"We seem now to have concluded that we have put ourselves entirely right, and that our Southern brethren are entirely wrong."
"I cannot feel," said Mr. North, "that we are to blame for having our opinions, and for expressing them honestly and fearlessly. What more have we done?"
I replied, "They say that we have held them up to universal execration; that we have quoted, with readiness, the testimony of foreign nations against them,—of nations who know nothing of domestic slavery like ours, mixed up with the qualifying influences of our own civilization; that our imaginative literature has made them odious, associating cruelty and vulgarity with the relation of slave-holding; that we have labored to cripple their Institution, hoping to destroy it; that we have striven to save the District of Columbia from their system as from corruption; that a thousand millions of dollars of their property we have treated as contraband, and have made it perilous for them to recover it; that we have lain in wait and molested them in their transit through our borders, with their servants, to embark for sea. We dispute their right to go with their servants into territories jointly acquired, and belonging by constitutional right equally to them as to ourselves. This, they say, has not been a just and sincere demand for an equitable division of territory in view of the naturally conflicting interests of slave labor and free, but rather a vindictive determination to hem in the slave-holder, to force the scorpion into fires where he shall die of his own sting, or,—to borrow the metaphor, with the language, of a present Senator from Massachusetts,—where the 'poisoned rat shall die in his own hole.'
"Two confederacies or one, our prospect is fearful if we continue to feel and act toward each other after this temper, and to cherish our respective grievances."
"There is another side to all this," said Mr. North. "I ascribe the excitement at the South to the loss on their part of political power, or to a grasping spirit which breaks compromises, and which requires that the national legislation be always shaped in its favor."
"But," said I, "if we can trust the convictions of just men, in private life, at the South,—men removed from all suspicion as to the purity of their motives,—it is certain that our Northern feelings toward slave-holders, and the expressions of those feelings in ways which have been applauded among us for many years, are the real causes of the irritation and exasperation which have brought us to the present brink.
"Now, as these two sections must continue to exist, side by side, they will go on to repel each other until either slavery ceases, or a change of feeling takes place in the non-slaveholding section. Secession and permanent division will not cure the trouble, but will increase it. Moreover, the contrariety of feeling between people in the non-slaveholding States, made intense by the departure of the Southern section, may inaugurate hostilities among ourselves more fearful than those which drive away the Southern people.
"Perhaps we are to be two nations. I cannot but regard this as the greatest calamity which will have happened to the cause of human improvement. Nor do I see how it will help Northern philanthropy, nor the negro; but it may be greatly for his injury. The truth is, we must live together for self-defence against each other, if from no other consideration. Israel began its downfall in secession, which was compelled by Rehoboam.
"But," said I, "let us contemplate a different issue. Let us think what a result it will be if such a government as ours, whose speedy ruin has been so often predicted and is still confidently looked for, shall pass through these trials and dangers without bloodshed, and we become again a united people. Self-government will then have vindicated itself; constitutional liberty will have triumphed; arms and coercion will lose their old authority and power; for there will be an example of a republican people recovering from convulsions which would have demolished any throne or power which trusted in the sword. The serf-boats in ports of the Bay of Bengal, which ride the swift, enormous surges, are not nailed, but their parts are lashed one to another, and thus the boats yield easily to the force of the water. Our government has been likened to them; and now, by yielding, one part to another, where a theoretically stronger government would have used coercion, we shall, if it please God, pass safely through these fearful hazards, furnishing a demonstration, which God may have been preparing by us for the instruction of mankind, that fraternal blood is not the best nourishment of the tree of liberty, and that 'wisdom,' resulting in the victories of peace, 'is better than weapons of war.'
"I look, therefore, toward some change in Northern feelings with regard to the South. A change in this respect will end our troubles. Opinions may not be wholly reversed; people born and bred under totally different institutions may not, for they cannot wholly, yield their convictions on controverted sectional topics, even when they cherish mutual respect and deference; but, the belief that the North will change its feelings toward the South and its institutions, under a modification of views entirely consistent with independence of judgment and self-respect, and that the South will not be wanting in a corresponding temper, rests on the same conviction as that God does not intend to destroy us by each other's hands, nor to make the life of the two sections weary with perpetual hatred and strife."
* * * * *
"Our form of government, Mr. North," said I, "is the very best on earth if it goes well, and the worst if it goes ill. We have no standing army to fight for an administration as for a throne or dynasty; so that if a State secedes, the question is how to coerce that people, if it be best to attempt it. Citizens do not like to march against their brethren. Think of our taking up arms against our correspondents; against people that have gone from our churches and settled in that State; against cousins, and brothers-in-law, and people who lived or did business under the same roofs with us."
"It is awkward, indeed," said Mr. North, "especially if they simply withdraw and hold the fortifications of the general government, in their own territory, to keep the government from destroying their lives."
"Why, yes," said Mrs. North, "it would be simple in them, after seceding, to suffer themselves to be bombarded. But have they any right to secede?"
"As to that," said Mr. North, "my mind has been much exercised of late with this thought: I have always advocated the right of the negroes to make insurrection, or to flee from oppression. But now their masters complain of being oppressed by the North. Why have not the masters the same right to secede from their government as the negro from his?"
"Well, husband," said his wife, "I think that you are getting on fast."
"Why," said I, "Mr. North, is not slavery 'the sum of all villanies?'
Did the negro ever consent to his form of government?"
"Well," said he, "I never consented to be born; I find myself in existence; I have no more consented to the government of the United States than I suppose the negroes, generally, have submitted to their civil condition. My question is, Who shall decide when the Southern masters say, We are intolerably oppressed; we are under a yoke; 'break every yoke!' 'let the oppressed go free!' If I interpose and say, 'You are not oppressed; you are better off as you now are,' is not this the reply of the masters when we seek to free their slaves? Do we not say that the oppressed must be the judges of their necessity? And why may I coerce the master, if it be wrong for him to coerce the negro?"
"I must let you, work out that question at your leisure, and on your own principles," said I.—"We were speaking of seizing and holding the forts and arsenals. The French proverb says, 'It is the first step that costs.' Seceding involves the necessity of seizing the forts. If they who do this embarrass other persons in their lawful rights, they must risk the consequences; but if they secede from the government, the question is, Do circumstances justify a revolution? for secession is revolution. Is revolution justifiable in the present case?
"But not to discuss that question," said I, "all that I wished to say was this, that our government seems admirably suited for a people who will behave well under it. We can take care of isolated cases of rebellion. But if any important part of the country rises up and departs, it is exceedingly difficult to know what to do. Prevention is excellent; but cure is next to impossible. So long as there is a general acquiescence in the exercise of executive power against insurrectionists, one or more, we have a general government; but when States depart, we are a house divided against itself. We find that we have been living, as it were, not so much under paternal authority, as under fraternal rule. If broken irretrievably, the alternative is to be divided, or for one part of the country to coerce its neighbors and brethren. This we find to be extremely inconvenient and really impracticable without civil war; and after the war,—whose horrors, in our case, can never be pictured,—we would either find ourselves in the same divided state as before, or if politically united, it will have been effected at a cost which it is fearful to contemplate.
"So that we are illustrating the question, whether such a government as ours is really practicable,—whether a people can govern themselves. Already we hear it said, 'We have no government.' The explanation is, We are not disposed to destroy each other's lives to preserve the confederation. We can have a monarchy, with its 'divine right,' and with its standing army, if we choose; or, if we remain as a republic, we must be liable to just our present exigency. Our only defence, then, consists in mutual conciliation and agreement.
"What a land this is," said I, "with its diversified interests and its unparalleled variety of products,—its agriculture, mechanic arts, science, and literature. Separation will embarrass every form of intercourse, and make us hostile."
"Jews and Samaritans," said Mrs. North. "And all for an idea!"
"Yes," said I, "and for an idea which to one whole section, and to a very large part of the people in the other section, is false.—Four millions of negroes are destroying us. As a foreign writer said, 'In trying to give liberty to the negro, we are losing our own.'"
Said Mrs. North, "Can nothing be done to save us?"
"Bishop Butler tells us, Mrs. North," said I, "that a nation may be insane as well as an individual. But reason seems to be returning in some quarters. Secession and its consequences are having a wonderful effect to open the eyes of people. John Brown's foray and its end were a providential demonstration of certain errors, which we may conclude will not soon be revived. Secession is now leading the world to look more narrowly into the subject of negro slavery. Let me read to you these extracts from a recent number of 'Le Pays,' Paris. The writer is arguing that Europe must recognize the Southern confederacy:
'But in awaiting these results which would flow from the cordial welcome given by Europe to the new confederation, let true philanthropists be assured that they are wonderfully mistaken in regard to the real condition of the blacks of the South. We willingly admit that their error is pardonable, for they have learned the relations of master and slave only from "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Shall we look for that condition in the lucubrations of that romance, raised to the importance of a philosophic dissertation, but leading public opinion astray, provoking revolution, and necessitating incendiarism and revolution? A romance is a work of fancy, which one cannot refute, and which cannot serve as a basis to any argument. In our discussion, we must seek elsewhere for authorities and material. Facts are eloquent, and statistics teach us that, under the superintendence of those masters,—so cruel and so terrible, if we are to believe "Uncle Tom,"—the black population of the South increases regularly in a greater proportion than the white; while in the Antilles, in Africa, and especially in the so very philanthropic States of the North, the black race decreases in a deplorable proportion.
'The condition of those blacks is assuredly better than that of the agricultural laborers in many parts of Europe. Their morality is far superior to that of the free negroes of the North; the planters encourage marriage, and thus endeavor to develop among them a sense of the family relation, with a view of attaching them to the domestic hearth, consequently to the family of the master. It will be then observed that in such a state of things the interests of the planter, in default of any other motive, promotes the advancement and well-being of the slave. Certainly, we believe it possible still to ameliorate their condition. It is with that view, even, that the South has labored for so long a time to prepare them for a higher civilization.
'In no part, perhaps, of the continent, regard being had to the population, do there exist men more eminent and gifted, with nobler or more generous sentiments, than in the Southern States. No country possesses lovelier, kinder hearted, and more distinguished women. To commence with the immortal Washington, the list of statesmen who have taken part in the government of the United States shows that all those who have shed a lustre on the country, and won the admiration of Europe, owed their being to that much abused South.
'Is it true that so much distinction, talent, and grandeur of soul could have sprung from all the vices, from the cruelty and corruption which one would fain attribute now to the Southern people? The laws of inflexible logic refute these false imputations. And—strange coincidence—while Southern men presided over the destinies of the Union, its gigantic prosperity was the astonishment of the world. In the hands of Northern men, that edifice, raised with so much care and labor by their predecessors, comes crashing down, threatening to carry with it in its fall the industrial future of every other nation. For long years the constant efforts of the North, and a certain foreign country, to spread among the blacks incendiary pamphlets and tracts have powerfully contributed to suspend every Southern movement towards emancipation. Its people have been compelled to close their ears to ideas which threatened their very existence.'"
"But," said Mr. North, "here we have been, for thirty years or more, living on an anti-slavery excitement. Grant that it is all wrong; will you ask or expect that we shall change all at once? in a week? or in a month? or in a year? We will not kneel to anybody; if we change, it must be upon conviction."
"I strike hands with you there," said I, "most heartily. Our Southern friends must understand this; they must now approach us once more with reason and persuasion. The people at large are in a frame to be reasoned with and persuaded; for if we can do anything within the bounds of reason to retain the South in the Union, it will be done. We will say of concession as the antithesis of secession, as was said of two other things: 'Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute.' I think that both sections need forgiveness of God, and of each other."
"Well," said Mr. North, "after all we shall get along and get through, even if there should be a separation."
"Mr. Worth," said I, "when you were studying Cicero, could you understand—for I could not—how he and other patriots could feel so strongly about the fortunes of their country as to declare—which they frequently do—that they would rather die than survive their country's honor? It has come to me vividly of late. I see it and feel it. The sunshine will seem to have gone out of our life when we become two unfriendly nations.
"It is easy," said I, "for it gratifies some of the lower passions, to ridicule a whole section of the country for their act of secession or a disposition towards it; to boast that the South cannot do without us; to prophesy that they will get sick of it, and wish to return; to express wonder that they should feel so much hurt; to remind them that, if they will do as we have always counselled them, there would be no trouble; and there is a temptation to say, as friends in a quarrel will hastily say, Let them go. But when they are irrecoverably gone, justifiably or not, I tell you, Mr. North, there will be mourning in our streets. I know, indeed, that there are some among us to whom it will be a carnival; but—"
"They will have a long Lent after it," said Mrs. North; "pray excuse me."
"Ties of kindred," said I, "patriotism, Christian friendships, will not go down to hopeless graves without leaving behind them sorrows ending only with life.
"It appears to me," said I, "that our ship is where nothing but an immediate calm and then a change of the wind, can save us. If we become two nations, it may be for judgment and destruction; and it may be for some great, ultimate good. But it will be hard parting. To think of having no South! and of their having no North! We shall each become provincial. We are wonderfully fitted to qualify and improve each the other. How strange it would be to have these two sections love each other! No one among us under twenty-five years of age, has probably ever thought of us but as in controversy."
"Speaking of Southern life," said Mrs. North, "I have not seen our friend Grant since he came back from the South."
"I have seen him," said I, "and have heard his story. He made his home with an old friend, a clergyman. It was known that he was a stranger, and at once he was made to feel at home by many of the citizens. The morning after he arrived, Jack, a servant of a neighboring family, came into the breakfast-room, with a waiter filled with dishes, which he deposited on the side-board. 'Master and Missis send their compliments, and want to know how the family is, and how Mr. Grant is this morning.' Now they had never seen Mr. Grant; but they knew that he had arrived the night before. 'Well, Jack,' says Mrs. ——, 'I see you have got some good things for us.' 'O, not much, Missis; but they thought you and Mr. Grant would excuse 'em for sending it.' So there were deposited on the breakfast-table, 'big hominy' in one or two shapes, rare fish, puff-muffins, and several dishes which called for Jack's interpretations. 'And Master says, shall he send the carriage round for you this forenoon? and he will call himself.' The evening talk was interrupted by a black woman, all smiles, bearing a waiter of ice-cream and other refreshments, from another house; and so the visit was a succession of surprises from families who, at the South, count each other's guests their own. Mr. Grant was a strong anti-secessionist, and he spent much breath in arguing with the people in private. On his return to his room, one day, he found a glass dish on the table, filled with japonicas, camellias, roses, and other early flowers, with the card of a married lady,—with whom he had had a debate,—inscribed, 'From the hottest of the Secessionists.' He seems modified in his views a little about 'the sum of all villanies,' since his return."
"Yes," said Mrs. North, "and the people here explain it by saying, 'O, he was fêted, and flattered.'
"Yes," she continued, "some of our people will sacrifice their confidence in man or angel, rather than believe anything good about slavery."
I said to her, "Add the Bible to those witnesses, Mrs. North."
"Husband," said she, "please reach me that long, thin, brown-covered book on the what-not." She then read an extract from the sixty-third page; it was a book by one now deceased, called, "Experience as a Minister":
"I had not been long a minister, before I found this worship of the Bible as a fetish hindering me at every step. If I declared the Constancy of Nature's Laws, and sought therein great argument for the Constancy of God, all the miracles came and held their mythologic finger up. Even Slavery was 'of God,' for the divine statutes in the Old Testament admitted the principle that man might own a man, as well as a garden or an ox, and provided for the measure. Moses and the Prophets were on its side; and neither Paul of Tarsus, nor Jesus of Nazareth, uttered a direct word against it."
* * * * *
"But here is the sun!" said I.
"We are all more cheerful," said Mrs. North, "than we were when he left us; for we have been able to converse on a trying and perplexing subject with good feelings."
"Now," said I, "here is the Southern lady's letter, which has given occasion to all our conversation."
"It has also introduced us," said Mr. North, "to that goose, Gustavus, and to his good aunt."
"What shall I say to the Southern lady," said I, "if I write to her father?"
"Tell her," said Mrs. North, "that if she comes to the North she must come directly to our house and make it her home. If you will allow me, I will put a note into your envelope to that effect. I shall beg her to bring Kate with her. Wouldn't I love to see Kate!"
"My dear," said Mr. North, "do you know what a time there would be if the lady should bring Kate with her?"
"The good time coming! I think it would be," said his wife, "to see the
Southern lady and her Kate under our roof."
"Why," Paid he, "we should all have to go to court?"
"Well, that would be interesting," said she; "but for what?"
"Why," said he, "you know that this is free soil: Kate is a slave; she can have her freedom for nothing if she comes here. Some of our Massachusetts gentlemen are as chivalrous and attentive to Southern colored people, as our good friend tells us Southern gentlemen are to a white woman: a committee would wait on Kate, with an officer of the peace, and invite her to visit the court-house with them, to be presented with 'freedom'; and Kate's mistress must go with her, to show that she is not restraining Kate of her liberty."
"Why," said Mrs. North, "if I could not be allowed, in visiting Sharon Springs, to take Judith with me to give me my baths, because she is free, I should call it barbarism. Who was that gentleman that broke his collar-bone and seat to you, husband, to get him a nurse?"
Mr. North said it was a student in a medical school, from the South.
"Did you find him a nurse?" said she.
"Yes," he replied; "but he groaned and said, 'Mother wanted to send on my mammy that nursed me, but your laws will not allow her to come. Now,' said he, 'mammy will not tamper with your servants here, and entice them away, as free colored men might do to our slaves if they landed at the South from your vessels. O, mammy,' said he, 'if I had your 'arbs and your nursing, what a pleasure it would be to be sick.'"
"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. North. "What did you say to him?"
"O," said he, "I told him that we lived under different institutions; and that when we are among the Romans we must do as the Romans do."
"Well," said Mrs. North, "if all such prohibitions are not downright impertinence, then I will give up."
"It's the law of the land, here," said her husband.
"Is there no 'Higher Law' in such a case?" said she. "'Higher Law,' I believe, is sometimes the rule in Massachusetts."
"Some of our most estimable colored fellow-citizens would attend her," said I, "and tempt her by their own prosperity and happiness in freedom, at the North, to cast in her lot with them and abandon her Southern home, her mistress, and her little charge, Susan; and her own little Cygnet's grave. They would send her, if she wished, free of charge, to Canada, and leave her there. She could be perfectly free."
"Now, what is all this for?" said Mrs. North. "Do the people here really believe that Kate is 'oppressed?' that her mistress is a tyrant? that Kate is a victim to the 'sum of all villanies?' that she buffers an 'enormous wrong?' that her mistress does her a 'stupendous injustice?' If they wish for objects of charity, and will go with me, I will engage to supply them with 'the oppressed' in any quantity, with some of 'the down-trodden' also."
"But, my dear Mrs. North," said I, "''tis distance lends enchantment to the view.' Besides, to get a slave away from a Southerner is worth unspeakably more to the cause of human happiness than to help scores of Northern people."
"But to be serious," said Mr. North, "we are afraid that slave-holding may get a foothold in Massachusetts; so we have to challenge every one who comes here with a slave, to show proof that he or she is not holding the servant to involuntary servitude among us."
"But," said Mrs. North, "are the people so conscientiously fearful lest bondage should get established here in Massachusetts? Is that the true reason for hurrying every colored servant, who travels here with his or her invalid master or mistress, before a court to know if he or she would not prefer to quit the family and the South? It seems to me we are sadly wanting in good manners."
"Now, please do not smile at your good wife for her simplicity, Mr. North," said I, "for I suppose that you are thinking, What have 'good manners' to do with the 'cause of freedom'? She is right in her impressions; a lady's sense of propriety against all the world."
"Do publish the Southern lady's letter by all means," said Mrs. North.
"How surprised she would be," said I, "to see it in print, or to know that it had wandered here, and was taking part in the discussions about slavery."
"The letter," said Mrs. North, "would, just now, seem like Noah's poor little dove, wandering over wrecks and desolations."
"True," said I, "and to finish the illusion, it might come back to her after many days, and lo! in its mouth an olive-leaf plucked off!"
"Give my love to her," said Mrs. North; "her letter has made me a better and happier woman. Now I love my whole country. I do justice in my feelings to hundreds of thousands whom I have hitherto regarded as perverse. I now see God's wonder-working providence in connection with the slave. It seems plain to me in what way the Union can be saved, and that is, by the general prevalence at the North of such views about slavery as the very best people at the South declare to be just and right."
"You would be deemed simple for saying that, Mrs. North," said I. "But you are right."
"Three things," she continued, after a moment's pause, "are more strongly impressed on my mind; please see if I am right:—That the relation of master and slave is not in itself sinful; That good people at the South feel toward injustice and cruelty precisely like us; and, That Southern Christians can correct all the evils in slavery, or abolish it, if necessary, better without our aid than with it."
"Mrs. North," said I, "unless we accept those propositions, the North and South never can live together in peace; and if we separate, the Northern conscience will be in a worse condition than ever, and we shall have long wars."
"It is a marvellous thing to me," said she, "as I now view it, that our good Christian people here are not willing to confide in that which good Southern Christian people say about slavery. We should trust their judgments, their moral sentiments, their consciences, on any other subject. How is it that when men and women, who are the excellent of the earth, tell us the results of their observation, experience, and reflections, with regard to slavery, we treat them as we do? When ill-mannered people, who must be vituperative and saucy to every body and in every thing, behave thus, it is not surprising; but I cannot explain why truly good men should not either adopt the deliberate sentiments of good people at the South, or at least consent to leave the subject, if beyond their faith or discernment, to the responsibility of Southern Christians. I condemn myself in saying this. But having myself been converted, I have hope for everybody."
During this talk, Mr. North was affected somewhat as he said his wife was when he first read the Southern lady's letter to her. He was a little incoherent by reason of his emotions; but he made out to say something about the sweetness and the strength of reconciled affections, and of the happiness which there would be when it should be proclaimed that the North and the South are once more friends.
"What is your whole name, Mrs. North?" said I; "for I shall wish to speak of you to the Southern lady, if I write to her father."
"My Christian name," said she, "is Patience."
"PATIENCE NORTH!" I said to myself, once or twice, as I stood at the parlor door. I was musing upon the name perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, and when I looked up, they were each both smiling at me and crying.
We shook hands, and I went my way.