MR. DAVIS'S LATEST PLAN.
THE South is apparently about to take the most im- portant step yet tried in its political career. Con- vinced by fatal experience that the theory of negro -cowardice is a prejudice merely, sorely pressed by want of recruits, and perhaps rendered desperate by the pro- spect of another four years of continued battle, they have resolved, it would seem, to arm all able-bodied negroes, and send them into the field. They have two millions of slaves still left, of whom 400,000 must be men qualified to bear arms, and their owners calculate that by thus doubling their armies at a blow they shall ensure to themselves next cain- paign a certain victory. Tho plan is as yet of course only inchoate, for it requires the conjoint sanction of the State and the Central Legislatures, but it is openly discussed and defended at Richmond, is advised in a powerful letter by the Governor .of the Confederate section of Louisiana, and has, it is confi- dently stated, been unanimously adopted at a meeting of all the State Governors. Even the details of the scheme are said to have been discussed. Every slave sent into the ranks will be -enfranchised, but slavery will not be abolished, and the law which in every Slave State regulates the status of the child by that of the mother will not be repealed. The advocates of the measure expressly deny that it is abolitionist, and claim the planters' adhesion in the name not of freedom, but of the patriotism which sacrifices property to the common weal. 'Thus limited the measure may be carried, we think will be, for it has that strange double impress peculiar to the South. No race has ever made voluntarily a nobler sacrifice of pro- perty, no race ever made it with such a contempt for noble principle. These slaves are the pick of the plantations, the choice " hands " of the South, worth in times of peace 1001. per man, and the aristocracy therefore deliberately sacrifice forty millions sterling at one blow rather than surrender the cause to which they have devoted their lives. Englishmen could scarcely do more to preserve their country's freedom. Yet the object for which it is done, for which the Southern aristocrat surrenders wealth in the future as well as in the present, is mainly that he may retain the system the profit of which he is manfully throwing away. Else why not complete the act ? If mere independence be his object, let him give loose to the higher impulses this awful struggle must have generated 'in his mind, and by one immense act of justice render sub- jugation impossible. Even now, with Grant behind Richmond .and Sherman unhurt in Georgia, with every port blockaded, and every embouchure occupied, the South may win its game. Let it emancipate fully, frankly, and completely, admit its coloured people to every right of white men, and guarantee its own resolve by entrusting the whole servile population with arms, and subjugation will be a moral im- possibility. The 200,000 negroes in the service of the Union are drawn southwards, could they but trust their former masters, by a hundred bonds, the love of family, the instinct of village attachment, the crave of men for their wives or mistresses, and their children, and without their hearty aid the war, Mr. Lincoln admits, cannot be carried on. Its single moral issue will be at an end, and the backbone of the Union, the small party which postpones all material interests to one grand moral conviction, will be paralyzed. The shock would be felt by opinion in every country of Europe, and the South acknowledged at last to be struggling with a single eye to its independence. Suffering elevates nations, and the South may yet rise to this temper, but as yet though strong enough to forego the profit of their own system they are too weak to recognize the iniquity which it involves. They can give up their slaves, but not their right of enslaving. They look forward to the time when their household ranks shall be re- cruited, and hope against hope that by sacrifices such as would add new lustre to the highest form of Christian character they may perpetuate a system which the highest Paganism condemned. They show the spirit of martyrdom, in honour of a Fetish. No spectacle more strange has ever been pre- sented to man since Leonidas recorded how his three hundred Spartans died for their country, and forgot the eleven hundred Helots who died around them.
The present scheme, limited as it is, must, we think, fail, though not perhaps for the reasons commonly assigned. Many observers in England believe that the Southern blacks will not fight upon the Southern side, but the opinion rests, we think, upon very slender foundation. The experience of West Indian planters seems to show that slaves regard all oppressions suffered during their slavery as evil incidents, not as evil deeds, and are strangely, almost unintelligibly, forgiving. If they can trust their masters, a point on which no English- man can enter into the mind of a Southern black, they may
fight a race whom, as Hr. Lincoln said, " they have little cause to like," as well as the M•imelulies did under the same circumstances. The Russian serfs fought well though they hated the army, and the power of military discipline over a race used to obey can hardly be over-estimated. If they dis- trust their masters' promises they maydesert, or even revolt, but if suspicion can be removed they may fight well enough,—and the masters retain terrible hostages. The slaves who have fled have carried their children, the freedmen who desert must do it alone. It is hard to convince men brutalized by generations of servitude that they should struggle for a principle ; they feel for their comrades, but they will do any- thing, hide in the swamps, crawl for months through jungle with pursuers behind them, live upon roots, meet death by torture in order to obtain their personal liberty. Still less do we believe that they will, because armed, be able to dictate to their masters terms for the whole of their race. A military revolt,—for any but a personal object,—is a very rare and very exceptional occurrence, and the black regiments can hardly exceed in strength the regiments of white men. They will have against them, too, all the artillery, all the cavalry, all the remainder of the white population, and the traditionary reverence of years. Remembering the complete defeat of the Sepoy army by a tithe of its own numbers, the coherence which dominance produces among the dominant race, and the patience of the negro, we see little reason to believe that he will, even if armed, revolt, but nevertheless the scheme carries in it the seeds of ultimate failure.
Grant, in the first place, that all is done which by possibility can be done, that 300,000 negroes are armed, roughly drilled, and organized in working order, and what has the North to face? One more Southern army, perhaps as bravo, but cer- tainly less devoted than the last,—one more year of cam- paigning. The North loses no moral power,—rather indeed gains it,—for the Southerners with a hundred sepoy regiments cannot affect to retain their present horror of negro soldiers, while the presence of negroes in the opposite ranks may convert even Democrats into advocates of abolition. The North has simply so many more enemies, to subdue eight millions of people instead of six. On the other hand, the enfranchisement will undoubtedly weaken the devotion of the white Southern private. He is fighting to remain one of a dominant caste, and shoulder to shoulder equally privileged stands a man of the inferior race, free as himself, legally exempted from kicking, and very dangerous indeed to kick. It is to this danger to which the Richmond Inquirer points when it argues so strenuously that there is no degradation to the white in standing in lino with the black man, and actually repeats in the capital of the South Mrs. Beecher Stowe's great argument, that as white children fondle black nurses there is no instinctive antipathy. The South is already suffering from the unwillingness of recruits to come in, and any great cause of discontent might increase the average of deserters till the South must give way from want of means any longer to keep the field. There are signs abroad already that this is the evil which the leaders chiefly fear, the attenuation of their armies below the fighting point. Every speech of Mr. Davis has for its burden the necessity of conscription, the Governors assembled in conclave have recommended new laws for the arrest of deserters, General Beauregard offers thirty days' grace to all who will come in. Indeed the offer to arm the slaves is in itself a final proof of exhaustion, for we heard nothing of the courage of blacks while the armies were full. Emancipation would have shown a change in Southern opinion, enlistment only betrays an absolute necessity for men. The South is casting its fortunes royally into the gulf, but to win it must rise higher yet, and cast its cherished convictions after its less cherished cash.
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