The Life and Times of Queen Victoria; Vol. 3 of 4

WAR AND FAMINE.

Outbreak of Civil War in the United States--Origin of the Dispute--The Missouri Compromise--Effect of the “Gold Rush” on the Extension of Slavery--Colonising Nebraska--The Struggle in “Bleeding Kansas”--Assault on Senator Sumner--The Wyandotte Constitution--The Dred Scott Case--Election of Mr. Lincoln as President--Secession of South Carolina--Organisation of the Southern Confederacy--The Firing of the First Shot--Capture of Fort Sumter--Lincoln’s Call to Arms--Opinion in England--The Trent Affair--The Queen and the Prince Consort avert War--Opening of Parliament--Bitter Controversy over the Education Code--Parliament and the Civil War--The Cotton Famine--A Relief Bill--War Expenditure--Mr. Disraeli denounces Lord Palmerston’s “Bloated Armaments”--A Budget without a Surplus--The Fortifications at Spithead--Floating versus Fixed Forts--A Mexican Adventure--Revolution in Greece--Bismarck’s Visit to London--Anecdote of Bismarck and Mr. Disraeli--Progress of the American War--Mr. Peabody’s Benefactions--The Exhibition of 1862--The Prince of Wales’s Tour in the East--The Hartley Colliery Accident--Marriage of the Princess Alice--The Queen’s Visit to Belgium--Her Meeting with the Princess Alexandra of Denmark--The Queen’s Visit to Gotha--Removal of the Prince Consort’s Remains to the Mausoleum at Frogmore.

The closing days of 1861 and the opening days of 1862 were days of feverish excitement. The citizens of the United States were locked in the deadly and fratricidal strife of Civil War. The passions and prejudices which divided them into hostile armies, divided their kith and kin in England into hostile factions. In America the fight between North and South was waged on the field of battle. In England it was carried on in the Press, on the Platform, on the floor of the Senate, in Clubs, in drawing-rooms, by road and rail, in the market-places of the great cities, and in the ale-houses of quiet rural villages. Roughly speaking, the classes as opposed to the masses took the side of the South. Those who view public affairs from the standpoint of privileged as distinguished from national and popular interests, and who can always command the facile advocacy of what may be termed the organs of well-dressed opinion in the London Press, were nearly all arrayed against the North. At the end of 1861 the nation watched the struggle with breathless interest, for events had happened which rendered it probable that England might be dragged into it.

When the United States formed themselves into a Federal Republic each State dealt as it pleased with the question of slavery. But when new Territories were annexed it was difficult to say whether slavery should or should not be recognised in them. The people of the slave States argued that under the Federal Constitution a citizen of any State had the right to settle in and transfer his property to any of the partially organised Territories which were owned in common by all the States. Slaves were property. Therefore a citizen who had slaves had a right to hold them in any of the Territories. Soon, however, Territories became sufficiently populous to be admitted as States. In that case was slavery to be recognised in them? During the Presidency of Mr. Monroe (1816) this difficulty became acute. A Bill authorising the Territory of Missouri to form itself into a State was introduced. Mr. Talmage, of New York, proposed to insert a clause converting the Territory into a Free State. The controversy raised on the point was settled in 1820 by the adoption of what was called “The Missouri Compromise” by which slavery was prohibited in new States north of latitude 36° 30´. The slave-owners’ party endeavoured, by making war on Mexico, to increase the territory available for slavery, and under the Presidency of General Taylor, who was elected in 1849, they persuaded Congress to virtually abandon the Missouri Compromise, and permit all Territories, in the event of becoming States, to decide for themselves whether or not they should recognise slavery. They based their hopes on the aggressive activity of their squatters. It was supposed that they would pour more rapidly into the new Territories than emigrants from the Free States, and thus in every plébiscite turn the scale in favour of slavery. And but for an accident the policy of the Southern leaders would have triumphed, and slavery would not only have been established in the new Territories contiguous to the Southern States, but even in the North-West itself. This accident was the discovery of gold in California. The “gold rush” from the Free States to the Pacific Coast was not a migration but an exodus, and long ere the Southern squatter could settle in force in these regions, they were swarming with citizens from New England. In the Pacific Territories, where slavery must have been legalised had the Missouri Compromise not been upset by Southern politicians, it was prohibited by popular vote, and in 1850 California joined the Union as a Free State. Meanwhile the Fugitive Slave Law had created much ill-feeling between the Free and other Slave States.[124] Some of them, like Massachusetts, prohibited its enforcement. But the two great parties were agreed in abiding by the Fugitive Law, and maintaining slavery in statu quo. During the administration of President Pierce (who was elected in 1852) the conflict over the organisation of Kansas and Nebraska into Territories disturbed the status quo. Their people had it in their power to determine the question of slavery for themselves, and to control the popular vote in favour of slavery. Missouri, which was a Slave State, therefore poured pro-slavery emigrants into both Territories. It was alleged that most of these were sham settlers, and that the pro-slavery vote was tainted by terrorism and fraud. But be that as it may, a Territorial government in favour of slavery was organised in Nebraska and Kansas, and President Pierce appointed Governors pledged to secure the ultimate admission of these Territories to the Union as Free States. To defeat this policy settlers from the Free States migrated to Nebraska and Kansas--“bleeding Kansas,” as it was called in the North--and they were supplied with arms and money to defend themselves against the “border ruffians” from Missouri, who naturally objected to their company. Ultimately there came to be two rival governments in the Territories, and when in 1856 the anti-slavery party elected their own State officers, and repudiated all that had been done in the interests of slavery, President Pierce ordered the Governor to call on Federal troops to enforce the pro-slavery laws of the Territory.

During the debates in Congress on this subject, Senator Sumner happening to make a strong speech in favour of the anti-slavery party in Kansas, was brutally assaulted in his place in the Senate by a slave-owner called Brooks, a senator from South Carolina. “To me,” said Sir George Cornewall Lewis of this outrage, writing to Sir Edmund Head, “it seems the first blow in a civil war,” and it was. In 1857 Mr. Buchanan was elected President. The Supreme Court of the United States, in the famous Dred Scott case, decided that negroes had no rights save those which the Government gave them, and that Congress could no more prohibit a citizen from taking his slave into any State, than it could prohibit him from taking there any kind of property whose safe possession was guaranteed to him by the Constitution.[125] This, of course, intensified the struggle between North and South for the control of Nebraska and “bleeding Kansas.” Southern slave-owners saw that they must have an outlet for their surplus slave population. If they lost Kansas and Nebraska they must seize Cuba or Mexico, or both, or secede from a Union in which the Slave States would be in a minority, and at the mercy of the Free States. The struggle went on till, in 1859, Kansas adopted, by a majority of 4,000, the Wyandotte Constitution, prohibiting slavery. President Buchanan seems to have prepared for the worst, because he now began secretly to pour munitions of war and arms, which were the common property of the North and the South, into Southern strongholds. The Democratic party split into a Southern and a Northern wing over the Dred Scott case, so that in November, 1859, the Republicans elected Mr. Abraham Lincoln as President, pledged to maintain the principle that freedom was the normal condition of the Territories, which Congress must preserve and defend--though slavery in the old Slave States was not assailed as a domestic institution.

The difference between North and South was thus sharp and clear. The North desired to maintain the status quo with regard to slavery, and to prohibit the extension of its area. The South demanded the extension of its area into the Territories, and all new States that might be carved out of them. Lincoln’s election was followed, at the beginning of 1860, by the secession of South Carolina. By the end of February, 1861, her example was imitated by Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, and Alabama. Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Missouri were wavering. When Congress met, President Buchanan, in his last Message, explained how events were drifting, denied the right of the Southern States to secede, but doubted the power of Congress to levy war on seceding States. The Crittenden compromise was now proposed, but it came too late.[126] Another attempt was made to conciliate the South by an amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting Congress from ever meddling with slavery in the United States. By this time the seceding States had met at Montgomery, and had organised the Government of the Confederate States of America. The constitution adopted differed from that of the United States in that it recognised slavery, extended the term of the President’s office, and prohibited tariffs for other purposes than raising revenue.[127] Being producers, not of manufactured goods, but of raw material, the governing class in the South were naturally Free Traders. Mr. Jefferson Davis was chosen President, and Mr. Alexander H. Stephen Vice-President, and their Government prepared to carry on war. In Congress, the withdrawal of the Southern representatives enabled the Republicans by large majorities to admit Kansas as a Free State, to organise Nevada, Colorado, and Dakota as Territories, and to adopt a new protective tariff mainly in the interests of the Eastern States and Pennsylvania.

With the exception of two or three small forts, the Government of the seceding States took quiet possession of all fortresses and places of arms in their territory. This was easily done, because in most instances the officers in command, though holding Federal commissions, betrayed their masters. Major Anderson, however, was an exception. He held Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbour, for the Federal Government. Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated as President on 4th of March, 1861. In his Message to Congress he said that the Government was determined to relieve Fort Sumter, and whilst denying the right of the South to secede, he asserted the right of the Federal Government to preserve the Union. On the 13th of April, 1861, Fort Sumter was attacked by the rebel, or Confederate forces, and on the 14th it surrendered. On the 15th Lincoln issued his first call for troops, and by this time only an insignificant section of the Democratic Party remained true to their principle that secession was a constitutional right, and that the Federal Government had no legal authority to coerce a State. Within a fortnight after the first shot was fired, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the South. Small majorities, however, held Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri for the North. The capture of Fort Sumter stirred up a war feeling in the loyal States which astonished the Confederate leaders. So eagerly did the Northern men respond to Lincoln’s call that the Federal Government, ere the end of the year, had half a million of troops at its disposal. As, however, most of the officers of the regular army had gone over to the South, the Federal troops chiefly consisted of armed mobs of volunteers.