THE CHANCES OF SOUTHERN SUBMISSION. T HE first truth of the
American struggle, that it is a revo- lution, and not a revolt, a drama in which campaigns are scenes and great battles only incidents, seems at last to have been accepted. We hear no more sudden rumours of a peace based on a compromise, no more talk of this or that battle of Armageddon which is to terminate civil war and in- troduce the reign of goodwill and cheap cotton. Sensation reports are no longer circulated, and nobody professes to know that Messrs. Davis and Gordon Bennett have between them patched up the Union on the basis of Abraham Lincoln's immediate execution over John Brown's grave. With this revulsion of ideas there has come also a reaction towards despondency. The war which was to have been finished by General Lee's march, or Mr. Slidell's new offer, or a procla- mation from Mexico, or a revolt in Ohio, or a sudden vote at the pollq, is now to drag on for a life. Revolutions, it is said, last for a generation, the aristocratic and democratic principles fought out the struggle beginning in 1792 for at least twenty years; and even the American colonies did not fairly break loose without seven years of battle. The war in America, now rising into a campaign, then sinking into chronic border anarchy, may, it is said, last out all living men—last till a generation has grown up who know of peace only as a dim recollection. That view is based on analogies which have some bearing on the case, and is certainly truer than the old expectation of a melodramatic finale ; but it omits one element from the calculation.
It supposes that the South is as resolute as the North, that the aristocratic society will fight on, as it, has often promised to fight on to the last man and bullet, that the persistence which is, perhaps, the one distinctive quality of our race will on both sides prove indomitable, that there is no termination possible short of the ruin of the Confederacy State by State. There is much to support that belief, which is that of many Ameri- cans fanatically devoted to the Union. The South has, undoubtedly, shown a determination, both in the war and in the retention of slavery, which is equal to the determination of their adversaries, have shed their blood with a readiness which indicates social coherence as much as individual zeal. Levies such as no European State could order have been raised without apparent resistance, and the private soldiers captured have uniformly expressed their devotion to Southern ideas. The popular view, therefore, may be the true one, but there is another, supported by many facts, which deserves an attention it has not yet received. The Northern stories of Union feeling, current at the beginning of the war were probably stories simply, regret for the loss of empire being confounded with regret for the old connection. But it is a very remark- able fact, not depending on Northern statements, that wherever within the South, from any cause, slavery was disregarded, there the support of the South was lukewarm' or was refused. The idea that the poor whites, who own no slaves, would not fight for slaveholders proved incorrect,—as incorrect as the notion that Irish soldiers will not fight for an organization which, individually, they dislike. The social coherence pro- duced by all aristocracies has proved too strong for resistance to begin from below. But though that notion was incorrect another very unwelcome to the South has been found unex- pectedly true. Without slavery there is no South. Virginia, for example, is the oldest of all the Slave States, and, except Maryland, the one in which a slaveholding society assumes its highest external form. Half the English confusion of idea as to Southern society proceeds from applying the condition of those two States and South Carolina to the whole of the slaveholding region. Nowhere is the social coherence more unbroken, nowhere is there so strong a belief in State sovereignty, nowhere a greater readiness to make sacrifices for the war. Yet the one section of that great state in which slavery does not pay is strictly Northern, sends representatives to Washington and recruits to the Federal army. So with the uplands of Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee. State rights, dislike of Yankees, crave for independence, hatred of heavy customs, all the excuses for revolt other than slavery exist in all parts of these States alike, yet only the slave- owning sections accept the Southern ideas. Precisely the same feeling has shoivn itself over and over again in the hilly districts of North Carolina, where slaves are profitless, and is showing itself in Georgia, where slaves are slowly disappear- ing by flight. It would almost seem as if the defence of slavery were not only the object of the war, which is certain, but the one political bond of the South, which has been hitherto doubtful, and this view is supported by the in- telligence received this week. Brigadier Gaunt, a leading politician of Arkansas, who assisted to " rush " the State out of the Union, and subsequently commanded a brigade in the Southern army, has called on his fellow-citizens to renounce the useless struggle. He does not express any Yankee feeling, any loyalty to the Union, any idea, in fact, of any sort, such as New Englanders entertain. But he believes that the cause is lost, and, being lost, Arkansas must look out for some new path. "Our armies," he says, "are melting, and ruin fairly approaches." Every "battle we gain brings us that much nearer our final ruin." "How is it with us? The last man is in the field. Half our territory overrun. Our cities gone to wreck—peopled alone by the aged, the lame and halt, and women and children; • while deserted towns and smoking ruins, and plantations abandoned and laid waste, meet us on all sides, and anarchy and ruin, disappointment and discon- tent, lower over all the land." Slavery is, in fact, worthless ; the North has decided that it must cease to exist, and Briga- dier Gaunt calls on his fellow states-men to let it go, and try whether free emigration will not bring them the prosperity which they have as slaveowners lost for ever. He is not very hopeful over the prospect; he indulges in no manner of brae.; he talks rather as Scotch Jacobites talked after 1745; but he says, "If we don't get the happiness we enjoyed under the old Government we can get no more misery than we have felt under Jefferson Davis," and the North, after all, promises peace, and even in war really assures protection. He would yield, not from respect for the Union, or love towards Northerners, but because it is, on the whole, the only thing remaining to be done.
That kind of impulse, the impulse of the average man not to fight hopeless causes, to prefer comfort to grandeur, and safety to any "idea," has hardly been sufficiently reckoned on. Brigadier Gaunt is an individual, but he seems assured that he speaks the sentiments of thousands, and in accord with the tendency of all, and he probably speaks the truth. The mass of any community are hard to inspire with a senti- ment, particularly when, as in his case, that sentiment is not supported by anything like an interest. There must be in most States of the Confederacy a very strong party very sick of suffering, slowly preparing themselves for the single sacrifice the North now demands—the total abolition of slavery. I contest like that the South has been waging has a tendency to make men, so to speak, statesmen, to inspire them with self-restraint, to compel them to reason, to teach them that there are in politics as in nature some disagreeable facts which have to be accepted. The beaten do not always yield, but they always reconsider, and no one who knows how the Scotch once hated the English, how Norwegians detested Swedes, how Savoyards abhorred Frenchmen will be- lieve in the permanent influence of hatreds excited by war. Should any such party be growing strong, the first great defeat of the Southern armies, the first march of the Federal troops into the true South will give it free- dom, and the result may be not an explosion of Union feeling, not a sudden love for the disliked dominant class, but a readiness to come to terms. The South will not be a willing section of the old Empire, or a constantly revolting section, not a Wales to Britain, any more than a Poland to Russia, but rather what Ireland is to England, a country often complaining, always full of grievances, frequently with separate Interests, sometimes given to a separate policy, but yet not on the whole hostile or unendurable, requiring a garrison, it is true, but still only a garrison which one county, if raised to the fanatic level, could readily cut to pieces. That is not by any means a termination of the war such as we have desired ; for the American crave for bigness and.
uniformity seems to us wholly unhealthy, but it at all events, one of the half-dozen possible ends—one which many. acute Americans expect, and one which is, in England, too steadily overlooked.
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