THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
United States turned upon the question of human slavery; that the Southern States seceded from the Union, not on account of any metaphysical point of States' rights, but simply because the election had gone against the slave-holding interest, it having demonstrated that the slave-holding interest would no longer be permitted to rule the Union; that the secessionists had set up an independent confederacy, not to vindicate the constitutional liberty of the citizen and the right of man to govern himself, but to vindicate the right of one man to enslave another man, and, as they themselves boastingly confessed, to “found an empire upon the cornerstone of slavery”; and that our civil war, although conducted on our side, primarily and in conformity with our legal position, for the purpose of maintaining or restoring the Union, would, if decided in favor of the secessionists, result in the real establishment of that empire founded on the “cornerstone of slavery,” while, if it were decided in favor of the Union, human slavery would inevitably perish as a result of our victory. If, therefore, this having been made clear, any European power chose to countenance the Southern Confederacy, it could do so only with the distinct understanding that it was taking sides with the cause of human slavery in its struggle for further existence and dominion. What European government depending to any extent on the approval of public opinion would—cotton or no cotton, commerce or no commerce, war, long or short, victory, certain or uncertain—range itself on the side of human slavery in the face of the moral sense of civilized mankind?
In this respect the attitude of our government appeared unhappily ambiguous. The home situation was prolific of complicated embarrassments, while every clear-minded person recognized that the war was bound to result ultimately in the total destruction of slavery, and the spirit of “abundant caution” in
[ 278 ]
