Southern Loyalty

Why Southern LOYALTY? Observations (Excerpts) Of GERALD W. JOHNSON. THE SECESSION of the SOUTHERN STATES
CHAPTER II. THE SOUTH and the LAW (Page 79.) True, when Senator Seward, of New York, supported Calhoun’s prophecy by remarking, in this same debate, “ I feel assured that slavery must give way, and will give way, to the salutary instructions of economy, and to the ripening influences of humanity; that emancipation is inevitable and is near,” . . . In any event, Clay staved off war when the belief that slavery was rapidly destroying itself was no more than an opinion, and when there was, therefore, more excuse for war, either to protect it or to destroy it. His successors precipitated war when the inevitable self-destruction of slavery was a demonstrated fact, rendering war in behalf of it hopeless and war to destroy it needless. Clay had been dead five years when Hinton Rowan Helper, in 1857, published the book which removed the last vestige of an excuse for the Civil War, as far as that war was based on slavery. [The Impending Crisis of the South.] 80. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES Helper was almost the only man of the time who dealt with the question of slavery without illusions and without sentimentality— . . . He is apparently the only man to whom it occurred to examine slavery in another light than that of the opinions of the Founding Fathers of the government, of the Jewish patriarchs of the Old Testament, THE SOUTH AND THE LAW 81. of the nine Justices as expressed in the latest guess of the Supreme Court, of Garrison, Stringfellow and similar holy men, or of Mrs. Stowe, who had never seen a cabin belonging to Uncle Tom or any other slave. Helper bethought him of the United States Census reports, and began to dig into statistics. The results were amazing. They demolished so completely the “ positive good ” theory of Calhoun that not a trace of it was left. The theory that slave labor had made the South the great agricultural region of the country crashed before the simple information that the total value of all crops, cotton included, in 1850 had been, slave States, $155,223,415, free States, $214,422,523. And lest it should be argued that this reflected, not the agricultural efficiency, but the greater area of the free States, he added a table showing the bushels per acre production of such crops as wheat, oats, rye, Indian corn and Irish potatoes, showing in each and every case a heavy advantage for the free States. Then he took up various other aspects of the material development of the two sections, and filled page after page with tables, all compiled from the census reports and therefore beyond successful refutation, and all showing the South as dragging behind. The fellow was a devil with statistics. He not only refuted the claims of the spread-eagle orators; he obliterated them, 82. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES he buried them under an avalanche of figures from which no amount of digging could hope to exhume them. He took the South one State at a time and compared that State with some northern State fairly comparable either in area or population when the government was founded, showing where the northern State had arrived by 1850 and how far the southern State was lagging behind. The picture was appalling. No unbiased reader could doubt, after examining it, that slavery, as an economic system, was already a wreck and sinking fast. Any clear-minded Northerner should have been able to perceive that slavery, as a system, was not worth attacking, seeing that it was already collapsing under its own weight. Any clear-minded Southerner should have been able to perceive that no political defense of slavery was worth while, since economically it was swiftly ruining the South. But clear-minded men were precisely what the country lacked in 1857. Slavery by that time had become a moral issue, and when a political question becomes a moral issue reason and sense promptly depart from it and emotion is all that counts. THE SOUTH AND THE LAW 83. Nevertheless, there was enough of a caste system in the South to make the life of the poor white there markedly less comfortable than it was in the northern States; and the existence of castes was enough to give some color of truth to the Helper charges and therefore to delight the Abolitionists, on the one hand, and to sting the South into fury, on the other. So the violence and bitterness in The Impending Crisis were enough to furnish the South with an excuse for rejecting the whole book. Not that Helper asked the slave-holders to accept it. He asked nothing of them, except to stand up and take the war he brought. “ It is against slavery as a whole, and against slaveholders as a body, that we wage an exterminating war . . . the black list of three hundred and forty-seven thousand slave-holders who, as a body, have shocked the civilized world with their barbarous conduct, 84. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES and from whose conceited and presumptuous ranks are selected the officers who do all the legislation, town, county, state and national, for (against) five millions of poor, outraged whites and three millions of enslaved negroes.” The five millions of “ poor, outraged whites ” were Helper’s concern, and it was to them that he appealed. He was under no illusions about the Negroes, and not interested in their fate except as it affected that of his own people. What he failed to take into account was that such of the poor whites as could read had a pretty shrewd idea that this slavery business was only the entering wedge and that what the North was really interested in was less the abolition of Negro slavery than the establishment of white slavery, under a tariff system which should hold the South in ruinous economic bondage to the industrial North. If this movement toward tyranny were to be stopped, slavery seemed as good a point as any other at which to make the stand. That this belief was not without good ground will become apparent when we turn to consideration of the Northern attitude, which was one of ruthless disregard of the law, of the sacredness of contracts, and of every other consideration of tolerance and forbearance. For the North, too, had made a moral issue of the question, and having done so had thrown decency overboard. THE SOUTH AND THE LAW 85. Nevertheless, for all his raucous tones, Helper spoke truth, in part. His was the one voice raised in behalf of the men who, when the storm of war burst, were to feel its full force, the men who were to fill the ranks of the Confederate army and be the cannon-fodder. But so far was he from being heeded that mere possession of his book was made a criminal offense in some States, and John Sherman was defeated for Speaker of the House for having commended it, one member, Millson, of Virginia, remarking that he who “consciously, deliberately and of purpose lends his name and influence to the propagation of such writings is not only not fit to be a Speaker, he is not fit to live.” Truth was not much in fashion in American politics in 1857, nor for a long time thereafter. What was in fashion, . . . was the grand old game of politics. When the time came to select a Democratic nominee for the Presidency to succeed Buchanan— . . . an expert player of the game hove in sight from Illinois, and proceeded to play it out, even though the earth was heaving under his feet and calamity was in plain view. 86. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES This was Stephen A. Douglas, to whom it was given to precipitate the war through the method of attending strictly to his own business. Senator Douglas’s business was politics, and it must be admitted that he knew it thoroughly. THE SOUTH AND THE LAW 87. Douglas had played politics cleverly, but just a little too cleverly. He had played to the slavery gallery in the matter of the original Kansas- Nebraska bill, and then to the anti-slavery gallery in the matter of the Lecompton Constitution for Kansas. 88. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES Douglas was a great politician, but only a politician. Had he been the statesman he thought he was, at this juncture he would have sacrificed his own ambition, seeing that it was no time to adhere stubbornly to the rules of any political game. THE SOUTH AND THE LAW 89. As it was, he locked the convention. Lacking enough votes to nominate himself, he could yet veto any other nomination, and he employed his veto power inexorably. So the Democratic party was riven asunder. The deadlocked convention adjourned to meet again in Baltimore, and there Douglas was awarded, and received, his pound of flesh. But he, like Shylock, won his suit and disaster at the same time. For the Southerners nominated a second ticket, headed by Breckinridge, and thereby the election of Lincoln was assured. The Southerners, too, were within their rights. Everybody was within his rights, and by clinging stubbornly to their rights they contrived to inflict immeasurable wrong upon themselves, upon their country and upon their posterity. 90. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES Without doubt, in 1861, the South had the law behind her. But those who would urge this in her justification would do well to study the observation of Saint Paul, “ The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers.” Free Men for Better Job Performance. Lincoln— Becoming an Emancipator: (Ch. 3.) CONFEDERATED GOVERNMENT — STRONGEST OF ALL GOVERNMENTS? The Genesis of Conflict between States. Meating of the Minds? The Re-Union Party could Offer the Choice of political candidates, who are rejected by the Democrat and Republican Organizations. The American: His Morals. TaxJudas.com Isonomia.us *IPSEITY*.us LandGrab.US Eminent Domain - Condemnation: reduces Private Property to a priviledge, and creates Nomads.

Why Southern LOYALTY?
Observations (Excerpts) Of
GERALD W. JOHNSON.
THE SECESSION of the SOUTHERN STATES

CHAPTER II.
THE SOUTH and the LAW (Page 79.) True, when Senator Seward, of New York, supported Calhoun’s prophecy by remarking, in  this same debate, “ I  feel assured that slavery must give way, and will give way, to the salutary instructions of economy, and to the ripening influences of humanity; that emancipation is inevitable and is near,” . . .
In any event, Clay staved off war when the belief that slavery was rapidly destroying itself was no more than an opinion, and when there was, therefore, more excuse for war, either to protect it or to destroy it. His  successors precipitated war when the inevitable self-destruction of  slavery was a demonstrated fact, rendering war in behalf of  it hopeless and war to destroy  it needless.
Clay had been dead five years when Hinton Rowan Helper, in 1857, published the book which removed the last vestige of an excuse for the Civil War, as far as that war was based on slavery.
[The Impending Crisis of the South.]
80. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES
Helper was almost the only man of the time who dealt with the question of slavery without illusions and without sentimentality— . . . He is apparently the only man to whom it occurred to examine slavery in another light than that of the opinions of the Founding Fathers of the government, of the Jewish patriarchs of the Old Testament,

THE SOUTH AND THE LAW 81.
of the nine Justices as expressed in the latest guess of the Supreme Court, of Garrison, Stringfellow and similar holy men, or of Mrs. Stowe, who had never seen a cabin belonging to Uncle Tom or any other slave. Helper bethought him of the United States Census reports, and began to dig into statistics.
The results were amazing. They demolished so completely the “ positive good ” theory of Calhoun that not a trace of it was left. The theory that slave labor had made the South the great agricultural region of the country crashed before the simple information that the total value of all crops, cotton included, in 1850 had been, slave States, $155,223,415, free States, $214,422,523. And  lest it should be argued that this reflected, not the agricultural efficiency, but the greater area of the free States, he added a table showing the bushels per acre production of such crops as wheat, oats, rye, Indian corn and Irish potatoes, showing in each and every case a heavy advantage for the free States.   Then he took up various other aspects of the material development of the two sections, and filled page after page with tables, all compiled from the census reports and therefore beyond successful refutation, and all showing the South as dragging behind. The fellow was a devil with statistics. He not only refuted the claims of the spread-eagle orators; he obliterated  them,

82. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES
he buried them under an avalanche of figures from which no  amount of digging could hope to exhume them. He  took the South one  State at a time and compared that State with some northern State fairly comparable either in  area or population when the government was founded, showing where the northern State had arrived by  1850 and how far the southern State was lagging behind. The  picture was appalling. No  unbiased reader could doubt, after examining it, that slavery, as an economic system, was already a  wreck and sinking fast. Any clear-minded Northerner should have been able to perceive that slavery, as a  system, was  not worth attacking, seeing  that it was already collapsing under its own weight. Any clear-minded Southerner should have been able to perceive that no political defense of slavery was worth while, since economically it  was swiftly ruining the South.
But clear-minded men were precisely what the country lacked in  1857.   Slavery by that time had  become a moral issue, and when a political question becomes a moral  issue reason and sense promptly depart from  it and emotion is all that  counts.

THE SOUTH AND THE LAW 83.
Nevertheless, there was enough of a caste system in the South to make the life of the poor white there markedly less comfortable than it was in the northern States; and the existence of castes was enough to give some color of truth to the Helper charges and therefore to delight the Abolitionists, on the one hand, and to sting the South into fury, on the other.
So the violence and bitterness in The Impending Crisis were enough to furnish the South with an excuse for rejecting the whole book. Not  that Helper asked the slave-holders to accept it. He asked nothing of  them, except to stand up and take the war he brought. “ It is against slavery as  a whole, and against slaveholders as a body, that we wage an exterminating war . . . the  black list of three hundred and forty-seven thousand slave-holders who, as a body, have shocked the civilized world with their barbarous conduct,

84. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES
and from whose conceited and presumptuous ranks are selected the officers who do all the legislation, town, county, state and national, for (against) five millions of poor, outraged whites and three millions of enslaved negroes.”
The five millions of “ poor, outraged whites ” were Helper’s concern, and it was to them that he appealed. He was under no illusions about the Negroes, and not interested in their fate except as it affected that of his own people. What he failed to take into account was that such of the poor whites as could read had a pretty shrewd idea that this slavery business was only the entering wedge and that what the North was really interested in was less the abolition of Negro slavery than the establishment of white slavery, under a tariff system which should hold the South in ruinous economic bondage to the industrial North. If this movement toward tyranny were to be stopped, slavery seemed as good a point as any other at which to make the stand.
That this belief was not without good ground will become apparent when we turn to consideration of the Northern attitude, which was one of ruthless disregard of the law, of the sacredness of contracts, and of every other consideration of tolerance and forbearance. For the North, too, had made a moral issue of the question, and having done so had thrown decency overboard.

THE SOUTH AND THE LAW 85.
Nevertheless, for all his raucous tones, Helper spoke truth, in part. His was the one voice raised in behalf of the men who, when the storm of  war burst, were to feel its full force, the men who were to fill the ranks of the Confederate army and be the cannon-fodder. But so far was he from being heeded that mere possession of his book was made a criminal offense in some States, and John Sherman was defeated for Speaker of the House for having commended it, one member, Millson, of Virginia, remarking that he who “consciously, deliberately and of purpose lends his name and influence to the propagation of such writings is not only not fit to be a Speaker, he is not fit to live.” Truth was not much in fashion in American politics in  1857, nor for a long time thereafter.
What was in fashion, . . . was the grand old game of  politics. When the time came to select a Democratic nominee for the Presidency to succeed Buchanan— . . . an  expert player of the game hove in sight from Illinois, and proceeded to play it out, even though the earth was heaving under his feet and calamity was in plain view.

86. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES
This was Stephen A. Douglas, to whom it was given to precipitate the war through the method of attending strictly to his own business.
Senator Douglas’s business was politics, and it must be admitted that he knew it thoroughly.

THE SOUTH AND THE LAW 87.
Douglas had played politics cleverly, but just a little too cleverly. He had played to the slavery gallery in the matter of the original Kansas- Nebraska bill, and then to the anti-slavery gallery in the matter of the Lecompton Constitution for Kansas.

88. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES
Douglas was a great politician, but only a politician. Had he been the statesman he thought he was, at this juncture he would have sacrificed his own ambition, seeing that it was no time to adhere stubbornly to the rules of any political game.

THE SOUTH AND THE LAW 89.
As it was, he locked the convention. Lacking enough votes to nominate himself, he could yet veto any other nomination, and he employed his veto power inexorably.
So the Democratic party was riven asunder. The deadlocked convention adjourned to meet again in Baltimore, and there Douglas was awarded, and received, his pound of  flesh. But he, like Shylock, won his  suit and disaster at the same time. For the Southerners nominated a second ticket, headed by Breckinridge, and thereby the election of Lincoln was assured. The Southerners, too, were within their rights. Everybody was within his rights, and by  clinging stubbornly to their rights they contrived to inflict immeasurable wrong upon themselves, upon their country and upon their  posterity.

90. THE SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES
Without doubt, in 1861, the South had the law behind her. But  those who would urge this in her justification would do well to study the observation of Saint Paul, “ The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and  disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for  murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers.”

Free Men for Better Job Performance.

Lincoln— Becoming an Emancipator: (Ch. 3.)

CONFEDERATED GOVERNMENT —
STRONGEST OF ALL GOVERNMENTS?

The Genesis of Conflict between States.
Meating of the Minds?

The Re-Union Party could Offer the Choice of political candidates, who are rejected by the Democrat and Republican Organizations.
The American: His Morals.
TaxJudas.com
Isonomia.us
IPSEITY.us
LandGrab.US
Eminent Domain - Condemnation:
reduces Private Property to a priviledge,
and creates Nomads.