North America-1 [11]
back into your bosom this people which you now hate with so deep a hatred, and receive them again into your arms as brothers on equal terms? Is it in accordance with experience that a conquered people should be so treated, and that, too, a people whose every habit of life is at variance with the habits of their presumed conquerors? When you have flogged them into a return of fraternal affection, are they to keep their slaves or are they to abolish them?" "No," said my friend, "it may not be practicable to put those rebellious States at once on an equality with ourselves. For a time they will probably be treated as the Territories are now treated." (The Territories are vast outlying districts belonging to the Union, but not as yet endowed with State governments or a participation in the United States Congress.) "For a time they must, perhaps, lose their full privileges; but the Union will be anxious to readmit them at the earliest possible period." "And as to the slaves?" I asked again. "Let them emigrate to Liberia--back to their own country." I could not say that I thought much of the solution of the difficulty. It would, I suggested, overtask even the energy of America to send out an emigration of four million souls, to provide for their wants in a new and uncultivated country, and to provide, after that, for the terrible gap made in the labor market of the Southern States. "The Israelites went back from bondage," said my friend. But a way was opened for them by a miracle across the sea, and food was sent to them from heaven, and they had among them a Moses for a leader, and a Joshua to fight their battles. I could not but express my fear that the days of such immigrations were over. This plan of sending back the negroes to Africa did not reach me only from one or from two mouths, and it was suggested by men whose opinions respecting their country have weight at home and are entitled to weight abroad. I mention this merely to show how insurmountable would be the difficulty of preventing secession, let which side win that may. "We will never abandon the right to the mouth of the Mississippi." That, in all such arguments, is a strong point with men of the Northern States--perhaps the point to which they all return with the greatest firmness. It is that on which Mr. Everett insists in the last paragraph of the oration which he made in New York on the 4th of July, 1861. "The Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers," he says, "with their hundred tributaries, give to the great central basin of our continent its character and destiny. The outlet of this system lies between the States of Tennessee and Missouri, of Mississippi and Arkansas, and through the State of Louisiana. The ancient province so called, the proudest monument of the mighty monarch whose name it bears, passed from the jurisdiction of France to that of Spain in 1763. Spain coveted it--not that she might fill it with prosperous colonies and rising States, but that it might stretch as a broad waste barrier, infested with warlike tribes, between the Anglo-American power and the silver mines of Mexico. With the independence of the United States the fear of a still more dangerous neighbor grew upon Spain; and, in the insane expectation of checking the progress of the Union westward, she threatened, and at times attempted, to close the mouth of the Mississippi on the rapidly-increasing trade of the West. The bare suggestion of such a policy roused the population upon the banks of the Ohio, then inconsiderable, as one man. Their confidence in Washington scarcely restrained them from rushing to the seizure of New Orleans, when the treaty of San Lorenzo El Real, in 1795, stipulated for them a precarious right of navigating the noble river to the sea, with a right of deposit at New Orleans. This subject was for years the turning-point of the politics of the West; and it was perfectly well understood that, sooner or later, she would be content with nothing less than the sovereign control of the mighty stream from its head-spring to its outlet in the Gulf.