Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs/Chapter 23

by George Sewall Boutwell

 

XXIII

PHI BETA KAPPA ADDRESS AT CAMBRIDGE

ABOUT ten days before the 18th of June, 1861, Judge Hoar called at my office and invited me to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge on the 18th of the month. Although I had but little time for preparation, I accepted the invitation upon the understanding, or rather upon his request, that I was to deal with the questions then agitating the country. Among my hearers was the venerable Josiah Quincy, formerly President of the College. My address was so radical that the timid condemned it, and even Republican papers deprecated the violence of my language—they then living in the delusion that concessions, mild words and attitudes of humility could save the Union. Mr. Quincy was not of those. He gave to my address unqualified support, and I had no doubt that the majority of my audience sympathized with my views. There were, however, copperheads, and peace-men at any price, and gradually there appeared a more troublesome class of men who professed to be for the prosecution of the war, but criticised and condemned all the means employed. They were the hypocrites in politics—a class of men who affect virtue, and who tolerate and protect vice in government.

My address was called “The Conspiracy—Its Purpose and Power,” and as far as I know, it was the first time that emancipation was demanded publicly, as a means of ending the war and saving the nation. The demand was made in a qualified form, but I renewed it in the December following in an address that I delivered before the Emancipation League. This address gave rise to similar or even to severer criticisms from the same classes. They were never a majority in Massachusetts, but they had sufficient power to impair the strength of the State, and in 1862 under the style of the People’s Party, they endangered the election of Governor Andrew.

These criticisms made no impression upon me, for my confidence was unbounded that emancipation was inevitable and I was willing to wait for an improved public opinion.

I quote a portion of my remarks at Cambridge, which gave rise to criticism in some quarters, and provoked hostility among those whose sympathies were with the South:

“The settlers at Jamestown and Plymouth did not merely found towns or counties or colonies, or States even; they also founded a great nation, and upon the idea of its unity.

“Their colonial charters extended from sea to sea. Their origin, their language, their laws, their civilization, their ideas, and now their history, constitute us one nation. In the geological structure of this continent, Nature seems to have prepared it for the occupation of a single people. I cannot doubt, then, that continental unity is the great, the supreme law of our public life.

“A division such as is sought and demanded by those who carry on this war would do violence to our traditions, to our history, to those ideas that our people, South and North have entertained for more than two centuries, and to the laws of Nature herself. An agreement such as is desired by the discontented would only intensify our alienations, embitter the strife, and protract the war upon subordinate and insignificant issues. Separation does not settle one difficulty at present existing in the country; while it furnishes occasion, and necessity even, for other controversies and wars, as long as the line of division remains.

“Nor can we doubt, that when, by division, you abandon the Union, acknowledge the Constitution to be a failure, the contest would be carried on regardless of State sovereignty, and finally end in the subjugation of all to one idea and one system in government. Whatever may stand or fall, whatever may survive or perish, the region between the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains, between the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, is destined to be and to continue under one form of government.”

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“If your victories are not followed by a revolution in public opinion, if your authority is not re-established in the seceded States by the assent thereto of a majority of the people, if they still regard themselves as aliens, and beyond your legitimate jurisdiction, then, inasmuch as the enjoyment of the right of the nation to exist is the supreme necessity of all, as the safety of the capital is essential to the enjoyment of that right, as the presence of slavery in Maryland and Virginia is inconsistent with the safety of the capital, no alternative remains but to provide for the extinction of slavery in those States at such times and upon such conditions, always including compensation to the masters who are not under the ban of the law of treason, as may be compatible with the welfare of the States themselves and the preservation of the Union.”

I advanced a step further in December, as will be seen from the extracts from my speech on Emancipation:

“I say, then, it is a necessity that this war be closed speedily. By blockade it cannot be; by battle it may be; but we risk the result upon the uncertainty whether the great general of this continent is with them or with us. I come, then, to emancipation. Not first,—although I shall not hesitate to say, before I close, that as a matter of justice to the slave, there should be emancipation,—but not first do I ask my countrymen to proclaim emancipation to the slaves in justice to them, but as a matter of necessity to ourselves; for, unless it be by accident, we are not to come out of this contest as one nation, except by emancipation. And first, emancipation in South Carolina. Not confiscation of the property of rebels: that is inadequate longer to meet the emergency. It might have done in March or April or May, or possibly in July; but, in December, or January of the coming year, confiscation of the property of the rebels is inadequate to meet the exigency in which the country is placed. You must, if you do anything, proclaim at the head of the armies of the republic, on the soil of South Carolina, FREEDOM,—and then enforce the proclamation as far and fast as you have an opportunity; and you will have opportunity more speedily then than you will if you attempt to invade South Carolina without emancipating her slaves. Unsettle the foundations of society in South Carolina; do you hear the rumbling? Not we, not we, are responsible for what happens in South Carolina between the slaves and their masters. Our business is to save the Union; to re-establish the authority of the Union over the rebels in South Carolina; and, if between the masters and their slaves collisions arise, the responsibility is upon those masters who, forgetting their allegiance to the Government, lent themselves to this foul conspiracy, and thus have been involved in ruin. As a warning, let South Carolina be the first of the States of the Republic in which emancipation to the enslaved is proclaimed.”

I left home for Washington the Monday following the Sunday when the first battle of Bull Run was fought. When near New Haven, the conductor brought me a copy of a press despatch which gave an account of the engagement and indicated or stated that the rebels had been successful. On the seat behind me were two men who expressed their gratification to each other, when they read the despatch over my shoulder. When I had a fair view of them, I formed the opinion that they were Southern men returning South to take part in the conflict. It is difficult to comprehend the control which the States’ Rights doctrine had over the Southern mind. In my conversations with General Scott the influence which the course pursued by Virginia exercised over him was apparent. Those conversations left upon me the impression that he had debated with himself as to the course he ought to pursue. Attachment to Virginia was the sole excuse which Lee offered in his letter to his sister which contained a declaration that there was no just cause for secession.

In July, 1861, Washington was comparatively defenceless. Mr. Lincoln was calm, but I met others who were quite hopeless of the result.

My speech upon Emancipation in December, 1861, led to a request from the publishers of the Continental Magazine for an article upon the subject. It appeared in February, 1862, and in that article I set forth the necessity of immediate emancipation as a war measure, and by virtue of the war power, under the title, “Our Danger, and Its Cause.” Rapid changes were then taking place in public opinion, and in Massachusetts the tide was strong in favor of vigorous action. It was arrested temporarily in the summer of 1862, by the untoward events of the war, and the “People’s Party” became formidable for a brief season.

One of the peculiar circumstances of the contest was the acceptance by General Devens of the post of candidate for Governor by the People’s Party. General Devens was then in the army, and with considerable experience he had shown the qualities of a good soldier. But he was not a Republican. In other days he had been a Webster Whig, and as marshal of the district of Massachusetts he had had charge officially of the return of the negro Sims to slavery.

This act had brought down upon him criticisms, quite like maledictions, from the Anti-Slavery Party. By these criticisms he had been embittered, and although he was hearty in his support of the war, he had not then reached a point in his experience when he could realize that the only efficient way of supporting the war was to support the Republican Party.

At a later period he identified himself with the Republican Party, and as a Republican he filled with honor a place upon the bench of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and upon the election of President Hayes, he was made Attorney-General of the United States. That office he filled with tact, urbanity, and reasonable ability. He belonged to a class of orators of which Massachusetts has furnished a considerabie number—Mr. Everett was the chief. His disciples or followers included Hillard, Burlingame, Bullock, Devens, Long, and some others of lesser note. The style of these men was attractive, sometimes ornate, but lacking in the force which leaves an indelible impression upon the hearer.