[From Fraser's Magazine] English Opinion on Slavery and the War in the United States: (1862)

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, June 28, 1862.

The most disagreeable feature in the war, if it come upon us now, will be the support which we shall be compelled to give to the Slave States. It will be an odious position for us, to be defending a system with arms which we have long and loudly condemned; and we shall be told scornfully the old story what we have no policy but as interest dictates.

England stands clear enough in the question of slavery to bear language of this kind without very much feeling it. One regret, however, would be keener than it is, were the civil war in any sense a war for the benefits of the slave. But the humanity of the North is as 'the tender mercies of the wicked.' The negro of South Carolina is his master's chattel; but for the most part he is treated as a fellow creature. The free black of the North is a Pariah, from whose touch the New Yorker shrinks as a contamination. The Republican party hate slavery not because the slave is oppressed; but because they have no interest in slave labor, and the existence of it is a reproach to their country. As the case grows more desperate, the abolition cry will become louder, and before long it will be no fault of Fremont and his friends if there is not a servile insurrection. But the freed negroes will be no nearer to their rights as human beings. The President already hints at deportation; and other talk insolently of their elimination by 'natural selection.' We who profess to have some real interest in the negro, need feel small interest in the success of the Abolitionists of Massachusetts; and if the poor African is ever to receive god from the more advanced races, he must be permitted to associate with them in some form or another, in some relation or another. If they turn him from their sight, he will die or become a savage again. The world has outgrown slavery and condemned it; but the long crime in which we too have our share, will not be atoned for merely by declaring it at an end; by robbing the owner of his slave's services, and leaving the slave to what fate may do for him. It is with man as it is with the lower creatures. The horse and the cow, the sheep and the pig, multiply and are cared for, because they will domesticate ad make themselves useful; the wolves and jackals, even nobler wild beasts, are killed off as nuisances. And like them, too, the Red Indian, the Australian, the New Zealander, who will not bend to the yoke of civilization, dwindle and perish, by the 'natural selection' to which the Americans will consign the negro; while notwithstanding the negro has been the one exception in all the wild races with which we have come in contact. He tames easily. He works well. He becomes docile, gentle, humorous; and his numbers multiply faster than in his native forests. If he be made free only to be thrust away from intercourse with the whites, his natural habits will come back over him, he will be forced into the condition which the wilder savage chooses, and by the same law will perish.

The happiest fortune for the Southern slaves will be to remain on their plantations, still cared for as they have been, and still giving their services as they have hitherto given them, if only the condition of their service can be improved. Many things have been done for them far short of emancipation, as the proper and wholesome preparation for it. They may be made adscripti glebae, annexed to the soil, and be no longer in danger f being sold away from their homes. The laws may be softened which interfere with their education. The laws may be strengthened which protect them from brute usage. Their evidence may be admitted in courts of justice. They may be allowed to acquire property. They may have days given them when their labor shall be their own, and they may be allowed to buy their freedom. When they are no longer irritated by Northern fanatics, the planters may find it in their interest to consent to such measures as these; and slavery may disappear at last as serfdom has disappeared from Europe, leaving the negro able to keep and to care for himself.

At all events, even in this aspect of the civil war, there is no such manifest right on one side, or such manifest wrong on the other, that we are to be kept by these accidental and collateral considerations from standing by our own flag. The magnitude of an injury is not measured by the actual harm inflicted. And the nation which will not or cannot makes its rights respected is on the road to ruin.