BOOKS.

SLAVERY AND SECESSION TN AMERICA.*

Mn. Ermsox's work is a specimen of book-making of a very excellent class. It contains no writing, for the object of the author would only have been obscured by an attempt at style. It offers little original argument, for argument would have diminished the impar- tiality which, though more apparent than real, is the first recom- mendation of an annalist. Still less is there any description, except so far as statistics are descriptive, for the book is addressed to men whose minds are supposed to be made up on the moral questions at issue, and perfectly familiar with the surface aspects of the straggle. It is an effort to record calmly and temperately the annals of the seces- sion movement, the political struggle which preceded the disruption, the opinions of the leading American politicians, and the statistical facts which best describe the resources which the contending parties bring to the civil war. The narrative seems brief to baldness, but those who are familiar with American history for the last five years will find that little of importance has been omitted, that the facts, and dates, and party evolutions which it is so difficult to recal in their true sequence, are all recorded in a fashion which refreshes the memory without encumbering it with verbiage or irrelevant special pleading. We shall, we think, -best serve our readers by condensing from the book a brief and clear narrative of the events which, after years of contest, have culminated in civil war.

The " irrepressible conflict," as Mr. Seward called it, between slavery and freedom, though perceptible in the very first constitution of the Union, only became manifest as the radical party conflict of the States in 1818, when Missouri claimed admission as a Slave State. The American Government had, in 1803, purchased Louisiana from the French, and in 1812 a slice of the new territory was elevated into a State, and called Louisiana. Owing, it is supposed, to the difficulties which impeded the settlement of the whites upon the Delta, the North offered no opposition. Six years afterwards, however, when the slaveowners carved a second slice into a State, and asked admission for it into the Union, the North took the alarm. The majority of the House of Representatives, in spite of frantic threats of the dissolution of the Union, accepted distinctly the policy of restricting the slave area, and passed, by 87 to 76, a clause prohibiting the introduction of slavery into Missouri, and adhered to their resolve after the Senate had rejected the stipulation. The bill was, therefore, lost, and, before it could be brought up again, Maine petitioned to be admitted into the Union. The Senate refused to admit one State without the other, and the difficulty was solved by the famous Missouri compromise, passed on the 2nd March, 1820. This compromise runs as follows : "And be it further enacted, That in all the territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of 36 deg. 30 min. north latitude, not included within the limits of the State contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude' otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall be and is hereby, for ever prohibited: Provided always, That any person escaping into the same from whom labour or service is lawfully claimed in any State or tesritory of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labour or service as aforesaid ;"

and subsisted, though fiercely attacked from both sides, for thirty years, until modified, in 1850, by the Fugitive Slave Law.

All this time both parties had been increasing in population and in territory. ' The South also had begun to believe herself not so much part of the Union as a separate section of it, a doc- trine emphatically proclaimed in 1831 by Mr. J. C. Calhoun, the leader of what was then termed nullification. The South wanted a lower tariff, and failing to obtain one in Congress, announced her. intention to secede. South Carolina made every preparation for' carrying this intention into effect, but President Jackson had made up his mind that secession was treason, and once resolved he was in- flexible. He marched a force into the State under General Taylor, with distinct orders to hang rebels, and the danger once more passed away, the South continuing to assert, but never practising, the doc- trine of nullification.

The South, however, was not content. The number of the slaves was increasing rapidly, and the old lands were getting fast worn out. Arkansas had been carved out of the old Louisiana estate, and Florida purchased from the Spaniards ; but the former was half swamp, and the latter full of dangerous Indian tribes. It was neces- sary to seek new soil, and consequently Texas was taken from the Mexicans, and in 1845 admitted into the Union. Texas is large enough for half a dozen new States, and the North became seriously alarmed. All through the contest it must be remembered it was understood that whichever party should gain a real preponderance- i.e. a working majority—would employ it to restrict or to extend the slave area. The North, therefore, determined that New Mexico and Utah should be free States, and matters once more were about "to be carried to extremity"—that is, to the length of civil war—when Mr. .Clay proposed a second compromise. The Missouri line was to be superseded for the Territories, and the principle of "squatter sove- reignty "—i.e. the right of settlers to establish such constitution as they chose—established in its stead. In return for this concession the North accepted the Fugitive Slave Law. Such a law existed in the constitution, and was distinctly repeated in the Missouri com- promise; but it had never been put in operation. It was now pro- vided, however, that the Federal officers should seize fugitive negroes under penalty of a fine of one thousand dollars, that bystanders must * .Slavery mut Sacestiow is America By Thomas Ellison. Sampson Low, Son, and Co.

assist them, that negro testimony should be inadmissible, and that if the Commissioner decided in favour of the slaveowner, his fees should be doubled. This law, and the appearance of Uncle Tom, maddened the North, and most States passed what were called personal liberty laws, which reduced the Fugitive Law to a mere nullity. They are not given by Mr. Ellison—a defect in the book—but most of them were drawn up with the intention of making identification at once indispensable and impossible. The South then fook another step for- ward. Acting through their union with the Northern Democrats, they passed a law formally repealing the Missouri compromise, and authorizing the settlers of Kansas and Nebraska, both territories north of the line, to draw up their own constitutions. On the night on which this bill passed (1854) it was declared that the North would bear no farther humiliation, and the Republican party sprang into existence. The Act, however, was passed, and the slaveholders endeavoured to make it operative. The majority of the electors in Kansas were Free- soilers, but they were not three thousand in number, and the South poured in through Missouri five thousand ruffians, who elected what was called the "Bogus Legislature," a body acting under the orders of the South. The regular settlers formed a second, the " Topeke Legislature," which was Freesoil, and was suppressed by President Pierce by military force. After months of border warfare, which, among other things, inflicted those injuries on John Brown which made him an Abolitionist, a sort of compromise was arranged called the Lecompton Constitution. The North, however, was thoroughly roused, the representatives at Washington were censured, and in April, 1858, Congress decided that the State should be admitted with or without the Lecompton Constitution. The settlers instantly abolished it, and under a document called in political parlance the Lavenworth Constitution, erected Kansas into a free state.

The defeat in Kansas warned the slaveowners that the term of their dominion was drawing near. They had long lost a real ma- jority in the House of Representatives, that is a majority composed of Southern men, and were dependent on their Northern allies. The admission of Kansas threatened, or rather ensured the loss of the Senate also, and they rallied all their strength to secure their last chance—a President devoted to their principles. So long as the Executive was in their hands, they could, at all events, protect themselves against laws levelled at the peculiar institution, perhaps even by conquest extend the area of slave soil. Accordingly, with that instinct which never fails men defending their property, they selected Mr. Buchanan, and as the democrats of the North still re- mained true to the Southern leaders, carried him into power. They could not, however, alter the majority in Congress, which, in 1859-60, after two months of fruitless struggle and debate, elected Mr. Penning- ton, a Freesoiler, Speaker of the House. The parliamentary part of the contest was now over, The slaveowners had expected this issue. They had tried to get up a war with Spain, a war with England, another border war in Kansas, but all in vain, and they prepared themselves for the measure they had so long menaced. Pending the election of 1860, they seem to have been strangely disturbed by the existence among them of free negroes, and three of the States, Arkansas, Mis- souri, and South Carolina, passed laws prohibiting emancipation and condemning all free negroes, above eighteen, found within the States after 1859, to be sold as slaves. These laws were carried out, and then the South betook itself to the exciting work of the elections. They hoped still to carry a thorough pro-slavery candidate, but the moderate democrats who refused t9 concede the right of the South to all territories fell off, and the two parties each set up a candidate, Mr. Breckenridge as the Southern man, Judge Douglas as the repre- sentative of compromise. A third party, called that of the Constitu- tional Union, nominated Mr. Bell. The Freesoilers, after a brief hesitation as to the claims of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward, accepted the former as the least-known man, and on the 6th November the State votes were declared as follows :

Free States ... Slave States...

Total ... Total Number of Votes. Given to Lincoln. Breckenridge. Bell. Douglas.

183

120 180

72

3

9 303 180

72 39 12

The Free States had plumped for Lincoln, only three votes being given to the moderate candidate; while not one vote had been given in the South to the representative of the North. The Southern as- sertion that the vote was a sectional one was, therefore, partly jus tified. The vote by head, however, showed 23,000 votes given for Lincoln in States which have seceded, and 163,000 er ein for Douglas, while Bell, the "Union" candidate, had 515,000 ern votes, or nearly as many as Mr. Breckenridge, the uncompromising supporter of the South, a fact which bears strongly on the Northern allegation that a Union party exists in the South kept down by violence and terror. The total vote was as follows :

Lincoln (Freesoiler) Douglas (Compromise) Bell (Union) Breckenridge (Slavesoiler)

North.

1,831,180 ... 1,202,451 ... 74,658 ... 277,082 ...

South.

29,430 ... 163,525 ... 515,973 ... 540,871 ...

Total.

1,857,610 1,365,976 590,631 847,953 The succeeding events, the election of Lincoln, the pro-slavery Message of Mr. Buchanan, the secession of South Carolina, and the formation of the Confederacy, are too fresh in the remembrance of our readers for recapitulation. It will be seen from this brief narrative that for forty years the Southern leaders have adhered unswervingly to their single object, the

extension, and not the mere protection, of slavery. The struggle has been in every case upon a .point connected with the acquisition of new territory, and never in any case forced on by an attack upon slavery in the old slave soil. The planters believe, and justly, that if re- stricted to their present limits they will gradually exhaust the soil until slavery will die out by becoming unprofitable, themselves the while growing poorer with every year. They will, therefore, consent to no compromise which does not involve the possibility of extension, and that one privilege it is impossible for the North, for their interests as well as their principles, longer to concede.