American Institutions And Their Influence

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Yet, at whatever period the strife may break out, the whites of
the south, even if they are abandoned to their own resources,
will enter the lists with an immense superiority of knowledge and
of the means of warfare: but the blacks will have numerical
strength and the energy of despair upon their side; and these are
powerful resources to men who have taken up arms. The fate of
the white population of the southern states will, perhaps, be
similar to that of the Moors in Spain. After having occupied the
land for centuries, it will perhaps be forced to retire to the
country whence its ancestors came, and to abandon to the negroes
the possession of a territory, which Providence seems to have
more peculiarly destined for them, since they can subsist and
labor in it more easily than the whites.

The danger of a conflict between the white and the black
inhabitants of the southern states of the Union--a danger which,
however remote it may be, is inevitable--perpetually haunts the
imagination of the Americans. The inhabitants of the north make
it a common topic of conversation, although they have no direct
injury to fear from the struggle; but they vainly endeavor to
devise some means of obviating the misfortunes which they
foresee. In the southern states the subject is not discussed:
the planter does not allude to the future in conversing with
strangers; the citizen does not communicate his apprehensions to
his friends: he seeks to conceal them from himself: but there is
something more alarming in the tacit forebodings of the south,
than in the clamorous fears of the northern states.

This all-pervading disquietude has given birth to an undertaking
which is but little known, but which may have the effect of
changing the fate of a portion of the human race. From
apprehension of the dangers which I have just been describing, a
certain number of American citizens have formed a society for the
purpose of exporting to the coast of Guinea, at their own
expense, such free negroes as may be willing to escape from the
oppression to which they are subject.[Footnote:

This society assumed the name "The Society for the Colonization
of the Blacks." See its annual reports; and more particularly
the fifteenth. See also the pamphlet, to which allusion has
already been made, entitled "Letters on the Colonization Society,
and on its probable results," by Mr. Carey, Philadelphia, April,
1833.

]

In 1820, the society to which I allude formed a settlement in
Africa, upon the 7th degree of north latitude, which bears the
name of Liberia. The most recent intelligence informs us that
two thousand five hundred negroes are collected there; they have
introduced the democratic institutions of America into the
country of their forefathers; and Liberia has a representative
system of government, negro-jurymen, negro-magistrates, and
negro-priests; churches have been built, newspapers established,
and, by a singular change in the vicissitudes of the world, white
men are prohibited from sojourning within the
settlement.[Footnote:

This last regulation was laid down by the founders of the
settlement; they apprehended that a state of things might arise
in Africa, similar to that which exists on the frontiers of the
United States, and that if the negroes, like the Indians, were
brought into collision with a people more enlightened than
themselves, they would be destroyed before they could be
civilized.

]

This is indeed a strange caprice of fortune. Two hundred years
have now elapsed since the inhabitants of Europe undertook to
tear the negro from his family and his home, in order to
transport him to the shores of North America; at the present day,
the European settlers are engaged in sending back the descendants
of those very negroes to the continent from which they were
originally taken; and the barbarous Africans have been brought
into contact with civilisation in the midst of bondage, and have
become acquainted with free political institutions in slavery.
Up to the present time Africa has been closed against the arts
and sciences of the whites; but the inventions of Europe will
perhaps penetrate into those regions, now that they are
introduced by Africans themselves. The settlement of Liberia is
founded upon a lofty and a most fruitful idea; but whatever may
be its results with regard to the continent of Africa, it can
afford no remedy to the New World.

In twelve years the Colonization society has transported two
thousand five hundred negroes to Africa; in the same space of
time about seven hundred thousand blacks were born in the United
States. If the colony of Liberia were so situated as to be able
to receive thousands of new inhabitants every year, and if the
negroes were in a state to be sent thither with advantage; if the
Union were to supply the society with annual subsidies,[Footnote:

Nor would these be the only difficulties attendant upon the
undertaking; if the Union undertook to buy up the negroes now in
America, in order to transport them to Africa, the price of
slaves, increasing with their scarcity, would soon become
enormous; and the states of the north would never consent to
expend such great sums, for a purpose which would procure such
small advantages to themselves. If the Union took possession of
the slaves in the southern states by force, or at a rate
determined by law, an insurmountable resistance would arise in
that part of the country. Both alternatives are equally
impossible.

] and to transport the negroes to Africa in vessels of the state,
it would be still unable to counterpose the natural increase of
population among the black; and as it would not remove as many
men in a year as are born upon its territory within the same
space of time, it would fail in suspending the growth of the evil
which is daily increasing in the states.[Footnote:

In 1830 there were in the United States 2,010,327 slaves and
319,439 blacks, in all 2,329,766 negroes, which formed about
one-fifth of the total population of the United States at that
time.

[In 1840 there were in the United States 2,486,348 slaves, and
386,232 free blacks; in all, 2,872,580 negroes, which formed
about one-sixth of the total population.]

] The negro race will never leave those shores of the American
continent, to which it was brought by the passions and the vices
of Europeans; and it will not disappear from the New World as
long as it continues to exist. The inhabitants of the United
States may retard the calamities which they apprehend, but they
cannot now destroy their efficient cause.

I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of
slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races
in the United States. The negroes may long remain slaves without
complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen,
they will soon revolt at being deprived of all their civil
rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they
will speedily declare themselves as enemies. In the north
everything contributed to facilitate the emancipation of the
slaves; and slavery was abolished, without placing the free
negroes in a position which could become formidable, since their
number was too small for them ever to claim the exercise of their
rights. But such is not the case in the south. The question of
slavery was a question of commerce and manufacture for the
slave-owners in the north; for those of the south, it is a
question of life and death. God forbid that I should seek to
justify the principle of negro slavery, as has been done by some
American writers! But I only observe that all the countries
which formerly adopted that execrable principle are not equally
able to abandon it at the present time.

When I contemplate the condition of the south, I can only
discover two alternatives which may be adopted by the white
inhabitants of those states: viz., either to emancipate the
negroes, and to intermingle with them; or, remaining isolated
from them, to keep them in a state of slavery as long as
possible. All intermediate measures seem to me likely to
terminate, and that shortly, in the most horrible of civil wars,
and perhaps in the extirpation of one or other of the two races.
Such is the view which the Americans of the south take of the
question, and they act consistently with it. As they are
determined not to mingle with the negroes, they refuse to
emancipate them.

Not that the inhabitants of the south regard slavery as necessary
to the wealth of the planter; for on this point many of them
agree with their northern countrymen in freely admitting that
slavery is prejudicial to their interests; but they are convinced
that, however prejudicial it may be, they hold their lives upon
no other tenure. The instruction which is now diffused in the
south has convinced the inhabitants that slavery is injurious to
the slave-owner, but it has also shown them, more clearly than
before, that no means exist of getting rid of its bad
consequences. Hence arises a singular contrast; the more the
utility of slavery is contested, the more firmly is it
established in the laws; and while the principle of servitude is
gradually abolished in the north, that self-same principle gives
rise to more and more rigorous consequences in the south.

The legislation of the southern states, with regard to slaves,
presents at the present day such unparalleled atrocities, as
suffice to show how radically the laws of humanity have been
perverted, and to betray the desperate position of the community
in which that legislation has been promulgated. The Americans of
this portion of the Union have not, indeed, augmented the
hardships of slavery; they have, on the contrary, bettered the
physical condition of the slaves. The only means by which the
ancients maintained slavery were fetters and death; the Americans
of the south of the Union have discovered more intellectual
securities for the duration of their power. They have employed
their despotism and their violence against the human mind. In
antiquity, precautions were taken to prevent the slave from
breaking his chains; at the present day measures are adopted to
deprive him even of the desire of freedom. The ancients kept the
bodies of their slaves in bondage, but they placed no restraint
upon the mind and no check upon education; and they acted
consistently with their established principle, since a natural
termination of slavery then existed, and one day or other the
slave might be set free, and become the equal of his master. But
the Americans of the south, who do not admit that the negroes can
ever be commingled with themselves, have forbidden them to be
taught to read or to write, under severe penalties; and as they
will not raise them to their own level, they sink them as nearly
as possible to that of the brutes.

The hope of liberty had always been allowed to the slave to cheer
the hardships of his condition. But the Americans of the south
are well aware that emancipation cannot but be dangerous, when
the freed man can never be assimilated to his former master. To
give a man his freedom, and to leave him in wretchedness and
ignominy, is nothing less than to prepare a future chief for a
revolt of the slaves. Moreover, it has long been remarked, that
the presence of a free negro vaguely agitates the minds of his
less fortunate brethren, and conveys to them a dim notion of
their rights. The Americans of the south have consequently taken
measures to prevent slave-owners from emancipating their slaves
in most cases; not indeed by a positive prohibition, but by
subjecting that step to various forms which it is difficult to
comply with.

I happened to meet with an old man, in the south of the Union,
who had lived in illicit intercourse with one of his negresses,
and had had several children by her, who were born the slaves of
their father. He had indeed frequently thought of bequeathing to
them at least their liberty; but years had elapsed without his
being able to surmount the legal obstacles to their emancipation,
and in the meanwhile his old age was come, and he was about to
die. He pictured to himself his sons dragged from market to
market, and passing from the authority of a parent to the rod of
the stranger, until these horrid anticipations worked his
expiring imagination into phrensy. When I saw him he was a prey
to all the anguish of despair, and he made me feel how awful is
the retribution of Nature upon those who have broken her laws.

These evils are unquestionably great; but they are the necessary
and foreseen consequences of the very principle of modern
slavery. When the Europeans chose their slaves from a race
differing from their own, which many of them considered as
inferior to the other races of mankind, and which they all
repelled with horror from any notion of intimate connexion, they
must have believed that slavery would last for ever; since there
is no intermediate state which can be durable, between the
excessive inequality produced by servitude, and the complete
equality which originates in independence. The Europeans did
imperfectly feel this truth, but without acknowledging it even to
themselves. Whenever they have had to do with negroes, their
conduct has either been dictated by their interest and their
pride, or by their compassion. They first violated every right
of humanity by their treatment of the negro; and they afterward
informed him that those rights were precious and inviolable.
They affected to open their ranks to the slave, but the negroes
who attempted to penetrate into the community were driven back
with scorn; and they have incautiously and involuntarily been led
to admit of freedom instead of slavery, without having the
courage to be wholly iniquitous, or wholly just.[Footnote:

In the original, "Voulant la servitude, il se sont laisse
entrainer, malgre eux ou a leur insu, vers la liberte."

"Desiring servitude, they have suffered themselves, involuntarily
or ignorantly, to be drawn toward liberty."--_Reviser._

]

If it be impossible to anticipate a period at which the Americans
of the south will mingle their blood with that of the negroes,
can they allow their slaves to become free without compromising
their own security? And if they are obliged to keep that race in
bondage, in order to save their own families, may they not be
excused for availing themselves of the means best adapted to that
end? The events which are taking place in the southern states of
the Union, appear to be at once the most horrible and the most
natural results of slavery. When I see the order of nature
overthrown, and when I hear the cry of humanity in its vain
struggle against the laws, my indignation does not light upon the
men of our own time who were the instruments of these outrages;
but I reserve my execration for those who, after a thousand years
of freedom, brought back slavery into the world once more.

Whatever may be the efforts of the Americans of the south to
maintain slavery, they will not always succeed. Slavery, which
is now confined to a single tract of the civilized earth, which
is attacked by Christianity as unjust, and by political economy
as prejudicial, and which is now contrasted with democratic
liberties and the information of our age, cannot survive. By the
choice of the master or the will of the slave, it will cease; and
in either case great calamities may be expected to ensue. If
liberty be refused to the negroes of the south, they will in the
end seize it for themselves by force; if it be given, they will
abuse it ere long.

* * * * *

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES IN FAVOR OF THE DURATION OF
THE AMERICAN UNION, AND WHAT DANGERS THREATEN IT.

Reasons why the preponderating Force lies in the States rather
than in the Union--The Union will only last as long as all the
States choose to belong to it.--Causes which tend to keep them
united.--Utility of the Union to resist foreign Enemies, and to
prevent the Existence of Foreigners in America.--No natural
Barriers between the several States.--No conflicting Interests
to divide them.--Reciprocal Interests of the Northern,
Southern, and Western States.--Intellectual ties of
Union.--Uniformity of Opinions.--Dangers of the Union resulting
from the different Characters and the Passions of its
Citizens.--Character of the Citizens in the South and in the
North.--The rapid growth of the Union one of its greatest
Dangers.--Progress of the Population to the Northwest.--Power
gravitates in the same Direction.--Passions originating from
sudden turns of Fortune.--Whether the existing Government of
the Union tends to gain strength, or to lose it.--Various signs
of its Decrease.--Internal Improvement.--Waste
Lands.--Indians.--The Bank.--The Tariff.--General Jackson.

The maintenance of the existing institutions of the several
states depends in some measure upon the maintenance of the Union
itself. It is therefore important in the first instance to
inquire into the probable fate of the Union. One point may
indeed be assumed at once; if the present confederation were
dissolved, it appears to me to be incontestable that the states
of which it is now composed would not return to their original
isolated condition; but that several Unions would then be formed
in the place of one. It is not my intention to inquire into the
principles upon which these new Unions would probably be
established, but merely to show what the causes are which may
effect the dismemberment of the existing confederation.

With this object I shall be obliged to retrace some of the steps
which I have already taken, and to revert to topics which I have
before discussed. I am aware that the reader may accuse me of
repetition, but the importance of the matter which still remains
to be treated is my excuse; I had rather say too much, than say
too little to be thoroughly understood, and I prefer injuring the
author to slighting the subject.

The legislators who formed the constitution of 1789 endeavored to
confer a distinct and preponderating authority upon the federal
power. But they were confined by the conditions of the task
which they had undertaken to perform. They were not appointed to
constitute the government of a single people, but to regulate the
association of several states; and, whatever their inclinations
might be, they could not but divide the exercise of sovereignty
in the end.

In order to understand the consequences of this division, it is
necessary to make a short distinction between the affairs of
government. There are some objects which are national by their
very nature, that is to say, which affect the nation as a body,
and can only be intrusted to the man or the assembly of men who
most completely represent the entire nation. Among these may be
reckoned war and diplomacy. There are other objects which are
provincial by their very nature, that is to say, which only
affect certain localities, and which can only be properly treated
in that locality. Such, for instance, is the budget of
municipality. Lastly, there are certain objects of a mixed
nature, which are national inasmuch as they affect all the
citizens who compose the nation, and which are provincial
inasmuch as it is not necessary that the nation itself should
provide for them all. Such are the rights which regulate the
civil and political condition of the citizens. No society can
exist without civil and political rights. These rights therefore
interest all the citizens alike; but it is not always necessary
to the existence and the prosperity of the nation that these
rights should be uniform, nor consequently, that they should be
regulated by the central authority.

There are, then, two distinct categories of objects which are
submitted to the direction of the sovereign power; and these
categories occur in all well-constituted communities, whatever
the basis of the political constitution may otherwise be.
Between these two extremes, the objects which I have termed mixed
may be considered to lie. As these objects are neither
exclusively national nor entirely provincial, they may be
attained by a national or a provincial government, according to
the agreement of the contracting parties, without in any way
impairing the contract of association.

The sovereign power is usually formed by the union of separate
individuals, who compose a people; and individual powers or
collective forces, each representing a very small portion of the
sovereign authority, are the sole elements which are subjected to
the general government of their choice. In this case the general
government is more naturally called upon to regulate, not only
those affairs which are of essential national importance, but
those which are of a more local interest; and the local
governments are reduced to that small snare of sovereign
authority which is indispensable to their prosperity.

But sometimes the sovereign authority is composed of preorganized
political bodies, by virtue of circumstances anterior to their
union; and in this case the provincial governments assume the
control, not only of those affairs which more peculiarly belong
to their province, but of all, or of a part of the mixed affairs
to which allusion has been made. For the confederate nations
which were independent sovereign states before their Union, and
which still represent a very considerable share of the sovereign
power, have only consented to cede to the general government the
exercise of those rights which are indispensable to the Union.

When the national government, independently of the prerogative
inherent in its nature, is invested with the right of regulating
the affairs which relate partly to the general and partly to the
local interest, it possesses a preponderating influence. Not
only are its own rights extensive, but all the rights which it
does not possess exist by its sufferance, and it may be
apprehended that the provincial governments may be deprived of
their natural and necessary prerogatives by its influence.

When, on the other hand, the provincial governments are invested
with the power of regulating those same affairs of mixed
interest, an opposite tendency prevails in society. The
preponderating force resides in the province, not in the nation;
and it may be apprehended that the national government may in the
end be stripped of the privileges which are necessary to its
existence.

Independent nations have therefore a natural tendency to
centralization, and confederations to dismemberment.

It now only remains for us to apply these general principles to
the American Union. The several states were necessarily
possessed of the right of regulating all exclusively provincial
affairs. Moreover these same states retained the right of
determining the civil and political competency of the citizens,
of regulating the reciprocal relations of the members of the
community, and of dispensing justice; rights which are of a
general nature, but which do not necessarily appertain to the
national government. We have shown that the government of the
Union is invested with the power of acting in the name of the
whole nation, in those cases in which the nation has to appear as
a single and undivided power; as, for instance, in foreign
relations, and in offering a common resistance to a common enemy;
in short, in conducting those affairs which I have styled
exclusively national.

In this division of the rights of sovereignty, the share of the
Union seems at first sight to be more considerable than that of
the states; but a more attentive investigation shows it to be
less so. The undertakings of the government of the Union are
more vast, but their influence is more rarely felt. Those of the
provincial government are comparatively small, but they are
incessant, and they serve to keep alive the authority which they
represent. The government of the Union watches the general
interests of the country; but the general interests of a people
have a very questionable influence upon individual happiness;
while provincial interests produce a most immediate effect upon
the welfare of the inhabitants. The Union secures the
independence and the greatness of the nation, which do not
immediately affect private citizens; but the several states
maintain the liberty, regulate the rights, protect the fortune,
and secure the life and the whole future prosperity of every
citizen.

The federal government is very far removed from its subjects,
while the provincial governments are within the reach of them
all, and are ready to attend to the smallest appeal. The central
government has upon its side the passions of a few superior men
who aspire to conduct it; but upon the side of the provincial
governments are the interests of all those second-rate
individuals who can only hope to obtain power within their own
state, and who nevertheless exercise the largest share of
authority over the people because they are placed nearest to its
level.

The Americans have therefore much more to hope and to fear from
the states than from the Union; and, in conformity with the
natural tendency of the human mind, they are more likely to
attach themselves to the former than to the latter. In this
respect their habits and feelings harmonize with their interests.