The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863

THE CAUSES AND RESULTS OF THE WAR

There are certain theories in regard to the causes of the present war, which are so generally accepted as to have fortified themselves strongly in the principle of 'magna est veritas et prevalebit.' Theories based, however, upon facts which have taken their rise long since the true causes of the war had begun to work, and which, consequently, mistaking the effect for the cause, are from their nature ephemeral, and farther from the truth than they were at their origin. Few thinkers have looked below the surface of the matter, and the majority of Christendom, ignoring any other past than the few brief years that have rolled over our national existence, forgetting that great causes oft-times smoulder unseen for centuries ere they burst forth in effects the more powerful from their long suppression, shaking the earth with the pent-up fury of ages—forgetting these things and arguing in the present instance from the few palpable facts found floating upon the surface of our society, by a tacit consent lay the burden of the war upon the present generation and its immediate predecessors. Herein lies the error which blinds the world as well to the warning of the past as to the momentous issue involved.

Where then shall we look for the cause of that antagonism in which North and South are arrayed—that bitter hostility setting brother against brother, and father against child, dividing into two separate portions a nation descended from the same stock, whose archives are one, all whose associations of a glorious past are the same, and which has hitherto swept swiftly on to unparalleled wealth and power, seemingly indissolubly united, and looking forward to the same glorious and ever-expanding future? Not to the errors in our political system, for no faults of government could, in a brief century, have produced such an upheaving of the foundations of society as we now behold—could have awakened such a thunder peal as is now causing the uttermost corners of the earth to tremble with dismay. Not to the institution of slavery, for however great a curse it maybe to our people and soil, however brutalizing in its tendencies, however unjust to the negro race, and opposed to all the principles of enlightenment and human progress—of whatever crimes it may have been guilty, this last and greatest of crimes cannot be laid at its door: for the bitterness of feeling between North and South existed long before the agitation of slavery was dreamed of, and the latter has only been seized upon as the ready means of accomplishing a greater design. Finally, not to any supposed desire in the Southern mind of establishing an independent empire of the South, whose people should be homogeneous, whose individual interests identical, and whose climate, productions, and institutions should move on in undisturbed harmony forever. For to this last a motive is wanting. Under no government that the world has ever known could the South have enjoyed so much freedom, such unexampled prosperity, such a rapid growth in wealth and power, in a word, so much real happiness—which is the sum of all earthly gifts—as under this which they are so earnestly endeavoring to tear down and blot from the face of the earth. Men's minds do not eagerly grasp and sternly pursue an abstract idea divorced from every consideration of self-interest, such as this would be. Even the greatest of moral principles are indebted to self-interest for their success, and without it the sublimest of creeds, the loftiest of principles would soon wither and die for lack of support. With every blessing that heart could wish in the present, and with no hope through change of bettering their condition in a practical point of view in the future, the idea of a great Southern empire, based upon such uncertain possibilities, would soon have disappeared from the Southern mind, even if it had ever existed.

Nay; the true cause is beneath and behind all these, taking its rise from the very foundations of English society in the dark ages, from the establishment of classes and distinctions of rank. In English history this principle reached its culmination in the wars of the Parliament, that great political tempest which changed the whole destiny and guided the future of that powerful nation, making it, as it is to-day, the dominant race of the old world. Its greatest development, however, was reserved for our day and our land. The England of the subsequent era was a new government, a new people. She reaped her harvest of good from her gigantic struggles, and so must we reap our harvest from ours. From the moment when the first settlers set foot upon our shores our inevitable destiny was foreshadowed; the seeds of the 'Great Rebellion' were even then deeply implanted, and all causes have since that day worked together for its fulfilment. We too must be purified by fire and sword; and may we not hope that our beloved country may emerge from the slaughter, the ruin, and the conflagration, more prosperous, more powerful than ever before, and casting off the slough of impurity that has for long years been hardening upon her, renovated and redeemed by the struggle, sweep majestically on to a purer and nobler destiny than even our past has given promise of, and attain a loftier position than any nation on earth has yet acquired?

The intimate relation of the feudal ages, between baron and retainer, established at first upon principles of individual safety and the public weal, soon degenerated into that of noble and serf. That which at first was but an honorable distinction between knight service on the one hand, and protection and patronage on the other, became, in the course of time, the baser relation of haughty assumption and oppression on the one hand, and the most abject servitude on the other. Descended from the same stern Saxon stock, separated only by purely artificial barriers, by the fortuitous circumstance of birth, the sturdy peasant could ill brook the tyranny of the privileged class—those 'lords rich in some dozen paltry villages.' That stern independence which has ever been the prominent characteristic of the Saxon mind, revolted at the palpable injustice of the relation of lord and serf. The aristocracy, on the contrary, fortified in their arrogance, at a later day, by the irruption of the Norman nobility, with their French ideas and customs, so far from yielding to the signs of the times and the light of dawning civilization, refused to give up one tittle of their assumed prerogatives, and became even more exacting in their demands, more lofty in their supposed superiority. Thus was engendered between the two classes a bitterness of feeling, a spirit of antagonism, that has never yet disappeared. Patiently did the peasant bide his time, and only when the tyranny became utterly unendurable did the movement commence which has swept downward to our time, reiving away one by one the miscalled privileges of the favored class, bringing, year by year, the condition of the laborer nearer to the true balance of society.

This antagonism reached its height in the Cromwellian era, and the men of those times stand forth upon the page of history as the exponents of the great principles of civil freedom. The strength of the Cromwellian party lay in the fact that it was composed almost entirely of the laboring and the middle classes, the bone and sinew of the land. Then for the first time in English history the world saw the plebeian pitted against the aristocrat, and the strife which ensued involved not so much the question of kingly prerogative and the 'divine right' of monarchs, as the pent-up feuds of ages—feuds arising from the most flagrant injustice and wrong on the one hand and forced submission on the other. This of itself was enough to lend to the contest a character of ferocity which well might make civilization turn pale. But even this bitterness was slight compared with that engendered by the religious element of the war. The history of the world has shown no wars so cruel and bloody, no crimes so heinous, no hatred so deep seated and abiding as those produced by religious differences. Strange that it should be so! Strange that the sacred cause whose province is to develop the purest and holiest emotions of the soul, should call forth and develop the fiercest, the darkest, and most unrelenting passions of the human heart! Yet so it proved in this instance. Their fierce, fanatical enthusiasm was a powerful element of strength to the Roundheads, which was lacking to the effeminate, corrupt, and godless Cavaliers. With such an auxiliary the struggle could not be doubtful; religious fanaticism carried the day.

In the years succeeding the Restoration, the evil effects of this religious antagonism were modified by mutual concessions, and in time almost disappeared under the impartial administration of a government founded upon a firmer basis than ever before, and more consonant to Saxon ideas of justice and social equality. But with us of America there was no such modification, for from the midst of this time of war and tumult, of savage hatred and unrelenting persecution, American society sprang. Our country was settled by representatives of these two extremes of English society, and in their choice of abode the hand of Providence is distinctly seen laying the foundations of our struggle of to-day, which is to prove the refining fire, the purification and regeneration of our race. Had the Cavaliers landed upon the shores of New England, the bracing winds of that northern clime, the rugged and intractable nature of the soil, the constant presence of dangers from the fiercer Indian tribes of the north, and the absolute necessity of severe and incessant toil to support existence, would have awakened and developed in them those manly qualities which for centuries had lain dormant in their souls—would have imparted new strength to their frames, new vigor and energy to their modes of thought; their indolence and effeminacy would soon have passed away, and they would have constantly approached, instead of departing from the true Puritan type. While, on the other hand, the stern, rough, almost savage peculiarities of the Puritan would in like manner have been modified by the genial influences of a southern sun and a teeming soil, and while the severe training and rough experiences of centuries, as well as their peculiar mental constitution, would have prevented their entirely lapsing into the indolence and effeminacy of the Cavalier, the whole race would nevertheless have undergone a softening change, bringing them in their turn nearer the type of their old antagonists; and thus each succeeding year would have seen these two extremes of social life drawing nearer and nearer together, and at last blending in dull, contented, plodding harmony. And the result would doubtless have been the degeneration of the entire race, and our fate that of the Spanish American colonies.

But this did not suit the designs of Providence. It was His purpose that there should be here those manifold social and political conflicts which are the life of a great nation—which are, indeed, the motive power to the wheels of human progress. A great problem in human destiny was here to be wrought out; a powerful nation was to arise, bearing within itself the elements of its own continual purification. The Cavalier landed upon the shores of Virginia, and spread his settlements southward. The influence of climate upon both the physical and mental constitution of man is well known. The enervating climate of the 'sunny South,' the soil fruitful beyond a parallel, pouring forth its products almost spontaneously, and, above all, the 'peculiar institution,' which released the planter from the necessity of toil, all tended to aggravate the peculiarities of mind and body which the settlers inherited from their ancestors; and the result has been a race which, while it presents here and there an example of brilliant, meteoric genius, is, in the main, both intellectually and physically inferior to the hardy denizens of the North and West. The same influences have fostered the aristocratic notions of the early settlers of the Southern States. With every element of a monarchy in their midst, the Gulf States have long been anything but a republic. De Bow, when, a few years since, he broached in his Review the idea, and prophesied the establishment of a monarch in our midst, was but giving expression to a feeling which had long been dominant in the Southern heart. All their institutions, associations, and reminiscences have tended steadily to this result, and in the event of the success of the rebellion, it needs but some bold apostle to take upon himself the propagation and execution of the plan, to make the idea a startling reality. And herein lies the secret of the sympathy of the English aristocracy with the confederates in their struggle for independent existence.

The Puritan, guided by the hand of God, planted his future abode on the shores of New England, a land truly congenial to him, whose whole mental and physical life had hitherto been one of storm and tempest. Nor could a fitter type in the human race have been found than he to tame the rock-crowned hills, to brave the rigors of such winters as Old England never knew, and the lurking dangers at the hands of a powerful and jealous race. Here was no place for indolence and luxurious ease. Only by the most persevering and painful labors could the bleak hills and gorge-like valleys be made to yield the fruits of life. Only by unremitting energy and the most patient self-denial could starvation be kept from his door, while constant watchfulness and never-flinching courage were required to ward off the many dangers that beset his path. Nature herself seemed pitted against him to contest every inch of his progress. But his nature was as stern and rough as that of the land he had come to tame. Accustomed to move steadily on in the pursuit of some one great purpose, to surmount every obstacle and crush every impediment, looking neither to the right nor the left, nor even pausing to pluck the flowrets that bloomed by the wayside, there was for him no such word as fail. Here the unbounded resources and exhaustless energy of body and mind found fitting scope. What to ordinary men would seem but hopeless, cheerless toil, was to him but pastime. The Puritan was just the man for New England, and New England the land for the Puritan. How he succeeded let all Christendom proclaim, for his works were not for himself nor his immediate posterity, but for the whole world.

But it is not so much with the results of his labors that we have to do as with their effects upon himself and his posterity. Here, as in the case of the Cavalier, every circumstance of his life tended to aggravate the hereditary peculiarities of his class. The success of his enterprise, the crowning of those hopes which had led him to cast off all ties of the old world, the lofty spirit which induced him to reject all external aid, and, above all, the crisp, free mountain air he breathed, begot in him a feeling of independence and superiority, and, at the same time, ideas of social equality, which have made themselves manifest to all time. Where all were toilful laborers, and few possessed more than a sufficiency of worldly goods to provide for the necessities of the day, there was no room for the distinctions of rank. Power, with them, resided in the masses; the results of their labor were common stock; their interests were one and the same. Add to these facts their ancient hatred of the aristocracy, and we have the influences Under which New England has ever tended to republicanism. The Puritan race has ever been republican to the core, and this is one great and vital respect in which they have continually diverged from their Southern brethren.

Yet with, all their virtues, with all their sublime heroism, was blended an inordinate, morbid selfishness. Shut in within their little republic from all Communion with the outer world, lacking the healthful influences of conflicting ideas and that moral attrition which polishes the cosmopolitan man, enlarging his views of life and giving broader scope as well to the active energies of the soul as to the kinder sympathies and benevolent sensibilities of the heart, this little community became more set in their traditional opinions, and gradually imbibed a hearty contempt for all beyond the pale of their own religious belief, which soon extended to all without the bounds which circumscribed their narrow settlements. Living alike, thinking alike, feeling alike, placing under solemn ban all speculations in religion, and even all research into the deeper mysteries of natural science, grinding with iron heel the very germ of intellectual progress, in their blind presumption they would have closed the doors of heaven itself upon all mankind save the called and elected of the Puritan faith. This intellectual life was one of mere abstractions, and as a natural consequence all their thoughts and emotions, their joys and sorrows, their loves and hatreds, became morbid to the last degree. But the bent bow will seek release; the reaction came at last, and the astonishing mental progress of the New England of to-day, the wild speculation upon all questions of morals and religion, rivalling in their daring scope the most impious theories of the German metaphysicians, which our New England fosters and sustains, and above all, the proverbial trickery of the Yankee race, are but the reaction of the stern and gloomy tenets of that olden time which would have made of our earth a charnel house crowded with mouldering bones.

In the midst of this intensely morbid Puritan life, no more eligible object could have been presented for the exercise of their bitterest antipathies than the descendants of their ancient enemies, the Cavaliers,—who were already rivalling them in the South, and who, as we have shown, were equally ready to cast or lift the gauntlet. Occupying the very extremes of religious faith, radically differing in their views of public polity, of bitterly hostile antecedents and traditions, the one looking upon the other as an outcast from salvation itself, and the other in its turn nothing loth brands its opponent with the epithets of surly, hypocritical, psalm-singing knaves, then as now, and as they have ever been since the foundations of our country were laid, these two classes stood arrayed against each other in every respect save that of open, carnal warfare. The bitterest of foes in the beginning, diametrically opposed in every possible respect, each has plodded on in his own narrow path, and the two paths have continually diverged to our day, and the present outbreak is but as the breaking of a sore which has long been ripe. It is of such antagonisms that nations are made: it is but differences such as these that have separated the common stock of Adam into so many distinct races and nationalities through all the ages of the world. Such a result we see to-day in our country, in two separate and distinct nations, hitherto nominally united under one form of government—nations as distinct as ever were the Roman and the Greek. As the Cavalier of the Cromwellian era was a horror to the pharisaical Puritan, and the Puritan in his turn a contempt and an abomination to the reckless, pleasure-hunting Cavalier, so to-day is the 'psalm-singing, clock-peddling Yankee' a foul odor to the fastidious nostrils of the lordly Southerner, and the reckless prodigal, dissipated and soul-selling planter a thorn in the flesh of Puritan morality. The Yankee is to the Southerner a synonym for all that is low and base and cunning, and the Southerner is to the Yankee the embodiment of all worthlessness and crime. The same spirit is observable in those Northern States which were settled by a mixed emigration from both portions of the country, and the fact is well known that even in those loyal Western States where the Southern element most predominates, is found the bitterest hatred and denunciation of the Yankee; so that he is no sage who draws the line east and west, north and south, and in every mixed community, between the descendant of the Cavalier, and the man of Puritan stock. Shall any one say that this is but the result of the war? Where then does history record a like instance? Where can be found the record of a civil war where the people, descended from a common stock and bound together by a common interest, sprang with such alacrity to the call to arms, and waged a war so relentless and cruel even in its very commencement, except there had been radical antagonisms existing through a long series of years?

But it may be urged that a large portion of the Southern population are emigrants from the New England States, and consequently of Puritan descent, and that while this very class of slaveholders are notoriously the most cruel and exacting of masters, they stand in the front ranks of secession and are the most deadly enemies of the North. True, but the enmity of this class, wherever it exists, is that of the most sordid, unprincipled self-interest. Gold is their god, and all things else are sacrificed to the unhallowed lust. But this enmity is oftentimes assumed from motives of self-preservation. Objects of suspicion to the Simon-Pure Southerner from the very fact of their nativity, and visited with the most horrible retribution wherever they have shown a leaning toward the land of their birth, they find it necessary to out-herod Herod in order to preserve their social status and the possessions which are their earthly all. Hence, to disarm suspicion, often those have been made to take the more prominent positions in this tragic drama who, did circumstances permit the expression of their true sentiments, would be found to be at heart the most truly loyal citizens of the South. Another class—and this includes more particularly the descendants of Northern emigrants—born and bred among the moral influences of Southern society, imbibing all the ideas and prejudices of their surroundings, lose their identity as effectually as the raindrop is lost in the surging billows of the ocean. Drinking in with their years the prevailing hatred of the very stock from which their own descent is derived, they become part and parcel of the people among whom their lot is cast, and ordinarily run to the farthest extreme of the new nationality. Herein is seen the fallacy of the ancient maxim—Cœlum, non animum mutant qui trans mare currant. The all-potent influence of self-interest, the overshadowing sway of undisputed dogmas, soon sweep away the lessons and prejudices of earlier years, and effectually transform the foreign born into the citizen of the new clime and nation. Were the population of the South more equally divided between the Northern and Southern born, this would not be the case; but in all the slave-holding States the Cavalier element so overwhelmingly predominates as to crush before it all opposing ideas, prejudices, and opinions.

This radical antagonism, smouldering for years, found its first great expression in the Tariff question of 1832, which was not so much a question of State rights and agricultural interests as the vehicle, or rather the weapon of the pent-up hatred of years. General Jackson saw the true bearing and origin of the dispute; and when he prophesied that the slavery question would be the next issue sprung by the designing revolutionists of the South, he did but show his appreciation of the great fact of the moral and physical antagonism between the descendants of the Cavalier and the Puritan. He might, and probably would, had circumstances required it, have gone farther, and prophesied, that should the slavery question in its turn be settled, some other cause of dispute would soon be found and grasped by the apostles of separation and revolution, as a means for the accomplishment of their great design. He alone, of all our statesmen, with his far-seeing eye saw and appreciated the tremendous issue involved. He was sternly opposed to the compromise which was subsequently made, well knowing that if the question were not then settled, at once and forever, the flame was but smothered for a time, to break out again in future years, with far greater vehemence. His policy was to crush the malcontents by the strong arm of power, to make such a display of the strength and resources of the Federal Government, such an example of the fate which must ever await treason in our midst, and, above all, such a convincing manifestation of the utter hopelessness of all attempts to destroy a great and good government, deriving its powers and functions from the people themselves, as to put forever at rest the machinations of traitors and anarchists. Experience has shown that he was right, and shown us, too, that if, in this our day, a second compromise be adopted, and a peace patched up upon a basis ignoring the true cause of dispute, or of oblivion to the past, or, worst of all, of yielding, on our part, one jot or tittle to the demands of our antagonists, as sure as there is a God in heaven—as sure as that retribution follows the sinner, the war will have to be fought over again, more savage, more bloody, and more desolating than ever, by our posterity, if not even in our own time. Fought over again, not once, but again and again, as often as the revolving wheel of human progress and enlightenment shall bring to the surface the black waters of the steaming cesspool below.

But what of the result? Watchman! what of the night? The night is stormy and dark; men's hearts are failing them for fear; those who see clearly in the day time, now grope helplessly in the dark; the blind are leading the blind; society is at a stand still, waiting and watching for the coming day. Yet afar off in the east the patriot's eye may even now see the first faint streaks of that light which shall usher in the golden dawn.

The result, in the event of the success of the North, is too palpable to require a moment's thought, involving, as it does, every possible blessing to our race, every advantage to the progress of the new theories of social equality, and of man's capacity for self-government. But what in the other event? The evils would be legion—countless in number and direful in effect, not to us alone, but to the whole American race. First and foremost is that hydra precedent. We are fighting, not alone for the stability of any particular form of government, not alone for the sustaining of an administration, not alone for the upholding of those God-given ideas which have made America the most favored land on earth; but against a PRECEDENT, which involves and would destroy them all. Precedent which is, and ever has been, all powerful to overturn theories and systems, to topple kings from their thrones, and plunge nations into slavery. Of all dangers which every liberal form of government has to shun, none is so deadly as this. Grave and venerable judges, sages though they may be, rest upon it, and thereon base decisions involving millions of property, and sometimes life itself. And though, as Blackstone has declared, a bad precedent in law is comparatively harmless, inasmuch as succeeding judges are in no wise bound by it, but free, and in fact bound to decide the law as it was before the evil precedent was established, and to interpret it as it ought to be, yet in national affairs this is not so. No matter how bad or absurd a precedent may be, designing men will be found in all ages and climes to avail themselves of it, honestly or dishonestly. Men's minds are not constructed alike, and that which seems evil to one is to another good. The foulest of all theories, the basest of systems, the most suicidal of policies, will at all times find sincerely honest adherents and supporters. Individuality of mind admits a million of shades and degrees of right and wrong. Moreover, an idea once broached before the people, no matter how detestable it may at first appear, is already halfway advanced upon the road to execution. Thousands of criminals have been executed for crimes their minds would never have conceived save for the suggestion of some artful apostle of evil. Give me but a precedent once firmly established, I care not how bad it may be, and I shall revolutionize the world.

And what is the precedent against which we have to contend? It is that of separation. If secession would stop where it has begun, if the result of our defeat were to be but two great republics of the North and South upon our continent, there would still be room for the development of both, and we might even look forward to such a peace with some degree of complacency, and with hope for a future of happiness and prosperity. But it will not stop here. As surely as that an overruling Providence directs the affairs of men, the movement will go on until there are as many separate and hostile republics as there are States in our Union. The mutterings of separation—which have already been heard in the West, are but the precursors of the storm which can only be forever allayed by the triumph of our arms in the present contest. The slightest disagreement between the East and the West would soon be made a pretext for secession: the least dispute or conflicting interest between any two great portions of our country would find a speedy remedy in separation. The West would divide from the East, the Atlantic States from the Lake States, the Mississippi States from the Pacific, the North Pacific States from the South Pacific, and where would be the end? Already the great West has learned her own gigantic strength, which before she knew not that she possessed, and if the time should come when her interests should apparently point in a different direction from those of the East, with such a precedent before her, would she not avail herself of that new-found strength? Already the soldiers of the West have begun to sneer at the achievements of those of the East, and to consider themselves the braver and the manlier of the two. Are these not the signs of the times? And do they not betoken a future of anarchy in the event of the establishment of this most pernicious and monstrous of doctrines?