BOOKS.
AN APOLOGY FOR SECESSION AND SLAVERY.* UNDER the title of a "History," and in the full-dress style 'which it is supposed the exacting Muse demands, Mr. Percy Greg has composed a violent pamphlet in two bulky volumes. He will take exception to the description, because he is so very evidently in earnest, and so indisputably sincere. He hates democracy, and he hates "the North ;" all hie affections flow out towards the late Slave States, and all his powers of invective —and they seem abundant—are easily excited by the mere mention of any one who even seems to oppose Secession or look dubiously on slavery. So thoroughly is this the case, that so stout a Southerner as Andrew Jackson, by no means an ileal hero, is overwhelmed by a torrent of choice invective because he roughly and resolutely opposed the nullification doctrine of Calhoun, the grandfather of that extreme form of State rights which necessarily led to Secession and to civil war. The book is so violent and uncompromising, that it reminds us of the Frenchman who, when advised by the Magistrate to put his case temperately, said, in excuse for his fierceness, that " he had been in a continuous rage for fifteen months." Mr. Greg sur- passes in his constancy the impassioned Gaul. We shall do him no injustice when we say that he has raged furiously over the Secession War for twenty-one years, nearly a generation, " nursing his wrath to keep it warm " throughout that long period. Mr. Greg describes himself ae "reviewing from the Bench of history a course he once argued at the Bar of politics ;" and he is surprised to find—a surprise which few will share—that he has not to "modify many severe censures, contradict many grave charges," or doubt the evidence, if not the truth of statements accepted at the time. He finds all his " original views confirmed," and he is happy in the conviction that as he accurately judged passing events twenty or five-and-
History of the United Slatee,from the Foundation of Virginia to the Reconstrue. lion of the Union. By Percy Oreg. 2 cols. London W. H. Allen and Co.
twenty years ago, so now he is able to come forward as the one true and faithful witness who can and who does depone the exact and startling truth respecting American history, hitherto systematically and almost wickedly withheld from Englishmen, and certainly most Americans, to whom these pages will come in the light of a revelation. We have said that the author of this astounding book is sincere. Nothing, indeed, but the earnestness of a fanatic could have borne him along and sustained unbroken his anger, his partiality, and perversity from the beginning to the end of these otherwise well-written volumes. It sounds like irony to the reader of Mr. Greg's pages, to find himself adjured to re- examine the subject with "calmer feelings," seeing that the author himself is always at fever-heat. Others have reviewed the facts, and found much to modify both in regard to the North and the South; have learned to understand and sympathise with men like Lee and Alexander Stephens ; but Mr. Greg has over them an enormous advantage,—he has nothing to alter, nothing to retract. Yet twenty years have passed by ; the old antagonists have become friendly ; a son of Robert Lee has been present at the funeral of Ulysses Grant ; the soldiers who fought each other have shaken hands, and compared notes in order to estab- lish, if possible, the truth respecting their military deeds ; nay, a Democratic President lives in the White House, and the old alliance between the ex-Slave States and the "Northern Wing" has been to a great extent successfully revived. There are, how- ever, two constant men whom nothing can shake, both resolved to prove, before gods and men, that they are, and always were, right and righteons,—Mr. Jefferson Davis and Mr. Percy Greg. The book of the latter is precisely what he says it is not, " a political apology " for the Slave States, and an unqualified " impeachment " of the Free States.
It is impossible to deal in a few lines with a series of argu- ments, statements, and assertions which extend to more than a thousand pages. That would require almost an equal bulk of type, for the whole would have to be rewritten. Mr. Greg starts, for example, with the assumption that all, or nearly all the people living north of the Potomac are, if not exactly wicked, yet a low, vulgar, huckstering, greedy, and intolerant set; while every one south of the stream, but especially the Virginians and South Carolinians, are wise, high-minded, sagacious, generous, honourable, and eminently humane. The author will not agree with such an account of his standpoint, and may be unconscious that he stands there; but the proof of its accuracy may be found on almost every page. At any rate, it governs the whole of his " history " of every transaction from the Revolution to the great war begun and waged in order to found an empire on the basis of negro slavery. That, Mr. Greg denies; but he is only able to do so by shutting his eyes to the main facts, and by standing on a narrow edge of " legality " which he finds in the Constitution. Robert Lee, who had insight, declared that Secession was revolu- tion. Mr. Greg knows better ; it was a legal proceeding, based on the reserved, we might almost say the inalienable rights, of each sovereign State. But of what use are such con- tentions when the facts override the contentions ? The real strife, from 1820 onwards, was between free labour and slave labour, between free communities and communities based on the enslavement of an alien race. No one in his senses could sup- pose that the free white myriads pouring into America would submit to see the field of their labour limited. Setting aside altogether the moral question—whether slavery was just or un- just, good or bad, sanctioned or unsanctioned by Scripture—the bare fact that free labour would be predominant in the Union de- cided the question for the South. The alternative before the slave owners was to accept the restricted area, and allow slavery to die out or assume some other form ; or to fight for its existence, and with its existence, the power to extend the area, not only in order that new lands might be acquired to replace exhausted soil, but in order that the dominant power in the Union, which the slave- owners had managed to secure, should be preserved. " State rights" was a genuine cry in the month of a man like Robert Lee; it was only a cheval de bated& when employed by a Toombs or a Jefferson Davis. The real exponents of the movement were the Lamars, who tried to revive the slave trade, and William Walker, with his extravagant project of a military confederacy based on slavery. Mr. Greg never enters into the actual facts which led up to the war, but runs off into barren legal arguments and unmeasured diatribes. The real truth is, that the conflict was " irrepressible," because two antagonistic principles were imprisoned in the same Constitution,—freedom and slavery ; and as they were incompatible, no " compromises " could bring them into harmony. Mr. Greg is so angry through. out, that he cannot see the realities, and be goes off into invec- tives or eulogies suggested by the names of persons. He says, " The temper of the American people is feminine." The word is much abused, but, in a certain sense, we are entitled to say that Mr. Greg's treatment of his great theme betrays a temper which is distinctly like that which he so oddly ascribes to the American people.
Another point of vital historical importance, which is ignored by the author, is the composition of the Democratic Party. In order to dominate, the slaveowners—and the preservation and extension of slavery were, by virtue of the position to which they were born, their first thought—had to secure allies in the Free States. That was accomplished by supporting the tariff, which favoured Northern manufacturers, and by giving to their confederates a large share of the spoils. Mr. Greg travesties this state of things when he says the Southrons "led" the Union, the Northerners desired to govern it. Lead- ing, predominance, was essential to the preservation of the political position obtained by the slaveowners ; they governed just as much and as little as any other set of politicians. It was only when the position became imperilled by the growth of a free population, that the Southern leaders wisely elected Pierces and Bnchanans. The nature of the party disruption in 1859.60, as narrated by Mr. Greg himself, shows that a point had been reached where the Democrats of the North and West could no longer go with their elaveowning confederates, whose claims grew greater and more imperious year after year. An "im- partial historian"—Mr. Greg thinks he is one—would have unfolded this, and defined the causes which brought on the terrible strife, and would not have fastened on legal subtleties, or plunged headlong into violent personal attacks, and the wholesale indictment of free communities.
We can only deal in generalities, because so much space would be needed to show up any special example of distortion, not intentional, but distortion springing out of the quenchless feeling of disappointment and anger which flames through these pages. It need hardly be said that the military narratives aro mere partisan sketches, without any merit whatever from a military point of view, and calculated to give the reader a false impression of the campaigns. It is not necessary to enter into any controversy with Mr. Greg to prove that General Grant had at least some soldierlike ability, and displayed it even in the last campaign ; nor is it in the least needful to occupy space in showing that the Northern and Western soldiers were not dolts and cowards who prevailed by mere "brute force." The Confederate Generals themselves have answered Mr. Greg's illiberal strictures, and General Lee's conduct in 1864-65 proved that he knew he had a worthy opponent in General Grant, one with whom he could not take liberties. The book, however, is ably, sometimes powerfully, and always furiously written; but it is of no value as a " history," and can only rank among the purely polemical works on the great theme.
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