthy of the record, must bear the impress of Universal History; and this impress is finally what the historian is to make manifest in his work. The American Ten Years' War cannot leave out of sight its originating principle,- to which the appeal has dften been made in the course of the foregoing narrative. Here it is well to note another thought which is sure to rise: History, even Universal History, is not all, or the All; it is but one form of man- 5^6 THE TEN YEARS' WAR. — PART Ilf. ifestatiou along with others, such as Science, Art, Poetry These, then, are likewise to be co- ordinated with History into one complete process of the All, which process is in its turn creative of these special forms of manifestation. Ulti- mately up to this highest process History is to be carried. 4. The process is then what connects the low- est and highest, connects the little round of events with the creative act of the Universe. To be sure the reader must see this act, must indeed recreate it for himself in order to know it. Such is the true meaning of the Period when rightly ordered; it gives the supreme process in the par- ticular events, it reveals in the seeming incidents of Time the creative mind of the Almighty. The Period of the Ten Years' War has, ac- cordingly, a significance which rises bej^ond His- tory, if we pluck its topmost fruit. It carries us up to the Creator creating not only it but every- thing else. The Period rounding itself out with its subordinate stages, which are also Periods, leads us to see not merely the movement of His- tory but of the Universe. Indeed unless I can see History as a part of the Great Whole, I can- not see it as the whole of itself. 5. The American Ten Years' War has ac- cordingly, its distinct, predicable object: the elimination of the dualism introduced into the Union at its birth. The expression, the dual- ism in the Union ^ discloses in words the contra- t RD-94" BETIiOSPECT. 527 diction which has hccome conscious and aclixe in the Folk-Soul, and which gives it no })cace until eliminated. Undouhtcdly this dualism had existed for many years, and was known to exist ; but its opposing sides never broke forth into violence, oroanized and persistent, till that first invasion of Kansas, in the s})ring of 1855 (see the first chapter of this book). The war then begun ends with the scene at Appomattox, the dualism being overcome, with the Nation one and homogeneous in the matter of "slavery, and with the Union Free-State producing henceforth forever. Such is the historic Period now rounded out and lying before us, in which much stress has been put upon that higher presiding Spirit of all History as it works in the soul of the People, and thereby realizes itself in the occur- rences of Time. But this task could not be rightly fulfilled without the co-operation of the mediating Spirit embodied in the Man of the Period, its true Hero, whose transcendent gift was the ability to bring together these two ele- mental principles of History, the World-Spirit and the Folk-Soul, and to make them function harmoniously toward the one supreme result. But to give his work as it is in itself and to show his place adequately, we must take a new point of view and enter upon the task of a new science, passing out of Historiography into its counterpart, Biography. Ifpftp this Catalogue for Reference. Note reduction in price. WORKS BY DENTON J. SNIDER PUBLISHED Br csIGMA PUBLISHING COMPANY, 210 PiNB Street, St. Loms, Mo. I. Commentary on the Literary Bibles, in 9 vols. 1. Shakespeare's Dramas, 3 vols. Tragedies (new edition), . . $1.50 Comedies (new edition), . . 1.50 Histories (new edition), . . 1.50 2. Goethe's Faust. First Part (new edition), . . l.r>0 Second Part (new edition), . 1.50 3. 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