HISTORY

OF THE

GREAT AMERICAN REBELLION.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

CAUSES OF THE REBELLION.

No Excuse for the Rebellion-Different Social Systems-Effect of Discussion Colonies of Plymouth and Jamestown Contrasted-Effects of their Opposite Characters-Early Slave-holders Opposed to the System-South Carolina and Georgia Exceptions-Their Opposition to the Declaration of Independence, and to the Federal Constitution-The Pretext for Secession.

The recent revolt of the Southern States of the American Union is without just excuse. The impartial historian will seek in vain for an adequate cause. They were enjoying their usual prosperity. They had the full protection of the most liberal and beneficent government the world had ever known. All their rights as individuals and as States had been scrupulously respected, and but one source of difference and alienation existed. The North relied upon voluntary and compensated labor-the South upon servile and enforced labor. This radical difference in the labor of the two sections, produced, necessarily, wide differences in their industrial and social habits, and led to frequent conflicts of opinion and of interest.

It cannot now be successfully disputed that the South was unwilling to submit her system of labor to a free and unrestricted competition with that of the North; but sought, by special legislation in her behalf, to secure for it special protection. In the discussions and controversies which that effort provoked, not only in Congress, but throughout the country and

24

EFFECTS OF DISCUSSION.

the world, the merits and defects of the competing systems were freely and fully canvassed, and public opinion became enlightened and vigorous, in approval or dissent.

The practical effect of those discussions was to separate the parties to them more widely, and to produce in each a firmer attachment to its peculiar opinions, the friends of slavery became more and more exacting, and its opponents less and less disposed to yield to its claims.

The South saw in the growing opposition to her system, and in the rapidly increasing population and wealth of the North and West, her loss of political control in the national councils. She broke away from her alliance with the North, simply because the public opinion of that section, enlightened by discussion, would not admit that slavery was a better foundation for a republic than freedom, and would not secure to it, for all time, an indefinite expansion and full control of the Government.

Earlier in the world's history, the ideas which Southern statesmen sought to diffuse and embody in the laws of this country, might have been received with more favor, and more congenial soils than our own might have been found in which to plant them.

On the question of slavery in the abstract, and of the relative justice or injustice of its former claims, the people of the North have been divided; and from interest, the love of peace, or other causes, a minority conceded, and conceded often disgracefully, to the exactions of its friends, until Secession ended all Concession, and an attack upon the national flag cemented into a united phalanx all parties and all interests.

The terrible rebellion which has inflicted upon us such dire calamities, is the direct off-shoot of slavery. The proof is found on nearly every page of our recent history; and the germ of the mischief was early planted and rooted in the soil, which, in the end, it so bitterly cursed.

OUR PECULIAR ORIGIN.

25

A careful and candid review of the leading controversies between the two sections, from the origin of the Government to their dreadful culmination in the rebellion, forms, therefore, a fitting prelude to the tragic scenes which attended its pro

gress.

Our country had a peculiar origin. The world was gray

headed at its birth. It was over five thousand five hundred years old, when the land which is now our fair heritage, was but the abode of

"Wild beasts, or of wilder men."

The old world had, meanwhile, made great progress in the arts of life, and in the science of government. It had risen gradually, through oceans of blood, from barbarism to civilization; and some of its nations were highly enlightened. In the latter, the gross tyranny and abuses of the darker ages had been superseded by a more general equality of privileges, and by better provisions for the improvement and elevation of the masses. But in the best of them, the common people enjoyed but slender means for the improvement of their condition. As a rule, the child was born to a nearly inevitable condition. The governments and laws of society made distinctions irrespective of individual merit, and plenty or penury, eminence or obscurity, were the accidents-the heritage of birth. So fixed and powerful were the governments and ruling classes, and so poor and ignorant the masses, that reforms could hardly be hoped for in the lands in which old abuses had become so deeply rooted, and so widely ramified.

But the discovery of a new Continent, separated from the old world by broad oceans, furnished just the field in which to inaugurate the desired reforms, to found, on the right basis, a new social and governmental system. The experiment begun, with a single exception, most flatteringly. The virgin continent was first peopled mainly from England—the most enlightened and liberal of the old nations, and the emigrants

26

PLYMOUTH AND JAMESTOWN CONTRASTED.

were among the most enterprising and virtuous of her population. They were friends of Christianity, education and freedom. They came, leaving behind them all the old and consolidated abuses, to found a government in which the people were to be the depositaries of power.

Had such been the disposition and habits of all the emigrants, happy indeed would it have been for mankind, and the History of the Great American Rebellion would not then have been written. But an element of discord, and ultimately of blood and terrible suffering, was also introduced, and the result has been a generation of angry and bitter discussion, to be followed by years of cruel war.

Plymouth Rock, in New England, and Jamestown, in Virginia, were the first points settled in this country. They were not only the earliest settlements made, they were also representative settlements, "each producing fruit after its kind." Plymouth was settled by "a band of Puritans, dissenters from the Established Church of England, persecuted for their religious opinion, and seeking, in a foreign land, that liberty of conscience which their own country denied them." Jamestown was settled by a company of "noblemen, gentlemen and merchants." Of the one hundred and five persons destined to form the colony, there were but "twelve laborers and few mechanics; the rest were composed of gentlemen of fortune, and of persons of no occupation, mostly of idle and dissolute habits." And from the settlement at Plymouth has sprung a race, kindred, in all its nobler elements, to the parent stock. Their descendants have carried with them, throughout New England and the Northern and Western States, that love of liberty, that respect for the dignity and the rights of labor, and those ample provisions for the education and elevation of the masses, which led the old Pilgrims to enact, "in order that

Wilson's History.

bSame.

•Same.