A Defence of Virginia. Robert Lewis Dabney
allowed to flow unchecked, its silent waters gradually undermine the sternest obstacles. This great truth men of thought are more apt to recognize than men of action. While the true statesman is fully awake to it, the mere politician is unconscious of its power; and when his expedients—his parties and his statutes—have all been silently swept away by the diffusion of abstract principles opposed to them, he cannot understand his overthrow. If the late Confederate States would have gained that to which they aspired, the position of a respectable and prosperous people among the nations of the world, it was extremely important that they should secure from their neighbours a more just appreciation of their institutions. A respectful and powerful appeal in defence of those institutions was due to our neighbours' opinions, unfair and unkind as they have been to us; and due to our own rights and self-respect.
Our mere politicians committed an error in this particular, while we were still members of the United States, by which we should now learn. They failed to meet the Abolitionists with sufficient persistence and force on the radical question—the righteousness of African servitude as existing among us. It is true that this fundamental point has received a discussion at the South, chiefly at the hands of clergymen and literary men, which has evoked a number of works of the highest merit and power, constituting almost a literature on the subject. One valuable effect of this literature was to enlighten and satisfy the Southern mind, and to produce a settled unanimity of opinion, even greater than that which existed against us in other States. But such is the customary and overweening egotism of the Yankee mind, that none of these works, whatever their merit, could ever obtain general circulation or reading in the North. People there were satisfied to read only their own shallow and one-sided arguments, quietly treating us as though our guilt was too clear to admit of any argument, or we were too inferior to be capable of it. The consequence was, that although the North has made the wrongs of the African its own peculiar cause—its great master-question—it is pitiably ignorant of the facts and arguments of the case. After twenty-five years of discussion, we find that the staple of the logic of their writers is still the same set of miserable and shallow sophisms, which Southern divines and statesmen have threshed into dust, and driven away as the chaff before the whirlwind, so long ago, and so often, that any intelligent man among us is almost ashamed to allude to them as requiring an answer. When the polemic heat of this quarrel shall have passed away, and the dispassionate antiquary shall compare the literature of the two parties, he will be amazed to see that of the popular one so poor, beggarly, and false, and that of the unpopular one so manly, philosophic, and powerful. But at present, such is the clamour of prejudice, our cause has not obtained a hearing from the world.
The North having arrogated to itself the name of chief manufacturer of literary material, and having chief control of the channels of foreign intercourse, of course our plea has been less listened to across the Atlantic than in America. The South has been condemned unheard. Well-informed men in Great Britain, we presume, are ignorant of the names and works of the able and dignified advocates to whom the South confidently and proudly committed her justification; and were willing to render their verdict upon the mere accusations of our interested slanderers. But while the United States yet existed unbroken, there was one forum, where we could have demanded a hearing upon the fundamental question: the Federal Legislature. From that centre of universal attention, our defence of the righteousness of the relation of master and slave, as existing among us, might have been spread before the public mind; and the abstract question having been decided by triumphant argument, the troubles of our Federal relations might possibly have been quieted. There were two courses, either of which might have been followed by our politicians, in defending our Federal rights against Abolitionism. One plan would have been, to exclude the whole question of slavery persistently from the national councils, as extra-constitutional and dangerous, and to assert this exclusion always, and at every risk, as the essential condition of the continuance of the South in those councils. The other plan was, to meet that abstract question from the first, as underlying and determining the whole subject, and to debate it everywhere, until it was decided, and the verdict of the national mind was passed upon it. Unfortunately, the Southern men did neither persistently. After temporary resistance, they permitted the debate; and then failed to conduct it on fundamental principles. With the exception of Mr. Calhoun, (whom events have now shown to have been the most far-seeing of our statesmen, notwithstanding the fashion of men to depreciate him as an "abstractionist" while he lived,) Southern politicians usually satisfied themselves with saying, that the whole matter was, according to the Constitution, one of State sovereignty; that Congress had no right to legislate concerning its merits; and that therefore they would not seem to admit such a right, by condescending to argue the matter on its merits. The premise was true; but the inference was practically most mischievous. If the Congress had no right to legislate about slavery, then it should not have been permitted to debate it. And Southern men, if they intended to make their stand on that ground, should have exacted the exclusion of all debate, at every cost. But this was perhaps impossible. The debate came; and, of course, the principles agitated ran at once back of the Constitution, to the abstract ethical question: "Is the holding of an African slave in the South a moral wrong in itself?" Southern men should have industriously followed them there; but they did not do it: and soon the heat and animosity of an aggressive and growing faction hurried the country beyond the point of calm consideration. A moment's reflection should have shown that the decisive question was the abstract righteousness of the relation of master and slave. The Constitution gave to the Federal Government no power over that relation in the States. True; but that Constitution was a compact between sovereign commonwealth: it certainly gave recognition and protection to the relation of master and slave; and if that relation is intrinsically unrighteous, then it protected a wrong. Then the sovereign States of the North were found in the attitude of protecting a wrong by their voluntary compact; and therefore it would have been the duty of all citizens of those States to seek, by all righteous means, the amendment or repeal of that compact. They would not, indeed, have been justified to claim all the benefits of the compact, and still agitate under it a matter which the compact excluded. But they would have been more than justified, they would have been bound to clear their skirts of the wrong, by surrendering the compact, if necessary. There was no evasion from the duty, except by proving that the Constitution did nothing unrighteous by protecting the relation; in other words, that the relation was not unrighteous. Again, on the subject of the "Higher Law," our conservative statesmen and divines threw up a vast amount of pious dust. This partially quieted the country for a time; but, as might have been foreseen, it was destined to be inevitably blown away. There is a higher law, superior to constitutions and statutes; not, indeed, the perjured and unprincipled cant which has no conscience against swearing allegiance to a Constitution and laws which it declares sinful, in order to grasp emoluments and advantages, and then pleads "conscience" for disobeying what it had voluntarily sworn to obey; but the everlasting law of right in the word of God. Constitutions and laws which contravene this, ought to be lawfully amended or repealed; and it is the duty of all citizens to seek it. Let this be applied to the Fugitive Slave Law. If the bondage was intrinsically unrighteous, then the Federal law which aided in remanding the fugitive to it, legalized a wrong. It became, therefore, the duty of all United States officers, who were required by statute to execute this law—not, indeed, to hold their offices and emoluments, and swear fidelity, and then plead conscientious scruples for the neglect of these sworn functions, (for this is a detestable union of theft and perjury with hypocrisy,)—but to resign those offices wholly, with their profits and their sinful functions. It would have become the duty of any private citizen, who might have been summoned by a United States officer, to act in a posse, guard, or any other way in enforcing this law, to decline obedience; and then, in accordance with Scripture, to submit meekly to the legal penalty of such a refusal, until the unrighteous law were repealed. But, moreover, it would have become the right and duty of these and all other citizens to seek the repeal of that law, or, if necessary, the abrogation of that Federal compact which necessitated it. But on the other hand, when we proved that the relation of master and slave is not unrighteous, and that therefore the Fugitive Slave Law required the perpetration of no wrong, and was constitutional, it became the clear moral duty of every citizen to concur in obeying it.
Once more: the true key of the more commanding question of free soil was in the same abstract ethical point. If the relation of master and servant was unrighteous, and the institution a standing sin against God and