“So Mr. Wigfall of Texas hit the nail on the head, when he said substantially that the South cannot be at peace with the North until the latter concedes that slavery is right?”
“Well, — I admit it; that is precisely it.”
In January 1861, a Connecticut civilian named John William De Forest returned to Charleston to visit after an extended absence. Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, April 1861
My first conversation in Charleston on Secession was with an estimable friend, Northern-born, but drawing breath of Southern air ever since he attained the age of manhood. After the first salutation, he sat down, his hands on his knees, gazing on the floor, and shaking his head soberly, if not sadly.
“You have found us in a pretty fix,—in a pretty fix!”
“But what are you going to do? Are you really going out? You are not a politician, and will tell me the honest facts.”
“Yes, we are going out,—there is no doubt of it. I have not been a seceder,— I have even been called one of the disaffected; but I am obliged to admit that secession is the will of the community. Perhaps you at the North don’t believe that we are honest in our professions and actions. We are so. The Carolinians really mean to go out of the Union, and don’t mean to come back. They say that they are out, and they believe it. And now, what are you going to do with us? What is the feeling at the North?”
“The Union must and shall be preserved, at all hazards. That famous declaration expresses the present Northern popular sentiment. When I left, people were growing martial; they were joining military companies; they wanted to fight; they were angry.”
“So I supposed. That agrees with what I hear by letter. Well, I am very sorry for it. Our people here will not retreat; they will accept a war, first. If you preserve the Union, it must be by conquest. I suppose you can do it, if you try hard enough. The North is a great deal stronger than the South; it can desolate it, —crush it. But I hope it won’t be done. I wish you would speak a good word for us, when you go back. You can destroy us, I suppose. But don’t you think it would be inhuman? Don’t you think it would be impolitic ? Do you think it would result in sufficient good to counterbalance the evident and certain evil?”
“Why, people reason in this way. They say, that, even if we allow the final independence of the seceding States, we must make it clear that there is no such thing as the right of secession, but only that of revolution or rebellion. We must fix a price for going out of the Union, which shall be so high that henceforward no State will ever be willing to pay it. We must kill, once for all, the doctrine of peaceable secession, which is nothing else than national disintegration and ruin. Lieutenant-Governor Morton of Indiana declares in substance that England never spent blood and money to wiser purpose than when she laid down fifty thousand lives and one hundred millions of pounds to prevent her thirteen disaffected colonies from having their own way. No English colony since has been willing to face the tremendous issue thus offered it. Just so it is the interest, it is the sole safety of the Federal Government, to try to hold in the Cotton States by force, and, if they go out, to oblige them to pay an enormous price for the privilege. Revolution is a troublesome luxury, and ought to be made expensive. That is the way people talk at the North and at Washington. They reason thus, you see, because they believe that this is not a league, but a nation.”
“And our people believe that the States are independent and have a right to recede from the Confederation without asking its leave. With few exceptions, all agree on that; it is honest, common public opinion. The South Carolinians sincerely think that they are exercising a right, and you may depend that they will not be reasoned nor frightened out of it; and if the North tries coercion, there will be war. I don’t say this defiantly, but sadly, and merely because I want you to know the truth. War is abhorrent to my feelings,—especially a war with our own brethren; and then we are so poorly prepared for it!”
Such was the substance of several conversations. The reader may rely, I think, on the justness of my friend’s opinions, founded as they are on his honesty of intellect, his moderation, and his opportunities for studying his fellow-citizens. All told me the same story, but generally with more passion, sometimes with defiance; defiance toward the Government, I mean, and not toward me personally; for the better classes of Charleston are eminently courteous. South Carolina had seceded forever, defying all the hazards; she would accept nothing but independence or destruction; she did not desire any supposable compromise; she had altogether done with the Union. Yet her desire was not for war; it was simply and solely for escape. She would forget all her wrongs and insults, she would seek no revenge for the injurious past, provided she were allowed to depart without a conflict. Nearly every man with whom I talked began the conversation by asking if the North meant coercion, and closed it by deprecating hostilities and affirming the universal wish for peaceable secession. In case of compulsion, however, the State would accept the gage of battle; her sister communities of the South would side with her, the moment they saw her blood flow; Northern commerce would be devoured by privateers of all nations under the Southern flag; Northern manufactures would perish for lack of Southern raw material and Southern consumers; Northern banks would suspend, and Northern finances go into universal insolvency; the Southern ports would be opened forcibly by England and France, who must have cotton; the South would flourish in the struggle, and the North decay.
“But why do you venture on this doubtful future?” I asked of one gentleman. “What is South Carolina’s grievance ? The Personal-Liberty Bills?”
“Yes,—they constitute a grievance. And yet not much of one. Some of us even—the men of the ‘Mercury’ school, I mean—do not complain of the Union because of those bills. They say that it is the Fugitive-Slave Law itself which is unconstitutional; that the rendition of runaways is a State affair, in which the Federal Government has no concern; that Massachusetts, and other States, were quite right in nullifying an illegal and aggressive statute. Besides, South Carolina has lost very few slaves.”
“Is it the Territorial Question which forces you to quit us?”
“Not in its practical issues. The South needs no more territory; has not negroes to colonize it. The doctrine of ‘No more Slave States’ is an insult to us, but hardly an injury. The flow of population has settled that matter. You have won all the Territories, not even excepting New Mexico, where slavery exists nominally, but is sure to die out under the hostile influences of unpropitious soil and climate. The Territorial Question has become a mere abstraction. We no longer talk of it.”
“Then your great grievance is the election of Lincoln?”
“Yes.”
“And the grievance is all the greater because he was elected according to all the forms of law ?”
“Yes.”
“If he had been got into the Presidency by trickery, by manifest cheating, your grievance would have been less complete?”
“Yes.”
“Is Lincoln considered here to be a bad or dangerous man ?”
“Not personally. I understand that he is a man of excellent private character, and I have nothing to say against him as a ruler, inasmuch as he has never been tried. Mr. Lincoln is simply a sign to us that we are in danger, and must provide for our own safety.”
“You secede, then, solely because you think his election proves that the mass of the Northern people is adverse to you and your interests ?”
“Yes.”
“So Mr. Wigfall of Texas hit the nail on the head, when he said substantially that the South cannot be at peace with the North until the latter concedes that slavery is right ?”
“Well, — I admit it; that is precisely it.”
I desire the reader to note the loyal frankness, the unshrinking honesty of these avowals, so characteristic of the South Carolina morale. Whenever the native of that State does an act or holds an opinion, it is his nature to confess it and avow the motives thereof, without quibbling or hesitation. It is a persuaded, self-poised community, strikingly like its negative pole on the Slavery Question, Massachusetts. All those Charlestonians whom I talked with I found open-hearted in their secession, and patient of my openheartedness as an advocate of the Union, although often astonished, I suspect, that any creature capable of drawing a conclusion from two premises should think so differently from themselves.
“But have you looked at the platform of the Republicans?” I proceeded. “It is nor adverse to slavery in the States; it only objects to its entrance into the Territories; it is not an Abolition platform.”
“We don’t trust in the platform; we believe that it is an incomplete expression of the party creed,—that it suppresses more than it utters. The spirit which keeps the Republicans together is enmity to slavery, and that spirit will never be satisfied until the system is extinct.”
“Finally, —yes; gradually and quietly and safely,—that is possible. I suppose that the secret and generally unconscious animus of the party is one which will abolitionize it after a long while.”
“When will it begin to act in an abolition sense, do you think?”
“I can’t say: perhaps a hundred years from now; perhaps two hundred.”
There was a general laugh from the half-dozen persons who formed the group.
“What time do you fix?” I inquired.
“Two years. But for this secession of ours, there would have been bills before Congress within two years, looking to the abolition of slavery in the navy-yards, the District of Columbia, etc. That would be only the point of the wedge, which would soon assume the dimensions of an attack on slavery in the States. Look how aggressive the party has been in the question of the Territories.”
“The questions are different. When Congress makes local laws for Utah, it does not follow that it will do likewise for South Carolina. You might as well infer, that, because a vessel sails from Liverpool to New York in ten days, therefore it will sail overland to St. Louis in five more.”
Incredulous laughter answered me again. The South has labored under two delusions: first, that the Republicans are Abolitionists; second, that the North can be frightened. Back of these, rendering them fatally effective, lies that other delusion, the imagined right of peaceable secession, founded on a belief in the full and unresigned sovereignty of the States. Let me tell a story illustrative of the depth to which this belief has penetrated. Years ago, a friend of mine, talking to a Charleston boy about patriotism, asked him, “What is the name of your country?” “South Carolina!” responded the eight-year-old, promptly and proudly. What Northern boy, what Massachusetts boy even, would not have replied, “The United States of America”?
South Carolina, I am inclined to think, has long been a disunionist community, or nearly so, deceived by the idea that the Confederation is a bar rather than a help to her prosperity, and waiting only for a good chance to quit it. Up to the election of Lincoln all timid souls were against secession; now they are for it, because they think it less dangerous than submission. For instance, when I asked one gentleman what the South expected to gain by going out, he replied, “First, safety. Our slaves have heard of Lincoln,—that he is a black man, or black Republican, or black something,—that he is to become ruler of this country on the fourth of March,—that he is a friend of theirs, and will free them. We must establish our independence in order to make them believe that they are beyond his help. We have had to hang some of them in Alabama,—and we expect to be obliged to hang others, perhaps many.”
This was not the only statement of the sort which I heard in Charleston. Other persons assured me of the perfect fidelity of the negroes, and declared that they would even fight against Northern invaders, if needful. Skepticism in regard to this last comfortable belief is, however, not wanting.
“If it comes to a war, you have one great advantage over us,”said to me a military gentleman, lately in the service of the United States. “Your working-class is a fighting class, and will constitute the rank and file of your armies. Our working-class is not a fighting-class. Indeed, there is some reason to fear, that, if it take up arms at all, it will be on the wrong side.”
My impression is, that a prevalent, though not a universal fear, existed lest the negroes should rise in partial insurrections on or about the fourth of March. A Northern man, who had lived for several years in the back-country of South Carolina, had married there, and had lately travelled through a considerable portion of the South, informed me that many of the villages were lately forming Home Guards, as a measure of defence against the slave population. The Home Guard is frequently a cavalry corps, and is always composed of men who have passed the usual term of military service; for it is deemed necessary to reserve the youth of the country to meet the “Northern masses,” the “Federal mercenaries,” on the field of possible battle. By letters from Montgomery, Alabama, I learn that unusual precautions have been common during the last winter, many persons locking up their negroes over night in the quarters, and most sleeping with arms at hand, ready for nocturnal conflict. Whoever considers the necessarily horrible nature of a servile insurrection will find in it some palliation for Southern violence toward suspected incendiaries and Southern precipitation in matters of secession, however strongly he may still maintain that lynch-law should not usurp the place of justice, nor revolution the place of regular government. If you live in a powder-magazine, you positively must feel inhospitably inclined towards a man who presents himself with a cigar in his mouth. Even if he shows you that it is but a fireless stump, it still makes you uneasy. And if you catch sight of a multitude of smokers, distant as yet, but apparently intent on approaching, you will be very apt to rush toward them, deprecate their advance, forbid it, or possibly threaten armed resistance, even at the risk of being considered aggressive.