The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863: Devoted To Literature And National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Is there anything in the way of this union? Is there a morbid growth--a
cause of irritation and disease tending to dissolution? Then, it must be
removed. Is ambitious and reckless demagoguism to be apprehended? Then
educate the people and diffuse science. But is there not still a worse
devil to be cast out? Where slavery is, you cannot educate the people,
you cannot diffuse science; and without enlightenment there can be no
political justice, since unprincipled demagogues will sway all political
destiny. Slavery cannot always exist side by side with freedom; it is
the natural enemy of union, the enemy of civilization. Prominent
secession leaders have admitted that slavery is the cause of this war,
boasting at the same time that the confederate constitution is founded
on a scientific distinction of races. Without slavery there could be no
sufficient motive for the independent national existence of the South.
Had there been no slavery, there had been no civil war. This is, at the
present time, the political significance of the institution. There is no
safety but in its extinction--so far at least as the border Slave States
are concerned, in order to overthrow its power in the United States
Senate, to enlarge the sympathies of freedom, and weaken and
circumscribe the chances for revolutionary movements which slavery will
be ready at any critical moment to precipitate against the Union.
If we have not misinterpreted the law of development, slavery, as it
exists in this country, is a morbid political condition, a social
disease, which stands in the way of the natural course of social
evolution. In this law, therefore, is written the doom of slavery. The
enlightened world will not always permit it to blast the fair field of
civilization by its poisonous presence.
There is a law of human movement by which predominating conditions
extend and perpetuate themselves, overcoming those which are weaker and
on the wane. We observed this in our brief survey of the feudal system.
Freedom is now in the ascendant, and slavery must go down. And since
secession is the child of slavery, and both at war with the cardinal
principles of progressive civilization, it is meet that both should fall
together.
This war may not directly extinguish slavery, and it may; we do not see
the end. But if not directly, we believe the war is, nevertheless,
indirectly setting those forces into action which will eventually
extinguish the institution. If the 'confederacy' should be destroyed,
as, if not saved by foreign intervention, it certainly will be, slavery,
if not already dead, will be pent up, and, in that case, will soon die
by its own hands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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