Tag: Southern Literary Messenger

The Revolutions of 1776 and 1861 Contrasted

It is hard to express how radically dif­ferent the thinking of many Southerners was during the Civil War from anything we would recognize in the United States today. We may point, however, to this 1863 article by George Fitzhugh, which was published in the Southern Literary Messenger, the nearest thing the Confederacy had to a canonical journal of Southern opinion. Fitzhugh com­pletely repudiates the Declaration of Independence and all the prin­ciples embodied in it, and lays down a doctrine of absolute tyranny. Down with bills of rights; down with religious toleration; down with the consent of the governed; down with human equality; it would have been better had those ideas never been formed. The same issue, by the way, included an article—long enough for a sub­stantial book—proving that the good free people of the South were racially different from Yankees. In the era after the Civil War, Southerners developed the com­forting myth that they had rebelled for the sake of things all Americans agree on—freedom, self-determination, and so on. It may have been so for some, but the secession was led by men who had much more radical opinions.

The Revolution of 1776 was, when subjected to the searching analysis of learned and compre­hensive philosophy, the com­monest thing in nature. The birth of a child, or the weaning of a calf, excites no wonder, and stirs up no fanatical ardor, because of their frequent occurrence; yet the birth of a nation, or the separation of a colony from its parent stem, are events quite as much in the order of nature as the birth of a child, the weaning of a calf, or the dropping of the ripened apple from its parent stem. The Revolution of 1776 had nothing dramatic, nothing novel, nothing grand about it. Every child and every chicken, that, getting old enough and strong enough to take care of itself, quits its parents and sets up for itself, is quite as singular and admirable a spectacle, as that of the thirteen adult States of America solemnly resolving to cut loose from the state of pupilage and dependence on their parent, England, and ever there­after to assert and enjoy the rights of inde­pen­dent manhood. It was an exceedingly vulgar, common-place affair; it had nothing poetic or dramatic about it. A birth, a christening, a circum­cision, or the induing of the “toga virilis”—in fact, anything that marked an epoch in life, was quite as admirable as this weaning of the American calf from its trans-Atlantic dam.

Colonies are sure to set up for themselves when strong enough to do so, and had been thus setting up for themselves since the world began, and excited no wonder by the procedure. So well aware were the Greeks of this fact, that they anticipated and obviated this weaning process, which whether it occur with Colonies, calves or chickens, occasions heart-burning, family quarrels, scratching and pecking and fighting—that they sent out their Colonies as full-fledged and independent nations. Declarations of Inde­pendence were unknown then. Nothing so pompous, so mal apropos and so silly is to be found in history, until our Revolution of ’76. A hundred guns are fired when a Prince is born in France, yet all the artillery in the world, fired simultaneously, could not make the birth or the weaning of a baby or a nation a grand or imposing event. Either occurrence is decidedly vulgar and common-place, and Columbian Orators, or fourth of July orations, and lengthy Columbiads, in endeavoring to celebrate and dramatise them, only serve to render them more ridiculous.

All the bombastic absurdities in our Declara­tion of Inde­pen­dence about the inalienable rights of man, had about as much to do with the occasion, as would a sermon or an oration on the teething of a child or the kittening of a cat.

Glendower.      …At my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets; and at my birth,
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shak’d like a coward.
Hotspur.      Why so it would have done
At the same season, if your mother’s cat had
But kitten’d.

[King Henry IV, act 3d, scene 1st.

It would have been well for us, if the seemingly pompous inanities of the Declaration of Independence, of the Virginia Bill of Rights and the Act of Religious Toleration had remained dead letters. But they had a strength, a vitality and a meaning in them, utterly uncom­pre­hended by their charla­tanic, half-learned, pedantic authors, which rendered them most potent engines of destruction. Our institu­tions, State and Federal, imported from England, where they had grown up naturally and imperceptibly, and adapted to our peculiar circumstances by like natural growth and accretion, might, and would, have lasted for very many ages, had not silly, thought­less, half-informed, specu­lative charlatans, like Jefferson, succeeded in basing them on such inflammable and explosive materials as those to be found in the instruments which we have mentioned. The doctrines which they contain are borrowed, almost literally, from Locke’s Essays on Government—Locke distin­guished himself in pure meta­physics—deceived and led astray the philosophic world, for two centuries, by a system of materialism and consequent infidelity, which he himself did not comprehend, or at least, the necessary deductions from which he did not foresee. A professing Christian himself, he is the father of all modern infidelity—infidelity in religion, in morals, in everything. Rousseau borrowed from him, and sowed his infidel and anarchical principles broadcast throughout Christendom. Locke’s meta­physics ignored all innate ideas, all instincts, all intuition and involuntary faiths, beliefs and opinions. Man, according to his doctrine, is a mere reasoning machine, and derives all his knowledge and all his judgments and opinions from impressions made upon his mind, through the medium of his senses, by external objects. It is not our business now to refute this theory nor to follow it out theoretically or historically, into its materialistic, infidel and anarchical conse­quences. We have only to do with him as a political pedagogue: as a presumptuous charlatan, who, as ignorant of the science and practice of government as any shoemaker or horse jockey, attempted to introduce his false and infidel metaphysics into the field of politics.

Aristotle had taught, and his teachings had been respected and heeded for two thousand years, that society or government, was natural to man; that he was born under government, born a member of society, and did not originate government and society; that men, like bees, and ants, and herds and flocks, were impelled into society by their natures, their wants, their instincts and intuitions; that, in fact, society and government, in their origin and grand outlines, were the works of God, and not of man. He taught further, that in all societies some were formed by nature to command and others to obey; that inequality, not equality, was the necessary condition of men, bees, ants and all other social and gregarious animals: for society can only exist as a series of subordinations. Hence, he (Aristotle) begins his treatise on government with a dissertation on the family, and on slaves as a natural and appropriate part of the family. Human inequality and the natural, God-made organ of society and of government are the distinguishing features of his political doctrines.

Human equality, and the origination and entire construction of society and government by man, are the distinguishing, and only distinguishing features of the would-be political philosophy of Locke. He teaches the doctrine of the social contract or compact, and distinctly explains it to mean, that men are not by nature social animals, but originally lived each adult separate, to himself, inde­pendent and self-governing. That society is an institution which in process of time grew out of positive agreement or compact, and that only those who entered into this agreement were bound by it. This is all absurd enough; but he is not content with this glaring fatuity. He adds, that not only originally did men become members of society by positive agreement, but that even now no one becomes a subject of government or a member of society except by express agreement.

His metaphysic drove him to these monstrous conclusions, for to admit that society was instinc­tive and not the result of reasoning from experience, was to admit the doctrine of innate ideas—the doctrine of Aristotle and the Peripatetics, which his philosophy was intended to refute.…

Locke’s doctrine of human equality, which was incorporated into the declaration of Independence, and put into active force in the Chicago Platform, is thus expressed in the beginning of his 8th chapter on Civil Government: “Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of his estate, and subjected to the political force of another without his own consent.” The only way by which any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe and peaceable living, one among another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any that are not “of it.”

This passage in Locke is almost literally copied into the first two sentences of the Declaration of Independence. First, “all men are created equal.” That is Locke’s doctrine. Secondly, “governments are instituted among men.” That is, man is not like other gregarious animals, born into society, born a member and subject of government; but society and government are human institutions and discoveries, not pre-ordained by God, like flocks, and hives and herds. This is an infidel doctrine of Locke’s and of the Declaration of Independence. Thirdly, “that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Now, men and horses, and all creatures subject to government, submit to be governed, but do not consent to be governed. A consent government is no government, for it implies that all shall think alike, “con-sentio.” But to constitute government at all, the rulers must think for those who are ruled. Those who consent are not governed, for to be governed implies that one is required and compelled to do, by a superior power, that which, left to himself, he would not do. He alone is governed, whose will is subjected and controlled by the will of another. He submits, but does not consent.

These doctrines of Locke put into distinct and imposing form, in the Declaration of Independence, and exported from America to France, acted like a torpedo shot into a magazine. They blew up first the French monarchy, and soon thereafter all the monarchies of Western Europe, but established in their stead, not the absurdity of a “consent government,” but the great military despotism of Bonaparte.…

We now come to the Southern Revolution of 1S61, which we maintain was reactionary and conservative—a rolling back of the excesses of the Reformation—of Reformation run mad—a solemn protest against the doctrines of natural liberty, human equality and the social contract, as taught by Locke and the American sages of 1776, and an equally solemn protest against the doctrines of Adam Smith, Franklin, Say, Tom Paine, and the rest of the infidel political economists who maintain that the world is too much governed, “Pas trop gouverner,” and should not be governed at all, but “Let alone,” “Laissez nous faire.” This reaction commenced in 1840, as we have said, under the lead of Calhoun, Tyler, and R. M. T. Hunter—Kendall, and Blair, and Benton, and their base, radical and destructive clique, were then ousted from their places as leaders of the Southern Democracy, and the States Rights Whig party took their places and controlled the action of the South. In truth, the Democratic party of the South became Whig and conservative, but retained its name and its offices. The reason of this new departure was, that it was perceived that the doctrines of Jefferson and of the other illustrious Fathers of the Republic were being successfully employed to justify abolition and to upset the whole social system of the South—besides, excluding her from equal or any participation in the public lands, most of which she had acquired against the protests of the North, that was now greedily and rapaciously seeking to monopolize them.…

Outside pressure will combine with inside necessity (slavery) to make us conservative, and to perpetuate our Confederacy and our State institutions. We must cling together, in order to be always prepared to resist, not only to resist the rapacity and fanaticism of the North, but to make head, if necessary, against the abolition machinations of the rest of Christendom. Conservatives by blood, feeling, choice and necessity, we may well hope and expect that our Confederacy will be of long and glorious duration.

——The Literary Messenger, November & December 1863.

We Are Not Losing the War

The Southern Literary Messenger, the brightest literary light of the South, continued publishing nearly to the end of the Civil War. Here in the February 1864 issue we find the editor ruminating on the pessimism of Confederate citizens and the many reasons to be cheerful about the prospects of the war. You may take it as a sign that your war is going badly for you if you find it necessary to enumerate all the reasons why you still might not lose. Perhaps it is also a bad sign that you have no one left who can tell you how to spell “panacea” or “mobilized,” or even “Southerner.”

Whatever may be the cause, the fact is sufficiently patent to be undeniable, that the popular mind, for months past, has laboured under a burden of sore depression. The assertion of a correspondent of an English paper, that the resolution of the South, so energetic in success, and indomitable in actual contest, staggers under the weight of misfortune and reverse, has in the lapse of the past six months received a substantial verification, which their unflinching fortitude and heroic constancy in previous stages of the war, equally attended by calamity and disappointment, had little prepared us to expect.

The leading causes of popular anxiety and apprehension, besides a countless variety of causes of minor weight, mutually co-operative, and perhaps all depending for their remedy upon the happy and successful solution of the more important problems, are the depreciation of the currency, the scarcity of supplies, and the absence of military success. As to the extent to which the first difficulty has been aggravated by the last, and the second by the concomitant action of both the others, it is needless to conjecture.

The great heart of the nation throbs with impatient solicitude as it awaits the application of the wished-for relief, and calculates the probabilities of its restoration to that elastic energy and buoyant hopefulness which, to the Southernor, is everything for contentment in quiet, and enthusiastic exertion in time of trial. With reference to the question of the currency, we will express no opinion, though the apprehension is well-founded, that if astute financial abilities in Congress be necessary, we have more to hope from future military success in the improvement of our finances, than from the fortunate consummation of any expedients of legislation. It is an exceedingly difficult matter for a politician to become so thoroughly imbued with the inspiration of patriotic devotion and self-sacrifice, as to forget entirely the consideration of his chances of re-election.

The question of supplies we believe to be greatly dependent upon the achievement of that military success, which after all, in time of war, is the great nepenthe, the panecea for national affliction, and which in the happy prosecution of the spring campaign will restore to us the country upon which we have been mainly dependent for supplies, and such additional territory as with a proper employment of the opportunity, will definitely put at rest the question of subsistence.

Many persons find it difficult to comprehend the possibility of such military results as are essential to our salvation, in the face of the disasters of last summer. That is as an exceedingly superficial and unintelligent view of the situation, which regards those events as having exercised any seriously adverse influence upon the fortunes of the Confederacy. The taking of a city, the gaining of a battle, the capture of an army, or even the subjection of a province, is but a small advance over the obstacles besetting the path which leads to the attainment of the object of an invasion which contemplates the conquest of half a continent. Napoleon won the battle of Borodino, in the attainment of those ends which are usually regarded as the elements of success in battle, viz: the discomfiture and. retreat of the enemy. He advanced to the heart of the most extensive empire of modern Europe, but in a few weeks retreated with an army almost annihilated and without another general engagement. Grant, who is for the nonce the military idol of Yankeedom, and who is to be the Agamemnon of the next crusade against us, has himself illustrated even in his brief career of martial glory, the impracticability of successful penetration of hostile territory in his memorable retreat from upper Mississippi, when Van Dorn captured his supplies at Holly Springs.

But what is there in the military situation which forbids the confident anticipation of the expulsion of the enemy, in the spring and summer, from the more vital sections of our territory? What have they now that they either did not have or could not have obtained twelve months since? The Mississippi river, and the country about Chattanooga. This answer comprehends the entire result of Yankee labour in the last twelve months. They claim to hold Tennessee. Yet only a few days since we are informed of the exploits of the indomitable Forrest in the very midst of the Federal garrisons, and with a force mainly recruited and organized within three months. Johnston is with the main army of Tennessee, imparting the inspiration and energy of his martial genius—and most bravely the work of re-organization and improvement progresses. Longstreet, with his invincible corps of trained veterans, from the unequalled cohorts of Northern Virginia, holds with an unrelaxed grasp the mountain passes of East Tennessee, ready, with the swoop of an eagle, to dash into Kentucky upon the unprotected flank of Grant, or to fall upon the more exposed situations of Federal power in Tennessee. Lee’s unconquered battalions, often victors than the Old Guard of Austerlitz, or the Tenth Legion of Caesar, are still intact, and present the old front of proud defiance to their ancient foe, whom to meet, with them, has been to conquer.

To offset all these cheering features of the situation, we are told of Yankee perseverance, of Yankee enthusiasm for the prosecution of the war, and of resolutions in the Yankee Congress pledging all their power and resources for its prosecution, and even of Yankee intention to raise a million of men to release their prisoners. As to the latter proposition, we wonder that while in their facetious mood, they did not think of a crusade of old women and bedlamites to march to the moon. The mob of crazy fanatics and conscience-stricken fools, who followed Peter the Hermit to the Holy Land, were nothing compared to such a spectacle as this army of Yankee Humanitarians. We can imagine the derision with which such a scheme will be received in Lee’s army after its experience with Pennsylvania militia last summer. Yankee perseverance we are already familiar with, having pitted Southern endurance and fortitude against it, and successfully withstood its most malignant exertions for nearly three years. To talk of Yankee enthusiasm in favour of the war, is absurd, when we remember the results of the last draft, that bounties, of $1,800 are now vainly offered in New York, and that the commutation feature of the conscription act has been repealed in consequence of the indisposition to enter the service of everybody who could purchase an exemption.

Panic or alarm are equally out of place in either people or legislators. We need not fear Yankee perseverance, or Yankee numbers. Better far than all these are a compact military organization, so disciplined and mobolized as to be thrown upon the enemy at any available point, prudent generalship, wise statesmanship, official integrity, and an inexorable devotion to our national independence.

——From the Southern Literary Messenger, February, 1864.