Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/280

 266 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

crusade it failed to acquaint itself with the real facts of the case, and the conditions actually existing. For, be it remembered, the question was not whether the dower of negro slavery bestowed upon the South by her English mother, and still more firmly settled upon her by her northern sisters, was a blessing or a curse, but simply whether under existing conditions (conditions in no wise the result of her own choice) there was any alternative left her?

I do not arrogate to myself a prophet's powers, but judging from the signs of the times it may yet be that ere the close of this new century the world will have discovered that, in face of the facts confronting it, the institution of negro slavery as it existed in the southern states of the American Union, so far from being an outrage on civilization, was, on the whole, at once the most humane and the most practical method ever devised for "bearing the white man's burden."

In conjunction with this slavery agitation the great northern heart was still further fired by an artful appeal to its patriotism. That the masses responded readily and heartily to this appeal is greatly to their credit. But in view of the facts we have just been considering it is impossible to escape the conviction that those most potent catch-words, " Our flag!" and "Our country!" were catchwords merely, on the lips of the leaders, who used them to stir up popular feeling and secure their personal ends thereby. Magic words, they are, to conjure with always, the whole earth round ! Yet do they sometimes represent a sentiment rather than a substance. Or, to change the mode of expression somewhat, the better to suit the case in point, they may stand for an outward semblance from which the animating essential spirit has departed. Thus with the fetich of "the Union," the federation of the states under the constitution as it existed up to 1861 was, as a northern writer well expressed it, "justly to be regarded as one of the greatest and most momentous political experiments the world has ever seen." But when the same writer goes on to ask whether "such a unique political combination should have been allowed to goto pieces in order to retain the continuation of negro slavery in the South " the reply is self-evident. For the peculiar