The New York Herald, July 31, 1860
Below: The Moral Issue Underlying the Conflict.
This is an Op-ed piece examining the treatment of slavery by political parties and the bleak future the author sees for the Union if slavery is not somehow accepted by the North.
In essence, the writer is telling the Democratic Party that the time has come to deal squarely with the issue of slavery. That, somehow, they need to convince people it is an acceptable part of the American project.
The Republicans, on the other hand, have seized upon the issue and are convincing people it is an evil.
The rise of the Republican Party, the writer claims, is explained by that “great overwhelming moral issue of slavery, as an institution of good or evil, of right or wrong.”
The Republicans therefore are dealing with it square in the face, and being a sectional party, reflect a growing understanding at the North:
“This underlying fundamental Northern idea, that the institution of Southern slavery is a sin; that it is founded in error and against right; that it’s fruits are poisonous; that it pretensions are false and incompatible with our free institutions; and that it must be hunted out of the country, will account for this solid front of the Republican Party.”
In short, these ideas unite the Republicans and is uniting the North.
These same suspicions run throughout the Democratic Party, too. However, that party tends to ignore or evade these fundamental questions regarding the institution. Instead, they argue over abstractions which work to divide the party instead of uniting it - as was seen at the Charleston and Baltimore Conventions.
As a result, the sectional Republicans “representing hardly one-third of the popular vote of the country, is morally certain to elect its candidates for President and Vice President, by a majority of the electoral vote of the Union.”
“The simple truth is, that this contest is between the anti-slavery sentiment of the North and the pro-slavery sentiment of the South.”
If the Democrats do not figure out how to confront the slavery issue in a way that can unite them, then a sectional party will take the Presidency and force a disunion of the country.
“It is,” the writer believes, “the ‘irrepressible conflict’ proclaimed by W.H. Seward.”
Here, the writer obviously has no way of contemplating or knowing the utter devastation which is about to engulf the country, or that the issue of slavery will actually be resolved permanently in this country.
So, although he agrees with the “irrepressible conflict” idea, he does not think that any result of that pending conflict will lead to an either-or scenario (all free or all slave).
Instead, the writer believes the result will mean “the withdrawal of the bulk of slave States from the Union, sooner or later, peace or war.” In that scenario, the Union is lost and slavery remains on the continent.
What he hopes is that the conflict can be somehow prolonged until “there shall appear a party strong enough to maintain slavery in the Union, not only as recognized by the compact of the constitution but upon that high moral ground, that as existing in the United States, negro slavery is right, is good and proper, a divinely ordained institution.”
That certainly seems a huge barrier to overcome, even a bit outlandish to even consider - at least from a modern perspective. But such were surely the sentiments of many Americans who held the Union with such esteem, and who feared its disunion over the issue of slavery. They were seeking some new way to compromise when compromising seemed all but dead.
Nevertheless, the writer ponders on the only way he can see forward to a future where the Union is saved. From his perspective, then, it must come, somehow, in some way, by Americans accepting the institution:
“But under a popular government like ours, such a Southern institution as this of slavery can never be safe until public opinion in the North shall have been trained at least so far to recognize it right and good as to let it alone.”
“Will that day ever come? We know not; but we know, for we see, that this Presidential contest, for good or evil, is the beginning of the end.”