GROUNDS OF FAITH AND HOPE

BY HORACE GREELY

The dullest and most benighted mortal can fully appreciate a great victory, such as that of Bull Run or Fort Donelson. So many cannon taken – so many muskets – so many prisoners – all is tangible, concrete, material, computable – to be reckoned up on the fingers and weighed against the fruits of an adversary or prior success. Moral triumphs, on the contrary, are abstract, unimposing, shadowy – and moral qualities are requisite to their clear and full appreciation. They are not less but more real than the triumphs of Force; but time is requisite to their perfect development, and elevation as well as breadth of view to a just estimate of their importance. Yet the last few weeks have been [signalized] by a succession of events which go far to decide auspiciously the great events which now distract our country. These events briefly are –

I. The hearty acceptance by both Houses of Congress of the President’s recent proposal that the Union shall proffer pecuniary aid to any State which shall see fit to rid itself of Slavery. The very heavy majorities given in either House for the President’s plan – 88 to 31 in the House, and 31 to 10 in the Senate – derive additional significance from the fact that three Senators from Border States – Messrs. Garret Davis of Ky., Willey of Virginia, and Henderson of Missouri – voted in the majority. None of these ever before professed or intimated the faintest sympathy with Anti-Slavery teachings or doctrines; but they are all Unionists who owe their seats in the Senate to the Rebellion, each of them having had a place made for him by the retirement of a traitor. They all intend that the Rebellion shall be crushed and the Union fully restored, and their vote for the President’s proposition is a gratifying evidence of their perception that the Union and Slavery cannot both be restored to the palmy estate from which treason precipitated them. Their approval of the President’s timely and wise proposition is of itself a signal Union victory, bearing the seeds of future and beneficent triumphs.

II. The vote of the Senate by more than two to one, (29 to 14,) passing the bill abolishing Slavery in the Federal District forthwith, is another cheering indication of National progress. It is in one sense unfortunate that none but Republicans supported this too long delayed act of justice; but it is plain that Senators who are willing that Slavery shall soon cease to exist in their own States respectively, cannot seriously desire that it shall be perpetuated at the Federal Metropolis. The opposition of the Senators from Delaware is purely partisan in its character and motives; they rely on Slavery to restore the [Democratic] party to power in the Union while perpetuating its ascendancy in their own State, and they of course uphold the influence to which they owe so much, yet desire and hope to be still further indebted. So of Mr. Powell of Kentucky and of several Members of the House. On the other hand the willingness of the Republicans to pass this bill by their own unaided votes argues a scope of vision and a faith in the might of abstract justice which has been quite to rare in the acts of parties and partisans. Slavery is doomed to vanish from the District of Columbia before the next Fourth of July, and the Republican party assumes the undivided responsibility and will receive the full credit of its exile. Should that party be doomed to an early dissolution, its tombstone will be well garnished with a few bold and noble acts of this character.

III. The vote on the 3d inst. of the people of Northwestern Virginia, whereby they expressed their decided desire to constitute a new and independent State, to be recognized and admitted into the Union as WESTERN VIRGINIA, and to be gradually relieved of the incubus of Slavery, is a most cheering sign of the times. The proposed new State consists of thirty-nine Counties, or nearly one-third of the area of the Virginia that lately was. It contained by the census of 1860 a population of 280,641, which was rapidly increasing by immigration up to the outbreak of the rebellion – the chief impulse to this increase being the recent discovery of Petroleum or Rock Oil in some of its valleys. Being considerably larger in area than New Jersey or any New England State but Maine, with vast though as yet undeveloped Mineral resources – Coal, Salt, Iron, Petroleum, etc. – and a superabundance of excellent Timber, there is no reason why West Virginia, with Peace and impartial Liberty, may not have Half a Million of inhabitants within ten years and more than One Million within thirty. – Traversed by Railroads whereon her products may readily find markets in the East or in the West, threaded by Rivers whereon her Timber and other bulky staples may be cheaply floated down to the Ohio and the ever growing cities on its banks, West Virginia needs but Freedom for All to assure her a rapid growth and a glorious destiny. She had but 6,884 slaves in 1860; she has probably less than 5,000 now – many having been hurried off to places of greater security before the advance of the Union armies, while others have hurried themselves away to the Free West to escape the unappreciated blessings of servitude. And these 5000 slaves, the White freeman of West Virginia have voted, shall no longer chain her to a doomed and desperate cause, to which her every interest is irreconcilably hostile. The delegated Convention which lately assembled at Wheeling and framed there a Constitution for the embryo State, left Slavery undisturbed; but decreed that the People, in voting to ratify or reject it, should vote also For or Against a policy of Gradual Emancipation. They did so last Thursday; and the aggregate result is a great majority for the Constitution and one barely less for Emancipation. And though the vote was necessarily light, the whole region being convulsed and distracted by the perils and apprehensions which accompany civil war, there can be no doubt that it expresses the deliberate and unchangeable judgment of the People.

This is one of the most palpable and auspicious results yet realized from the War inaugurated by Slavery for the overthrow of the Union. That West Virginia was thoroughly loyal has at no time been doubtful. Her delegates so voted at Richmond when their lives were in danger from an infuriated mob of slave-traders and their tools during the week of madness that followed the fall of Fort Sumter. A hand full of her aristocracy and a larger number of their ignorant, idle and profligate satellites, were rebels on instinct; but the great mass where inflexibly loyal from the start. But no Abolition lecturer was ever allowed to climb their steep ridges and penetrate their narrow valleys preaching the gospel of Wages for the Worker, while their every vote in Congress has been uniformly cast into the scale of Slavery. Gag-Rules; Texas Annexation; resistance to the unbalanced Admission of California as a Free State; the repudiation of the Missouri Compromise; the years of outrage and indignity to which the Free-State settlers of Kansas were subjected at the hands of the Border Ruffians – in short, every crime of the Slave Power throughout the last twenty years – has commanded the thoroughgoing support of the Representatives in Congress of Western Virginia, wherein Pierce, Buchanan, and the two rival Democratic candidates in 1860, received large majorities over Scott, Fillmore and Bell, while Fremont and Lincoln had but a handful of votes all told, and these mainly cast in the Yankee-peopled city of Wheeling. No voice from the Free States being allowed to reach them, it seemed at least probable that a majority of the West Virginians might blindly plod on in the old rut, eager to show that, while they cling to the Union, they had not ceased to be Democrats and Virginians.

Such apprehensions did them gross injustice. Rude and illiterate as many of them are, they yet have eyes, which the events of the past year have opened to their full dimensions. – Reading little and hearing no speeches, they needed but their own observation to convince them that the origin and mainspring of the Rebellion are to be found in Human Slavery – that on Slavery it feeds and with Slavery it must die. Had they favored Secession, they would have clung to Slavery; loving the Union, they resolved and voted that Slavery must die. And that vote is in our conclusive answer to those who are eternally menacing us with the hostility of the Border States if we do not cease warring upon Slavery. Whosoever loves Slavery more than Union is to-day in heart a subject of Jefferson Davis and hopes to see his sway established and perpetuated; while he who loves the country more than Slavery will find in this vote of the West Virginians an assurance that the Union is to live though Slavery be doomed. The real wishes and judgment of the hearty Unionists of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee, are expressed in this vote of their compatriots in West Virginia.

IV. The Election this week in Connecticut is more than a sign – it is a realization. Parties are virtually suppressed in that State of bitter partisanship, and the People rally in mass around the Government of their country, and in the expression of their stern resolve that treason shall not divide and destroy the American Republic. Gov. Buckingham has nobly deserved this testimonial; but President Lincoln must also feel cheered and strengthened by it. It is an emphatic approval of his policy and attitude by an enlightened and practical people, whose children and grandchildren people every State, and will hear and repeat with filial pride and joy that the Old Folks at Home are true to Liberty and Country.

V. Finally, the echo from Europe of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Message proves that document to be a wiser and more masterly blow at the vitals of the Rebellion than even its warmest eulogists on this side had esteemed it. There is no European journal of decided ability and character, however hostile to the National cause, which does not treat that cause with greater difference since the reception of that Message; while there is no Secession emissary still cooling his heels in the antechambers of Foreign Ministers who does not at length despair of European intervention and aid. – The Falsehoods and sophistries whereby the Yanceys and Slidells so lately hoped to make Europe believe Unionists and Rebels united in the unflinching support of Slavery and at loggerheads on some question of Protection or Internal Improvement, are swept away at a breath; the great underlying issue stands revealed to all eyes, and no Christian State, however famished for Cotton and surfeited with its won fabrics, dare entertain the proposals of the Rebel envoys. Henceforth their mission is null, and every dollar allowed them for expenses is a shear waste of the paper on which the never-to-be paid Confederate shinplasters are printed. And there is not one champion of the Union cause from Gibraltar to Moscow who does not feel the great weight lifted from his heart as he reads the President’s brief and homely but most significant Message, and thank God that he can henceforth stand up for the Great Republic without qualification and without shame.

Such are the brighter moral aspects which the past three or four weeks have given to our great and arduous struggle. Heaven send that the battles now imminent may in no wise countervail them!

– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, December 19, 1862

The Position of the Republicans in Congress

The position and policy of the Republicans in Congress, in relation to the important questions growing out of slavery, are beginning to take definite shape. We have no doubt they will be thorough and effective enough to answer all just expectations of the radical portion of the party, and yet sound and cautious enough to avoid threatened dangers, and so accomplish the results most to be desired, without increasing the difficulties or extending the limits of the war. The speech of Senator Fessenden of Main, on the question of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, gives the key note to the policy of Republicans and Union men, as near as it can be hit at the present moment. His discussion of the whole subject was clear and statesmanlike, but we print only such paragraphs as touch the subject in hand:

“I know what the argument has always been in opposition to it: ‘You are affecting the institution of slavery; you are weakening its power; you are doing something that will have a tendency to injure it; you are giving an example that may produce evil to the institution of slavery in the States themselves.’ So be it. Is there any obligation binding on me that, in exercising a constitutional power, in doing that which I have a right to do under the great charter which I have sworn to support, I should do nothing which indirectly might affect the institution of slavery in the States of the Union.”

“I have said during the last canvass repeatedly, and I aided in passing a resolution through Congress to effect, that the object and purpose of this war was not to affect slavery in the States, but to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land. I have said at this session that that pledge has been made by me; that the party to which I belonged had pledged itself that it did not come into power and would not prosecute this war for the purpose of abolishing slavery in the States; and I said that, so far as I was concerned, I meant to keep my pledge. – But, sir, I did not say, nor did the party to which I belong ever say, that it pledged itself to do nothing that indirectly might affect the institution of slavery. Do gentlemen call upon us, because we are prosecuting this war, to forget all we have said, and all we have been struggling to accomplish for years? What sir, have we been struggling for? It was to place this government in a position where it should not lend its aid to slavery. Since its formation, it has been devoted to that object; and what the Republican party contended for, as I understood it, was to free the government from the incubus that had been laid upon it through its unnatural connection with this peculiar institution.

“Now, sir, are gentleman so unreasonable as to ask us, in this particular crisis of our affairs, and because of the peculiar existing state of things, that we shall forget all we have heretofore said on this subject; that we shall forego all we have tried to attain; that we shall at once ignore the question of slavery altogether, that we shall do nothing directly or indirectly which is calculated to effect our own purpose, and that a constitutional purpose, which we declared long ago? In my judgment, it is asking too much of us; and the process of reasoning by which gentlemen attempt to meet this question, it strikes me, is hardly a fair one. Let me ask the Senator from Virginia, (Mr. Willey) for whom I have very great respect, does it follow, when we act constitutionally in one direction, that therefore we mean to act unconstitutionally in another direction? Does it follow, because we adopt one measure, that we mean to adopt another, and a different one? The honorable senator has connected all the measures before Congress together, and he views them as parts of a whole. In the first place, there is the recommendation of the President; in the next place, there is the bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; and in the third place, here are the questions with regard to the confiscation of property, and again the resolutions of the honorable senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Sumner) with regard to the States themselves; and the honorable Senator from Virginia Takes it for granted that they are parts of a system. Let me tell him it is not so; and he acts unwisely in leading his people to suppose, because we carry out, or attempt to carry out, what we believe to be a constitutional power and a duty resting upon us with regard to this particular measure, that therefore we mean to exercise a power which may not belong to us under the constitution. Each measure should be left to be judged, and to stand or fall upon its own merits and according to its issue.

Why, sir, I do not hesitate to say here most distinctly for myself and that I dissent entirely from the conclusions of the honorable Senator from Massachusetts, as stated in his resolutions. I do not look upon the States of this Union as gone and destroyed. The fundamental idea upon which we started in this contest was, that no state could take itself out of the Union, no State could destroy its existence as a State, or change its relations to the Union. We have not recognized State action. From the beginning we have considered all action as individual action, as having nothing whatever to do with the States as such. But, sir, I do not intend to argue that question now. It is enough to say, in this connection that upon this particular point the opinions of the honorable senator from Massachusetts are his own, for which he alone is responsible, and which he is undoubtedly well able to defend. What right, then, has the honorable Senator from Virginia to say that he considers all the propositions that have been made as parts of a system, and designed as an attack on the institution in the States where it exists, and a breach of the obligations under which the dominant party held itself with reference to this particular question?

“Mr. President, that the Republican party would rejoice to see slavery abolished everywhere, that they would rejoice if it no longer existed, that they feel it to be a blot upon our fair institutions and a curse to the country, there is no doubt. I can answer, for one, that has been my opinion always, and I have expressed in here and elsewhere; but, sir, I have held, and I hold to-day, and I say to-day what I have said in my place before, that the Congress of the United States, or the people of the United States through the Congress, under the Constitution as it exists now, have no right whatever to touch, by legislation, the institution of slavery in the States where it exists by law. I have said that, and I say it again, boldly; for my position never has been misunderstood on this subject. But sir, I say further, that so far as the people of this country have the power, under the Constitution, to weaken the institution of slavery; to deprive it of its force; to subject it, as an institution, to the laws of the land; to take away the political influence which it has wielded in this country, and to render it, so far as they can, a nullity, they have the right to do so, and it is their solemn duty to exercise it. And I say, moreover, that honorable Senators mistake in endeavoring to excite the sensibilities of their people by complaining of any constitutional action of ours upon this subject and charging us with a breach of plighted faith.

“Why, sir, do you suppose we came into power to sit still and be silent on this subject; that we came into power to do nothing; to think nothing to say nothing lest by some possibility a portion of that people of the country might be offended? That was the argument of the honorable Senator from Indiana (Mr. Wright) [sic] this morning, as I understand it. Sir. It is no more than ought reasonably to be expected – no matter whether in progress of this war or not, no matter where it touches – if the people of this country should see that the institution of slavery has been the prolific cause of all that we now suffer, the ground upon which this rebellion originated, and has been carried on, that they will, wherever they can constitutionally strike at it, do so. All that anybody ought to ask is, hands off wherever the constitution prohibits you from touching it at all.

“I do not grow restive, sir, because on this question I am no longer positive; but I cannot help feeling a little wonder that Senators here or gentlemen out of this hall should undertake to suppose that this cry, which we have heard so long, and which has produced so much effect, that we must not touch the question at all, what ever may be its condition, and whatever may be ours, is to be listened to. I will hold, as I have always said before, strictly and strongly to every pledge that I gave individually, or that my party gave and that I assented to; but you must not expect me to take back all my opinions; you must not expect me to hold back my hand where I can strike at the institution as an institution; you must not expect me to restrain myself when I see an opportunity in any way to dissever this Government from the support of that institution directly or indirectly. I should be false to my own principles if I did so. I should be false to all the professions that I have made from my youth up. I should be false to all the instinct of my nature, and all the duty which I owe to my country, believing, as I do that the institution is, has been, and ever will be a curse.”

– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 19, 1862