Shady Hill, 11 December, 1860.
. . . Confusion and alarm are the order of the day with us.
The movement for the breaking-up of the Union has acquired a most unexpected
force. No one could have supposed beforehand that the South would be so blind
to its own interests, so deaf to every claim of safety and honour, as to take
such a course as it has done since the election a month ago. This course if
followed out must bring ruin to the Southern States, and prolonged distress to
the North. We are waiting on chance and accident to bring events. Everything in
our future is uncertain, everything is possible. The South is in great part
mad. Deus vult perdere. There is no counsel anywhere; no policy
proposed. Every man is anxious; no one pretends to foresee the issue out of
trouble. I have little hope that the Union can be preserved. The North cannot
concede to the demands of the South, and even if it could and did, I doubt
whether the result would be conciliation. The question is now fairly put,
whether Slavery shall rule, and a nominal Union be preserved for a few years
longer; or Freedom rule and the Union be broken up. The motives which the
Southern leaders put forward for disunion are mere pretexts; their real motives
are disappointed ambition, irritated pride, and the sense that power which they
have so long held has now passed out of their hands.
There is little use in speculating on the consequences of
disunion. If but one or two States secede, if the terrorism now established in
South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, and which has strength to
control every expression of sentiment opposed to disunion, — if this terrorism
be broken through, and a chance be given for the conservative opinion in these
States to manifest itself, it is possible that secession may take place without
violence. But if, on the other hand, the excited feeling now prevalent should
extend and gather force, peaceable secession becomes hardly possible, and all
the horrors of servile insurrection and civil war loom up vaguely in the not
distant future.
At present there is universal alarm; general financial
pressure, great commercial embarrassment. The course of trade between the North
and the South is interrupted; many manufacturing establishments are closed or
working on short time; there are many failures, and many workmen thrown out of
employment. This general embarrassment of business is shared in by foreign
commerce, and must be sympathetically felt in England. The prospects of the
next cotton crop are most uncertain.
The North stands in a perfectly fair position. It waits for
action on the part of the South. It has little to regret in its past course,
and nothing to recede from. It would not undo the election of Mr. Lincoln if it
could; for it recognizes the fact that the election affords no excuse for the
course taken by the South, that there was nothing aggressive in it and nothing
dangerous to real Southern interests. It feels that this is but the crisis of a
quarrel which is not one of parties but of principles, and it is on the whole
satisfied that the dispute should be brought to a head, and its settlement no
longer deferred. It is, however, both astonished and disappointed to find that
the South should prefer to take all the risks of ruin to holding fast to the
securities afforded to its institutions and to all the prosperity established
by the Union. It is a sad thing, most sad indeed, to see the reckless flinging
away of such blessings as we have hitherto enjoyed; most sad to contemplate as
a near probability the destruction of our national existence; saddest of all to
believe that the South is bringing awful calamities upon itself. But on the
other hand there is a comfort in the belief that, whatever be the result of
present troubles, the solution of Slavery will be found in it; and that the
nature of these difficulties, the principles involved in them, and the trials
that accompany them, will develop a higher tone of feeling and a nobler
standard of character than have been common with us of late.
All we have to do at the North is to stand firm to those
principles which we have asserted and which we believe to be just, — to have
faith that though the heavens fall, liberty and right shall not fail, and that
though confusion and distress prevail for the time in the affairs of men there
is no chance and no anarchy in the universe.
We are reaping the whirlwind, — but when reaped the air will
be clearer and more healthy.
I write hastily, for it is almost the mail hour, and I want
to send this to you to-day. But even were I to write at length and with all
deliberation, I could do no more than show you more fully the condition of
anxious expectancy in which we wait from day to day, and of general distress among
the commercial community.
Of course in these circumstances there is little interest
felt in other than public affairs. It is a bad time for literature; the
publishers are drawing in their undertakings; — and among other postponements
is that of your poems. So much do our personal concerns depend on political
issues. The only new book of interest is Emerson's.1 It was
published a day or two since and could not have appeared at a fitter time, for
it is full of counsels to rebuke cowardice, to confirm the moral principles of
men, and to base them firmly on the unshaken foundations of eternal laws. It is
a book to be read more than once. It is full of real wisdom, but the wisdom is
mingled with the individual notions of its author, which are not always wise. .
. .
_______________
SOURCE: Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters
of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 212-5
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