Commentary/Editorial: The Polynesian, October 1862

Source: The Polynesian. Honolulu: Saturday, October 4, 1862.

In reading North American journals, and even some journals issued in this place, the writers, claiming to arrive at Union via Coercion, frequently accused themselves of leniency and forbearance and not having at an earlier stage of the war had recourse to slavery abolition as a means of speedily ending the rebellion. We never could see the force of their reasoning. It is historically and well-known that, up to the advent of Mr. Lincoln to power, the proslavery party both North and South ruled the roost in the country, in Congress and in the Cabinet. Consequently no abolition could have been forced down Southern throats up to that time. It is further well-known that no sooner was Mr. Lincoln elected and the abolitionists in power, than the South separated themselves from the Union, and thus made evolution impossible except for Northern arms had possession; consequently abolition, as a means to overthrow the slave power, was by the secession wrenched out of the grasp of the Northern philanthropists, and they need not, in our opinion, now blame themselves for not doing what, when the States were united, they had not the power to do, or what, after separation, they had not the means to enforce. One of the causes, as we understand it, that made the South secede, was their apprehension that when the anti-slavery party came into power, it would proceed to the extinction of slavery in a manner and in a time alike unpleasant and inconvenient to the South; and, notwithstanding the President tried in his inaugural address to reassure them that slavery would not be interfered with, and that their own slaves would be safer in that out of the Union, yet recent measures and the present cry for abolition can have but one tendency  -that of confirming the South in its first opinion that abolition would be the national policy of the present administration- quietly by legislation, if the south submitted -forcibly by arms, if it resisted. 

To us and other “impartial” journals, who keep their noses above the dust kicked up by the warm breeze, it seems that abolition proclamations at this stage of the game will only widen the gulf and embitter the hatred that separates the two sections. As well proclaim the abolition of slavery in Turkey. It would look well on paper; but unless Turkey were covered by the arms of the proclamation of the proclaimer, his proclamation might gain him great credit but would do no possible good for the slave and so with the Southern states. 

That slavery is a great evil, whether it affects body or soul, no sane man will deny. When the present Union of the American States was formed in 1787, all the States except Massachusetts were slave States. And then, and not in 1861, began “the uprising of a great people.” Then they uprose, each one for itself, and one after the other gradually and in concordance with natural laws, physical and moral, is all great and lasting changes in the world are made;  -quietly and noiselessly, as the providence of God, spread the Divine afflatus towards the South and the West, and those who are competent to judge affirm that in 20 or 25 years more Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri would have swelled the grand chorus of the “uprising.” It is proper for the thinking man, the Christian philosopher, and the candid historian, to inquire what arrested or retarded a consummation so devoutly desired, a movement of which the glory belonged to God alone- a movement like all great forces, slow but sure and embracing and its program more than the abrupt liberation of four million semi-savages.  We fear that the inquirer will be answered that benevolence without judgment, zero without direction, restlessness without patience, vanity with some, Phariseeism with others, were the principal causes that interfered with the gradual and safe abolition of slavery in the United States. People who had cleaned their own skirts of the abomination of slavery, fretted under the slow movement of natural laws; they felt themselves called upon to lend the Almighty a hand; the “Dieu le volt” of the Eleventh Century found a singular echo in the Nineteenth, and Peter the Hermit of the time of the Crusades found many a counterpart in the abolition ranks. They were met at the threshold of their enterprise by a document called the Constitution of the United States; but what avail human parchments against those who fancy themselves impelled by the inward sense of a “higher law”? They shouted to each other until they drowned of the sound of conservative men, and that shout, borne along on the air, has been hailed by some as the awakening  -“the uprising of a great people.” 

And now, for nearly two years, that this party has had control of the Government, how much nearer is the slave to his liberty then he was before its “aprising" -how much fitter to enjoy it when obtained? And when this fratricidal war is over, by conquest or exhaustion, who will charge themselves with the maintenance and education of the liberated slave during pupilage? -for political equality is not included on the abolition programme; it offers political outlawry in exchange for social bondage. There is a distinction between the two, we know. The one that is the measure of slaveholding depravity; the other is the extent of abolition benevolence. 

It is sad to think that men who distrusted the omnipotence of God, the efficacy of moral forces and natural laws, should feel no misgivings about the efficacy of physical forces in human hands, directed by red-hot zeal and brimful prejudice. It is sadder still to see the inextricable snarl into which men entangle themselves when, instead of invoking with God, they attempt to work for God. Frederik von Schlegel, speaking of the abolition of slavery, says: “The sudden abolition of an evil that has become an invertebrate habit in society, is mostly attended with danger, and frequently works another wrong of an opposite kind.” “But this,” says his commentator, “is one of those truths which giddy, reckless spirit of a spurious philanthropy can never be made to comprehend.”

As many of our readers of probably never read Schlegel’s works, we copy the following paragraphs from his commentator, Jas. Burton Robertson, Esq.:

Schlegel observes that the difference between strict wall and equitable law is the most arduous problem in all jurisprudence. Strict law is an abstract law, deduced from certain general principles, applied without the least regard to adventitious circumstances. Equity, on the other hand, payed regard to such circumstances, examines into the peculiar state of things and the mutual relation of parties; and forms her decisions not according to the caprice of fancy, or the waywardness of feeling, but according to the general principles of right, applied to the variable circumstances and situations of parties. 

According to the authors definition, the object of the institution of the state is the maintenance of internal and external peace. Justice is the only basis of peace; but justice is here the means and not the end. If justice were the end for which the state was constituted, then neither external or internal peace could ever be procured or maintained; for the state would then be compelled to wage eternal war against all who, at home or abroad, were guilty of injustice and could never lay down its arms till that injustice were removed. 

As peace is essentially the end of that great corporation called the state it follows that the justice by which its foreign and domestic policy must be regulated, is not that strict or absolute justice spoken of above, but that temperate or conciliatory equity, which is alone applicable to the concerns of men. The maxim, “a thousand years’ wrong cannot constitute an hours right,” if applied to civil jurisprudence prudence, would introduce interminable confusion, hardship, and misery in the affairs of private life, and if applied to constitutional and international law would lead to perpetual anarchy at home, and to endless, exterminating war abroad.

“The Christian religion, as it comes from God, is eminently social -hence it abhors the principle of absolute or inexorable right, whether applied to civil or public law -hence the Christian state, or the state animated with the spirit of Christianity, is in its tendency essentially pacific. 

This pacific policy of the state, however, so far from excluding, necessarily implies the firm, uncompromising vindication of its rights and interests, whether at home or abroad; and the repression of evil doers within, or a just war without, is often the only means of attaining the object for which the state was constituted -to wit, the maintenance of peace. On the other hand, the revolutionary state, or the state where, in opposition to the existing rights and interests, new right and interests are violently enforced; and where, in subversion of all established institutions, new institutions, conceived according to abstract and arbitrary theories, are violently introduced; the revolutionary state, I say is, from its nature and origin -no matter what form it may assume- necessarily driven to a course of iniquitous policy -to this organizing tyranny within, and to fierce relentless hostility without.”