Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 44, June, 1861», страница 12
Troup of Georgia, one of the champions of the Democratic party, replied to the Opposition,—"Shall we sacrifice the honor and independence of the nation for a little trade in codfish and potash? Permission to arm is equivalent to a declaration of war; make the embargo effective, and it will show what all the great commercial politicians have said is true,—it will vitally affect the manufacturing and commercial interests of England."
As one coercive measure after another was proposed, John Randolph of Roanoke, who had at first favored an embargo, came out against the measure, and "warned the Administration that they were fast following in the fatal footsteps of Lord North."
But one of the most effective speeches against the Democratic policy was made in February, 1809, by Gardinier, who represented New York, a city the creation of commerce.
"The avowed object of this policy," he said, "was to save our vessels and property from capture; the real one seemed to be to establish a total non-intercourse with the whole world. We are engaged perpetually in making additions and supplements to the embargo. Wherever we can spy a hole, although it be no bigger than a wheat-straw, at which industry and enterprise can find vent, all our powers are called in requisition to stop it. The people of the country shall sell nothing but what they can sell to each other. All our surplus produce shall rot on our hands. God knows what all this means; I cannot understand it. I see effects, but I can trace them to no cause. I fear there is an unknown hand guiding us to the most dreadful destinies, unseen, because it cannot endure the light. Darkness and mystery overshadow the House and the whole nation. We know nothing, we are permitted to know nothing. We sit here as mere automata."
This speech nearly cost Gardinier his life, for he was in consequence of it challenged and dangerously wounded; but the embargo was permitted to continue.
The produce of the country fell sixty to seventy per cent. in value, and much of it passed at low prices into the hands of British agents. Armed ships from England appeared on the coast of Georgia and loaded with cotton from lighters in defiance of Government, and Northern ships in the outports occasionally eluded the vigilance of collectors or escaped by their collusion; but the measure pressed with a crushing weight upon the honest merchants and ship-owners.
When news of the Enforcing Act reached Boston, it was received with such indignation, that General Lincoln, the collector of the port, resigned, and the flags of the dismantled ships were hoisted at half-mast, processions of starving sailors and mechanics passed through the streets, and the whole community was highly excited; an excitement increased by an order from the Cabinet to the commandant of the fort to allow no vessel whatever to proceed to sea.
But the end of Jefferson's administration was approaching. He had come in as the advocate of popular rights; and now at the close of his term was enforcing measures more arbitrary than those which preceded the Revolution. Madison was nominated as his successor. All New England, save the inland State of Vermont, was revolutionized and voted against him, while Maryland and New York chose Federal Assemblies. The South, however, gave him its votes, and he was elected; but the tide of public opinion was rolling strongly against the Embargo.
The new legislature of Massachusetts was convened; Governor Gore, who had displaced Gerry, drew their attention to the arbitrary and oppressive measures of Government; and the General Court, in their reply, after denouncing those measures as illegal and unconstitutional, used the memorable words, that "they would be true to the Union, although they had fallen under the ban of the Empire."
The merchants determined to test the legality of the Enforcing Act; but John Quincy Adams and Joseph Story repaired to Washington, and urged the necessity of a repeal. Their representations, and the signal defeat of the Democracy at the North, proved irresistible; and the Embargo, after a protracted struggle, fell before them.
From this glance at the history of the Embargo we can account for the asperity of feeling towards the Democratic leaders, and the distrust of their measures and men, which pervaded New England from the passage of the Embargo Act until the close of the war.
New England, and more especially Massachusetts, commercial from its infancy, did not come into the Union to surrender its commerce, navigation, or seamen to any visionary theories of the South. For nearly two centuries it had struggled for all its liberties with the parent empire. It had learned in the cruel school of oppression that the price of freedom is perpetual vigilance.
Fifteen months had now elapsed since the laying of the embargo, and it had more than realized all the presages of its opponents. Our minister, Armstrong, had written from France, that it had produced no effect in France and was forgotten in England. Pinckney, in England, did all in his power to save the Administration, by offering to end the embargo, if England would relax her policy; but Canning replied, that England had no complaints to make, that Spain and Russia had been opened to her, and the measure would serve to convince her that she was not absolutely dependent on the trade of America; with cutting irony, he added, he would make but one concession to America: she had complained that England drew a tribute from her merchandise, when shipped to the Continent; he would, out of deference to American delicacy, substitute a total prohibition. He had the tact, also, to draw from Pinckney a letter offering to concede many of the points in dispute, and published it with an insolent commentary.
Jefferson still clung to the embargo; but Madison and his friends, deferring to the reasons of Story and Adams, and yielding to the adverse current now setting strongly against Democracy, March 9, 1809, repealed the obnoxious act. Such was the end and signal failure of a measure alike disastrous at home and abroad, a measure which had falsified all the predictions of its author. Its avowed object was to secure our seamen from impressment, to protect our commerce, and preserve our ships; its presumed object was to coöperate with France, and starve England into submission: but none, of these objects were effected. Instead of rescuing our seamen, it imprisoned them all at home, and deprived them of the food which they found even in the prisons of the enemy. Instead of protecting our commerce, it tamely resigned it to England, and either left our exports to perish or reduced their value sixty per cent. It seized all our ships at home, and left most of them to decay, without giving the sufferer the claim to ultimate redress which consoled him in cases of foreign seizure. It aided France so little, that this "deed of magnanimity" was in a few months forgotten. Instead of impoverishing or humbling England, it poured into her lap the riches of the world, and increased the insolence of her tone; while it impoverished our own nation, broke the spirit of the commercial classes and alienated them from Government, and gave the first of a series of blows to the nation from which it did not recover for a quarter of a century.
But the pusillanimous policy which prompted the embargo survived its repeal. The Chinese theory still showed itself, not in measures for defence, but in impotent measures for restriction or prohibition, and finally in a declaration of war against England on the very eve of her triumph by the power of her navy and commerce over the greatest captain of the age: a war declared by our rulers without an army, navy, officers, coast-defence, or national credit, for the avowed purpose of securing free trade and sailors' rights by measures which the mercantile community rejected. In its progress, the want of discipline, forts, ships, munitions of war, credit abroad, and frugality at home, was most severely felt; and the principal honor derived from it arose from the exploits of the few frigates left to us by improvidence and parsimony, from the achievements of the Northern troops of Scott, Brown, and Miller, disciplined during the war, and the courage and sagacity of the veteran Jackson and his Western volunteers behind their cotton ramparts at New Orleans.
If, during the seven years of trial and suffering, from 1808 to 1815, in which nearly one-half of the wealth of New England was extinguished, her citizens became indignant at the wanton sacrifice of their means and of the best opportunity Fortune ever gave them to gain riches by commerce,—if the public sentiment found expression alike through the press, in town-meetings, in legislative halls, and even in the pulpit,—if the capitalists lost confidence in a government which trifled with its own resources,—if the merchant refused all countenance to those who had wrought his ruin,—let the blame fall on the originators of the evil. Lord North did but impose a few light taxes, place a few restrictions upon commerce, and make a few other inroads on freedom; but he set a nation in flames. The Cabinets of 1807 and 1812 warred against commerce itself, and placed an interdict on every harbor; and which of the measures of the British statesman was more arbitrary in its character, more repugnant to the spirit of freemen, or more questionable as to its legality, than the Enforcing Act of 1808? And if the men of New England, who had in their colonial weakness met both France and England by sea and land without a fear, saw the fruits of their industry sacrificed and the bread taken from their children's mouths by the Chinese policy of a Southern cabinet, might they not well chafe under measures so oppressive and so unnecessary that they were ingloriously abandoned? Under a dynasty whose policy had closed their ports, silenced their cannon, nearly ruined their commerce, and left their country without a navy, army, coast-defences, or national credit, could they be expected to rush with ardor into a war with the greatest naval power of the age, elated with her triumph over Napoleon,—into a war to be prosecuted on land by raw recruits against the veteran troops of England, for the avowed purpose of protecting the commerce of those who opposed it, and in which munitions of war were to be dragged at their expense across pathless forests,—into a war whose burdens were to fall either in present or prospective charges upon their surviving trade? Must they not have deeply felt that they were still under "the ban of the Empire"? and is it not proof of the extent of their patriotism and intense love of country, that under such trials and adverse policy they were still "true to the Union"?
If Canada were desired, how easily might it have been acquired by a wiser policy! A small loan to the State of New York, from surplus funds, might have opened the Erie and Champlain Canals twenty years in advance of their completion. A little aid to men of genius might have placed Fulton's steamers, then navigating the Hudson, on the Lakes.
A dozen frigates to cruise in the Gulf of St. Lawrence would have cut off supplies from England. The attractions of a new outlet for commerce, aided by a few disciplined regiments, the command of the Lakes, facilities for moving munitions of war and for intercepting supplies, would have settled the question in advance. And instead of a series of measures which embittered parties, created a jealousy between North and South, called into the field one hundred and twenty thousand raw militia, and absorbed in wasteful expenses nearly half our resources, we should have reaped a golden harvest in commerce, preserved our wealth, and have either avoided war, or terminated it in the same style in which the Constitution, Constellation, and United States terminated their conflicts on the deep, or as France and England terminated their recent war with Russia, arresting their foe in his march of conquest, closing his ports, destroying his fleet, seamen, and chief military station, and nearly exhausting his resources,—and drawing the means of war from commerce, have at the same time expanded our commerce, cities, and wealth to a degree unparalleled in our history.
The past, however, is gone, and the future is before us. England, conscious of her naval power, of her vast steam-marine, and of our deficiencies, has not acceded to our proposal to exempt merchantmen from seizure in future wars. Is it not now our policy to provide in advance for the contingencies of the future,—to obtain the live-oak and cedar frames, the engines, boilers, Paixhan guns for at least one hundred steam-frigates, with coats of mail for some of them,—so that, instead of spending years in their construction, launching them when the war is over, and then leaving them to decay, we may, as the crisis approaches, be able in a few months to fit out a fleet which, if not irresistible, shall at least command respect? Accomplished officers and men can be drawn from the merchant-service at short notice; but we cannot create steamers in a moment.
The appropriations by Congress of late years for steam—frigates and sloops-of-war, and for the defence of New York, New Bedford, Portland, Bath, and Bangor,—for Bath, in particular, which owns nearly two hundred thousand tons of shipping, and which builds more ships annually than any other port in the Union, Boston excepted,—are most judicious; but are there not other points which deserve the attention of Government? Should not a few thousand rifled cannon, a good supply of rifles, and a proportionate amount of powder and ball be deposited near San Francisco, to enable us, in case of war, to convert our clipper ships and steamers in the Pacific into cruisers? Should not batteries of Paixhan guns be erected at the outlet of Long Island Sound, upon Gull and Fisher's Islands and the opposite points, to convert the whole Sound above into a fortified harbor, and thus defend New York and the important seaports upon the Sound, and by these fortresses and a few coast-batteries between Stonington and Newport, like those on the coast of France, keep open during war an inland navigation for coal and flour between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts? Should not these and similar questions of national defence, in these days of extended commerce, command the attention of the nation?
* * * * *
DENMARK VESEY
On Saturday afternoon, May 25th, 1822, a slave named Devany, belonging to Colonel Prioleau of Charleston, South Carolina, was sent to market by his mistress.—the Colonel being absent in the country. After doing his errands, he strolled down upon the wharves, in the enjoyment of that magnificent wealth of leisure which usually characterizes the "house-servant" of the South, when once beyond hail of the street-door. He presently noticed a small vessel lying in the stream, with a peculiar flag flying; and while looking at it, he was accosted by a slave named William, belonging to Mr. John Paul, who remarked to him,—"I have often seen a flag with the number 76, but never one with the number 96 upon it before." After some further conversation on this trifling point, he continued with earnestness,—"Do you know that something serious is about to take place?" Devany disclaiming the knowledge of any graver impending crisis than the family dinner, the other went on to inform him that many of the slaves were "determined to right themselves." "We are determined," he added, "to shake off our bondage, and for that purpose we stand on a good foundation; many have joined, and if you will go with me, I will show you the man who has the list of names, and who will take yours down."
This startling disclosure was quite too much for Devany; he was made of the wrong material for so daring a project; his genius was culinary, not revolutionary. Giving some excuse for breaking off the conversation, he went forthwith to consult a free colored man, named Pensil or Pencell, who advised him to warn his master instantly. So he lost no time in telling the secret to his mistress and her young son; and on the return of Colonel Prioleau from the country, five days afterward, it was at once revealed to him. Within an hour or two he stated the facts to Mr. Hamilton, the Intendant, or, as we should say, Mayor; Mr. Hamilton at once summoned the Corporation, and by five o'clock Devany and William were under examination.
This was the first warning of a plot which ultimately filled Charleston with terror. And yet so thorough and so secret was the organization of the negroes, that a fortnight passed without yielding the slightest information beyond the very little which was obtained from these two. William Paul was, indeed, put in confinement and soon gave evidence inculpating two slaves as his employers,—Mingo Harth and Peter Poyas. But these men, when arrested, behaved with such perfect coolness and treated the charge with such entire levity, their trunks and premises, when searched, were so innocent of all alarming contents, that they were soon discharged by the Wardens. William Paul at length became alarmed for his own safety, and began to let out further facts piecemeal, and to inculpate other men. But some of those very men came voluntarily to the Intendant, on hearing that they were suspected, and indignantly offered themselves for examination. Puzzled and bewildered, the municipal government kept the thing as secret as possible, placed the city guard in an efficient condition, provided sixteen hundred rounds of ball cartridges, and ordered the sentinels and patrols to be armed with loaded muskets. "Such had been our fancied security, that the guard had previously gone on duty without muskets and with only sheathed bayonets and bludgeons."
It has since been asserted, though perhaps on questionable authority, that the Secretary of War was informed of the plot, even including some details of the plan and the leader's name, before it was known in Charleston. If so, he utterly disregarded it; and, indeed, so well did the negroes play their part, that the whole report was eventually disbelieved, while (as was afterwards proved) they went on to complete their secret organization, and hastened by a fortnight the appointed day of attack. Unfortunately for their plans, however, another betrayal took place at the very last moment, from a different direction. A class-leader in a Methodist church had been persuaded or bribed by his master to procure further disclosures. He at length came and stated, that, about three months before, a man named Rolla, slave of Governor Bennett, had communicated to a friend of his the fact of an intended insurrection, and had said that the time fixed for the outbreak was the following Sunday night, June 16th. As this conversation took place on Friday, it gave but a very short time for the city authorities to act, especially as they wished neither to endanger the city nor to alarm it.
Yet so cautiously was the game played on both sides, that the whole thing was still kept hushed up from the Charleston public; and some members of the city government did not fully appreciate their danger till they had passed it. "The whole was concealed," wrote the Governor afterwards, "until the time came; but secret preparations were made. Saturday night and Sunday morning passed without demonstrations; doubts were excited, and counter orders issued for diminishing the guard." It afterwards proved that these preparations showed to the slaves that their plot was betrayed, and so saved the city without public alarm. Newspaper correspondence soon was full of the story,—each informant of course hinting plainly that he had been behind the scenes all along, and had withheld it only to gratify the authorities in their policy of silence. It was "now no longer a secret," they wrote,—adding, that for five or six weeks but little attention had been paid by the community to these rumors, the city council having kept it carefully to themselves, until a number of suspicious slaves had been arrested. This refers to ten prisoners who were seized on June 18th,—an arrest which killed the plot, and left only the terrors of what might have been. The investigation, thus publicly commenced, soon revealed a free colored man named Denmark Vesey as the leader of the enterprise,—among his chief coadjutors being that innocent Peter and that unsuspecting Mingo who had been examined and discharged nearly three weeks before.
It is matter of demonstration, that, but for the military preparations on the appointed Sunday night, the attempt would have been made. The ringleaders had actually met for their final arrangements, when, by comparing notes, they found themselves foiled; and within another week they were prisoners on trial. Nevertheless, the plot which they had laid was the most elaborate insurrectionary project ever formed by American slaves, and came the nearest to a terrible success. In boldness of conception and thoroughness of organization there has been nothing to compare with it, and it is worth while to dwell somewhat upon its details, first introducing the Dramatis Personae.
Denmark Vesey had come very near figuring as a revolutionist in Hayti, instead of South Carolina. Captain Vesey, an old resident of Charleston, commanded a ship that traded between St. Thomas and Cape Français, during our Revolutionary War, in the slave-transportation line. In the year 1781 he took on board a cargo of three hundred and ninety slaves, and sailed for the Cape. On the passage, he and his officers were much attracted by the beauty and intelligence of a boy of fourteen, whom they unanimously adopted into the cabin as a pet. They gave him new clothes and a new name, Télémaque, which was afterwards gradually corrupted into Telmak and Denmark. They amused themselves with him until their arrival at Cape Français, and then, "having no use for the boy," sold their pet as if he had been a macaw or a monkey. Captain Vesey sailed for St. Thomas, and presently making another trip to Cape Français, was surprised to hear from his consignee that Télémaque would be returned on his hands as being "unsound,"—not in theology nor in morals, but in body,—subject to epileptic fits, in fact. According to the custom of that place, the boy was examined by the city physician, who required Captain Vesey to take him back; and Denmark served him faithfully, with no trouble from epilepsy, for twenty years, travelling all over the world with him, and learning to speak various languages. In 1800, he drew a prize of fifteen hundred dollars in the East Bay Street Lottery, with which he bought his freedom from his master for six hundred dollars,—much less than his market value. From that time, the official report says, he worked as a carpenter in Charleston, distinguished for physical strength and energy. "Among those of his color he was looked up to with awe and respect. His temper was impetuous and domineering in the extreme, qualifying him for the despotic rule of which he was ambitious. All his passions were ungovernable and savage; and to his numerous wives and children he displayed the haughty and capricious cruelty of an Eastern bashaw."
"For several years before he disclosed his intentions to any one, he appears to have been constantly and assiduously engaged in endeavoring to embitter the minds of the colored population against the white. He rendered himself perfectly familiar with all those parts of the Scriptures which he thought he could pervert to his purpose; and would readily quote them, to prove that slavery was contrary to the laws of God,—that slaves were bound to attempt their emancipation, however shocking and bloody might be the consequences,—and that such efforts would not only be pleasing to the Almighty, but were absolutely enjoined and their success predicted in the Scriptures. His favorite texts, when he addressed those of his own color, were Zechariah, xiv. 1-3, and Joshua, vi. 21; and in all his conversations he identified their situation with that of the Israelites. The number of inflammatory pamphlets on slavery brought into Charleston from some of our sister States within the last four years, (and once from Sierra Leone,) and distributed amongst the colored population of the city, for which, there was a great facility, in consequence of the unrestricted intercourse allowed to persons of color between the different States in the Union, and the speeches in Congress of those opposed to the admission of Missouri into the Union, perhaps garbled and misrepresented, furnished him with ample means for inflaming the minds of the colored population of this State; and by distorting certain parts of those speeches, or selecting from them particular passages, he persuaded but too many that Congress had actually declared them free, and that they were held in bondage contrary to the laws of the land. Even whilst walking through the streets in company with another, he was not idle; for if his companion bowed to a white person, he would rebuke him, and observe that all men were born equal, and that he was surprised that any one would degrade himself by such conduct,—that he would never cringe to the whites, nor ought any one who had the feelings of a man. When answered, 'We are slaves,' he would sarcastically and indignantly reply, 'You deserve to remain slaves'; and if he were further asked, 'What can we do?' he would remark, 'Go and buy a spelling-book and read the fable of Hercules and the Wagoner,' which he would then repeat, and apply it to their situation. He also sought every opportunity of entering into conversation with white persons, when they could be overheard by negroes near by, especially in grogshops,—during which conversation he would artfully introduce some bold remark on slavery; and sometimes, when, from the character he was conversing with, he found he might be still bolder, he would go so far, that, had not his declarations in such situations been clearly proved, they would scarcely have been credited. He continued this course until some time after the commencement of the last winter; by which time he had not only obtained incredible influence amongst persons of color, but many feared him more than their owners, and, one of them declared, even more than his God."
It was proved against him that his house had been the principal place of meeting for the conspirators, that all the others habitually referred to him as the leader, and that he had shown great address in dealing with different temperaments and overcoming a variety of scruples. One witness testified that Vesey had read to him from the Bible about the deliverance of the Children of Israel; another, that he had read to him a speech which had been delivered "in Congress by a Mr. King" on the subject of slavery, and Vesey had said that "this Mr. King was the black man's friend,—that he, Mr. King, had declared he would continue to speak, write, and publish pamphlets against slavery the longest day he lived, until the Southern States consented to emancipate their slaves, for that slavery was a great disgrace to the country." But among all the reports there are only two sentences which really reveal the secret soul of Denmark Vesey, and show his impulses and motives. "He said he did not go with Creighton to Africa, because he had not a will; he wanted to stay and see what he could do for his fellow-creatures." The other takes us still nearer home. Monday Gell stated in his confession, that Vesey, on first broaching the plan to him, said "he was satisfied with his own condition, being free, but, as all his children were slaves, he wished to see what could be done for them."
It is strange to turn from this simple statement of a perhaps intelligent preference, on the part of a parent, for seeing his offspring in a condition of freedom, to the naïve astonishment of his judges. "It is difficult to imagine," says the sentence finally passed on Denmark Vesey, "what infatuation could have prompted you to attempt an enterprise so wild and visionary. You were a free man, comparatively wealthy, and enjoyed every comfort compatible with your situation. You had, therefore, much to risk and little to gain." Is slavery, then, a thing so intrinsically detestable, that a man thus favored will engage in a plan thus desperate merely to rescue his children from it? "Vesey said the negroes were living such an abominable life, they ought to rise. I said, I was living well; he said, though I was, others were not, and that 't was such fools as I that were in the way and would not help them, and that after all things were well he would mark me." "His general conversation," said another witness, a white boy, "was about religion, which he would apply to slavery; as, for instance, he would speak of the creation of the world, in which he would say all men had equal rights, blacks as well as whites, etc.; all his religious remarks were mingled with slavery." And the firmness of this purpose did not leave him, even after the betrayal of his cherished plans. "After the plot was discovered," said Monday Gell, in his confession, "Vesey said it was all over, unless an attempt were made to rescue those who might be condemned, by rushing on the people and saving the prisoners, or all dying together."
The only person to divide with Vesey the claim of leadership was Peter Poyas. Vesey was the missionary of the cause, but Peter was the organizing mind. He kept the register of "candidates," and decided who should or should not be enrolled. "We can't live so," he often reminded his confederates; "we must break the yoke." "God has a hand in it; we have been meeting for four years and are not yet betrayed." Peter was a ship-carpenter, and a slave of great value. He was to be the military leader. His plans showed some natural generalship; he arranged the night-attack; he planned the enrolment of a mounted troop to scour the streets; and he had a list of all the shops where arms and ammunition were kept for sale. He voluntarily undertook the management of the most difficult part of the enterprise,—the capture of the main guard-house,—and had pledged himself to advance alone and surprise the sentinel. He was said to have a magnetism in his eye, of which his confederates stood in great awe; if he once got his eye upon a man, there was no resisting it. A white witness has since narrated, that, after his arrest, he was chained to the floor in a cell, with another of the conspirators. Men in authority came and sought by promises, threats, and even tortures, to ascertain the names of other accomplices. His companion, wearied out with pain and suffering, and stimulated by the hope of saving his own life, at last began to yield. Peter raised himself, leaned upon his elbow, looked at the poor fellow, saying quietly, "Die like a man," and instantly lay down again. It was enough; not another word was extorted.
