The Origin of the Late War

IN writing this book, I have endeavored to trace, in a manner which I trust will be intelligible to the general reader, the interior course of the long controversy, sometimes active, and again much subdued, but never absolutely at rest, between the North and the South. It was my purpose to make known whatever the facts of the case should of themselves indicate, without any regard to party interests or prepossessions. As the negro was, at the beginning, more or less conspicuously concerned in the question, and on considerations relating chiefly to the master rather than to the slave, either personally or morally; so he is still left in an uncertain condition, after a war which has destroyed more than half a million of men who were fellow-citizens, and probably twice as many of those who were made the occasion of the contest. This contest also placed the free institutions of the country in a state of peril still furnishing grounds of just apprehension. I have discussed negro-slavery in its own special relations, and the future which apparently awaits the negro race itself in this country, without consciousness of any prej

udice, and only so far as those points were inevitably con nected with the order of the narrative. If it should appear that the antislavery agitation, leading to such terrible public and private evils, was actually factitious in its origin and character, so far as its positively efficient agents have pursued it, and was, in reality, the fruit of a struggle for political power, instead of a moral or philanthropical demonstration, a very grave question is thus presented for the consideration of the American people. For, whatever contentment they might feel at the result, in one view of the subject, they may not be so well satisfied with the demoralization of their civil fabric, in subserviency to merely factious motives and partisan ends. If it should seem, indeed, to be a logical conclusion that the doctrine of negro equality and negro suffrage should follow, even upon the present deplorable condition of the colored population-the question may thence arise, whether the premises themselves were well laid down which could lead to consequences so much out of the order of nature and practice. Certainly, whether the past can be repaired or not, the future ought to be taken care of, for the common welfare, by an intelligent people, conscious of their own dignity and responsibilities. Nor ought they to allow politicians, for personal or party purposes, to make extreme theories the means of future and unknown ills, upon an insincere hypothesis, which cannot endure the light of either philosophy or experience.

In thus presenting a sketch of the progress of those causes which led to the Southern revolt, it will be seen that slavery, though made an occasion, was not, in reality, the cause of the war. Antislavery was of no serious consequence, and had no positive influence, until politicians, at a late period, seized

upon it as an instrument of agitation; and they could not have done so to any mischievous effect, except for an alleged diversity of interests between the sections, involving the question of political power. Wise and patriotic citizens for a long time kept those interests at the proper balance, or the passions which were thus stimulated under just control. As those great men passed away, self-seeking and ambitious demagogues, the pest of republics, disturbed the equilibrium, and were able, at length, to plunge the country into that worst of all public calamities, civil war. morals had as little as possible to do with the result. Philanthrophy might have sighed, and fanaticism have howled for centuries in vain, but for the hope of office and the desire of public plunder, on the part of men who were neither philanthropists nor fanatics.

The question of

It is the misfortune of Republican institutions that many who have paid little attention to matters of state policy, and some scarcely competent to understand it, must pass judg ment upon men of superior ability and high attainments, who have made such topics the study of their lives. Hence, it has happened, in this turmoil of parties, that the latter have been too frequently set aside for inferior persons, and their better considered opinions disregarded, in favor of those of transient Congressmen, often incapable by nature, and sometimes disqualified for calm judgment by personal habits, and of Governors of States, who ought to have remained among the governed.

The policy pursued might well be considered matchless in a certain direction, if, in opposition to those rights of the South, in which the interests of the North were equally concerned, and in repugnance to by far the most prevalent

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The Origin of the Late War: Traced from the Beginning of the Constitution to ...