Chapter XIII. Slavery, the Fault in the Structure

CHAPTER XIII Slavery^ the Fault in the Structure The three great ideas were brought together at last without impediment; the individual and immortal soul, exercising self-government by law, and free of the universe to pursue knowledge by reason. After two thousand years, the resources of science were released for productive application. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were the temporal instruments of this event. But in its original design the Constitution had to admit one prime defect, an irreconcilable contradiction. Chattel slavery was an existent institution. Whatever form of government was adopted for the Union, it must either extinguish slavery ab initio (as contrary to the moral order of the universe), or tolerate it by default of such axiomatic statement. Here the federal form, which is indispensable for stability, unhappily admitted an ambiguous expedient. It was temporarily possible to leave slavery to state jurisdiction. No doubt the opinion of slaveholders was weighted by their wrongful possession; but there was also colorable pretext for delay. It was honestly feared that the Negroes, many of them newly brought from Africa, might prove a burden and a danger if liberated immediately. There was then no question of the vote, which was rightly by property qualification j but only of the difficulty of assimilating savages to civilized life in other than a servile relation 5 though even that was felt to be none too safe. Nobody knew just how it was to be worked out ultimately, whether by gradual education of the Negroes or sending them back to Africa. Meantime, as the Federal government must control the external 135 I36 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE borders, it had authority to forbid further importation of slaves from abroad, and indicated that intention indirectly.

The implied sentiment was against slavery. On the other hand, slavery caused the inclusion of a clause in the Constitution providing for the extradition of slaves who escaped across state lines. That the subject was embarrassing is perhaps indicated by the language j the words slave and slavery are not used. The phrase is a "person held to service or labor." (At that time, the description would include free white apprentices during their terms of indenture.) Slaves then were at least persons 3 and are also counted as persons in apportioning for the House of Representatives. But the brute fact remained that they were slaves 5 and the Constitution did not pronounce them free by right. The lasting injury inflicted by this inclusion of slavery was that it vitiated the principle on which the new nation came into being. Emancipation by slaveholders as an act of generosity, or by states as an act of authority, could never be exactly equivalent to starting with liberty as the universal right from which authority was derived.

Further, the continuance of slavery made it impossible for the Bill of Rights to limit the state governments as well as the Federal government. The existence of slavery necessarily impairs the exercise of their rights by free men. If the state power makes a man a slave, of course it abridges his freedom of speech and assembly, leaves him no security of person, and no right to property 5 so it can hardly be forbidden to do those things to anybody. The alleged distinction between "human rights" and "property rights" is a verbal muddle; property rights are human rights. The true issue is between the individual and the collective. The only arguments ever offered for slavery call upon the collective, either race or state, for authority and enforcement 5 whereas if rights inhere in the individual, no man can be owned, and every man must have the right to own property. This moral defect caused an equivalent structural defect, SLAVERY, THE FAULT IN THE STRUCTURE 137 as it was bound to do. Logic was stultified, so that discussion was worse than futile. The slave states claimed that their state sovereignty sufficed to make a man a slave. Then the same sovereignty in a free state should have made any person free on crossing the border. But the extradition clause ceded this attribute; for the extradition of a slave as such is entirely different from the extradition of a criminal. The criminal is no less guilty after he has crossed the border, whereas the slave is presumed to become free; in delivering him up, the free state is obliged to violate its own basic law.* True that the free states had accepted the inequitable condition to begin with; union seemed so desirable that the point was yielded. The slave states could say that the free states could have and extradite slaves if they wished.

Yet all the states had fought for liberty. Both sides had compromised their moral position hopelessly. If the free states said that slavery was wrong, were they still to abet it, or denounce the Constitution? But the slave states must rest their case on the Constitution, and the Constitution was open to revision. If it came to that, would they be willing to abide by it? The conflict remained in abeyance, while the hope remained that slavery would be gradually extinguished. Yet from the first apprehension was felt for the permanence of the Union. This was evident in the prosecution of the misty Burr-Blennerhasset conspiracy, which was so largely sHeer energy driving westward that nobody quite knew the intention, not even the alleged conspirators. The impulse was to continue until it reached the Rio Grande and the Pacific Coast up to Puget Sound and leaped to Alaska. And the premonition was true; it tore the nation apart.

But where was the real weak point? Unless the question * Civilized nations do not permit extradition of political offenders because the offense is strictly local; a state which hands over a political refugee is thereby acting as the agent of the other state, in derogation of its own sovereignty} whereas in delivering up a criminal, it is acting as the agent of justice.

I38 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE is put in relevant terms, there can be no answer. Though the Civil War occurred seventy odd years ago, the controversy is still open 5 did the break occur on slavery, state rights, or the cleavage between an agrarian and an industrial economy? Did the states reserve or claim too much in state sovereignty ; and if they did, was it on account of slavery? Division of sovereign powers between a Federal government and its component states is no simple matter 5 the past is strewn with the wreckage of leagues and federations. The whole question of sovereignty is exceedingly complex. In practice there is always a debatable margin, on which the gage of battle is thrown down when claims are pressed rigorously. Territorial sovereignty is delimited by the boundaries. This is the virtue of nationalism; it is a spatial restriction on political power, an ultimate safeguard for the individual, a chance of escape from local tyranny. The rise of "internationalism" always connotes a corresponding encroachment on personal liberty; but it really does so by leaving no sovereignty anywhere. Sovereignty rests in the nation; its powers are exercised by the government. By ordinary, all stipulated powers are accounted strength in a government; and the absence of any conceivable power in government is considered a degree of weakness. The truth is that powers which are essentially improper, being contrary to the moral order of the universe, are weakness; and so are powers allotted to an inappropriate agency. They impose weight, stress, or thrust which no structure can support. When "weak" or "strong"

government is in question, the usual connotation of the terms relates only to the superstructure; and the usual recourse is further centralization of powers, which is to say, an increase in the bulk of the superstructure and the diversion of more energy into it. Beyond the correct proportions and powers, this is fatal; unless the resistance from the base is greater than the weight or strain of the superstructure, the whole must fall. Feeble governments are those which have no adequate and legitimately instrumented opposition from the THE FAULT IN THE STRUCTURE 139 regional bases and the mass veto. Utter incompetence in government is finally achieved by what is called absolute political power, whether under the name of democracy or as candid despotism.* Then both the states and the Federal government were too weak by the claim of improper powers and the improper allotment of a proper power. The latter error nullified a vital attribute of sovereignty, its space dimension. Unless this distinction between stipulated powers and intrinsic strength is understood, there can be no relevant discussion of the subThe function of states in a federation is to supply bases and vertical structure; this function is static. They are required to stand against pressure from above which tends to thrust them apart, make them buckle outward. Strictly speaking, no part of a foundation or the verticals resting on it can have too much static strength, true local autonomy. A structure collapses from weakness, not from strength. If it is torn apart violently, it must be from uncompensated thrusts and stresses. These must occur because of unequal bases, faulty cross connections, or excessive and unequally distributed superstructure. Now if slavery had not been admitted to the Constitution on tolerance, its original design was marvelously sound j but the inclusion of slavery introduced all three faults. Primarily it made the bases unequal. With this, it caused an uncompensated cross-thrust; for the extradition clause concerning slaves gave the slave states a point of pressure against the free states. And in the long run, slavery afforded an excuse for adding excessive weight to the superstructure and distributing it unequally.

Thus all three of the disputed causes of the Civil War entered into it, being one cause. And as a crowning evil, again the apparent problem masked the real problem. The apparent problem was the preservation of the Union. But •Exemplified in the collapse of the old regime in France, in Czarist Russia, in Turkey, etc.

140 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE the antecedent condition of federal union is the existence of the states. The real problem was the preservation of the states. If that were impossible, the Union must presently disintegrate or solidify into mass. If a structure is defective, the fact that it was the best the builders could do, or thought they could do, will not avert the physical consequences. Yet since human affairs are in the realm of moral law, which is of a higher order than mechanical law, the outcome may confound all measurable probabilities. Once a machine has been devised, its performance is calculable. But no pre-estimate is possible of what machines man may invent. Machines have no independent active existence, and being creations of the human mind, the system in which they operate must correspond to the nature of the prime mover. It is now a popular cliche that the internal combustion engine has somehow brought about or necessitated some alleged new principle or form in political organization. This is ridiculous. Man himself is an internal combustion engine 5 he is the determinant, and his devices are only multiples of his own faculties and powers. The internal combustion engine increased the volume of production, of energy, on the already existent long circuit, that is all.

The relations are unaltered. The necessary transmission line is the same; it is private property. The necessary condition of human beings is the same 5 it is liberty. The only change is in degree, which can involve only a requirement of more of the same thing, absolute security of private property, full personal liberty, and firm autonomous regional bases for a federal structure. For this reason the potential of a nation cannot be appraised quantitatively. It consists in abstract ideas, in its axioms of human relations expressed in organization, not in material wealth computed at a given date. The Civil War exemplifies this principle. In the early years of the Republic, all of the measurable factors were preponderantly in favor of the Southern slave states. They had ample and varied natural resources. Their SLAVERY, THE FAULT IN THE STRUCTURE staple products, cotton and tobacco, were in demand by a world market, affording cash and credit. They had the prestige bequeathed by their great statesmen as a political asset.

Practically, they had the Federal government, the wealth, and the legal leverage. The North had the personal enterprise of a free population. As northern industry got under way, it seemed to be contributing to Southern dominance, by commerce and inventions which swelled the profits of slave-owners and enabled them to extend slave territory. The appearance was delusive. Suddenly the free economy reached out and began to take over a greater territory than the area which had accrued to slavery. The wealth and power of the free states increased by geometrical progression, doubling and redoubling. Just before the Civil War, William Tecumseh Sherman warned his Southern friends not to provoke war, saying that an agrarian economy cannot match an industrial economy in armed conflict. But the truth is that the South was not a real agrarian economy either 5 it had no-economy whatever of its own, lacking the generator for a local circuit. Looking further than the hazards of a particular war, it was incapable of becoming an independent nation in such conditions.

The South lost the Civil War, as it was bound to; and the question of state sovereignty was dismissed as a technicality set aside by the verdict on slavery. In resorting to war, the slave states committed the moral error of repudiating a contract after taking special advantage through it. The Federal government was clearly obligated to maintain itself against aggression or disruption; having received its authority by delegation, it had no right to abandon its deputed function unless legitimately dissolved by the same means through which it was instituted. The benefit of union to all the states is so overwhelmingly evident that its dissolution then or now wears the aspect of violent lunacy; but if the events were described as pure phenomena, an intelligent spectator would 142 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE realize that there must have been a fault in the structure, as in a falling house. So the operation and consequences of the Reconstruction Act must raise grave doubts whether there could be moral authority for perpetuating by force a union of voluntary origin. Nor is it justifiable to alter the terms of contract when one of the parties is under duress.

Being made by force, the rebuilt structure still contained a physical defect corresponding to the moral defect. The Reconstruction Act was immediate evidence j it wiped out the states as political entities. Though the Act was terminable, and ceased in time, the damage was done. In political organization the specific act implies a continuing power. Even if it be denominated an exception, a temporary expedient, the rule has been laid down that such expedients may be used. The Northern states could not consent to any extension of Federal power over the Southern states without making themselves liable to the imposition of the same power in the future. It was not the liberation of the slaves which extinguished state sovereignty. Liberty is a pre-condition, a universal, which the Constitution should have recognized as primary. The destruction was done by the usurpation of state powers by the Federal government as by right of conquest.

If the Federal government had fought and won a war of conquest, then the states, north as well as south, must have lost it. In place of genuine regional bases, the Civil War resulted in a factitious division with factional interests which would inevitably seek to use the Federal power for partisan advantage. And in that lesson the Western states got their first political training.