Book: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864




We admit that the inference which the European foes of freedom are
prepared to draw from our unhappy quarrel would be perfectly correct, if
they started from a correct position. If our polity is a democratic
polity, and if the end thereof is disunion, civil war, debt, immense
suffering, and the fear of the conflict assuming even a social character
before it shall have been concluded and peace restored, then is the
conclusion inevitable that a democracy is no better than any other form
of government, and is as bad as aristocracy or pure monarchy, under both
of which modes of governing states there have been civil wars, heavy
expenditures, much suffering for all classes of men, and great
insecurity for life and property. Assuredly, democracy never could hope
for a fairer field than has here existed; and if here it has failed, the
friends of democracy must suffer everywhere, and the cause of democracy
receive a check from which it cannot hope to recover for generations. As
"the horrors of the French Revolution" have proved most prejudicial to
the popular cause for seventy years, so must the failure of the American
"experiment" prove prejudicial to that cause throughout Christendom. Our
failure must be even more prejudicial than that of France; for the
French movement was undertaken under circumstances that rendered failure
all but certain, whereas ours was entered upon amid the most favoring
conditions, such as seemed to make failure wellnigh impossible. But we
do not admit that the position assumed by our European enemies is a
sound one, and therefore we hold that the conclusion to which they have
come, and from which they hope to effect so much for the cause of
oppression, is entirely erroneous. Whether we have failed or not, the
democratic principle remains unaffected. As we never have believed that
our example was fairly quotable by European democrats, even when we
appeared to be, and in most respects were, the most successful of
constitutionally governed nations, so do we now deny that our failure to
preserve peace in the old Union can be adduced in evidence against the
excellence of democracy, as that is understood by the advanced liberals
of Europe. As there is nothing in the history of the French Revolution
that should make reflecting men averse to constitutional liberty, so is
there nothing in the history of our war that should cause such men to
become hostile to that democratic idea which, as great observers assure
us, is to overcome and govern the world.

If we have failed, _if_ our conflict is destined to end in a "general
break-down," so unhappy a close to a grand movement will not be due to
the ascendency of democracy here, but rather to democracy having by us
been kept down and depressed. Our polity is not a democratic polity. It
was never meant that it should be a democratic polity. Judging from the
history of the doings of the national convention which made the Federal
Constitution, and of the State conventions which ratified it, we should
be justified in saying that the chief object of "the fathers" was to
prevent the existence of a democracy in America. Their words and deeds
are alike adverse to the notion that democracy had many friends here in
the years that followed the achievement of our nationality. What might
have happened, had the work of constitution-making been entered upon two
or three years later, so that we should have had to read of Frenchmen
and Americans engaged at the same time in the same great business, it
might be interesting to inquire, as matter of curiosity; but our
government under the Constitution had been fairly organized some days
before the last States-General of France met, and, much as this country
was subsequently influenced by considerations that proceeded from the
French Revolution, they did not affect our polity, while they largely
affected our policy. Some eminent men, who were much under the influence
of French ideas, and others who were democratically inclined by their
mental constitution, did not altogether approve of the polity which had
been formed and ratified, and they represented the extreme left of the
country,--as others, who thought that polity too liberal, (too feeble,
they would have said,) represented the extreme right. These men agreed
in nothing but this, that the Federal Constitution was but a temporary
contrivance, and destined to last only until one extreme party or the
other should succeed in overthrowing it, and substituting for it a
polity in which either liberty or power should embody a complete
triumph. Probably not one of their number ever dreamed that it would
have seventy-two years of unbroken existence, or that the first serious
attack made on it would proceed from the quarter whence that attack was
destined to come.

That our polity ever should have been looked upon as democratical in its
character, as well at home as abroad, is one of the strangest facts in
political history. Probably it is owing to some popular expressions in
the Constitution itself. "We, the People of the United States," are the
first words of the instrument, and they are represented as ordaining and
establishing the Constitution. Some of the provisions of the
Constitution are of a popular character, beyond doubt; but they are, in
most instances, not inspirations, but derived from English
experience,--and it will hardly be pretended that England was an armory
from which democracy would think of drawing special weapons. Our
fathers, as it were, codified English ideas and practices, because they
knew them well, and knew them to be good. The two legislative chambers,
the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, the good-behavior tenure of
judges, and generally the modes of procedure, were taken from England;
and they are not of democratic origin, while they are due to the action
of aristocrats. The English Habeas-Corpus Act has been well described as
"the most stringent curb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny"; and
that act was the work of the English Whigs, the most aristocratical
party that ever existed, and it was as dear to Tories as to Whigs.
Democracy had no more to do with its existence than with the existence
of the earth. No democratic movement has ever aimed to extend this
blessing to other countries. In forming our judicial system, the men of
1787-'91 paid little regard to democracy, making judges practically
independent. There have been but two Chief Justices of the United States
for wellnigh sixty-four years, though it is well known that
Chief-Justice Marshall was as odious to the Jeffersonians of the early
part of the century as Chief-Justice Taney is to the ascendent party of
the last four years. Mansfield did not hold his seat more securely in
England than Marshall held his in America, though Mansfield was as
emphatically a favorite of George III. as Marshall was detestable in the
eyes of President Jefferson, who seems to have looked upon the Federal
Supreme Court with feelings not unlike to those with which James II.
regarded the Habeas-Corpus Act. Had he been the head of a democratic
polity, as he was the head of the democratic party, President Jefferson
would have got rid of the obnoxious Chief Justice as summarily as ever a
Stuart king ridded himself of an independent judge. And he would have
been supported by his political friends,--democrats being quite as ready
to support tyranny, and to punish independent officials, as ever were
aristocrats or monarchists.

The manner in which Congress is constituted ought alone to suffice to
show that our polity is thoroughly anti-democratic. The House of
Representatives has the appearance of being a popular body; but a
popular body it is not, in any extended sense. The right to vote for
members of the House is restricted, in some States essentially so. As
matters stood during the whole period between the first election of
Representatives and the closing days of 1860, a large number of members
were chosen as representatives of property in men, a number sufficiently
large to decide the issue of more than one great political question. In
the Congress that met in December, 1859, the last Congress of the old
_regime_, one eleventh part of the Representatives, or thereabout,
represented slaves! Could anything be more opposed to democratic ideas
than such a basis of representation as that? Does any one suppose it
would be possible to incorporate into a democratic constitution that
should be formed for a European nation a provision giving power in the
legislature to men because they were slaveholders, allowing them to
treat their slaves as beasts from one point of view, and to regard them
as men and women from another point of view? Even in the Free States,
and down to recent times, large numbers of men have been excluded from
voting for Members of Congress because of the closeness of State laws.
At this very time, the State of Rhode Island--a State which in opinion
has almost invariably been in advance of her sisters--maintains a
suffrage-system that is considered illiberal, if not odious, in
Massachusetts; and Massachusetts herself is very careful to guard the
polls so jealously that she will not allow any man to vote who does not
pay roundly for the "privilege" of voting, while she provides other
securities that operate so stringently as sometimes to exclude even men
who have paid their money. Universal suffrage exists nowhere in the
United States, nor has its introduction ever been proposed in any part
of this country. The French imperial system of voting approaches much
nearer to universality than anything that ever has been known in
America; and yet England manages to get along tolerably well with her
imperial and democratic neighbor. Perhaps imperialism sweetens democracy
for her, just as democracy salts imperialism in France.

But our House of Representatives, as originally constituted, was a
democratic body, when compared with "the upper chamber," the Senate. The
very existence of an "upper chamber" was an invasion of democratic
ideas. If the people are right, why institute a body expressly for the
purpose of checking their operations? Yet, in making our Constitution,
not only was such a body instituted, but it was rendered as
anti-democratic and as aristocratical as it could possibly be made. Its
members were limited to two from each State, so that perfect equality
between the States existed in the Senate, though one State might have
four million inhabitants, and its neighbor not one hundred thousand. How
this worked in practice will appear from the statement of a few facts.
The year before the war began, the three leading States of the Union,
New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, had, in round numbers, ten millions of
people, and they sent six members to the Senate, or the same number with
Delaware, Florida, and Oregon, which had not above a twelfth part as
many. Massachusetts had seven times as many people as Rhode Island, and
each had two Senators. And so on through the whole roll of States. The
Senators are not popularly elected, but are chosen by the State
legislatures, and for the long term of six years, while Representatives
are elected by the people, every two years. The effect was, that the
Senate became the most powerful body in the Republic, which it really
ruled during the last twelve years of the old Union's existence, when
our Presidents were of the Forcible-Feeble order of men. The English
have Mr. Mason in their country, and they make much of him; and he will
tell them, if asked, that the Senate was the chief power of the American
State in its last days. That it was so testifies most strongly to the
fact that our polity is not democratic. Yet it was to the peculiar
constitution of the Senate that the seventy-two years of the Union were
due; and had nothing occurred to disturb its formation, we should have
had no Secession War. There was no danger that Secession could happen
but what came from the existence of Slavery; and so long as the number
of Slave States and of Free States remained the same, it was impossible
to convince any large portion of the slaveholders that their beloved
institution could be put in danger. But latterly the Free States got
ahead of the Slave States, and then the Secessionists had an opportunity
to labor to some purpose, and that opportunity they did not neglect. It
was to preserve the relative position of the two "sections" that the
Missouri Compromise was repealed in 1854, in the hope and expectation
that several new States might be made that should set up Slavery, and be
represented by slaveholders. Had this nefarious scheme succeeded, it
would have saved us from the Secession War; but it would have brought
other evils upon the country, which, in the long run, might have proved
as great as those under which we are now suffering. We were reduced to a
choice of evils; and though we chose blindly, it is by no means certain
that we did not choose wisely. As in all other cases, the judgment must
depend upon the event,--and the judges are gentlemen who sit in
courts-martial.

The manner in which the President and Vice-President of the United
States were chosen was the reverse of democratical. Each State had the
right to cast as many Electoral votes as it had Representatives in
Congress, which was a democratic arrangement up to a certain point; but
as a score and upward of the Representatives owed their existence to the
existence of Slavery, the equality of the arrangement was more apparent
than real. Yet farther in the direction of inequality: each State was
allowed two Electors who answered to its Senators, which placed New
Jersey on a footing with New York, Delaware with Pennsylvania, and
Florida with Ohio, in utter disregard of all democratic ideas. The
simple creation of Electoral Colleges was an anti-democratic proceeding.
The intention of the framers of the Constitution was that the Electors
of each State should be a perfectly independent body, and that they
should vote according to their own sense of duty. We know that they
never formed an independent body, and that they became at once mere
agents of parties. This failure was in part owing to a sort of
Chalcedonian blindness in the National Convention of 1787. That
convention should have placed the choice of Electors where it placed the
choice of Senators,--in the State legislatures. This would not have made
the Electors independent, but it would have worked as well as the plan
for choosing Senators, which has never been changed, and which it has
never been sought to change. The mode of choosing a President by the
National House of Representatives, when the people have failed to elect
one, is thoroughly anti-democratic. The voting is then by States, the
small States being equal to the great ones. Delaware then counts for as
much as New York, though Delaware has never had but one Representative,
and during one decennial term New York's Representatives numbered forty!
Twice in our history--in 1801 and in 1825--have Presidents been chosen
by the House of Representatives.

The manner in which it is provided that amendments to the Constitution
shall be effected amounts to a denial of the truth of what is considered
to be an American truism, namely, that the majority shall rule.
Two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, or two-thirds of the legislatures
of the several States, must unite in the first instance, before
amendments can be proposed, or a convention called in which to propose
them. If thus far effected, they must be ratified by three-fourths of
the States, before they can be incorporated into the Constitution. The
process is as difficult as that which awaited the proposer of an
amendment to the legislation of the Locrian lawgiver, who made his
motion with a rope round his neck, with which he was strangled, if that
motion was negatived. The provisions of Article V. pay no more attention
to the mere majority of the people than Napoleon III would pay to a
request from the majority of Frenchmen to abdicate that imperial
position which he won for himself, and which it is his firm purpose
shall remain in his family.

It would be no difficult matter to point out other anti-democratic
provisions in our National Constitution; and it would be easy to show
that in the Constitutions of most of our States, if not in all of them,
there are provisions which flagrantly violate the democratic principle,
and of which European democrats never could approve. All through the
organic laws of the Nation and the States there are to be found
restraints on numbers, as if the leading idea of the Constitution-makers
of America were aversion to mere majorities, things that fluctuate from
year to year,--almost from day to day,--and therefore are not to be
trusted. We are stating the fact, and it does not concern our purpose to
discuss the wisdom of what has here been done. How happened it, then,
that our polity was so generally regarded as purely democratical in its
character? Partly this was owing to the extremely popular nature of all
our political action, and to the circumstances of the country not
admitting of any struggle between the rich and the poor. Because there
was no such struggle, it was inferred that the rich had been conquered
by the poor, when the truth was, that, outside of the cities and large
towns, there were no poor from whom to form a party. Degrees of wealth,
and of means below wealth, there were, and there were poor men; but
there was no class of poor people, and hence no material from which to
form a proletarian party. In all our great party-conflicts the wealth
and talents of the country were not far from equally divided, the wealth
and ability of the South being mostly with the democratic party, while
those of the North were on the side of their opponents; but to this rule
there were considerable exceptions. Foreigners could not understand
this; and their conclusion was that the masses had their own way in
America, and that property was at their mercy, as it is said by some
writers to have been at the mercy of the democracy of Athens.[J] We
were said to have established universal suffrage, when in fact suffrage
was limited in every State, and in some States essentially limited, the
abuses that from time to time occurred happening in great towns for the
most part. Most citizens were legal voters in the larger number of the
States; but this was owing, not altogether to the liberal character of
our polity or legislation, but to the general prosperity of the country,
which made tax-paying easy and intelligence common, and hence caused
myriads of men to take a warm interest in politics who in other
countries never would have thought of troubling themselves about
politics, save in times of universal commotion. The political appearance
presented by the country was that of a democracy, beyond all question.
America seemed to be a democratic flat to the foreigner. To him the
effect was much the same as follows from looking upon a map. Look upon a
map, and there is nothing but flatness to be seen, the most perfect
equality between all parts of the earth. There are neither mountains nor
villages, neither elevations nor chasms, nothing but conventional marks
to indicate the existence of such things. The earth is a boundless
plain, on which the prairie is as high as Chimborazo. The observer of
the real earth knows that such is not the case, and that inequality is
the physical world's law. So was it here, to the foreign eye. All
appeared to be on the same level, when he looked upon us from his home;
but when he came amongst us, he found that matters here differed in no
striking respect from those of older nations. Yet so wedded were
foreigners to the notion that we were all democrats, and that here the
majority did as it pleased them to do, that, but a short time before his
death,--which took place just a year before the beginning of the
Secession movement,--Lord Macaulay wrote a letter in which he expressed
his belief that we should fall because of a struggle between the rich
and the poor, for which we had provided by making suffrage universal! He
could not have been more ignorant of the real sources of the danger that
threatened us, if he had been an American who resolutely closed his
eyes, and then would not believe in what he would not see. When such a
man could make such a mistake, and supposed that we were to perish from
an agrarian revolt,--we being then on the eve of a revolt of the
slaveholders,--it cannot be matter for wonder that the common European
belief was that the United States constituted a pure and perfect
democracy, or that most Europeans of the higher classes should have
considered that democracy as the most impure and imperfect of political
things.[K]

The long and almost unbroken ascendency of the democratic party in this
country had much to do with creating the firm impression that our system
was democratic in its character,--men not discriminating closely between
that party and the polity of which it had charge. Originally, some
reproach attached to the word _Democrat_, considered as a party-name;
and it was not generally accepted until after the Jeffersonian time had
passed away. Men who would now be called _Democrats_ were known as
_Republicans_ in the early part of the century. But the word conquered a
great place for itself, and became the most popular of political names,
so that even respectable Whigs did not hesitate to appropriate it to
their own use. Whatever name it was known by, the democratic party took
possession of the Federal Government in 1801, and held it through an
unbroken line of Virginia Presidents for twenty-four years. The
Presidential term of Mr. J.Q. Adams was no breach of democratic
party-rule in fact, whatever it was in name, for almost every man who
held high office under Mr. Adams was a Jeffersonian democrat. In 1829
the new democratic party came into power, and held office for twelve
successive years. The Whig victory of 1840 hardly interrupted that rule,
as President Harrison's early death threw power into the hands of Mr.
Tyler, who was an ultra-Jeffersonian democrat, a Pharisee of the
Pharisees. Mr. Polk, a Jacksonian democrat, was President from 1845 to
1849. The four years that followed saw the Presidential chair filled by
Whigs, General Taylor and Mr. Fillmore; and those four years form the
only time in which men who had had no connection with the democratic
party wielded the executive power of the United States. General Pierce
and Mr. Buchanan, both democrats, were at the head of the Government for
the eight years that followed Mr. Fillmore's retirement. Thus, during
the sixty years that followed Mr. Jefferson's inauguration in 1801, the
Presidency was held by democrats for fifty-six years, President Harrison
himself being a democrat originally,--and if he is to be counted on the
other side, the counting would not amount to much, as he was President
less than five weeks. Even in those years in which the democrats did not
have the Presidency, they were powerful in Congress, and generally
controlled Federal legislation. It was natural, when the democratic
party was so successful under our polity, that that polity should itself
be considered democratic. In point of fact, the polity was as democratic
as the party,--our democrats seldom displaying much sympathy with
liberal ideas, and in their latter days becoming even servilely
subservient to Slavery. It is but fair to add, that down to 1854 their
sins with respect to Slavery were rather those of position than of
principle, and that their action was no worse than would have been that
of their opponents, had the latter been the ruling party. But, as the
democratic party did rule here, and was supposed to hold to democratic
principles, the conclusion was not unreasonable that we were living
under a democratic polity, the overthrow of which would be a warning to
the Liberals of Europe.

Our polity was constitutional in its character, strictly so; and if it
has failed,--which we are far indeed from admitting,--the inference
would seem fairly to be, that Constitutionalism has received a blow, not
Democracy. As England is the greatest of constitutional countries, our
failure, supposing it to have occurred, tells with force against her,
from whose system we have drawn so much, and not adversely to the cause
of European democracy, from whose principles and practice we have taken
little. To us it seems that our war bears hard upon no government but
our own, upon no people but ourselves, upon no party but American
parties. It is as peculiar in its origin as in its modes. It had its
origin in the existence of Slavery, and Slavery here existed in the
worst form ever known among men. Until Slavery shall be found elsewhere
in combination with Constitutionalism or Democracy, it would be unfair
to quote our contest as a warning to other liberally governed lands. We
were a nation with a snake in its bosom; and as no other nation is
similarly afflicted, our misfortune cannot be cited in the case of any
other community. Free institutions are to be judged by their effect when
they have had fair play, and not by what has happened in a republic
which sought to have them in an unnatural alliance with the most
detestable form of tyrannical oppression. REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

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