Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/284

 278 Southern Historical Society Papers.

of nature. No teaching can turn a black man into a white one. The question which in days of controversy the North heard with such wrath from the mouth of the South, ' Would you like your daughter to marry a nigger ? ' lies at the root of the matter. * Where the closest of human connections is in any lawful form looked on as impossible there is no real fellowship. The artificial tie of citizen- ship is in such cases a mockery."

WHAT EMANCIPATION MEANT.

The sequel has shown that the emancipation which descended from the North meant a reconstruction of society, which could only be made effective by force. It carried in its wake the expulsion of a State legislature from its proper hall by the bayonets of the United States. It meant the emancipators themselves being judge that government of force which is indispensable when nature is super- seded. It meant that which for eight years we had a government' of the bayonet, by the bayonet, and for the bayonet. One who has gained his title to popular applause by meriting the title of "Czar," very lately renewed his adhesion to this peculiar type of popular government. "They said," he exclaimed, " we could not coerce a State. We coerced eleven. I wish our Republicans had more courage, and we should coerce them until liberty prevails all over this land." In one sense the speech is logical. It is the reasoning of logicians who, "false to freedom, sought to quell the free." Only by force bills is the argument of the South refuted. And yet it is a droll idea of liberty which seeks to instill its blessings at the point of the sword. The distinction between freedom and despotism grows so alarmingly indistinct. No better proof could be given of the extent to which the movement, vainly resisted by the South, has revolutionized free institutions, than that such a compulsory free- dom should have been the serious thought and purposed order of the day. " What is all the noise in the street ? " said a gentleman in conscription time in New York. "Oh, nothing, sir," said Pat, "they are only forcing a man to turn volunteer." Such would be the comedy of the new logic if its serious adoption does not turn it into tragedy.

whereby the missionaries of a higher culture have exposed the illogical and slightly barbarian mental attitude of the South. But to this enlightened scholar the question seems to have several signs of hereditary intelligence.
 * For years the repetition of this question has been the standing gibe