COMMENCEMENT OF CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA. the very time when the near and peculiar relation that we bore to the combatants most demanded the exercise of a practically disinterested neutrality, which as a nation we earnestly and successfully strove to preserve. There was and continued to be a great deal of confusion in the representations current in England with regard to the original causes of the war and the reasons for its continuance; nor would it be easy within the limits of these pages to trace the real history of its beginning, and the varied conditions and vicissitudes under which it was pursued. That the first hostilities by the South and the secession of South Carolina were in immediate relation to the apparently inevitable opposition of the Northern States to the maintenance of slavery was obvious enough; but several endeavours were made by the United States government to induce the slave-holding states to remain loyal to the Union, and among the propositions were suggestions to adopt a boundary line beyond which slavery should never be interfered with. When the "Republican" party, which was regarded as the anti-slavery party, carried their candidate for the presidency, it was still admitted that force would not or should not be employed to restore the Union. Mr. Seward, who became secretary of state, had declared that if the Union were restored by force it would not be worth having. Mr. Abraham Lincoln, however, in his inaugural address, stated his intention of recovering and keeping the property of the United States, and as he did not mention that he would do so by the force of arms, much trouble was taken by several eminent men in and out of office to represent that the message was truly pacific. It would appear that a considerable number of those who read the message in this way-and among them Mr. Seward-professed not to believe in the reality of the secession, but thought that the temporary demonstrations of revolt would cease when the whole question came to be argued and a compromise was effected. Otherwise it is difficult to see how the property of the Union could be either recovered or preserved without recourse to force. South Carolina having announced her resumption of separate indepen 89 dence as a sovereign state, had been followed by Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas; and Mr. Jefferson Davis, who had formerly been secretary of war in the United States government, was elected, in a meeting at Charleston, and proclaimed first president of these "Confederated States." Then, after having adopted a constitution similar to that of the United States government, the Cov federates or "Seceders" took possession of all the property of the Federal government within their reach, including all the military posts except two or three forts. In Texas a force of 2000 regular troops under General Twiggs surrendered to the state militia; and Major Anderson, commanding the Federal garrison of Fort Moultrie, in the port of Charleston, blew up the post which he could no longer hold, and removed the garrison to Fort Sum ter. All this had taken place during the presidency of Mr. Buchanan, who preceded Mr. Lincoln, and who was said to be closely allied to the interests of the slaveowners. At anyrate some of his ministers were in favour of the Confederacy, and he was obliged to dismiss them. One of them, Mr. Floyd, afterwards become a violent partisan of the South, and commanded a brigade in Western Virginia, and another went to preside over the Confederate senate. These were convincing signs that the question of slaveholding and slave traffic were the primary reasons for secession; but for a proper understanding of the attitude of the Federal government, it will be necessary to remember that at the time of the actual commencement of hostilities and afterwards, Mr. Abraham Lincoln declared that he did not go to war to put an end to slavery, nor even to decide whether in certain states slavery should or should not exist, or whether a certain number of slaves should be permitted; but that he called upon the Northern States to arm solely to preserve the Union, which it was their duty to maintain. So far then we may see a little of what was the position of affairs in 1861; but whatever may have been the assumed causes or the expressed objects of the combatants, the slave question was that which had really to be settled. The advances in civil liberty made by the Northern States, where the "peculiar institution" of holding negroes in perpetual bondage had been long abandoned, made the perpetuation of slavery in neighbouring territories under the same government impossible, came one of those significant phrases which are conveniently used to express settled convictions. But it is necessary to note that Mr. Seward apparently held the opinion that a compromise might be made by which slavery should be suffered gradually to die out, or should by degrees be superseded by free la and the negro who could escape over the bor-bour, and should not be perpetuated in future der was concealed or protected by the "aboli tionists." After the commencement of the war such fugitives were enfranchised by the law which was passed against the recapture of, or claim of property in, any one dwelling within the boundaries of the free states. The cry for abolition of negro slavery was in the air of the Northern States; and there were not wanting either true narratives, passionate appeals, fictional representations, or clear, indisputable evidence to show what were the actual as well as the possible cruelties and degradations to which the human chattel was liable under the irresponsible authority of an owner, or the irregulated tyranny of an overseer. Slavery could not have existed in any form likely to have been acceptable to either party, and, indeed, the most vigorous party-those who had retained the "grit" and persistency of the early founders of America-would not have rested with any compromise. Their forefathers, like ours, had regarded the institution as at least a permissible one, even when they did not rely on a convenient interpretation of Scripture for its support; but these people had abandoned the belief that negroes were the children of Ham, or that the system of slavery as it was practised, or might easily be practised, was of divine institution. To them it was a thing evil and odious-a system which had become dangerous to the existence of the republic. Whatever may have been Mr. Seward's opinion of the means to be taken to abolish it--and though in 1861 he may have regarded the secession of the slave-owning states as only a temporary demonstration he had, as early as 1858, declared in a speech in New York state that the antagonism between freedom and slavery was "an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces;" and the "irrepressible conflict" be generations by what were called the slavebreeding states. Even before the date of the speech just quoted he had said, in addressing the senate at Washington, "All parties in this country that have tolerated the extension of slavery, except one, have perished for that error already, and that last one-the Democratic party-is hurrying on irretrievably to the same fate!" There was nothing in the attitude of the state of South Carolina inconsistent with previous demonstrations. In 1848, when the senate at Washington had approved of a petition from the people of New Mexico to exclude domestic slavery from that country, the assembly of South Carolina passed resolutions denying the power of Congress to prohibit the introduction of slavery into any territory acquired by treaty or by the arms of all the states. The question was not likely to become the cause of a national conflict while the Democratic party was in power, for the Democrats of America may be said to have represented the Conservative party, and the Republicans the Whigs or Liberals. Near the end of the year 1853 a meeting of English ladies was held at Stafford House to agree upon a memorial to the ladies of the United States, which said, "A common origin, a common faith, and we sincerely believe a common cause, urge us at the present moment to address you on the subject of that negro slavery which still prevails so extensively, and even under kindly disposed masters, with such frightful results, in many of the vast regions of the Western World." The address was read by the Duchess of Sutherland, and was sent; but the answer received from Mrs. Tyler, the wife of the ex-president, was resentful. It roundly told the duchess that she might find fitting objects for her sympathy in London, in Ireland, or on her own Highland estates; and THE SLAVE POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 91 in those states which did not repudiate the bill by their own state laws, until the secession of the Southern States, and the first losses of the Federals after the commencement of the war-when Abraham Lincoln, who was then president, issued a proclamation declaring the freedom of all fugitive slaves entering the Federal States. said, "Leave it to the women of the South to | justice. This had been the condition of affairs alleviate the sufferings of their dependants, while you take care of your own. The negro of the South lives sumptuously in comparison with 100,000 of your white population in London." This reply, of course, did not touch the other side of the negro question, and, in fact, did not touch the question of slavery at all. It indicated, perhaps, that a large proportion of the people of the Northern States did not care much for the negroes, as they very plainly showed when they came in contact with them; and it seemed to imply that at that time emancipation was not regarded as a desirable question to bring into prominence. Evidences were not wanting that it might soon become a difficult, if not a dangerous one. The Republicans appear to have taken up the slave question as one which would have to be fought out with determination, and were ready to demand that the whole force of the government should be exerted to prevent the extension or the perpetuation of slavery in any of the states of the Union. The Democrats, on the other hand, were equally ready to defend "the institution," and the result was that while the United States government, in conjunction with Great Britain, was expending a large amount of money and losing many men in the work of suppressing the African slave-trade-and the only portions of the civilized world where that traffic was tolerated were the islands of Cuba and Porto Ricorunaway slaves, in their endeavour to escape from the Southern States to the borders, were recaptured and severely punished. Even at Charleston the abolitionists were wrought to a pitch of excitement by the arrest of fugitives, and their relinquishment to those who claimed them as their property. This was in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Bill passed by Congress in 1850, permitting owners to follow runaway slaves into free states, and making any assistance given to them in their flight, or any opposition to their arrest, illegal and punishable. At the same time the "free soil" party-(who, like the slaveholders, were fond of the word "freedom" in relation to themselves)-agreed to reject the testimony of slaves in courts of The demands for complete emancipation had not been altogether silenced since the days when England had paid so heavily for the freedom of the negroes in her West Indian possessions. In France and in America anti-slavery societies were earnestly at work, but all that could be done was to insist on the active suppression of the traffic in Africa. Unhappily the slave-dealers and their agents, the man-stealers, found the trade sufficiently profitable to tempt them to run great risks, and horrible discoveries were sometimes made of the sufferings of the wretched creatures, who were battened down in fast-sailing craft, that a quick run might be made to escape the British, French, or American cruisers. In 1840 the societies held a conference, the result of which was that the American government endeavoured to establish a negro colony, which they called Liberia, on the West Coast of Africa, to which slaves who had obtained their freedom might be sent. We cannot here follow the obvious causes of the failure of this attempt to form a self-sustaining colony of freed slaves. England had a station at Sierra Leone for the reception of negroes rescued from intercepted slave ships. It was believed that many of the slaves bought in Africa were not only taken to Cuba and Porto Rico, but were smuggled through Texas to the Southern States of America; but apart from that, those states retained in bondage the negroes at work on the plantations or otherwise employed, and comparatively few of them or their offspring obtained their freedom. The number of the negro slave population in the South in 1840 was reckoned at about two millions; but these figures were uncertain, or perhaps did not include the quadroons or mixed race of negroes and whites, numbers of whom were kept in slavery even though, in many instances, the signs of their negro descent had been almost obliterated, or at least were not conspicuous. The anti-slavery societies had done much, and the Quaker community had been forward in the effort to abolish from the land what they believed to be an accursed thing; but, as we have seen, other powerful agencies contributed to give a quick incentive to the movement, which in 1859 had aroused not only the interests but the passions of either side. The question had become, at the same time, a political and a religious one. Slaves who succeeded in escaping from the plantations found protectors in the free states, who aided and comforted them even at the risk of incurring punishment by the law, or the lawless revenge of those who looked upon them much as horse or cattle stealers would have been regarded in some other communities. The fugitives often | had dreadful stories to tell of the cruelties practised by overseers; the evidences of the truth of what they said, were to be seen upon their scarred and seared bodies, and were often corroborated by witnesses who had themselves visited Southern plantations, or possessed indubitable testimony of the treatment of which the slaves were frequently the victims. It may be conceded that comparatively few instances of cruelty and atrocity would have been sufficient, in the excited state of feeling, to raise a passionate outcry against the system of slavery and a demand for its abolition, but the examples were too numerous to be regarded as exceedingly rare or as altogether exceptional. It was known that men, women, and children were sold at auction like beasts, that they were often treated like brutes, that men and even women were flogged and punished in a revolting manner, that women who were not negroes, but who were partly of negro blood, might be flogged or worse. Not only in cries, speeches, songs were these things denounced, but anti-slavery tracts, essays, stories, were circulated in great numbers. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's story, Uncle Tom's Cabin, sent a thrill of pain and of indignation not only through the Northern States, but through England, through other nations of Europe. Of course we know now that it was a "story," that all that was in it was not fact in the sense of its having happened in relation to persons such as were there depicted; but there was nothing in it that might not have happened without interference by law. The system of slavery in the South made such incidents possible, many of them probable: it was known that they had happened and were happening. The character of Uncle Tom was not the biography of any one man. It has been explained that the first suggestion of it reached Mrs. Stowe while she was in the Walnut Hills, Ohio. The coloured cook, whose husband was a slave in Kentucky, used to go to Mrs. Stowe to ask her to write to him. The poor woman told her mistress that this man's master trusted him to go alone and unwatched to Cincinnati to market his farm produce. This, according to the laws of Ohio, gave the man his freedom, since if any master brought or sent his slave into Ohio he became free de facto. But she said her husband had given his word as a Christian to his master that he would not take advantage of the law-his master promising him his freedom. Whether he ever got it is not recorded. It was some four or five years after, when the fugitive slave law made Mrs. Stowe desirous of showing what slavery was, that she conceived the plan of writing the history of a faithful Christian slave. After she had begun the story she obtained, at the Antislavery Rooms in Boston, the autobiography of Josiah Henson, and introduced some of its most striking incidents into the story. Josiah Henson, an old negro, was in England in 1879 or 1880, and was introduced as the Uncle Tom of Mrs. Stowe's story. Doubtless Uncle Tom's Cabin had an immense effect in increasing the public feeling against slavery; but it was not alone books or stories or public meetings which were working upon the popular imagination or the general sense of right and justice. In 1859 "abolition" had taken a startling and practical form the form of an enthusiasm which, by some, was not unnaturally regarded as fanaticism, as displayed by John Brown and his sons and followers at Harper Ferry. John Brown, or as he was usually called, "Old John Brown," had been a prominent character before the struggle between the "OLD JOHN BROWN"--HARPER FERRY. abolitionists and the supporters of slavery broke out into systematic reprisals. He had been the victim of one of the raids made by the border ruffians of Missouri during the time that the country was disturbed by bands of robbers and scoundrels, who made political excitement and party opposition the pretext for committing all kinds of atrocities. He was the son of an Ohio farmer, and himself made a considerable competence by farming and by trading in wool. While on his land in Kansas his homestead and farm buildings were burned, his property stolen, and it was said that two of his children were killed. Probably it was known at that time that he held strong opinions on slavery, though it appears that he had previously taken no prominent part in public affairs; but afterwards, and when he was about sixty years of age, he became a determined abolitionist, and with his six sons devoted himself to efforts to liberate the slaves. He became what his opponents called a fanatic or a monomaniac, but his friends regarded him as an enthusiast. He with his sons organized a band of about five-and-twenty, most of whom, it was said, were New Englanders, and all well armed. Several times these men, under "Old Brown's" guidance, had penetrated far into the interior of Missouri and liberated from jail, men who had been apprehended on a charge of assisting slaves to escape, or on some other allegation connected with attempting to free the negroes, which would probably have cost the accused persons their lives after a trial by "Judge Lynch." For a very small amount of practical sympathy with an escaped slave, either in speech or action, men had been seized and roughly used, and afterwards tarred and feathered, or sat astride upon a sharp rail beneath which their feet were tied together; and for active participation in the escape of a fugitive, or opposition to his recapture, they were liable to be tried by lynchlaw and hanged or severely maltreated. When John Brown and his followers paid a return visit to Missouri they made reprisals by setting free numbers of slaves, and occasionally had a fight, in which some of their opponents were killed or their property damaged. It should be remembered, however, that their 93 antagonists were the people who strove to force slavery upon the state of Kansas by raising a civil war. An agreement was come to which for a time caused a cessation of hostilities, and Brown settled down again to his farm, until a party of Missourians in pursuit of a runaway negro, under a pretence of looking for "their property," forced their way into the houses of some of the people of Kansas without legal authority, and committed several outrages. They had not long returned to their homes when Old Brown, his sons, and followers were among them, retaliating by carrying off negroes and horses and making other reprisals upon their property. A bold and skilful rider, a man of iron constitution and iron determination, Brown became a determined assailant, and eventually devoted himself entirely to the rescue of negroes. His sons lost their lives during the repeated struggles in which they were engaged. The name of the leader of the Kansas band was known all over America, and his foes had offered a reward for his head. He and his followers, however, contrived to inflict repeated defeats on their opponents, who, of course, often outnumbered them, but were beaten by the skilful strategy of the man who afterwards said he was always ready to give his life for the cause which he had adopted with the intensity and fervour of a strong religious conviction. It was said that a committee of five called on him on one occasion and informed him that he must leave the territory in three days or die that they would come to his house with a sufficient force at the end of that time, and if they found him still there they would hang him. The old man thanked them for the notice, saying very coolly, "You will find me here then, gentlemen." Before the next sun rose the five members of that committee were in the other world. Whether Brown killed them or not is unknown; but it is certain, had they lived, that they would have killed him, and no man knew that better than he. On one occasion a certain Henry Clay Pate started out from Westport, Missouri, with a party of thirty-three men, full of boastings and promises to catch "Old Brown" and take him a prisoner to Missouri, his only fear being that |