" A YANKEE'S " CREED.
FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
New York, January 4, 1867. THE Spectator has found occasions, not a few, for comment upon the letters of its New York correspondent. Its criticisms, had they been less flattering than they often were, or even less kindly and fair in purpose than they have always been, might well be submitted to by me in silent acquiescence. But recently, in the numbers for November 10 and December 15 and 22• of last year, it went so far as to pronounce upon the motives and even to set forth the " real creed " of the writer of these letters. Now, if these sub- jects are of sufficient interest to be mentioned at all in these pages, perhaps the person who is best informed upon them may discuss them without presumption. I shall, however, refer only to the latter. For without admitting that the heart of every man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, whoever looks into his own breast must confess that his motives are often so hidden in their sources and so subtle in their action, that he himself is not always their best voucher. Creed is another matter. Every man who has a creed knows what it is that he believes. Leaving my motives to the charitable construction of my readers, editorial and other, I ven- ture to insist upon being myself the only trustworthy authority as to my faith. This faith I have hitherto endeavoure I, and I shall hereafter endeavour, to make of the least possible consequence to those who do me the honour of reading what I write, to let it come as little as may be between them and the views of affairs in this country which I place before them. That I do not strive in vain to be thus impartial I have good reason for believing, notably, I think, in the recent opinion of the Spectator itself, that in my letter on " Free Trade " I had written " an elaborate and eloquent defence of the American passion for Protection," when the fact was that I merely put the case of the Protectionists as I thought it should be put, wishing myself the while that the smoke-cloud of a factory chimney had never darkened the clear air of New England, glooming the hill slopes and meadows. Were it desirable, how- ever, it is impossible, consistently with candour, for a writer who describes, relates, and explains, to prevent his story from being tinged somewhat with himself ; and therefore, having such occa- sion as my readers know, it may be well for me to show them the medium through which they are looking at " America."
When I closed my letter upon Radical confessions about the negro with the phrase, borrowed from Burnt Njal, " And now the Negro passes out of this story," I meant not that he passed out of the story of my country, but that it was my earnest desire and my fixed purpose not to mention again, except incidentally, in these letters, this unhappy creature, who, out of Africa, seems to be a mere rock of offence and bone of contention. I wrote that letter not to " demonstrate " anything to my own satisfaction, not to " triumph " over any one, least of all over the negro, but merely to show that in my previous statements about the general feel- ing here toward the negro (which statement had been stigma- tized as not applicable to " any considerable body of intelligent Americans "), I had merely told, what I always strive to discover and to tell, the simple truth. The proofs of this —" adequate proofs," as the Spectator itself calls them—were not of my seeking, not of my finding, not of my relating. Not even to defend my- self against sharp censure from men whom I honoured had I sought out this evidence. I merely waited for time to bring forth my vindication ; and it came from the pen of a partizan of my censors,—came in the shape of a piteous yet courageous confession, which having the support of the recorded evidence of public transactions, revealed yet more than I had related. And for this I and my readers are told that my " real creed" is—" Love your neighbour (except negroes, to whom you may be indifferent) as yourself. Love your enemies, if white ; if negroes, don't hate them." Now, I do not pretend even to myself that I have become so like Him of Nazareth that I really love my enemies ; but as to loving my neighbour except negroes, it is the Spectator that brings to my mind what it was that He declared to be the love which we should bear our neighbour ; it is those who assert that I find in race a bar to humanity, who cause me to say here that, having been in contact with negroes more or less all my life, no negro ever looked to me in vain for a kind act that I could do him, or a kind word that 1 could speak for or to him,—and that I have sat, a volunteer watcher, night after night by the bedside of a poor negro, who I knew could not live even to reward me with his gra- titude, or recover enough consciousness before his death to know who had been his servant. There is a shame in telling such a story, but whose is the shame in this telling? If mine, let it redden upon my forehead.
My creed about the negro is simply this—that it is my duty to be just to him, and to do him all the good in my power, consist- ently with my fealty to claims other than his, and higher. I do not believe that justice to the negro, or to the Chinaman, the Indian—to any man, involves the acknowledgment of his right to become a part of the government of this country, or an integral element of onr society. If I believed that justice to man required the establishment of manhood suffrage, and that every individual who is required to obey a law should have a voice (unheard, per- haps) in the making of that law, I should then insist, as far as I was able, upon giving political rights here to the negro, as well as to all other men. But I do not so believe ; and I have yet to see the first argument brought forward in support of such a theory of political society which is even worthy of refutation. Certainly the government neither of this nation, nor of any of the States that compose it, is based upon such a theory. But as to other than political relations, I hear the question, " Is not the negro a man and a brother ?" He is a man, and, in so far as all men are brothers, a brother. The declaration that God " hath made of one blood all nations of men" I hold to be of just as much authority as the other that He made the universe in six days. Without it, as with it, I admit in the fullest sense the bond of a common.
humanity between all races, the negro of course included. But the negro is as much my brother in Africa as he is in America. His claims upon me are as great there as here, except in so far as he and all other men who dwell in my country have a claim upon me for protection in life, liberty, and property. No one who is not one of the family has a claim for more as his inherent per- sonal right.
That this is a great country, and that we are a great people, are propositions which I have never asserted, but which I shall not deny. Most distinctly, however, I do deny that this country is great because it is " spacious in the possession of dirt," because, like Russia, it is vast, or even because, like France, it is rich and warlike. Its real greatness I believe, with a belief having the clearness of conviction and the earnestness of faith, has its sole origin in the qualities of the race by which the laud was settled and reclaimed, and by which its government and its society were framed, with the ceaseless and vigilant labour of two hundred years. Englishmen came here, bringing the English nature, with all its virtues, and not leaving behind them its faults—its rudeness, its inflexibility, its self-seeking egoism—men who had made the great Reformation rather in the interests of liberty and under the guidance of common sense, than from the promptings of religious enthusiasm. Here they transplanted English freedom and English manhood, to be developed unchecked, to all intents and purposes, by the artificial trammels of feudalism. Here they brought the rich heritage of English law, and, more worth than the law itself, that submission to law as law, tempering self-trust and the assertion of personal liberty, which may be called the distinctive political trait of our race. All this is not so much the source as the essence of our greatness. There is nothing good in this country, except its soil, which is not of English origin, the normal growth of an Eng- lish germ. We have evolved not a single new idea in politics or society. We have only worked out under favourable circumstances the problem the solution of which was undertaken by our fore- fathers who first turned the Pope out of England, and then solemnly put to death a king who was faithless to the common- wealth. I believe that the greatness or abjectness of every people is due primarily, if not solely, to one cause—race. Indeed, seeing, as it appears to me, that the manifestation of the immutable quali- ties of race is the one great fact of history ; that the annals of the world teach us that the power of race is the one master and posi- tive force, the operation of which can be calculated upon as a cer- tainty; that it is the primal law of humanity; that it is working now as irresistibly and with action as positive and simple as it worked thousands of years ago ; that at this very day it is breaking the bonds of treaties and destroying kingdoms to make nations, to deny its force, or to rate it at less than paramount importance, seems to me like calculating eclipses or building houses with like disrespect to the force and the law of gravitation. Believing thus, I also necessarily believe that just in so far as this nation loses its English, or, if my countrymen would prefer the term, its Anglo- Saxon traits, mental or physical, that just in so far as the Anglo- Saxon spirit fails in our Government and in our society of its full, normal, and absolute development, or is modified by the admis- sion of other elements to a controlling influence, to just that degree shall we deteriorate and fall short of a great destiny. The admission of the Celt to political power in this country has pro- duced only unmitigated evil, for which it is grovelling to answer that we have been at all compensated by the earth he has dug and the bricks and mortar he has carried. Great as are his capabilities, fine and generous as are many of his qualities in his best develop- ment, the Celt is utterly unfit for political power in a country where the government is self-government under a constitution, and liberty rests upon a reverence for law. He has changed no more than we have since we came out of the Scandinavian forests ; he has only developed, and whether born here or in Europe, he is as incapable of our ideas of free government as were Shan O'Neil's shock-headed gallowglasses, or as are the highly civilized French- men whose shoulders have been the steps to the thrones of two Napoleons. But we have admitted the Celt to political power, can we, therefore, consistently refuse to admit the negro ? I will answer " No," when I am convinced that because I have done one foolish act I must therefore do another.
One most important article of my " real creed" is a belief in the necessity and the right of an absolute submission to the Constitution,—a necessity which is paramount to all interests, a right which supersedes all other rights, except the right of national existence. I care as little about " a piece of paper," whatever it may be called, as the Spectator does, but I do care supremely for constitutional government. I do not worship this Constitution, or any special provision therein ; but that the constitution, what- ever it may be, shall be absolute, is the condition sine quti non of constitutional government. When Congress is able, for any pur- pose, good or bad, to take from the President, or the President is able to take from Congress, any power conferred by the Constitu- tion upon either, or when the President, Congress, or the people can defy or evade the decision of the Supreme Court, or that body looks for its guide anywhere but to the Constitution, we shall have passed under a tyranny—the rule of an unrestrained majority—compared with which any deprivation of popular rights charged by Mr. Bright upon the governing classes of the aristo- cratic republic of Great Britain would be of little moment. This is the New England creed. Let any one who doubts it wait till the constitutional rights of New England are invaded.
Crude and incomplete as my confession of faith has been, I must here close this letter, with an expression of my regret that I have felt compelled to thrust myself upon my readers, and the assurance that, if not the Negro, at least the "Yankee" personally, has passed out of this story. I have made a frank confession ; my readers can judge for themselves how far my crime affects my credibility ; and I have done away with the necessity for further defence, by abasing myself below the reach of further accusation_ A YANKEE.
[We sincerely apologize to our correspondent for seeming toy misinterpret his real feeling for the Negro ; and of his perfect humanity we never had a doubt. If he will, however, assert so, truculently as he did that the good faith of the Union to the slaves whom it has set free in the South is a matter of complete insignificance, as compared with the upholding of the letter of the written Constitution, he must expect to be sometimes misinter- preted even by admirers and friends.—ED. Spectator.]
Previous page
