The South stands for race integrity.
The instinct of race integrity is the most glorious, as it is the predominant characteristic of the Anglo-
Saxon race, and the sections have it in common.
Fiercely did it sweep the red men before it; swiftly did it brush away the Chinese in the West and North, burning their homes, cutting their throats when they pressed too hard in rivalry, and then breaking treaties to hurl them back across the
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Pacific ocean to their native shores.
Four million of black men lived in the
South side by side with the white race; and race integrity now incensed the
South to action.
Look further southward beyond the confines of our country, and behold how the
Latin races have commingled their blood with the aborigines and negroes, creating mongrel republics and empires, where society is debased and where governments, resting on no clear principles, swing like pendulums between the extremes of tyranny and license.
On the contrary, the
American element at the
South—and I quote a profound Northern writer in saying it—‘guarded itself with the strictest jealousy from any such baleful contaminations.’
But what a picture of horror rose before its eyes as it contemplated the freeing of the slaves.
John C. Calhoun had drawn that picture in vivid colors which now, recalling the days of
carpet-bag and negro ascendency, seems like a prophet's vision.
‘If I owned the four million of slaves in the
South,’ said
Robert Lee, ‘I would sacrifice all for the
Union.’
And so, indeed, would the
Southern people.
But
Lee never indicated how such sacrifice could obtain its object, nor was it possible that it could.
It was not the property invested in the slave that stood in the way, for emancipation with compensation for them was then practicable, and was again practicable in early stages of the war, and was indeed offered.
But free the slaves, they would become voters; becoming voters, they would predominate in numbers, and so predominating, what would become of white civilization?
This was the question which prevented emancipation in
Virginia in 1832.
Kill slavery, what will you do with the corpse?
Only silent mystery and awful dread answered that question in 1861, while the clamors of abolition grew louder, and the forces were accumulating strength to force the issue.
In fourteen Northern States the fugitive-slave law had been nullified.
In new territories armed mobs denied access to Southern masters with their slaves.
Negro equality became a text of the hustings, and incendiary appeals to the slaves themselves to murder and burn filled the mails.
The insurrection of
Nat. Turner had given forecast of scenes as horrible as those of the
French Revolution, and the bloody butcheries of
San Domingo seemed like an appalling warning of the drama to be enacted on Southern soil.
The crisis was now hastened by two events.
In 1854 the Supreme Court, in the Dred-
Scott decision, declared the
Missouri Compromise of 1820, which limited the extension of slavery to a certain line of
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latitude, unconstitutional.
This was welcome to the
South, but it fired the
Northern heart.
In 1859,
John Brown, fresh from the border warfare of
Kansas, suddenly appeared at
Harper's Ferry with a band of misguided men, and, murdering innocent citizens, invoked the insurrection of the slaves.
This solidified and almost frenzied the
South, and in turn the fate he suffered threw oil upon the
Northern flames.
Thus fell out of the gathering clouds the first big drops of the bloody storm.
In 1860
Abraham Lincoln was elected
President, and in his inaugural address he proclaimed his party's creed that the Dred-
Scott decision might be reversed.
The Southern States were already in procession of secession The high tides of revolution were in their flow.
