South and the North of the 19th Century

South and the North of the 19th Century

Dear Trevor,

As I write this, I can hear faint yells and cheers through my window. Somewhere, the city of Charleston still celebrates. You'll have heard why by the time my letter arrives. Secession. It was no secret that it would happen when Lincoln, that great ape, was elected. As many years as we've been on the receiving end of Yankee insults and "compromises," I wonder why we took so long.

You and I have talked about our peculiar institution, and I know you disapprove, but then, you have not been around Negroes. They are not our equals. They need us to care for them and direct them, and we need them to work the fields and keep our farms and plantations running. There is no immorality, no terrible sin. Merely an advantageous arrangement for both sides. But the Yankees don't see it that way. They want to do away with slavery, even though God knows they don't want to live and work next to a Negro man. So, their compromises began.

First was the Missouri compromise. That one came in along in 1820. Basically, Missouri entered as a slave state, Maine a free state. And then it banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes. That one was bad news, and the South knew it.

Secession almost happened about ten years later, in the 1830's, when South Carolina declared Andrew Jackson's tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void. How often I heard my father complain about the federal government laying taxes on our sovereign state. But President Jackson threatened to send troops into South Carolina, and to our everlasting shame, we eventually backed down.

Secession might also have happened a little more than ten years ago, in 1846, when Wilmot tried to pass his bill saying that no slavery could exist in any of the lands conquered in the Mexican War. Even though it never passed the Senate, you should have heard the hue and cry down here. Worse, a few years later Taylor -- a Southerner of all people -- betrayed us by allowing California to enter the union as a free state. That should have sparked secession. But it didn't. Instead it sparked talk, and more talk, and compromise. Clay's Compromise of 1850, to be exact, saying that while California would enter as a free state, New Mexico and Utah would be territories, and the citizens themselves could decide about slavery. John Calhoun tried to tell us we should leave the union then, but we didn't listen. (Naden & Blue, 2000).

Then, in 1854, came Kansas and Nebraska. Some wanted to cling to that damn outdated Missouri Compromise and have both states enter the union as free states. Nonsense! Then Stephen Douglas came along -- a pugnacious little man from Illinois -- and suggested the Kansas-Nebraska compromise which would allow the people of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether they wanted to be slave states or free states. And didn't that end up a nice mess, with Kansas having two governments, no one sure which to acknowledge.

And now we've got an ape of a president who opposes any further spread of slavery. Even though you and I don't always agree, Trevor, I'm sure you can see how the South has been insulted and belittled again and again. It is time to divorce ourselves from the union that has never been kind to us. If that means war, well, let it be war.

Yours, Beau

March 30, 1861

Dear Trevor,

Hello from your abolitionist friend. You asked me once how I came to be so militant. My father and mother were part of the Great Awakening in the 1820's, and I inherited my faith in God and my passion for freedom from them. Though I know you've always felt me too radical, I must point out that history is proving out the words of Mr. John Brown, who repeatedly said that the issue of slavery can only be settled through violence. Eight states have now seceded from the union, and President Lincoln is vowing war to hold the union together. Honestly, I do wish the man were a bit more of an abolitionist! He would have gladly left slavery untouched in the South, merely would have forbid any new territories from entering the union as slave states. How much more reasonable can you be than that, especially when you're dealing with an institution like slavery which is inherently evil?

I know you felt John Brown's actions in Kansas and at Harper's Ferry were wicked. I must agree the behavior was perhaps undesirable, but the motives were pure. Brown saw what should now be self evident. Slavery will not end by talk, nor by compromise. It will end, simply, when men and women of good conscience end it, violently if need be. As far as I'm concerned, Brown is a martyr. I wish the Negroes had taken up arms for his cause. Slave owners would be a little less complacent if they thought their "property" might well murder them in their sleep.

You mentioned that you had once heard the great Frederick Douglass speak. Having done so, how can you have anything but contempt for those who would enslave such a man? The government has played along with the South and their damned "peculiar institution" for far too long. Look at the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Ordinary citizens compelled to become slave hunters, any black man or woman even thought to be a slave sent away without trial or a chance to plead their own defense! And this is true in the so-called free states as well as the slave states. This was not a compromise. It was an out and out concession of which all good Christian men and women should be ashamed.