ENGLISH ERRORS CONCERNING AMERICA.
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
New York, September 1, 1865.
THOSE who lead or express British public opinion have been led, not unaccountably, into error upon one or two important points of present public policy in this country. It is not in the Saturday Review alone that President Johnson's persistent refusal to pardon rebels worth more than 20,000 dols. except upon special applica- tion, and his evident hostility to all such people as a class, and his willingness to make them suffer in purse for their political crime, elicits such remarks as this :—" There can be little doubt that at present Mr. Johnson intends to institute in the South a revolu- tionary redistribution of property." It seems to be thought that Mr. Johnson has something in him of the French Red Republican. He has nothing of the kind, and he has no more intention of re- distributing property at the South than he has of pronouncing a decree of universal divorce. Mr. Johnson is himself a rich man,— not opulent, but rich,—and he has made his money by hard work. Such men do not redistribute property. They are invariably the stoutest defenders of the rights of property. It may be thought that Mr. Johnson is a rare instance of a man born poor becoming rich at the South, and that his hatred is of a richly born class. Again a great mistake. It seems to be supposed in Europe that the slaveholders at the South are generally men born to that position in life. On the contrary, the South is full of men who got rich and became slaveholders just as Mr. Johnson did. It may be safely said that the majority of the men worth 20,000 dols. at the South are men who began life with little or nothing. There are in Virginia and -South Carolina a few, a very few, families of inherited wealth and transmitted culture, but there never was a more fanciful illusion than this that the slaveholders of the South were as a class gentlemen by birth and breeding. Mr. Johnson's hostility to the class (yet it is not a class) excepted from amnesty is due solely to the fact that having been of that class himself, he knows that they are the guilty people in this rebellion. They made it, they fomented it for years, they excluded every man from society and from polities who would not aid them, they sustained it, they could have brought it to an end at. any moment. And now Mr. Johnson merely means that they shall reap as they have sown.
The position of the slavery question is apparently not yet quite understood in England. For I have seen it stated in one of your best informed papers on our affairs, that as Kentucky will probably resist the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, and as "Kentucky is the last Slave State," the Government has been compelled to resort to other means—to wit, the issuing of passes by military commanders to negroes, allowing them to go where they will ; and that as this will probably depopulate Kentucky of slaves, that State will soon be "in the position of New Jersey— a State authorizing slavery, but without slaves ;" and that as to the legal question, "the proclamation of emancipation is either valid or not, and if valid, is as valid in Kentucky as in Florida." But Kentucky is not the last Slave State. There is another- Delaware--which, although the smallest of the States, has just as many votes—two—in the Senate as Kentucky or New York. Nor is New Jersey a Slave State ; it is, and has long been, a Free State ; but the mass of its people in the Southern counties are far below those of the other Free States in intelligence, and it has for a generation been given over to the rule of Pro-slavery Democracy; and in spite of the terrible lesson of the war, there is ground of fear that it still clings to the flesh-pots of Egypt. For the men who have hitherto controlled its political affairs have grown enormously rich by an extreme application of the doctrine of State sovereignty. New Jersey lies across the highway between the North, and Washington, and the Southern seaboard. No man can go from New York or the New England States to Washington without passing through New Jersey or around it ; and New Jersey claims and exercises the right to lay a tax upon every passenger who goes over her soil. This is done in virtue of a charter, in the nature of a monopoly, granted many years ago to the Camden and Amboy Railway Company. So completely does this com pany control the politics, and even the legislation, of New Jersey, that it is a common saying that the president of the company carries the Legislature of the State in his breeches' pocket. New Jersey in one colloquial phrase is the " State of Camden and Amboy," and in another is " out of the Union." Now if it should be decided on a case made and submitted to the Supreme Court that such an exercise of State rights is in derogation of the sovereignty of the Republic, and that no State has any more right to tax the passage of a citizen of the United States over its soil than to tax the goods which pass from one State to another, or to make a treaty with another State, the breeches' pocket in question would be very materially lightened, and the State Legislature, now safely buttoned up there, would be taken out of it. Hence New Jersey is a tremendous stickler for State sovereignty, which even at this day involves the right to legalize slavery or polygamy. For, contrary to the supposition above mentioned, the position of Kentucky and Delaware in regard to slavery, or any other domestic question not settled by the Con- stitution, is in no way affected by the war, or by President Lin- coln's proclamation. That proclamation was purely a war mea- sure, as purely as the marching of an army. It must needs have been limited, and by its terms it was limited, to the States under control of the insurgents. Neither Kentucky nor Delaware took part in the rebellion ; and the proclamation, though valid in Florida or in Virginia, is not valid in Kentucky or in Massachu- setts. The former may retain and the latter may establish slavery at pleasure, unless the constitutional amendment is adopted. More than this. The States lately in rebellion will not be admitted to their former political status unless they so amend their local constitutions as to exclude slavery. But once re-admitted, their control, their absolute control of their local affairs, limited only by the Constitution of the republic, revives ; and they may immediately change their local constitutions again, and re-establish slavery, unless the central Constitution is meantime itself amended so as to exclude slavery. Now the amendment in question is not yet ratified, in spite of the suspended political life of the States lately in rebellion, and the supporters of slavery hope to stave off the ratification until the admission of enough of the rebellious States to make the obtaining of the requisite majority—three- fourths—of the aggregate State Legislatures in its favour impos- sible. This is one reason why all anti-slavery people wish to continue the political disability of the States lately in rebellion as long as possible, or at least until this question of the anti-slaviry amendment is settled. For, it will be seen, in that amendment only is there really safety. The proclamation of emancipation freed certain slaves, but it did not abolish. slavery. It could not do so, even in the States against which it was specially directed, and all of which were enumerated in it—Kentucky and Delaware, as well as Maryland and Missouri, being omitted. It was a purely executive act, and as such it could no more abolish slavery than manufacturing or marriage.
The question as to the ability of the emancipated slaves to take care of themselves is now much discussed here. Their ability in this respect is of course various. The great mass of them are doubtless quite unable to look after themselves, but those who have been house servants, mechanics, or city labourers can do very well. Opportunities of somewhat extended observation of the negroes in the Free States enable me to form the opinion that the negro labourer here lives upon the same means rather more com- fortably and neatly than the Irishman in the same position. Physicians and other officers attached to charitable institutions also bear this testimony to the comparative ability of the two races to provide for their own comfort. But in the second genera- tion the Irishman shoots far, very far, ahead of the negro. Their opportunities and facilities for money-making, and thrift, and self- cultivation are absolutely the same, and negroes, if they chose, might accumulate money, as a very few of them do, and have a society of their own, in which they might develops themselves to the full ex- tent of their capacity. But for some reason or other they do not even attempt this. I heard, however, the other day from an officer just returned from Charleston of a speech which shows the view which some of the emancipated slaves take of this question of their capa- city. An old negro had applied to a provost-marshal for the custody of his son, who had been a slave, and who was under age. " Why," said the officer, " uncle, do you think you can take care of him ? " " Well, Sar," said the negro, " ole maussa, he leff [let] him out for fob [four] dolls. a monf ; an I reckon I'se able to take de foh dolls." An old negro in Washington some months ago made an answer to me which, although entirely without humour, was very significant. I made some trifling remark to him, adding," Uncle, don't you think so? " He was a very ragged and forlorn old fellow, but he took off his hat, not without a cer- tain grace of manner, and replied, " Yes, maus—boss, I tink so." To discover the significance of this, which struck me instantly, you must know that the Dutch word " boss," or Baas, is one of the two or three which have lingered in New York as evidence that the Hollanders preceded the English here. It has been kept for convenience', sake and to save false pride, for it means master, which good English word has been displaced here by this euphemism. How people sometimes shirk, not an idea, but a name, and cover up some homely thought with a foreign outside, which makes it seem like a stranger ! It is done here in this instance. Instead of a master-carpenter or a master-mason, the journeymen say a boss-carpenter or a boss-mason, and a man who would throw up his place on the instant rather than call his employer master has no hesitation whatever in calling him boss. The word indeed is used by most labouring people and artizans when they speak to those from Whom they ask, or for whom they are doing work. The reason is of -course that this word does not convey to them the idea of subservience. The word has spread from New York, and is in very general use throughout the Free States. Now my old negro had all his life been accustomed to call every white man who had any outside semblance, however small, of gentlemanhood, master. But the war had set him free, and he had heard from Northern working men whom the,war had taken southward this word " boss," which free white men's lips did not disdain to speak ; and the poor old fellow, trying to forget the lesson of hie life, and to use a word to a white man which would convey the fact that he was no longer a slave, did not take easily to his new tricks, and began with a half-uttered " maussa " and ended with a hasty but very decided " boss." I could not but smile at his compound, which touched me with mingled sadness and pleasure.
The trial of Captain Wirz for alleged murderous cruelty to the prisoners of war at Andersonville goes on slowly, and with fre- quent interruptions on account of foolish, petty differences be- tween the court and the accused's counsel. They have finally thrown up the case, and the Judge-Advocate himself is to appear for the defence. Meantime Wire publishes a letter giving a piteous account of his situation, saying that his health is suffering from confinement and prison diet, and that he is without clothes or money to procure comforts and pay counsel. He addressed the letter to the editor of the New York Daily News, a paper as furiously pro-slavery and rebel as any in Richmond or Charleston ever was. In spite of the charges on which this man is tried, and which appear to be already proved against him, and in spite of the quarter through which he makes his appeal—for he begs the editor of the Daily News to try and raise some money for him—the people do not seem to rejoice over his misfortune, although they are demanding his punishment. On the contrary, one subscription has been started for him among heartily loyal men, none other being allowed to contribute ; and he is to be made reasonably comfortable, and to be provided with such legal advice as will ensure him a perfectly fair trial, and even give him the advantage of all the legal ingenuity which can have play in his defence before a military tribunal, the means being provided by the friends of the very men whom he is accused of torturing. That seems at least to be fair play. This Captain Wirz is a Silas, and some people are rejoicing that he was not born in this country. But before we plume ourselves upon that fact, it may be better to to wait and see, first, whether the charges are fully proved, and next what comes out in the course of the trial about the conduct of men who were born in this country. It may reasonably be feared that one consequence of the advantages which the people of this country enjoy, and of the result of our four years' struggle, may be a too constant giving of thanks that we are not even as
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