Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/273

 THE CIVIL WAR AS SEEN THROUGH SOUTHERN

GLASSES.

IT is a mistake to suppose that the war between the states was fought in defense of slavery. The emancipation of the slaves was neither its producing cause nor its object. That emancipa- tion was an afterthought, a kind of dernier resort on the part of the North to bring about the desired end, when other means seemed failing, is a matter of history. "Submission 0r emanci- pation!" was the ultimatum submitted to the southern states by President Lincoln. It was not the fear of losing its slaves, therefore, that drove the South into arms in 1861, but rather the fear of losing those rights bequeathed to it by its revolutionary sires and solemnly guaranteed to it by the constitution of the United States.

The real question at issue between the sections was a political one, viz., the relative claims and advantages of a Republican or a Federal form of government. The South stood solidly for the former; the North, as a whole, as solidly for the latter; and from the southern point of view the war was fought in defense of constitutional rights, and was quite as much a struggle for liberty as was the earlier and more successful struggle of 1776. In proof of which assertion let us betake ourselves to a con- sideration of the facts.

Our investigation will carry us up the stream of national history until we reach its source, and there, in what may be termed the political "protoplasm" out of which the government was evolved, we shall discover the "germs" from which sprang the original party differences of North and South.

Luther Martin, himself one of the distinguished members of the Constitutional Convention, informs us that "there was one party whose object and wish was to abolish and annihilate all the state governments, and to bring forward one general government over all this extended continent, of a monarchical nature." The

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