C I V I L W A R I N A M E R I C A

from

Glimpses of World History

By

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

February 27, 1933

The Old World, with its conflicts and intrigues, its kings and its revolution, its hates and its nationalisms, has taken up a great deal of our time. Let us now cross the Atlantic and visit the New World of America, and see how this fared after it had shaken off the grasping hand of Europe. The United States in particular demand our attention. From small beginnings they have grown and grown, till today they seem to dominate the world situation. England has no longer pride of place today; she is not the world’s money-lender now, but is an unhappy debtor country, like all the others in Eroupe, asking the United States for kind and generous treatment. The mantle of the money-lender has fallen on America; wealth pours into her, and she breeds millionaires in surprising quantities.

But, as in the case of Midas of old, her touch of gold has not brought her much joy, and her masses are suffering from want and poverty today in spite of her millionaires.

The thirteen seaboard States that broke off from England in 1775 had a population of well under four millions. Today the city of New York alone has about double that population, and the whole of the United States have a population of a hundred and twenty-five millions. (rsr-that was in 1933)

There are many more States now in the Union, and they extend right across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. The nineteenth century saw the growth of this great country, not only in extent and population, but also in modern industry and commerce wealth and influence. The States had many difficulties and troubles and some wars and entanglements with Europe, but the greatest of their trials came from a bitter and devastating civil war between the States of the North and those of the South.

A few years after America became free there was the Revolution in France, followed by the wars of Napoleon. Both Napoleon and England tried to destroy each other’s commerce, and in doing this came into conflict with the United States. American overseas commerce was quite paralyzed, and this led to another war with England in 1812. Nothing much happened as a result of this two years’ war. In the course of this war, when Napoleon had been disposed of at Elba and England had her hands free, the British managed to capture Washington the capital city, and they burnt down and destroyed all the important public buildings including the Capitol, the building where Congress is held, and the White House, the residence of the presidents. Subsequently the British were defeated.

Even before this war, the States had added a large slice of territory in the south. This was the old French colony Louisiana, which Napoleon sold to them, as he was quite unable to defend it from British naval attacks.

A few tears later, in 1882, a purchase, from spaIn this time, brought Florida to the States, and in 1848 a successful war with Mexico brought several States in the south-west, including California. Many of the names of cities in this south-western part are Spanish still, and reminding one of the days when the Spaniards or the Spanish-speaking Mexicans ruled here. Everybody has heard of Los Angeles, the great city of Cinemadom, and of San Francisco.

While Europe was having its repeated attempts at revolution and repression, the United States kept on spreading westward. Repression in Europe helped immigration, and tales of vast territories and high wages attracted large numbers from the European countries. As the population spread to the west, new States were formed and added to the Union.

Between the northern States and the southern there was a great difference from the very beginning. The northern were industrial, where the new big machine-industry spread rapidly; in the south there were large plantations worked by slave labour. Slavery was legal, but in the north it was not popular and had little importance. The South depended entirely on slave labour. The slaves were, of course, Negroes from Africa. No white people were slaves. “All men are born equal,” says the Declaration of independence, but this applied to the whites, not to the blacks.

The story of how these Negroes were brought from Africa is a very sad one. The slave trade began early in the seventeenth century, and a regular supply was kept up till 1863. At first, cargo-boats passing the West African coast-a part of it is still called the “Slave Coast”-picked up the Africans whenever they could do so easily, and carried them to America. Among the Africans themselves there was very little slavery; only prisoners of war or debtors were so treated. It was found that this carrying of Africans to America and selling them as slaves was a very profitable business. The slave trade grew, and was subsidized as a business chiefly by the English, the Spanish, and the Portuguese. Special ships-slave-traders-were built with galleries between decks. In these galleries the unhappy Negroes were made to lie down, all chained up, and each couple fettered together. The voyage across the Atlantic lasted many weeks, sometimes months. During all these weeks and months these Negroes lay in these narrow galleries, shackled together, and all the space that was allowed to each of them was five and a half feet long by sixteen inches wide!

Liverpool became a great city on the foundation of the slave trade. As early as 1713, in the Peace of Utrecht, England extorted from Spain the privilege of carrying slaves between Africa and Spanish America. Even before this ,England had supplied slaves to the English territories in America. An attempt was thus made in the eighteenth century to make the Africa-America slave made an English monopoly. In 1730 Liverpool had fifteen ships engaged in this trade. The number went on growing, till in 1792 there were 132 ships employed by Liverpool in the slave trade.

The early days of the Industrial Revolution led to an advance in cotton-spinning in Lancashire in England and this led to a demand for more slaves in the United States. For, the cotton used by the the Lancashire mills came from the great cotton plantations of the southern States. These cotton plantations were rapidly extended, more slaves were brought over from Africa, and every effort was made to breed Negroes!

In 1790 there were 697,000 slaves in the United States; in 1861 the number rose to 4,000,000.

Early in the nineteenth century the British Parliament passed stringent laws against slavery. Other countries in Europe and America followed.

But even when the slave trade was thus outlawed, Negroes were still carried from, Africa to America, with this difference, that the conditions of their journey were far worse. They could not be carried openly, so they were hidden away from sight on loose shelves, one on top of the other. Sometimes, an American writer tells us, “One crowded on to the lap of another, and with legs on legs, like riders on a crowded toboggan!” It is difficult to imagine the full horror of all this. Conditions were so filthy that the slave ships had to be abandoned after four or five voyages. But the profits were huge, and during the height of the trade at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries ,as many as 100,000 slaves were carried every year from the African Slave Coast. And remember that the carrying away of this number meant the killing of far greater numbers in the raids to capture the Negroes.

All the principal countries made the trade illegal early in the nineteenth century or thereabouts. Even the United States did so. But although the slave trade was outlawed, slavery itself continued to be legal in America-that is to say, that the old slaves continued as slaves.

And because slavery was legal, the slave trade also continued in spite of prohibition. When Britain put an end to slavery also, then New York became the principal port for the slave trade.

Although New York was the port for this trade for many years-till the middle of the century-the North was against slavery. The South, on the other hand, required these slaves for plantation work. Some of the States abolished slavery, others retained it. Negroes would often run away from a slavery State to a non-slavery one, and there would be disputes about them.

The economic interests of the North and the South were different, and as early as 1830 friction arose about tariffs and customs duties. Threats of breaking away from the Union were made. The States were jealous of their rights, and did not like too much interference from the Federal Government. Two parties arose in the country, one favoring State sovereignty, the other wanting a strong central government. All these points of difference divided the North and South farther from each other, and wherever new States were added to the Union, the question arose which side they would support. Where would the majority lie? The population of the North was increasing rapidly because of the immigration from Europe, and this made southern people fear that soon they would be over overwhelmed by the numbers of the North and outvoted on every question. So tension increased between the North and South.

Meanwhile an agitation grew up in the North for the total abolition of slavery. The people who were in favor of this were called the “Abolitionists”, and their principal leader was William Lloyd Garrison. In 1831 Garrison brought out a paper called the Liberator to support his anti-slavery agitation. In the very first issue of this paper he made it clear that he was not going to compromise on this issue, and would not moderate about it. Some of his sentences from that issue have become famous, and I shall give them to you here;

I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak or write with moderation. No! No! tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of a ravisher; tell the other to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen-but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest-I will not equivocate-I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inch-and I will be heard.

This brave attitude was, however, confined to a small minority. Most of those who opposed slavery did not want to interfere with it where it already existed. Still the tension grew between the North and the South, for this was due to their different economic interests, which conflicted especially on the tariff question.

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States and his election was a signal for the South to break away. He was opposed to slavery, but even so ,he had made it clear that there would be no interference with it ,where it existed. He was not prepared to see it extended to new Stated or to give it legality.

The South was not appeased by this assurance, and State after State seceded from the Union. The United Stated were going to pieces. Such was the terrible position that faced the new President. He made another effort to win over the South and prevent this breakup. He gave them all manner of assurances about allowing slavery to go on; he even said that he was prepared to make it a part of the constitution, which would give it permanence. In fact, he was prepared to go to any length for peace, but one thing he would not agree to, and that was the breakup of the union. He denied absolutely the right of any State to withdraw from the Union.

Lincoln’s attempts to avoid Civil war failed. The South had decided the break away, and eleven States did so, while some other border States also sympathized with them. The seceding States called themselves the “Confederate States” and elected their own President, Jefferson Davis. In April 1861 the Civil war began, and it lasted for four weary years, during which many a brother fought against his brother and many a friend against a friend. Huge armies grew up as the war continued. The North had many advantages; it had a much bigger population and greater wealth. Being a manufacturing and industrial area, its resources were far greater, and it had more railways. But the South had the better soldiers and generals, especially General Lee, and all the early victories went to the South. But ultimately the South was worn out. The Northern navy cut off the South completely from its market in Europe, and cotton and tobacco could not be exported. This crippled the South, but it also had a disastrous result on Lancashire, where many mills had to stop working because thee was no cotton. There was great distress among the workers thrown out of employment in Lancashire.

English opinion about the war was generally in sympathy with the South, or at any rate the opinion of the wealthier classes was in favor of the South. The radical elements favored the North.

Slavery was not the principal cause of the Civil War. As I have told you, to the last, Lincoln gave assurances that he would respect slavery wherever it existed.

The real trouble arose from the different and somewhat confliction economic interests of the North and South, and finally Lincoln fought to preserve the Union. Even after war had begun, Lincoln made no clear pronouncement about slavery, as he was afraid of irritating many people in the North who were in favor of it. As the war went on, he became more definite. He proposed first that Congress could free the slaves after giving compensation to the owners. Later, he gave up this idea of compensation, and finally, he issued the Proclamation of Emancipation , in which , it was declared that the slaves in all the states in rebellion against the government should be fee on and after 1^st, January, 1863. It resulted on 4,000,000 slaves being freed, and it was no doubt hoped that these would create trouble in the Confederate States.

The Civil War ended in 1865, after the South was thoroughly exhausted. War at any time is a terrible affair, but civil war is often more horrible still. The burden of four years of this awful struggle fell most of all on the president, Lincoln, and the result was largely due to his cool determination to persevere in spite of all disappointments and disasters. He was out not only to win, but to do so with as little ill-will as possible, so that the Union for which he was fighting might be a real union of hearts, and not a forced one. So, having won the war, he set out to be generous to the defeated South. But within a few days a crank shot him dead.

Abraham Lincoln is one of the greatest of American heroes. He has also taken his place among the world’s great men. His beginnings were quite humble, he had little schooling, such education as he had was mostly his own work, and yet he grew up a great statesman and a great orator, and steered his country through a great crisis.

After Lincoln’s death the American Congress was not as generous to the Southern Whites as he might have been. These Southern Whites were penalized in some ways and many were disfranchised-that is, their voted were taken away. On the other hand, the Negroes were given full rights as citizens, and this was made part of the American constitution. It was also laid down that no State could disfranchise a man on account of his race, color, or previous slavery.

The Negroes were now legally free and had the vote. But this did them little good for their economic status remained the same. All the freed Negroes were wholly without property, and it became a problem to know what to do with them. Some migrated to the northern towns, but most of them remained where they were, as much under the thumb of their old white masters in the South as ever. They worked as wagelabourers in the old plantations on such wages as the white employers chose to give them. The Southern Whites also organized themselves ,to keep down the Negroes in every way by terrorism. An extraordinary semi-secret organization, called the “Ku Klux Klan”, was formed, and its members went about in masks terrorizing the Negroes and preventing them from even voting at the elections.

During the last half-century the Negroes have made some progress. Many own property, and they have some fine educational institutions. But they are still very definitely the subject race. There are about 12,000,000 of them in the United States-just about 10 percent, of the total population. Wherever they are in small numbers they are tolerated, as in parts of the North, but as soon as their numbers increase they are heavily sat upon and made to feel that they are little better than the slaves of old. Everywhere they are segregated and kept apart from the Whites in hotels, restaurants, churches, colleges, parks, bathing-beaches, trams, and even in stores! In railways they have to travel in special carries called “Jim-Crow cars”. .Marraiage between the White and Negro is forbidden by law . Indeed, there are all manner of strange laws A law passed by the State of Virginia as recently as 1926 prohibited white and colored persons from sitting on the same floor!

Sometimes there are terrible race riots between the Whites and the Negroes. Frequently in the south there are horrible cases of lynching ,that is, when a mob gets hold of a person it suspects of some offence and kills him. Cases have occurred in recent years of Negroes being burned at the stake by white mobs.

All over America and especially in the southern States, the lot of the Negro is still very hard. Often when labor is scarce ,innocent Negroes, in some States in the south, are sent to goal on some trumped-up charge, and the convict layout is leased out to private contractors. This is bad enough, but the conditions accompanying it are shocking. So we see that legal freedom does not amount to very much, after all.

Have you read or heard of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s

Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

This book is about the old slave Negroes in the southern States, and gives their sad story. It came out ten years before the Civil War, and had great influence I rousing the American people against slavery.

February 27, 1933