The Brothers' War - The Original Classic Edition. John Calvin

States. This was very plainly discernible when the epoch-making convention was in session. It was the beginning of a process which has been well-named nation-making. After a while--say just before Toombs takes the southern lead from Calhoun--it had developed, as we can now see, from concretion into nationalization--not nationality, yet--of the south. It was bound, if slavery was denied expansion over the suitable soil of the Territories and the restoration of its runaways, to cause in the ripeness of time secession and the founding of the Confederate States. But there was another nationalization, older, of much deeper root and wider scope--what we

       have already mentioned as the continental or Pan-American. Its origin was in an involuntary concretion of all the colonies--both the

       northern and the southern--antedating the commencement of the southern concretion mentioned a moment ago. While southern nationalization was the guardian of the social fabric, the property, the occupations, the means of subsistence of the southern people, the greater[Pg 5] nationalization was not only the guardian of the same interests of the northern people, but it had a higher office. This was in due time to give the whole continent everlasting immunity from war and all its prospective, direct, and consequential

       evils, by federating its different States under one democratic government--this higher office was to perpetuate the American union. This continental nationalization had probably ripened into at least the inchoate American nation by 1776. It was this nation, as I am confident the historical evidence rightly read shows, that made the declaration of independence and the articles of confederation, carried the Revolutionary war on to the grandest success ever achieved for real democracy, and then drafted and adopted the federal constitution. The constitution was not the creator of this nation, as lawyers and lawyer-bred statesmen hold, but the union and the constitution are both its creatures. This nation is constantly evolving, and as it does it modifies and unmakes the constitution and system of government of the United States, and the same of each State, as best suits itself. Why do we not trace our history from

       the first colonial settlements down to the present, and learn that the nation develops in both substance and form, in territory, in aims and purposes, not under the leading hand of conventions, congress, president, State authority, of even the fully decisive conquest of seceding States by the armies of the rest, but by the guidance of powers in the unseen, which we generally think of as the laws of evolution? To illustrate: For some time after I had got home from Appomattox I was disheartened, as many others were, at the men-ace of centralization. A vision of Caleb Cushing's man on horseback--the coming American Caesar--seared my eyeballs for a few years. But after the south had been actually reconstructed I[Pg 6] was cheered to note that the evolutionary forces maintaining and developing local self-government were holding their own with those maintaining and developing union. To-day, you see the people

       of different localities all over the north--in many cities, in a few States--driven forward by a power which they do not understand,

       in a struggle which will never end till they have rescued their liberties from the party machine wielded everywhere by the public-

       service corporations.

       To resume what we were saying just before this short excursion. Of course when the drifting of the south toward secession became decided and strong, Pan-American nationalization set all of its forces in opposing array. As soon as the southern confederacy was a fact, the brothers' war began. I emphasize it specially here that this war was mortal rencounter between two different nations.

       The successive stages by which her nationalization impelled the south to secession are roughly these:

       1. The concretion mentioned above probably passes into the beginning of nationalization when the south was aroused by the resistance of the free-labor States to the admission of Missouri as a slave State. With a most rude shock of surprise she was made to contemplate secession. Although there was much angry discussion and the crisis was grave, you ought to note that the root-and-branch abolitionist and fire-eater had not come. That crisis over, which ended the first stage, there was apparently profound peace between the free-labor communities and the slave-labor communities for some while.

       2. The south rises against the tariff which taxes, as she believes, her slave-grown staples for the profit of free-labor manufacturers. Here the next stage begins. Perhaps the advent of nullification, proposed and [Pg 7]advocated by Calhoun as a union weapon with which a State might defend itself against federal aggression, signalizes this stage more than anything else.

       3. The second gives place to the third stage, when the congressional debate over anti-slavery petitions opens. It is in this stage that the root-and-branch abolitionist and the fire-eater begin their really effective careers. Opposition to the restoration of fugitive

       slaves was spreading through the north and steadily strengthening. It ought to be realized by one who would understand these times that this actual encouragement of the slaves to escape was a direct attack upon slavery in the southern States, becoming stronger

       and more formidable as the root-and-branch abolitionists became more zealous and influential, and increased in numbers, and the slaveholder was bound to recognize what it all portended to him. It was natural that when he had these root-and-branch abolitionists before himself in mind, he should say of them:

       "The lands of the Territories suiting slave labor are much less in area than the due of the south therein. She will soon need all these

       lands, as the slaves are multiplying rapidly, and the virgin soil of her older States is going fast. With an excess of slaves and a lack of

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       fit land soon to come, if we are barred from the Territories our property must depreciate until it is utterly worthless. But these abolitionists attempt a further injury. They instigate our slaves to fly into the north, and then encourage the north not to give them up when we reclaim them. They deny our property the expansion into what is really our part of the Territories which it ought to have in order to maintain its value; and further they try to steal as many of our slaves from us in the States as they can."

       This was the double peril, as it were, which gathered in full view against the south.

       [Pg 8]I cannot emphasize it enough that the hot indignation of such as Garrison against slavery as a hideous wrong was not excited before the competition between north and south over the public lands had become eager and all-absorbing. It is nearly always the case that such excitement does not appear until long after an actual menace by a rival to the personal or selfish interest of another has shown itself. It is not until the menace becomes serious that the latter wakes up to discover that the former is violating some capital article of the decalogue. This was true of the root-and-branch abolitionist. And his high-flown morality was made still more Quixotic by his conscientiously assuming that the negro slave was in all respects just such a human being as his white master.

       This third stage extends from about January, 1836, until the country was alarmed as never before by the controversy of 1849-50 over the admission of California, in southern latitude, with an anti-slavery constitution. At its end the southern leadership of Calhoun standing upon nullification, a remedy that contemplated remaining in the union, is displaced by that of Toombs, who begins to feel strongly, if not to see clearly, that the south cannot preserve slavery in the union.

       4. The fourth stage begins with the compromise of 1850. Afterwards during the same year was an occurrence which cannot be overrated in importance by the student of these times. That was the consideration of the pending question in Georgia, and action upon it by a convention of delegates elected for that special purpose. The Georgia Platform, promulgated by that convention, is as follows:

       "To the end that the position of this State may be clearly apprehended by her confederates of the south and of the north, and that she may be blameless of all future consequences, Be[Pg 9] it resolved by the people of Georgia in convention assembled, First,

       that we hold the American union secondary in importance only to the rights and principles it was designed to perpetuate. That past

       associations, present fruition, and future prospects, will bind us to it so long as it continues to be the safeguard of these rights and

       principles.

       Second. That if the thirteen