 Section 10 of Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to his father and his youngest sister, 1857-78. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jim Clevinger, Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to his father and his youngest sister, 1857-78 by Ulysses S. Grant. Section 10 The following letter is from the Secretary of General Grant's aunt. The aunt Rachel referred to on page 27. It is included in this volume as a historical curiosity. Chestnut Hill, Virginia, June 5, 1861. Miss Grant. I have not often written to incognito correspondence, nor should I have the presumption now to address you unknown to me unless by reputation. But that peculiar circumstances have so combined as to induce the experiment. Your aunt, Mrs. Tompkins, has been prostrated by illness for many days and, for a while, closely confined to her couch, thus rendering it at least inconvenient, to respond to your elaborate epistle and, having permitted me the pleasure of its perusal, she requested me to act as her immanuances. In compliance, then, with her desire, I shall proceed ex-abrupto to discuss the various points you have presented, hoping you will pardon whatever of presumption there attaches to me in taking up a gauntlet thrown not directly at my own feet. Then you deplore the deep distress that pervades our land in anticipation of a conflict such as the civilized world never witnessed, and even the annals of barbarous history scarce record, together with the inevitable consequence that, our once, though many years ago, happy union must be forever dissolved. Viewing it from our standpoint, I unite my voice of lamentation with yours, for it seems truly a mournful sight to behold, spread out to the gaze of the world the history of a nation's folly written in letters of blood. But I look at the brighter side of this distorted photograph, with the eye of faith. At least I could discern the hand of Providence shifting the scenes. This may seem strange that a partition wall should be erected in the temple of liberty once an asylum for an oppressed world. At the stars and stripes, the once badge of freedom, gracing the bosom of every sea, should be riddled from its staff and another substituted in its stead. Not less strange, however, did thousands of good Englishmen deem it to behold the proud British lion quailed before his foe of the wilderness, and the Magna Carta rent in twain. We must look upon it then as an exercise of God's retributive justice for our sins as a people or that he designs that he shall ultimately be the more glorified by the separation. In the former case, of course, I take it that the North will receive the awful visitation, for although offenses must needs come yet, woe be unto him through whom they come. In the latter condition, the South is destined to become what, and indeed far more than, the whole America once was to the world. This government was far too large to prosper well for many years, or at least compared to England prosper, France and Spain and Russia itself. But especially should we be divided into two great governments since we have virtually been so, as to our domestic institutions and many of our social customs for many, many years. It is true we did exist many years also in commercial and social prosperity, and might have continued to maintain such a happy condition had not the green-eyed monster jealousy reared its horrid front. Yes, it was in great part jealousy. You yourself have admitted, and rightly, that our great ancestors were wiser than we. Well, when they formed the original confederacy, they were the representatives of slave states, with one exception. They did not deem it wrong in itself, or they would have abolished it, at least would not have made the fugitive slave law for its protection. After a while, however, it did not pay to keep slavery in northern climates, and it was abolished in stanter. Why then was it that it became such a monstrous crime in their eyes? Wherein was the consistency? Partisans became jealous of the wealth and power of southern planters and southern politicians, elevated to their power through their wealth, a thing unavoidable in a republican government. Thus through demagogues at the north, and animosity was aroused, it slumbered long in the germ, but being assiduously cherished from year to year, it at last budded and bloomed in a climb congenial to its nature, and is now bringing forth its venomous fruit even to a hundred fold. It was the consuming of this pernicious fruit that brought death upon our body politic, and produced all our woe. And to God, that woe should fall upon none but those who planted and watered it. I am perfectly conscious and cognizant of the manner in which this spirit of enmity has been fostered. I am a northern by birth and education, and can testify to that which I know. I have also been in the south sufficiently long to know the sentiments of the people here and how they coincide, or rather disagree, with the northern conceptions of them. I have spent almost eight years here, certainly long enough to learn the character of the peculiar institution, as well as its practical workings and effect on society. And as I came with somewhat of prejudice against it, you must be frank enough to acknowledge me a fair judge in the matter. Among the first books put into my youthful library was a work called Charles Ball, or The Trials of a Runaway Slee. This was a horrid thing, and formed an impression on my young mind that, as only with the utmost difficulty, been eradicated. I am conscious that its contents are false. About the same time, and repeatedly, I was taken to witness a panorama of Uncle Tom's Cabin, another book whose leaves have furnished much fuel to infernal flames. At the same time, and ever since, I have had my ears grated with a harsh jargon of fanatical tirades against the institutions and people of the South. Of course then my mind was poisoned and prejudiced. And this has not been my political training alone, but that of a majority of your youth at the North. No further North, too, than Pennsylvania. Now then is it possible that the North can entertain amicable feelings towards the South? Add to this what you rightly remark that the popular mind is continually influenced by the issues of the press, an instrument that has scattered the seeds of discord broadcast over the land. And here you, either ignorantly or designedly, intimate a slander against the South. You say all papers have free issue at the North, and not so at the South. Now do you not know enough of Southern affairs to see that the South, by their very constitution, cannot admit incendiary documents to be cast into their midst? It were suicidal. If the South should publish papers uttering sentiments detrimental to Northern manufacturers, in general, and in favor of foreign manufacturers, how long would the North permit such papers to pass into their territory? Again, just as you say you wish that Northern papers could circulate South, so also do I wish that I need not bar my doors of nights, and both our desires could be accomplished if all men were honest, but first, as I can't expect robbers to pass by my unbarred treasury, so I can't expect to receive Northern papers uncrammed with incendiary items. Again, however, the Southern papers have virtually no circulation at the North. I have heard men, reputable for their knowledge and conservatism even, denounce such publications as unworthy to be touched. In the reading room of Princeton Theological Seminary, there were taken last winter twelve weekly papers and about eight periodicals from the South, and scarcely three of these were touched by any but Southern students during the session unless some exciting discussion were going on in their columns. Thus, much as to newspapers. I confess they have been the cause of many erroneous impressions on both sides, but the North is no purer from crimination on the score than the South. One stubborn evidence of this is the numerical difference in population. You next remark that abolitionism does not predominate at the North. I admit that for many years it did not, but lately it has acquired an ascendancy and is now wielding its baneful influence on the minds of the masses. It is true. There are many good people there whose minds are too pure to be tainted by such an almost infidel spirit as pervades the breasts of abolitionists. Yet the party in power has been elevated by such vast majorities of the people in that section that, to one investigating the matter, it seems the public sentiment at the North has greatly changed in the last few years. In such a country as ours, a democratic one, the masses are governed by a few great leaders. These leaders, whether in power or not, are still the almost despots who rule us. Their actions give fruit and coloring to the character of the sections over which they sway their autocratic sectors. Who then can doubt the abolition propensities of the North when such men as Beecher, Greeley, Webb, Phillips, Sumner, and a host of kindred spirits are the giant leavers in the machinery of their society? It will not do to say that these are disregarded by sensible people there, for I know too well their power for evil. I know that Dr. Hodge, a man whom I love next to my father, stated in his article on the State of the Country that he did not know of twelve abolitionists within the circle of his acquaintance. But the doctor was either woefully mistaken or he didn't consider his pupils as belonging to that circle, for to my certain knowledge there were twice that number within the walls of Princeton at the time he made the assertion. And many of these avowedly such men, who I was astonished to see, withheld their names when the same Dr. Hodge came round with a petition to Congress for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise and the repeal of the Personal Liberty Bills. These young men were embryo ministers, men whose moral influence must be powerful for good or for evil. How is it, then, you can assert that the North don't want the extinction of slavery when such men, as I have mentioned, exert every effort to prevent its extension, and not that only, but the operation of the fugitive slave law? I am aware that you stated the contrary in your letter, that the North are ever rigorous in its execution, nor am I so un-gallant as to doubt your veracity. But I think you have not fully informed yourself on this point, else you would have learned that in scarcely an isolated case has the master ever recovered his property without being put to more expense in trouble than the Negro was worth, although I am free to admit that at the same time it cost the United States government an equal, if not greater, amount. Of course I refer to those Negroes who have not merely crossed the limits of a slave state and thus been caught, but gone some distance north. Now the obligation to restore a fugitive slave is a constitutional and moral obligation, and those laws designed to prevent such restoration are unconstitutional and criminal, and worthy of all condemnation and unbecoming the dignity of any sovereign state. If people of any state can't conscientiously submit to the constitution there are only two courses. They should endeavor to have it peaceably altered or should move out of the country. This is the opinion of the most learned and liberal men. They have no right to live under the protection of a constitution and yet refuse to submit to its stipulations. True enough, as you say, the North wish not to have the Negroes set free in their midst to overrun and disturb them. This they declare by their actions, for they take no care for or interest in the poor, free, almost brutes in their midst. Yet how soon will they be ready to resist you most violently should you attempt to take even one of them back from his then wretched abode to his former happier place in the service of a kind master? O consistency thou art a jewel. This then has been one of the two great causes of the present troubles. The other, the denial of equal rights in the territories, is still a greater because it involves a principle. The former was more a matter of personal interest. The territories being purchased in common were the common possessions of North and South. Each had a constitutional right to immigrate thither with their property and demand for it the protection afforded by the Constitution. It became, in course of time, a matter of dispute whether the South could take their slaves there as property. As a matter of course this arose from jealousy the North having no such property to take. This great question was decided, however, by the Chief Justice in the highest tribunal in the world in favor of the South, namely that slaves were property. I refer to the Dred Scott case. This should have been sufficient as it came from the highest authority in the government, but some parties and people are never satisfied. Full in the face of this high official the Republican party declare, by their platform orators and press, that slavery shall never enter another foot of territory. Now if the South admit this principle they acknowledge their inferiority to the North and act that even in the eyes of the North would not comport with their dignity and honor as an independent and free people. The South, being thus oppressed, then I assert they have a right not to secede for no such right exists in my conception as it would be an element subversive of any and especially of a Republican government to revolt, a right inherent in and beyond the control of all earthly governments. Thus I coincide with the great Lord Chatham when he says that rebellion against oppression is obedience to God. Our ancestors rebelled against the tyranny of British usurpation and detections revolted against a like despotism exercised by a Mexican autocrat. Why then are the Southern states of America not justifiable in throwing off the yoke or rather resisting to have put upon them the yoke of Northern tyranny? To make the argument still clearer, however, as to the territories, let us illustrate it. Suppose a Republican Congress decides that slavery shan't be protected in the territories as property. I take my slave thither. An indictment is brought against me. I am tried and condemned by the territorial court. I appeal from its decision to the Supreme Court of the United States, what then? From analogy I conclude that I shall be acquitted, i.e. recover my property. For one chief justice has already decided thus, and is not his decision final. Here then is an end of the matter, since the Supreme Court is the sole arbiter in determining the constitutionality of any of Congress's acts. As to the North not making use of slanderous epithets against the South, I know nothing about your particular section of the North, but I do know that when I have been in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, I have heard all classes utter the vilest insinuations against the people of the South indiscriminately. Yes, it often seemed as if they could find no language too harsh, no comparison to base, no denunciation too bitter. To apply to those whom, in their ignorance, they deemed their inferiors in wisdom and sense. Such have I heard from the lips of distinguished citizens in all departments and professions of life. Even hoary-haired ministers have entered the sacred desk with their manuscripts reeking with filth from the cesspool of political slander. Dr. Brown, with whom you are doubtless acquainted, is now in Philadelphia at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. He wrote home lately that he never saw a mob that made use of vile language, and did the best of citizens there in their denouncings of the South. I confess, however, that this is not a one-sided affair, for I have heard equally abusive language applied to the North by the people of the South. As before then, let us strike hands on this point also, for both sections are equally culpable. As to the strength of individuals in the two sections, it must be tested on the battlefield and there alone. Our war of words can never decide anything on this point. I should be sorry to admit the men in the North could not fight had they a real enemy to contend against. A war of justice, reason, or humanity to wage, but to arm themselves against their brethren and in such an unholy cause as that in which they are engaged now, I must confess that their true medal can never be exhibited. One man, whose heart is in the war, can always conquer two who are fighting from some impure motive. Now let me candidly ask you to, as candidly, tell me whether or not you think, after seeing the thing progress thus far, and, having, as you say, been, and still continue to be, well informed as to the apperceptions on both sides, the North are engaged in the cause of justice, admitting that some of them are actuated by pure and lofty motives. Do you not acknowledge that the vast majority are blinded by prejudice, led on by a desire for military fame, prompted by the prospect of plunder or actuated by the still more, but I refrain my pen shutters at the thought of expressing myself further? Yes, I think you must confess. That is the case. I refer, of course, to the armies of Lincoln thus far made up. Are they not composed of a mercenary horde, made up, generally, of the lowest rabble of the country, and thousands of those thrown out of employment in the manufacturing cities who have resorted to camp life for self-sustenance, indeed, their only resource? Whether you admit this or not, it is emphatically true to a great extent, for the northern papers themselves have made such statements as would lead me to believe so and more. I have correspondence in the North who confirm my suspicions on this score. My own father, who does not justify the attack on Sumter, yet denounces Lincoln's army as a set of murderers. He lives in Pennsylvania, and this is the opinion of many good citizens there, and now can such men be justified in their present purposes and activities? If so, upon what principles? We have shown that it is not in accordance with sound reason and the inexorable logic of the Constitution since that noble edifice was attacked in two points simultaneously by the Republican Party. First by abrogating the fugitive slave law, second by depriving the south of equal rights in the territories. These are two points in which the North has transgressed the limits of immutable justice, and nothing which is unjust can be reasonable for they, justice in reason, are twin sisters. Moreover, the Bible justifies no war but that of self-defense. Then are the North invaded? No, nor never will be by the south for all they ask is peace within their borders. While they hold in one hand the sword of self-defense, they present the olive branch with the other, and so God grant it may be ever. You lament the inconceivable disasters inaugurated by the attack on Sumter. True enough they may have been inaugurated by that act, but their unconcealed cause lies far back of that, as we have shown. That was only a raising of the curtain, or rather a forcing of it to be raised by the abolitionist, a beginning of the bloody drama. Who caused the attack? What meant those human cargos that approached so close to its walls the day before the battle? Why did the worthy Lincoln so long deceive the southern commissioners by promise after promise not to make war, but to evacuate the fort and meet them as a sensible president would have done, in friendly negotiation for peace? South Carolina was right, and acted nobly in the affair and was as justifiable therein, as was Anderson in occupying the fort before he had a reason for doing so. Being by his overt act that, the United States forces under him were at enmity with South Carolina. But then you say South Carolina should have first tried Lincoln before determining to secede. I think she saw with prophetic vision the end from the beginning. She took Lincoln at his word. That itself was oppression and tyranny sufficient to burst us under the closest ties of union that could exist in any country. You say we should give everything a fair trial. I disagree. If I saw a serpent in my path and it should attempt to make battle or declare its hostility by displaying its horrid fangs, do you think I would coolly stand by and give it a fair trial and test its friendship? I would be impelled, even had I never seen or heard of such a creature before to crush it immediately, and so South Carolina has sensibly said to the administration, Serpent, bite a file. As to your eulogium on Lincoln, I have not much to say. If he pleases you well enough, you're easily satisfied. I take it that he is a disgrace to the chair he occupies, and to judge from his conversations he is devoid of all sense of refinement and etiquette. To look at his executive powers as displayed thus far he had better be a bae than helmsman of the old ship, and what if his efforts at speeches? In the language of Logan I appealed to any white man to say, if they, would not be a disgrace to many a country squire, and yet such a man elevated to the highest position in the gift of the American people. There was a time when the soundest and most learned men of the land were made presidents. Now a man's capacity for the office seems to depend on the meanness of his intellect and the number of rails he can split in a day. And so great were his maul and wedge propincities that he withheld not his hand from splitting the tree of liberty. But let us inquire upon which side humanity stands in this contest. You complain much of several local depredations committed by South on private boats, etc. I ask in candor if it was not in retaliation for like-outrages committed by the North. I am certain as to its being so in several cases. The very first boat, thus ill-treated, was one belonging to the South on its way down the Mississippi and attacked at Cairo. To retaliate they determined to attack northern boats coming up the river. And what have your noble Ohioans done lately and repeatedly with RKA boats at Galliopolis? Thrice have they overhauled the same boat and twice kept every pound of freight on her timbers. But this is not all. Your humane Lincoln has closed the Southern ports and is daily robbing vessels on their way in and out of the same. During the last week he stole one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of Southern tobacco and thus the program continues. Very humane indeed. Again he is no invader. No indeed. By no means. Yet hundreds of citizens are now fleeing from wheeling and other towns invaded for personal safety. Scarce a day passes, but someone stops here who has thus escaped. If they remain on their own soil and round their proper hearthstone the very humane doom of a murderer awaits them. The North don't intend to make invasion at all, yet four thousand federal troops are now in Parkersburg breaking up printing presses, putting innocent people in jail, and doing other humane acts too numerous to mention. According to my letter from father I understand they don't have the first principles of civilized warfare. They intend to hang all their prisoners. O humanity, humanity! And now that we have seen that neither reason, justice nor humanity is on the side of the North, let us look at the subject in the light of expediency, admitting, for the sake of argument the while, that it were right or just to wage the war. And viewing it from this standpoint we ask, what does the North expect to gain by it? Does there live a man so lost to reason and common sense, as to imagine that the union of the seceded states with the northern states can ever be affected again? And if it could be done by force, how long could a republican government exist as a military despotism? And who would not prefer banishment or death to such a life? What satisfaction could the North themselves have in such an event? They would live a life of misery, provoke the sneers of the civilized world, and draw down upon their heads the terrible wrath of an offended God. But this war will not be permitted thus to terminate. The South can never be conquered. You yourself know their spirit too well to believe otherwise. Rather than be subjugated they will die a triple death. Like their mighty Henry they cry, give us liberty or give us death, and still more I don't think they can be exterminated. Eight million of people armed in the holy cause of self-defense, for their liberties, honor, interest in lives, with a laudable ambition, and an unyielding perseverance, are invincible by any force the North can raise to send against them. Besides, to continue the sentiments of Henry, the battle is not to the strong alone. It is to the vigilant, the active, the brave, especially so when, as I said before, the forces of Lincoln are not composed generally of men of the first rank of society, except a few officers desire us of fame, but the off-scouring and rabble of the land, men who have nothing at stake, not even their own lives, we might say, since they care so little for anything. So that not withstanding the immense number, and here let me remind you of the disparity of forces of which you said so much at Sumter, stubborn facts of which you speak, the South has nothing to fear, and moreover, as certainly as I believe there exists a God of justice and mercy, so certainly and conscientiously do I believe he will defend the South from the vandals of the North. Yes, dark as they seem, the clouds of gloom do not shut out the star of hope, and they are beginning to be spanned by a radiant bow of promise. The fall of Ellsworth and the shattered walls of the once presumed impregnable Sumter abundantly testify that God is on their side, and if the Lord be for them, who can be against them. So I heartily say God speed them. They shall have my prayers, but let us take one more glance at the expediency of this matter. Are not the North fighting for a patroclus grave in this struggle? What matters an abstract banner, especially to the matter of fact Yankee, and then behold the inconsistency of the North in another point? They have, through their representatives for many years cried, no more slave territory, and indeed many of them, such as Seward, etc., have declared that slavery must be abolished, as both can't exist under the same government, yet now they are fighting to the death to keep or get back slave territory. O consistency! And finally at this point, will it not cost millions of lives and millions of money to accomplish their infernal design? Even could they do it? And can the North afford this? Even now it is costing Lincoln's anarchy, for I can't call it government, one million dollars per day, a matter of record. Suppose then the war should last a year, what then? Union or disunion? Alas, farther separations. Continue it then two years more, what then? Ditto and ditto it will be, should it last as long as the War of Roses, for we have no houses of York and Lancaster to unite, sign and settle the dispute by marriage, one or both. Annihilated. And now I ask how, in the name of reason, justice, or humanity, can you lift up your voice in defense of the North when they are the cause of all this accumulating mystery? When they have deprived the south of her constitutional rights, driven her to the necessity of a separation, and now raised her arm against her as an enemy, declaring either to subjugate her, to overrun her with their vandal hordes, or exterminate from her soil every living creature. And when, O bloodiest picture in the book of time, they are ready to repeat with a triple vengeance, the untold horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. They are madly, blindly rushing. They know not where. The blame of dissolution rests upon her, and the still more awful responsibility of a civil war will hang as an everlasting incubus upon her shoulders. Then let her beware ere she cross the Rubicon. Let her pause long upon its brink. And shall we all perish by her fractisital hand? Shall the blood shed by brother in deadly war with brother flow ignominiously through our rivers to the ocean, and be carried by its waves to stain the shores of nations that, for long years, have been centering their fond hopes on America as the grand ideal of the government they too would someday enjoy? Shall such hopes be blasted as soon as fondly cherished? And now that Italy has trampled upon the tyrannical miter, torn from her long subdued neck the yoke of papal bondage, passed from the darkness of superstitious bondage into the light of religious freedom shall we sink back to what she was by casting ourselves into the whirlpool of civil war? Shall we not only put out but shatter the lamp of liberty a lamp whose effulgence was beginning to scatter the shades of despotism from off the earth? Shall we extinguish the brightest star in the constellation of human freedom? The united voices of humanity, justice, and reason answer? No. The cries of myriad free men, living and of millions yet unborned, rend the air with a universal negative, and from the vaulted canopy of heaven there swells back the solemn echo God forbid as if augmented by the mournful strain of ten thousand angels hovering in amazement over the conflicting scene. Oh, then let the North beware! Mrs. Tompkins says that if you can justify your brother Ulysses in drawing his sword against those connected by the ties of blood, and even most of it, you are at liberty to do so, but she cannot. And should one of those kindred be stricken down by his sword, the awful judgment of God will be meted out to him, and if not repented of, the hot thunderbolts of his wrath will blaze round his soul through eternity? On the contrary, if the vice versa should occur, she thinks those kin would be justified because in self-defense. As to Mr. John Marshall's being promoted in the Army of Lincoln, she thinks that fact explains itself. He spent much of his time previously seeking, or at least expecting, promotion and failing in a laudable way in defense of his own kindred and the home of his bosom companion he resorted to Yankedom, and so, as it were, his birthright for a mess of abolition pottage. This helps confirm my view that many take positions in Lincoln's army with the expectation of military promotion and the hope of an easy conquest of the South. Oh, how deluded! But as for many of them, God forbid them, for they know not what they do. But I must bring these desultory remarks to a break-off. So begging pardon once more for transgressing the limits of formality and hoping you may live to see the verification of many of my remarks, I have the pleasure of signing myself, the secretary of your Aunt Rachel, P.S. If you should write again, please use white paper. It almost gives me the blues to read your letter.