THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN THE NORTH. [Fnom OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
New York, August 8, 1863. A PURPOSE which I had of endeavouring to explain the relations of race in this country and their influence upon its politics in ordinary times, and during the present fundamental revolution through which we are passing, must give place to an attempt to help you to apprehend the present situation somewhat more exactly, and to comprehend it somewhat more clearly, than I am inclined to think British readers even of the Spectator do at present. Take
a map of the United States ; and, doing as I would be done by, let me recommend for this essential aid to the understanding of the news which reaches you from this side of the water the atlas made by your Keith Johnston and our Darwin Rogers, not only for its fulness, its accuracy, and its convenient size ; but because its separate maps show the whole country, from Newfoundland to the isthmus of Panama, upon the same scale, and thus preserve relations of space and distance which are lost in others. Take, then, the map, and remember not only what the insurgent Confederates said that they would do when the war broke out, but what they did. They not only claimed to the southern line of Pennsylvania, the south bank of the Ohio, and the southern line of Iowa, but they exercised their military power within the whole country south of those lines. Remember that Union troops on their way to Wash- ington were attacked in the streets of Baltimore, and that Mary- land, though loyal, was saved from the vortex of secession only by the sagacity and the decision of General Butler. Remember that just before the rebellion the people in Kansas had been fighting for the privilege of making their State free if they chose ; that the men who went among them to force slavery upon them by the rifle and the bowie-knife went froni Missouri, and, to the eternal shame of James Buchanan, were countenanced in their ruffianism by tits Government. Remember that the Union troops were twice attacked in the streets of St. Louis, and that we fought four pitched battles in Missouri, with forces enrolled under the authority of the Governor of that State. Remember that the Government of Kentucky was in hands no less disloyal than those which controlled South Carolina, and that all that the loyal men of that State could do at first was to compel an attitude of neutrality which was in itself rebellion, and that the whole of the State, to all intents and purposes, was afterwards held by the insurgent armies. The Mississippi was held by them from the mouth of the Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico. Now follows the line which this day marks the limits of • their power, never again to be enlarged. It begins a little southward of where the Blue Ridge is cut by the Potomac, stretches south-westward to the eastern lines of Kentucky and Tennessee, and follows the southern line of the latter State to the north-western corner of Mississippi, where we fought and won the battle of Corinth (or Farmington), but failed to follow up what was, in fact, a great decisive victory. Thence this boundary of rebel power straggles vaguely and tortuously through the middle of Mississippi, even the eastern part of which is now debateable ground. The rebel armies in Texas, cut off from communication with their Government, are surrounded by a population which is anxiously looking for the time when the power of the true Government will make itself felt beyond the Sabine. Steamboats loaded down with freight ply between St. Louis and New Orleans. In Louisiana even the planters are seeking the opportunity to return without ruin to their allegiance. Fully one-half the people of Mississippi are like-minded. Missouri, the home of the Border Ruffians, and whose Governor, like that of Kentucky, insulted the President when he called for 75,000 men to retake the Southern forts, is not only a loyal, but by its own spontaneous action a free State. Kentucky, called to choose between candidates for Governor and other offices, all professing loyalty and devotion to the Union, has just chosen the unconditional Union men (called Republicans by their Copperhead opponents) by a majority of 20,000. (And let me say here that General Burnside's proclanaation of martial law was merely to save Kentucky from a Border Ruffian experience such as before had utterly vitiated the elections in Kansas.) The election was as free as ever one was in New York or Massachusetts ; which it would not have been without General Burnside's proclamation. Maryland is as thoroughly, as staunchly loyal as Pennsylvania, and more actively so than some parts of her great northern neigh- bour. North Carolina is so disaffected toward the rebel Govern- ment and so restive under rebel rule, that the Richmond papers call upon the Great Repudiator to nip her "treason" in the bud by the application of very stringent measures. The loyalty of the maw of the people in eastern Tennessee you must know of well already ; but if you have read, you probably do not remember, that after the establishment of the "so-called" Confederate Government at Montgomery, it was resolved at a public meeting in a district in the northern part of the State (Alabama) in which that shortlived capital is situated, that their member should repre- sent them in the Congress of the United States and not in the Congress of the Confederacy.
From this view you may gather the extent and the importance of the changes which have taken place in the conditions of the rebellion ; how shorn it is of its proportions, how sapped in its very foundations. In territory it is reduced almost one-half, and what is left is split up into fragments, some of which are quite nil-
sound. Morally it has suffered even more than physically. Yet the venomous creature has vitality, and will die hard. It is badly
scotched, but not yet killed. To put an end to it we have desperate fights in prospect ; but we shall now soon do something more than fight. Neither our Government, our people, nor the rebel leaders can for a moment entertain the project of settlement which has two or three times been brought forward in the Spectator—of the recogni- tion of a Confederacy bounded on the west by the Mississippi river. For as to the rebels, the land west of the Mississippi has been from the beginning the very point at issue. They seceded mainly because the anti-slavery people of the Free States told them plainly that they meant to resist in every possible way the carrying of slavery into the Territories. Thereupon they said, "We will cut loose from the Republic and take our share of the Territories." In the States slavery was beyond the chance of harm. No mortal power could have freed the slaves in any State, except that of the people of that State. The President and Congress had no more right or power in the matter than the Queen and the Parliament of Great Britain. Their share in the Territories, then, the rebels must get, or their movement is a miserable failure ; they are utterly defeated. On the other hand, we went into the struggle on the ground that they must submit to the decision of Congress as to the condition of the common territory, and that in no case, except that of a successful revolution, could the division of the Republic be suffered, unless by the consent and through the agency of a con- vention of the whole people. We maintain that our nationality was that of a union, not a confederation ; that we became in 1789 (when the Constitution was adopted) a unit, whereas before that date we were a mere aggregation of units. You will see, then, that for the Government or for Congress to consent to the lopping off of a Confederacy of States east of the Mississippi river would be to set a fatal precedent upon a vital point. We must maintain our national integrity, or we are not only beaten but almost destroyed.
But, you will say, circumstances have been changed by two years' fighting. You see that these rebels will not submit to the Govern- ment at Washington ; you cannot have what you would; you must make the best arrangement that you can. True; there are certain of these rebels who will not submit—the " fire-eating " slaveholders. They will fight to the last. For these men there is only the alterna- tive of exile, imprisonment, or death. But they form only an active and influential minority of the people of the Slave States, the majority of whom are neither " fire-eaters " nor slaveholders. The fire-eating slaveholders, by obtaining, through their wealth, their abillty, and their activity, entire control of the politics and the press in their States, brought about a real but unfounded hatred and contempt for the Yankees (i. e., the people of all the Free States) in the South. They goaded their people into this war with an incessant iteration—the Yankees hate you ; the Yankees are cowards ; let us thrash them and take two-thirds of the Union, perhaps all except New England. But the war has revealed to these people, who are not fire-eating slaveholders, certain facts, among which these three are prominent—that the Yankees, or Free-State men, do not hate them ; that they are not cowards; and that, so far from taking away two-thirds of the Union, there is a chance, at least, that they will not take any.
It is from this condition of affairs, and from the fact (which, re- member, in spite of all subsequent events, we know) that secession was brought about in many quarters by intimidation of one kind or another, that Government expects a re-solution of our difficulties. The Government will have nothing to do with the rules of the "so-called Confederate States," will not communicate with them, or recognize them in any way. But from the people of the vari- ous States Government will receive any communication ; and more, it will use its power to secure them freedom of action, in spite of the military despotism of the fire-eaters. Ere long the people in MiesiKsippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina will be ready to hold conventions for returning to their allegiance, just as before they held conventions to secede from the Union. Ere long the Government will be in a position to protect such con- ventions, and the result will be restoration. This is not mere speculation. Such, I know, are the views entertained at Washing. ton ; and that the rebel Government apprehends and fears such a policy, on account of its distrust of the body of its subjects, if they could be sure of protection in freedom of action, is shown by a very significant article which lately appeared in the Richmond organ of Mr. Jefferson Davis, in which it was some- what nervously, though very strongly, insisted that any negotia- tions for peace must be not by approaches to the people, but "between Government and Government." And this was before the defeat of Lee, the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and the retreat of Bragg.
And on what terms will the people of the States which I have named return to their allegiance ? They will seek, of course, amnesty for their rebellion, exemption from confiscation, and the possession of their slaves. Amnesty, except for the ringleaders,. can be had for the asking. There is not one particle of hatred or of vindictive feeling in the Free States, except against such men as Davis, Tombs, Slidell, Mason, and the like. Confiscation will not be rigidly enforced, if, indeed, it is enforced at all, further than it has been and will be during the actual progress of the war. And then the great question of the slaves, the slaves whom President Lincoln has made free as far as he could do it by proclamation? Briefly, but surely and sufficiently, that matter is in the hands of the Supreme Court of the United States. In any case it would, it must be, even if every foot of ground and every man that stood upon it at the South were "subjugated." The President has no more right to decree by his simple voice the emancipation of a single slave in this country than the Queen has the right to take away, in like manner, the mill of a Manchester cotton-spinner. In the time of war that mill may be destroyed by the Queen's officers for military reasons ; and so here, in time of war, the President may take away a slave from a rebel. But with the war his power in this kind ceases,. absolutely and utterly ; and, loathing the monster slavery as I do, I am obliged to confess that that part of the emancipation procla- mation which declares all the slaves in certain districts free, and promises that the military and naval power of the United States shall be used to maintain their freedom, cannot stand the tests which must be applied to it. Pray do not talk about President Lincoln "selling the slaves for a treaty of peace." He cannot sell what he does not own, what he has not in his power; and no slave is in his power who does not come under the protection of his arms in time of war.
With you the Queen is not omnipotent, but an Act of Parliament ; with us the President is not, but an Act of Congress, with, however, this proviso, that the Act of Congress conforms to the terms of our written Constitution. Therefore the emancipation proclamation must come before the Supreme Court, where, in my opinion, its prospective clause will be pronounced null and void. Thus if the war end in this way, which is probable, it will end without attain- ing the entire abolition of slavery. But, nevertheless, how much more will it have accomplished for freedom than it undertook!
Remember that we began this fight not for the right to abolish slavery, but to restrain it ; and if it were ended to-day it would. have done much more than that, as you will see by reference to a preceding part of this letter. It would not have attained all that the friends of universal freedom may have hoped it would ; but far more than they had any reason to expect,—more than the "lopping off of the whole future of slavery in the Western States and Territories," which would be the result of accepting the line of the Mississippi river. It has made one State actually and two.
practically free. It has destroyed slavery as a political power, and.
so sapped the institution that it must soon crumble unless sup- ported by a government of its own. It was beyond all reasonable hope
to look for a radical change in the condition of four millions of people by the stroke of one man's pen. Could we expect that from the Constitution-bound President of the United States which could not have been accomplished by the absolute Czar of
[Does our correspondent mean that if the Supreme Court declares. against the President's proclamation the individual slaves emanci- pated under it ought to be returned into slavery? If so, a breach of faith so wicked ought to explode the "constitution" which requires it, and which is, indeed, the nightmare of the Union.— En. Spectater.]
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