22. K. Marx. The Crisis over the Slavery Issue 1
but even The Examiner ought to know that the present rebellion did not wait upon the passing of the Morrill tariff for breaking out. In point of fact, the Southerners could not have been tired of being robbed of the fruits of their slave labor by the Protective tariff of the North, considering that from 1846-1861 a Free-Trade tariff had obtained.
The Spectator characterizes in its last number the secret thought of some of the Anti-Northern organs in the following striking manner:
"What, then, do the Anti-Northern organs really profess to think desi-rable, under the justification of this plea of deferring to the inexorable logic of facts?" They argue that disunion is desirable, just because, as we have said, it is the only possible step to a conclusion of this "causeless and fratricidal strife;" and next, of course, only as an afterthought, and as an humble apology for Providence and "justification of the ways of God to man," now that the inevitable necessity stands revealed — for further reasons discovered as beautiful adaptations to the moral exigencies of the country, when once the issue is discerned. It is discovered that it will be very much for the advantage of the States to be dissolved into rival groups. They will mutually check each other's ambition; they will neutralize each other's power, and if ever England should get into a dispute with one or more of them, more jealousy will bring the antagonistic groups to our aid. This will be, it is urged, a very wholesome state of things, for it will relieve us from anxiety and it will encourage political 'competition,' that great safeguard of honesty and purity, among the States themselves.
"Such is the case — very gravely urged — of the numerous class of Southern sympathizers now springing up among us. Translated into English — and we grieve that an English argument on such a subject should be of a nature that requires translating — it means that we deplore the present great scale of this "fratricidal" war, because it may concentrate in one fearful spasm a series of chronic petty wars and passions and jealousies among groups of rival States in times to come. The real truth is, and this very un-English feeling distinctly discerns this truth, though it cloaks it in decent phrases, that rival groups of American States could not live together in peace or harmony. The chronic condition would be one of malignant hostility rising out of the very causes which have produced the present contest. It is asserted that the different groups of States have different tariff interests. These different tariff interests would be the sources of constant petty wars if the States were once dissolved, and Slavery, the root of all the strife, would be the spring of innumerable animosities, discords and campaigns. No stable equilibrium could ever again be established among the rival States. And yet it is maintained that this long future of incessant strife is the providential solution of the great question now at issue — the only real reason why it is looked upon favorably being this, that whereas the present great-scale conflict may issue in a restored and stronger political unity, the alternative of infinitely multiplied small-scale quarrels will issue in a weak and divided continent, that England cannot fear.
hands in horror at the present^ "fratricidal" strife because it holds out hopes of finality. We exhort them to look favorably on the indefinite future of small strifes, equally fratricidal and probably far more demoralizing, because the latter would draw out of our side the thorn of American rivalry."