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Richard Harding Davis - "The Consul"

Jonathan Swift - "A Modest Proposal"

Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman Julius - "Dust"

Julian Hawthorne - "The Project Gutenberg Etext of Stories by Modern American Authors"

The American Republic

O >> O. A. Brownson >> The American Republic







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 in its enjoyment to one man, it makes him chief, chief
of the family, the tribe, or the nation; extended in its
enjoyment to the few, it founds an aristocracy, creates a
nobility--for nobleman meant originally only freeman, as it does
350
his own consent, express or constructive. This is the so-called
Jeffersonian democracy, in which government has no powers but
such as it derives from the consent of the governed, and is
personal democracy or pure individualism philosophically
considered, pure egoism, which says, "I am God." Under this sort
of democracy, based on popular, or rather individual sovereignty,
expressed by politicians when they call the electoral people,
half seriously, half mockingly, "the sovereigns," there obviously
can be no state, no social rights or civil authority; there can
be only a voluntary association, league, alliance, or
confederation, in which individuals may freely act together as
long as they find it pleasant, convenient, or useful, but from
which they may separate or secede whenever they find it for their
interest or their pleasure to do so. State sovereignty and
secession are based on the same democratic principle applied to
the several States of the Union instead of individuals.

The tendency to this sort of democracy has been strong in large
sections of the American people from the first, and has been
greatly strengthened by the general acceptance of the theory that
government originates in compact. The full realization of this
tendency, which, hap-
351
pily, is impracticable save in theory, would
be to render every man independent alike of every other man and
of society, with full right and power to make his own will
prevail. This tendency was strongest in the slaveholding States,
and especially, in those States, in the slaveholding class, the
American imitation of the feudal nobility of mediaeval Europe;
and on this side the war just ended was, in its most general
expression, a war in defence of personal democracy or the
sovereignty of the people individually, against the humanitarian
democracy, represented by the abolitionists, and the territorial
democracy, represented by the Government. This personal
democracy has been signally defeated in the defeat of the late
confederacy, and can hardly again become strong enough to be
dangerous.

But the humanitarian democracy, which scorns all geographical
lines, effaces all in individualities, and professes to plant
itself on humanity alone, has acquired by the war new strength,
and is not without menace to our future. The solidarity of the
race, which is the condition of all human life, founds, as we
have seen, society, and creates what are called social rights,
the, rights alike of society in regard to individuals, and of
individuals in regard to society.
352
Territorial divisions or
circumscriptions found particular societies, states, or nations;
yet as the race is one and all its members live by communion with
God through it and by communion one with another, these
particular states or nations are never absolutely independent of
each other but, bound together by the solidarity of the race, so
that there is a real solidarity of nations as well as of
individuals--the truth underlying Kossuth's famous declaration of
the solidarity of peoples."

The solidarity of nations is the basis of international law,
binding on every particular nation, and which every civilized
nation recognizes and enforces on its own subjects or citizens
through its own courts as an integral part of its own municipal
or national law.

The personal or individual right is therefore restricted by the
rights of society, and the rights of the particular society or
nation are limited by international law, or the rights of
universal society--the truth the ex-governor of Hungary
overlooked. The grand error of Gentilism was in denying the
unity and therefore the solidarity of the race, involved in its
denial or misconception of the unity of God. It therefore was
never able to assign any solid basis to international law, and
gave it only a
353
conventional or customary authority, thus leaving
the jus gentium, which it recognized in deed, without any real
foundation in the constitution of things, or authority in the
real world. Its real basis is in the solidarity of the race,
which has its basis in the unity of God, not the dead or abstract
unity asserted by the old Eleatics, the Neo-Platonists, or the
modern Unitarians, but the living unity consisting in the
threefold relation in the Divine Essence, of Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, as asserted by Christian revelation, and believed,
more or less intelligently, by all Christendom.

The tendency in the Southern States has been to overlook the
social basis of the state, or the rights of society founded on
the solidarity of the race, and to make all rights and powers
personal, or individual; and as only the white race has been able
to assert and maintain its personal freedom, only men of that
race are held to have the right to be free. Hence the people of
those States felt no scruple in holding the black or colored race
as slaves. Liberty, said they, is the right only of those who
have the ability to assert and maintain it. Let the negro prove
that he has this ability by asserting and maintaining his
freedom, and he will prove his right to be free,
354
and that it is a
gross outrage, a manifest injustice, to enslave him; but, till
then, let him be my servant, which is best for him and for me.
Why ask me to free him? I shall by doing so only change the form
of his servitude. Why appeal to me! Am I my brother's keeper?
Nay, is he my brother? Is this negro, more like an ape or a
baboon than a human being, of the same race with myself? I
believe it not. But in some instances, at least, my dear
slaveholder, your slave is literally your brother, and sometimes
even your son, born of your own daughter. The tendency of the
Southern democrat was to deny the unity of the race, as well as
all obligations of society to protect the weak and helpless, and
therefore all true civil society.

At the North there has been, and is even yet, an opposite
tendency--a tendency to exaggerate the social element, to
overlook the territorial basis of the state, and to disregard the
rights of individuals. This tendency has been and is strong in
the people called abolitionists. The American abolitionist is so
engrossed with the unity that he loses the solidarity of the
race, which supposes unity of race and multiplicity of
individuals; and falls to see any thing legitimate and
authoritative in
355
geographical divisions or territorial
circumscriptions. Back of these, back of individuals, he sees
humanity, superior to individuals, superior to states,
governments, and laws, and holds that he may trample on them all
or give them to the winds at the call of humanity or "the higher
law." The principle on which he acts is as indefensible as the
personal or egoistical democracy of the slaveholders and their
sympathizers. Were his socialistic tendency to become exclusive
and realized, it would found in the name of humanity a complete
social despotism, which, proving impracticable from its very
generality, would break up in anarchy, in which might makes
right, as in the slaveholder's democracy.

The abolitionists, in supporting themselves on humanity in its
generality, regardless of individual and territorial rights, can
recognize no state, no civil authority, and therefore are as much
out of the order of civilization, and as much in that of
barbarism, as is the slaveholder himself. Wendell Phillips is as
far removed from true Christian civilization as was John C.
Calhoun, and William Lloyd Garrison is as much of a barbarian and
despot in principle and tendency as Jefferson Davis. Hence the
great body of the people in the non-slaveholding States, wedded
to American democracy as they
354
were and are could never, as much
as they detested slavery, be induced to make common cause with
the abolitionists, and their apparent union in the late civil war
was accidental, simply owing to the fact that for the time the
social democracy and the territorial coincides or had the same
enemy. The great body of the loyal people instinctively felt
that pure socialism is as incompatible with American democracy as
pure individualism; and the abolitionists are well aware that
slavery has been abolished, not for humanitarian or socialistic
reasons but really for reasons of state, in order to save the
territorial democracy. The territorial democracy would not unite
to eliminate even so barbaric an element as slavery, till the
rebellion gave them the constitutional right to abolish it; and
even then so scrupulous were they, that they demanded a
constitutional amendment, so as to be able to make clean work of
it, without any blow to individual or State rights.

The abolitionists were right in opposing slavery, but not in
demanding its abolition on humanitarian or socialistic grounds.
Slavery is really a barbaric element, and is in direct antagonism
to American civilization. The whole force of the national life
opposes it, and must finally eliminate it, or become itself
extinct
357
and it is no mean proof of their utter want of sympathy
with all the living forces of modern civilization, that the
leading men of the South and their prominent friends at the North
really persuaded themselves that with cotton, rice, and tobacco,
they could effectually resist the anti-slavery movement, and
perpetuate their barbaric democracy. They studied the classics,
they admired Greece and Rome, and imagined that those nations
became great by slavery, instead of being great even in spite of
slavery. They failed to take into the account the fact that when
Greece and Rome were in the zenith of their glory, all
contemporary nations were also slaveholding nations, and that if
they were the greatest and most highly civilized nations of their
times, they were not fitted to be the greatest and most highly
civilized nations of all times. They failed also to perceive
that, if the Graeco-Roman republic did not include the whole
territorial people in the political people, it yet recognized
both the social and the territorial foundation of the state, and
never attempted to rest it on pure individualism; they forgot,
too, that Greece and Rome both fell, and fell precisely through
internal weakness caused by the barbarism within, not through the
force of the barbarism
358
beyond their frontiers. The world has
changed since the time when ten thousand of his slaves were
sacrificed as a religious offering to the manes of a single Roman
master. The infusion of the Christian dogma of the unity and
solidarity of the race into the belief, the life, the laws, the
jurisprudence of all civilized nations, has doomed slavery and
every species of barbarism; but this our slaveholding countrymen
saw not.

It rarely happens that in any controversy, individual or
national, the real issue is distinctly presented, or the precise
question in debate is clearly and distinctly understood by either
party. Slavery was only incidentally involved in the late war.
The war was occasioned by the collision of two extreme parties;
but it was itself a war between civilization and barbarism,
primarily between the territorial democracy and the personal
democracy, and in reality, on the part of the nation, as much a
war against the socialism of the abolitionist as against the
individualism of the slaveholder. Yet the victory, though
complete over the former, is only half won over the latter, for
it has left the humanitarian democracy standing, and perhaps for
the moment stronger than ever. The socialistic democracy was
enlisted by the territorial, not to strengthen the government at
359
home, as it imagines, for that it did not do, and could not do,
since the national instinct was even more opposed to it than to
the personal democracy; but under its antislavery aspect, to
soften the hostility of foreign powers, and ward off foreign
intervention, which was seriously threatened. The populations of
Europe, especially of France and England, were decidedly
anti-slavery, and if the war here appeared to them a war, not
solely for the unity of the nation and the integrity of its
domain, as it really was, in which they took and could take no
interest, but a war for the abolition of slavery, their
governments would not venture to intervene. This was the only
consideration that weighed with Mr. Lincoln, as he himself
assured the author, and induced him to issue his Emancipation
Proclamation; and Europe rejoices in our victory over the
rebellion only so far as it has liberated the slaves, and honors
the late President only as their supposed liberator, not as the
preserver of the unity and integrity of the nation. This is
natural enough abroad, and proves the wisdom of the anti-slavery
policy of the government, which had become absolutely necessary
to save the Republic long before it was adopted; yet it is not as
the emancipator of some two or three
360
millions of slaves that the
American patriot cherishes the memory of Abraham Lincoln, but,
aided by the loyal people, generals of rare merit, and troops of
unsurpassed bravery and endurance, as the saviour of the American
state, and the protector of modern civilization. His
anti-slavery policy served this end, and therefore was wise, but
he adopted it with the greatest possible reluctance.

There were greater issues in the late war than negro slavery or
negro freedom. That was only an incidental issue, as the really
great men of the Confederacy felt, who to save their cause were
willing themselves at last to free and arm their own negroes, and
perhaps were willing to do it even at first. This fact alone
proves that they had, or believed they had, a far more important
cause than the preservation of negro slavery. They fought for
personal democracy, under the form of State sovereignty, against
social democracy; for personal freedom and independence against
social or humanitarian despotism; and so far their cause was as
good as that against which they took up arms; and if they had or
could have fought against that, without fighting at the same time
against the territorial, the real American, the only civilized
democracy, they
361
would have succeeded. It is not socialism nor
abolitionism that has won; nor is it the North that has
conquered. The Union itself has won no victories over the South,
and it is both historically and legally false to say that the
South has been subjugated. The Union has preserved itself and
American civilization, alike for North and South, East and West.
The armies that so often met in the shock of battle were not
drawn up respectively by the North and the South, but by two
rival democracies, to decide which of the two should rule the
future. They were the armies of two mutually antagonistic
systems, and neither army was clearly and distinctly conscious of
the cause for which it was shedding its blood; each obeyed
instinctively a power stronger than itself, and which at best it
but dimly discerned. On both sides the cause was broader and
deeper than negro slavery, and neither the proslavery men nor the
abolitionists have won. The territorial democracy alone has won,
and won what will prove to be a final victory over the purely
personal democracy, which had its chief seat in the Southern
States, though by no means confined to them. The danger to
American democracy from that quarter is forever removed, and
democracy a' la Rousseau has
362
received a terrible defeat
throughout the world, though as yet it is far from being aware of
it.

But in this world victories are never complete. The socialistic
democracy claims the victory which has been really won by the
territorial democracy, as if it had been socialism, not
patriotism, that fired the hearts and nerved the arms of the
brave men led by McClellan, Grant, and Sherman. The
humanitarians are more dangerous in principle than the egoists,
for they have the appearance of building on a broader and deeper
foundation, of being more Christian, more philosophic, more
generous and philanthropic; but Satan is never more successful
than under the guise of an angel of light. His favorite guise in
modern times is that of philanthropy. He is a genuine
humanitarian, and aims to persuade the world that humanitarianism
is Christianity, and that man is God; that the soft and charming
sentiment of philanthropy is real Christian charity; and he dupes
both individuals and nations, and makes them do his work, when
they believe they are earnestly and most successfully doing the
work of God. Your leading abolitionists are as much affected by
satanophany as your leading confederates, nor are they one whit
more philosophical or less sophistical. The one
363
loses the race,
the other the individual, and neither has learned to apply
practically that fundamental truth that there is never the
general without the particular, nor the particular without the
general, the race without individuals, nor individuals without
the race. The whole race was in Adam, and fell in him, as we are
taught by the doctrine of original sin, or the sin of the race,
and Adam was an individual, as we are taught in the fact that
original sin was in him actual or personal sin.

The humanitarian is carried away by a vague generality, and loses
men in humanity, sacrifices the rights of men in a vain endeavor
to secure the rights of man, as your Calvinist or his brother
Jansenist sacrifices the rights of nature in order to secure the
freedom of grace. Yesterday he agitated for the abolition of
slavery, to-day he agitates for negro suffrage, negro equality,
and announces that when be has secured that be will agitate for
female suffrage and the equality of the sexes, forgetting or
ignorant that the relation of equality subsists only between
individuals of the same sex; that God made the man the head of
the woman, and the woman for the man, not the man for the woman.
Having obliterated all distinction of sex in politics, in social,
in-
364
dustrial, and domestic arrangements, he must go farther, and
agitate for equality of property. But since property, if
recognized at all, will be unequally acquired and distributed, he
must go farther still, and agitate for the total abolition of
property, as an injustice, a grievous wrong, a theft, with
M. Proudhon, or the Englishman Godwin. It is unjust that one
should have what another wants, or even more than another. What
right have you to ride in your coach or astride your spirited
barb while I am forced to trudge on foot? Nor can our
humanitarian stop there. Individuals are, and as long as there
are individuals will be, unequal: some are handsomer and some are
uglier, some wiser or sillier, more or less gifted, stronger or
weaker, taller or shorter, stouter or thinner than others, and
therefore some have natural advantages which others have not.
There is inequality, therefore injustice, which can be remedied
only by the abolition of all individualities, and the reduction
of all individuals to the race, or humanity, man in general. He
can find no limit to his agitation this side of vague generality,
which is no reality, but a pure nullity, for he respects no
territorial or individual circumscriptions, and must regard
creation itself as a blunder. This is not fancy, for he has
365
gone very nearly as far as it is here shown, if logical, be must
go.

The danger now is that the Union victory will, at home and
abroad, be interpreted as a victory won in the interest of social
or humanitarian democracy. It was because they regarded the war
waged on the side of the Union as waged in the interest of this
terrible democracy, that our bishops and clergy sympathized so
little with the Government in prosecuting it; not, as some
imagined, because they were disloyal, hostile to American or
territorial democracy, or not heartily in favor of freedom for
all men, whatever their race or complexion. They had no wish to
see slavery prolonged, the evils of which they, better than any
other class of men, knew, and more deeply deplored; none would
have regretted more than they to have seen the Union broken up;
but they held the socialistic or humanitarian democracy
represented by Northern abolitionists as hostile alike to the
Church and to civilization. For the same reason that they were
backward or reserved in their sympathy, all the humanitarian
sects at home and abroad were forward and even ostentatious in
theirs. The Catholics feared the war might result in encouraging
La Republiques democratique et sociale; the humanitarian sects
366
trusted that it would. If the victory of the Union should turn
out to be a victory for the humanitarian democracy, the civilized
world will have no reason to applaud it.

That there is some danger that for a time the victory will be
taken as a victory for humanitarianism or socialism, it would be
idle to deny. It is so taken now, and the humanitarian party
throughout the world are in ecstasies over it. The party claim
it. The European Socialists and Red Republicans applaud it, and
the Mazzinis and the Garibaldis inflict on us the deep
humiliation of their congratulations. A cause that can be
approved by the revolutionary leaders of European Liberals must
be strangely misunderstood, or have in it some infamous element.
It is no compliment to a nation to receive the congratulations of
men who assert not only people-king, but people-God; and those
Americans who are delighted with them are worse enemies to the
American democracy than ever were Jefferson Davis and his fellow
conspirators, and more contemptible, as the swindler is more
contemptible than the highwayman.

But it is probable the humanitarians have reckoned without their
host. Not they are the real victors. When the smoke of battle
has
367
cleared away, the victory, it will be seen, has been won by
the Republic, and that that alone has triumphed. The
abolitionists, in so far as they asserted the unity of the race
and opposed slavery as a denial of that unity, have also won; but
in so far as they denied the reality or authority of territorial
and individual circumscriptions, followed a purely socialistic
tendency, and sought to dissolve patriotism into a watery
sentimentality called philanthropy, have in reality been
crushingly defeated, as they will find when the late
insurrectionary States are fully reconstructed. The Southern or
egoistical democrats, so far as they denied the unity and
solidarity of the race, the rights of society over individuals,
and the equal rights of each and every individual in face of the
state, or the obligations of society to protect the weak and help
the helpless, have been also defeated; but so far as they
asserted personal or individual rights which society neither
gives nor can take away, and so far as they asserted, not State
sovereignty, but State rights, held independently of the General
government, and which limit its authority and sphere of action,
they share in the victory, as the future will prove.

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