The American Republic [113]
and the danger is that it will be attempted too soon.
It would be a convenience to have the negro vote in the reconstruction of the States disorganized by secession, for it would secure their re-construction with antislavery constitutions, and also 346 make sure of the proposed antislavery amendment to the Constitution of the United States; but there is no power in Congress to enfranchise the negroes in the States needing reconstruction, and, once assured of their freedom, the freedmen would care little for the Union, of which they understand nothing. They would vote, for the most part, with their former masters, their employers, the wealthier and more intelligent classes, whether loyal or disloyal; for, as a rule, these will treat them with greater personal consideration and kindness than others. The dislike of the negro, and hostility to negro equality, increase as you descend in the social scale. The freedmen, without political instruction or experience, who have had no country, no domicile, understand nothing of loyalty or of disloyalty. They have strong local attachments, but they can have no patriotism. If they adhered to the Union in the rebellion, fought for it, bled for it, it was not from loyalty, but because they knew that their freedom could come only from the success of the Union arms. That freedom secured, they have no longer any interest in the Union, and their local attachments, personal associations, habits, tastes, likes and dislikes, are Southern, not Northern. In any contest between the 347 North and the South, they would take, to a man, the Southern side. After the taunts of the women, the captured soldiers of the Union found, until nearly the last year of the war, nothing harder to bear, when marched as prisoners into Richmond, than the antics and hootings of the negroes. Negro suffrage on the score of loyalty, is at best a matter of indifference to the Union, and as the elective franchise is not a natural right, but a civil trust, the friends of the negro should, for the present, be contented with securing him simply equal rights of person and property.
348 CHAPTER XIV.
POLITICAL TENDENCIES.
The most marked political tendency of the American people has been, since 1825, to interpret their government as a pure and simple democracy, and to shift it from a territorial to a purely popular basis, or from the people as the state, inseparably united to the national territory or domain, to the people as simply population, either as individuals or as the race. Their tendency has unconsciously, therefore, been to change their constitution from a republican to a despotic, or from a civilized to a barbaric constitution.
The American constitution is democratic, in the sense that the people are sovereign that all laws and public acts run in their name; that the rulers are elected by them, and are responsible to them; but they are the people territorially constituted and fixed to the soil, constituting what Mr. Disraeli, with more propriety perhaps than he thinks, calls a "territorial democracy." To this territorial democracy, the real American democracy, stand opposed two 349 other democracies--the one personal and the other humanitarian--each alike hostile to civilization, and tending to destroy the state, and capable of sustaining government only on principles common to all despotisms.
In every man there is a natural craving for personal freedom and unrestrained action--a strong desire to be himself, not another--to be his own master, to go when and where he pleases, to do what he chooses, to take what he wants, wherever he can find it, and to keep what he takes. It is strong in all nomadic tribes, who are at once pastoral and predatory, and is seldom weak in our bold frontier-men, too often real "border ruffians." It takes different forms in different stages of social development, but it everywhere identifies liberty with power. Restricted
It would be a convenience to have the negro vote in the reconstruction of the States disorganized by secession, for it would secure their re-construction with antislavery constitutions, and also 346 make sure of the proposed antislavery amendment to the Constitution of the United States; but there is no power in Congress to enfranchise the negroes in the States needing reconstruction, and, once assured of their freedom, the freedmen would care little for the Union, of which they understand nothing. They would vote, for the most part, with their former masters, their employers, the wealthier and more intelligent classes, whether loyal or disloyal; for, as a rule, these will treat them with greater personal consideration and kindness than others. The dislike of the negro, and hostility to negro equality, increase as you descend in the social scale. The freedmen, without political instruction or experience, who have had no country, no domicile, understand nothing of loyalty or of disloyalty. They have strong local attachments, but they can have no patriotism. If they adhered to the Union in the rebellion, fought for it, bled for it, it was not from loyalty, but because they knew that their freedom could come only from the success of the Union arms. That freedom secured, they have no longer any interest in the Union, and their local attachments, personal associations, habits, tastes, likes and dislikes, are Southern, not Northern. In any contest between the 347 North and the South, they would take, to a man, the Southern side. After the taunts of the women, the captured soldiers of the Union found, until nearly the last year of the war, nothing harder to bear, when marched as prisoners into Richmond, than the antics and hootings of the negroes. Negro suffrage on the score of loyalty, is at best a matter of indifference to the Union, and as the elective franchise is not a natural right, but a civil trust, the friends of the negro should, for the present, be contented with securing him simply equal rights of person and property.
348 CHAPTER XIV.
POLITICAL TENDENCIES.
The most marked political tendency of the American people has been, since 1825, to interpret their government as a pure and simple democracy, and to shift it from a territorial to a purely popular basis, or from the people as the state, inseparably united to the national territory or domain, to the people as simply population, either as individuals or as the race. Their tendency has unconsciously, therefore, been to change their constitution from a republican to a despotic, or from a civilized to a barbaric constitution.
The American constitution is democratic, in the sense that the people are sovereign that all laws and public acts run in their name; that the rulers are elected by them, and are responsible to them; but they are the people territorially constituted and fixed to the soil, constituting what Mr. Disraeli, with more propriety perhaps than he thinks, calls a "territorial democracy." To this territorial democracy, the real American democracy, stand opposed two 349 other democracies--the one personal and the other humanitarian--each alike hostile to civilization, and tending to destroy the state, and capable of sustaining government only on principles common to all despotisms.
In every man there is a natural craving for personal freedom and unrestrained action--a strong desire to be himself, not another--to be his own master, to go when and where he pleases, to do what he chooses, to take what he wants, wherever he can find it, and to keep what he takes. It is strong in all nomadic tribes, who are at once pastoral and predatory, and is seldom weak in our bold frontier-men, too often real "border ruffians." It takes different forms in different stages of social development, but it everywhere identifies liberty with power. Restricted