THE BROTHERS' WAR T CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY HE inhabitants of the English colonies in Can- same race, language, religion, and institutions of government. Such homogeneousness, as has long been recognized, works powerfully for the political coalescence of separate communities. With the adjacent ones of the colonies just mentioned there has always been trend to such coalescence, as is impressively illustrated by the recent establishment of the Australian Federation. The thirteen colonies out of which the United States developed were likewise English, and there was the same homogeneousness in their population, which made in due time, and also maintained for a few generations, a union of them all - a continental union. But there had crept in a heterogeneity, overlooked for many years, during which time it acquired such force that it at last overcame the homogeneousness just emphasized and carried a part of the inhabitants of the United States out of the continental union. African slavery dying out in the north, but prospering in the south, was this heterogeneity. By a most natural course the south grew into a nation - the Confederate States - whose end and purpose was to protect slavery, ! which had become its fundamental economical interest, against the north standing by the original union, and which having gained control of the federal government was about to use its powers to extirpate slavery. The continental or Pan-American nation the American union, as we most generally think of it could not brook dismemberment, nor tolerate a continental rival, and consequently it warred upon and denationalized the Confederate States. The last two sentences tell how the brothers' war was caused, what was its stake on each side, and the true result. This compendious summary is to serve as a proposition, the proof of which we now purpose to outline. Our first step is to emphasize how the free-labor system which prevailed in the north, and the slave-labor system which prevailed in the south, were utterly incompatible. Free labor is far cheaper and more efficient than slave labor, It had consequently superseded slavery in the entire enlightened world. But certain exceptional peculiarities of climate, soil, and products planted and made slavery profitable in the south. To maintain the market value of the slaves two things were needed: (1) the competition of free labor and the import of cheap slaves must be rigorously prevented; (2) a vast reserve of virgin soil, both to replace the plantations rapidly wearing out and to afford more land for the multiplying slaves. The fact last mentioned made it vital to the south to appropriate such parts of the soil of the Territories as suited her cotton and other staples. Therefore whenever she made such an appropriation she turned it into a slave State; for thus the competition of free labor would be effectually excluded therefrom. The much more rapid increase of her population made appropriation of lands in the Territories likewise vital to the north. Hers were all free-labor interests, as the south's were all slave-labor interests; and whenever the former appropriated any of the Territories, she made a State prohibiting slavery in order to protect her freelabor interests. The north was not excluded by nature from any part of the public domain as the other section Her free labor could be made productive everywhere in it, and she really needed the whole. was. Thus the brothers of the north and the brothers of the south commenced to strive with one another over dividing their great inheritance. The former wanted lands for themselves, their sons, and daughters in all the Territories possible made into States protecting their free-labor system; the latter wanted all of the Territories suiting them made into States protecting their slave-J labor system. What ought especially to be recognized by us now is that this contention was between good, honest, industrious, plain, free-labor people on one side, and good, honest, industrious, plain, slave-labor people on the other, those on each side doing their best, as is the most common thing in the world, to gain and keep the advantage of those of the other. It was natural, it was right, it was most laudable that every householder, whether northerner or southerner, should do his utmost to get free land for himself and family. This fact which is really the central, foundation, and cardinal one of all the facts which brought the brothers' war - must be thoroughly understood, otherwise the longer one contemplates this exciting theme the further astray from fact and reasonableness he gets. The foregoing shows in brief how there came an eager contention for the public lands between parents, capitalists, workers, employers, manufacturers, and so forth, bred to free labor and hostile to slavery on the one side - that is, in the northern States; and the same classes bred to slavery and hostile to free labor on the other side - that is, in the southern States. The contention grew to a grapple. As this waxed hotter the combating brothers became more and more angry, called one another names more and more opprobrious; and at last each side, in the height of righteous indignation, denounced their opponents as enemies of country, morality, and religion. Here the root-and-branch abolitionist and the fire-eater begin their several careers, and get more and more excited audience, the former in the north and the other in the south. Both were emissaries of the fates who had decreed that there must be a brothers' war, to the end that slavery, the only peril to the American union, be cast out. Under the necessity of defending slavery against free labor there came early an involuntary concretion of the southern States. This was very plainly discernible when the epoch-making convention was in session. It was the beginning of a process which has been wellnamed nation-making. After a while - say just before Toombs takes the southern lead from Calhoun - it had developed, as we can now see, from concretion into nationalization not nationality, yet - of the south. It was bound, if slavery was denied expansion over the suitable soil of the Territories and the restoration of its runaways, to cause in the ripeness of time secession and the founding of the Confederate States. But there was another nationalization, older, of much deeper root and wider scope — what we have already mentioned as the continental or Pan-American. Its origin was in an involuntary concretion of all the colonies - both the northern and the southern - antedating the commencement of the southern concretion mentioned a moment ago. While southern nationalization was the guardian of the social fabric, the property, the occupations, the means of subsistence of the southern people, the greater nationalization was not only the guardian of the same interests of the northern people, but it had a higher office. This was in due time to give the whole continent everlasting immunity from war and all its prospective, direct, and consequential evils, by federating its different States under one democratic government this higher office was to perpetuate the American union. This continental nationalization had probably ripened into at least the inchoate American nation by 1776. It was this nation, as I am confident the historical evidence rightly read shows, that made the declaration of independence and the articles of confederation, carried the Revolutionary war on to the grandest success ever achieved for real democracy, and then drafted and adopted the federal constitution. The constitution was not the creator of this nation, as lawyers and lawyerbred statesmen hold, but the union and the constitution are both its creatures. This nation is constantly evolving, and as it does it modifies and unmakes the constitution and system of government of the United States, and the same of each State, as best suits itself. Why do we not trace our history from the first colonial settlements down to the present, and learn that the nation develops in both substance and form, in territory, in aims and purposes, not under the leading hand of conventions, congress, president, State authority, of even the fully decisive conquest of seceding States by the armies of the rest, but by the guidance of powers in the unseen, which we generally think of as the laws of evolution? To illustrate: For some time after I had got home from Appomattox I was disheartened, as many others were, at the menace of centralization. A vision of Caleb Cushing's man on horseback-the coming American Cæsar - seared my eyeballs for a few years. But after the south had been actually reconstructed I |