It is by no means as yet a settled question that emancipation will enhance the happiness of our negro population, or that it may not be the beginning of a series of disasters to the race which will eventuate in its extinction on this continent. The settlement of the slave question may be the beginning of the negro question; and the end of one difficulty the beginning of another.
It may be that sympathy for the negro is seeking to put in train a series of changes which would terribly revulse those same sympathies, if the end could be seen from the beginning. Yet these sympathies, even if mistaken in their direct object, may be working to a great and desirable end, which they do not as yet recognize. The Crusaders aimed at what they considered a good, but, failing in that, accomplished a real good of which they had no conception. They did not make themselves permanent masters of the Holy Land, but through their intercourse with each other and with the more cultivated people of the East, they nourished the germs of a forthcoming civilization in the West.
In the natural history of the world we discover that certain tribes of sentient beings prey upon certain other tribes; and this seems, on a cursory view, to be very shocking to the finer sensibilities of our nature; yet it is an arrangement which results in a larger amount of sentient enjoyment than could otherwise obtain among these lower denizens of our inexplicable world. The most vigorousthat which embodies within itself the greatest and the most various elements of vitality and powerthe most vigorous, I say, prevails; and if the negro race of our continent should begin to wane and finally go as the 'poor Indian' has donea fate which I do not here predict for himthe field thus vacated will not be lost, but occupied at once, and in time to its fullest extent, by a race of greater capabilities for culture, progress, and enjoyment. The physical world has attained to its present advanced geological condition through much of violence and pain; the same is true in a moral sense of mankind at large; and there may be still quite a great deal of this same career to run.
Sympathy of itself is blind, and may 'kill with kindness.' It has often done so. But it is a noble emotion: let it play its role, since, in the working out of destiny, 'the will may be taken for the deed,' and a good accomplished which was not intended or foreseen.
Governments may not be greatly at fault for not proposing 'high moral aims.' We need only recall the names of Watt, Fulton, Stevenson, Morse, and others of that class, to perceive that great moral changes are brought about when no moral purpose is intended. It is not affirmed that these benefactors of mankind never thought of the moral consequences which their purely physical labors would produce, but only that the moral consequences were not the incentive to the mechanical achievement. The genius of invention had to work out its legitimate results through the innate force of its own peculiar constitution. The impetus was that of essential genius, not of moral calculation.
The same thing is true of the cultivation of science for its own sake. The stargazer with his telescope, the chemist with crucible and retort, the physiologist with his chemical and optical aids, the purely scientific thinkerall who prosecute science for the love of ithave wrought out results which are breaking as light of the clear morning sun upon the history of nations, thus enabling us to avail ourselves of the past in order to comprehend the status of the present and the possibilities of the future.
Great social and political results have thus been attained without consciously intending them, or seeing how they were to be brought about. Our Government, without professing great moral purposes, may yet accomplish more in that direction, and this, too, by the relentless and bloody hand of war, than has ever been the result of purely moral design by the most approved moral means, on the part of any combination of mankind. It may be a crisis in history, and the ushering in of a new era.
Our Government proposes to recover lost possessions, and restore the integrity of the Union. Wherefore? Ours is the most beneficent Government upon the earth, blessing the most human beings, and it should be sustained. The whole nation has contributed to the acquisition of Southern territory, and it is not meet that the Northern people should surrender their interest in the same. The Mississippi River belongs as naturally to the great West as to the South, and it should be under the control of the same sovereign power, to be used for the good of one great people. There is no natural division line between the North and South, and it would be fatal to the future peace and prosperity of this continent to attempt to make one.
These are some of the reasons ordinarily given for the prosecution of this warfor our great effort to reëstablish the Union. They are practical, readily comprehended, and to urge them is wellenough, really, for present practical purposes; but may there not be in the idea of political unity a meaninga philosophical significance, if you please, which these practical and obvious considerations do not reveal?
It is the confirmed conviction of the Northern people, with certain unnatural exceptions, that it is our true policy to maintain the integrity of the Union at any cost, however great; the people of the South evidently take a different view of it; the political thinkers of Europe appear to be divided in their sympathies between the North and South.
An article appears in a British quarterly to prove that it is the fate of great empires to fall to pieces; and that China, Turkey, Russia, and the United States show signs of approaching dissolution. It is observed that French writers of authority in the Government have issued pamphlets to prove that the peace and stability of nations require the dismemberment of the United States. The 'fire eaters' of the South are not the only people who would like to see the United States in fragments. We have such even in the North; and in Europe, especially near the thrones, 'their name is legion.'
The thinking world has not yet settled into the conviction that a great continental policy, preserving internal peace, and enduring for an indefinite period into the far-off future, is a possible thing. The fate of nations and empires, as revealed in history, is apparently against such an idea. Many empires have already appeared, risen to power, fallen into decay, and become dismembered, having run their course and disappeared. May it not be so with our own great confederacy of States? The authority against a great, practical, enduring political unity is respectable. May we not be fighting for an illusion? What guarantee have we in history, science, and common sense, that our Federal Union will not crumble as the empires of the past have done, and as the political prophets of Europe, casting the horoscope of nations in the shadows of their own political fragmentarism, have predicted for us? Even should the rebels South be chastised, and the Union restored for the present, have we solid reasons for believing in the permanency of our institutions? What is the warrant for our faith that American destiny comprehends the principle of American unity?
People contract habits of thought in a great measure from the nature of the institutions which surround them. Europe could think nothing but feudalism at one time; she had no conception of religion outside the Church of Rome. The Turk thinks by the standard of political absolutism and the Moslem faith. The reflections of every people are cast in the national mould; it is so the world over, and has been so in all times. Europe, or at least a very influential portion thereof, thinks that the 'balance of power' system will yet be inaugurated among the family of nations yet to spring up on this continent. Her people think balance of power, and the London Times and like organs of the existing polity write balance of power for our edification, and for the future of America. They cannot conceive that there is any other way to get along for any considerable length of time. In like manner is it concludedkeeping up the old trains of thoughtthat if nations once fell into fragments when shaken, they will do just so again.
Now, perhaps we have contracted habits of thought from the character of our country and her institutions, and are deceiving ourselves with hopes which have no real foundation. These, we believe, are considerations which have engaged the attention of every reflecting man; and it behooves us, as intelligent Americans and members of a young nation of hitherto unexampled prosperity and promise, to be able to give a reason for the faith that is in us.
There are changes and crises in the course and destiny of political systems. The conditions of one period of time are different from the conditions of another period. Different conditions necessitate different political systems. Feudalism did not last always; European diplomacy is only three hundred years old. If Europe, out of her peculiar situation, originated the doctrine of balance of power, thus innovating upon the past, may not we, owing to the novelty of our situation, originate a continental system which will endure to the remotest periods of time, or so long as political systems shall have place on the earth?
One empire may fall into fragments to-day; while another may not only not suffer dissolution, but really grow stronger, and appropriate, in a most legitimate manner, parts of the dismembered empire.
We must allow, not only for the difference of conditions with reference to time, but, also, for the different situations at the same time of different political structures. To assume, because nations have been ground to atoms, or have fallen to pieces of their own weight, that therefore Russia and the United States are about to go in the same way, is a species of reasoning which is hardly warranted by scientific methods. It may be that the empire of Great Britain is itself doomed to dissolution at no very distant day; but it does not follow that the United States are, therefore, liable to the same fate, now or ever. So far from this, it is possible, if not highly probable, that as the remote provinces of the British empire shall fall away, the central political system of this continent may very naturally absorb at least one of the fragments, and thereby become stronger as a Government, and more potent for good to the people of an entire world.
There are laws of dissolution, and laws of segregation and combination in the political as in the natural world. Great Britain may fall into fragments because her geographical and political conditions render her amenable to the laws of dissolution; while the United States may go on enlarging their boundaries and becoming more stable and powerful from the fact that their political status and local surroundings render them the legitimate subject of the laws of political growth and geographical enlargement. The British possessions are geographically too remote; they may not be united together by the necessary bonds of political union. The weakness of Great Britain may now be what the weakness of the Spanish empire once was. Her geography is against her. The day is gradually passing away when arbitrary power may hold distant regions in subjection to a central despotism; the day is at hand which demands that the bonds of union shall be natural and just, not arbitrarybonds which forever assert their own inherent power to unite and grow stronger, not weaker, with the inevitable changes constantly being wrought out by the busy hand of time.
Man's social and political life depends much on the physical conditions by which he is surrounded. We have only to instance a mountain and valley population. The former is isolated and out of the way, and the people simple, uncouth, and uncultivatedcontented, it is true, but, nevertheless, enjoying but little of the abundance and variety in which people of culture luxuriate. The valley population have a city, villages, rich lands, trade, and commerce; they are wealthy, cultivated, and realize far more the legitimate fruition of our entire nature.
Even missionaries, whose prejudices may be presumed to have been in favor of purely moral means, tell us that that heathen can only be permanently Christianized through changes in their physical conditions which commerce alone can bring about.
Physical conditions affect the destiny of nations, and go far to determine the extent and character of political organizations. It makes a great difference whether a country has or has not the means of ready communication and transportation from one section to another. While the great body of Europe was comparatively uncultivated, with only the natural channels of commerce, and these unimproved, there could be little communication between the different sections of country; and Europe had no political or social unity. The people of the entire continent were in a fragmentary and disorganized mass, comparatively isolated, and independent of each other. The jurisdictions of the great barons and of the cities became at length united into kingdoms. The increase of commerce brought these kingdoms into relations with each other, and diplomacy grew out of national necessities. As the countries improved and the facilities and occasions for intercommunication and commerce increased, the principle of political unity must needs comprehend a wider range. At first, it took in only the component parts of kingdoms, and then the kingdoms in the form of great national leagues of more or less permanence. This form of political unity may be very imperfect, but it is nevertheless unity consummated in the best possible manner which the system of separate thrones would permit. Changes in the conditions and relations of peoples render changes in their political forms an absolute necessity. The facilities for education, intercommunication, travel, and commerce, are the great unitizers of peoples and nations.