Risorgimento

“ The iron kettles of the boiling houses, and the bells which called them to their labors, were crushed into atoms, as if to destroy from the very face of the earth all memorials of former servitude. Twelve hundred families, once opulent and happy, were reduced to utter poverty, and driven in their destitution to subsist on public charity or private hospitality in their own or foreign countries. More than ten thousand of the rebels also had perished by the sword or by famine, and many hundreds of them had met their fate from the hands of the public executioner. ”

“ This Revolution has been defined, as "An open, violent rebellion and victory of unimprisoned anarchy, against corrupt worn-out authority; breaking prison, raging uncontrollable and enveloping a world in fever frenzy, until the mad forces are made to work toward their object, as sane and regulated ones." ”

“ Have not the providential developments of the rebellion revealed a new goal in our national progress? Instead of being a dire calamity, may we not rather consider the present civil war as a means, in the hand of Divine Providence, for the solution of a great moral problem—the overthrow of slavery? ”

“ Where was there ever written or published a more incendiary and fanatical document than the Declaration of Independence?—a torch to set the world on fire. In the present century, what but discussion and agitation, through all the realms of Great Britain and in this country, could have sufficed to extinguish the slave trade,—that foulest blot upon modern civilization? No, sir; agitation is a part of the sublime order of nature. In thunder, it shakes the stagnant air, which would otherwise breed pestilence. ”

“ Although the spirit of reform was stirring all classes of the community, the feeling against revolution was growing stronger in England with each small outbreak—stronger, that is, in the eyes of the governing powers—and signal examples were made of many obscure persons who had been concerned in turbulent risings and riots. Once before the criminal judges of the land, accused of arson, riot, and such-like misdemeanours, a short shrift and a long halter were almost sure to be his fate. ”

“ Conquest, in those days, meant subjugation to the extent of a deprivation of all rights—at least all political rights—and many social privileges, and absolute serfdom for the great mass of the population. ”

“ Social dissolution is accelerated by provincial revolts against central authority; by survival struggle between the empires which were coordinated and consolidated into the civilization; by revolt in the subordinate and dependent segments of the civilization; by rivalry and conflict between racial, cultural and political sub-groups forced into the civilization, held there by coercion, policed by armed force and taking the first opportunity to win political independence and self determination. ”

“ As to those engaged in the insurrection, we tell them that they ought to have shuddered at the thought of aggravating, of prolonging the scourge of the foreign occupation by adding thereto the scourge of civil discords. ”

“ From this I still conclude, that no destruction of inhabitants by expulsion, captivity, war, pestilence or famine, is so permanently hurtful to population, as a revolution in that spirit which is necessary for the increase and support of numbers. ”

“ What, in comparison with the great end in view, were the inevitable horrors of the Revolution, produced by desperate and enraged factions? There is not a single page in the history of man but is tarnished by some foul deed or bloody transaction. ”

“ The revolutionary disturbances which, during the year, had marked the progress of events on the Continent, were not without their effect upon the agricultural, as well as the manufacturing population of Great Britain; and interested demagogues were easily to be found, willing and ready to fan the feeling of dissatisfaction which prevailed among the labouring classes, and to produce discontent where none already existed, with a view to the excitement of dislike for the higher ranks of society, and of insurrection against the government of the day. ”

“ In that terrible period the people who had borne the yoke for fourteen hundred years, rising from the dust, casting their shackles from them, fiercely avenged their wrongs. A mob of twenty millions driven to desperation, in the sublimity of despair, in the sacred name of Liberty cried for vengeance. They reddened the earth with the blood of their masters. They trampled beneath their feet the great army of human vermin that had lived upon their labor. ”

“ Lynching, disfranchisement and segregation are evils HERE; and the place in which we must fight them is HERE. If foolish would-be leaders have no plan to lay before our people for the fighting HERE, in God’s name, let them say so, and stand out of the way! ”

“ Our rebellion has lasted four years. Government has exchanged prisoners and acknowledged its belligerent rights. After that, gibbets are out of the question. A thousand men rule the rebellion,—are the rebellion. A thousand men. We cannot hang them all. We cannot hang men in regiments. ”

“ The mind sickens in contemplating the mistakes of the "Reconstruction policy;" and the revolting peculation and crime—which went hand in hand from 1867-8 to 1876, bankrupting and terrorizing those unfortunate States—plunging them into all but anarchy, pure and simple. ”

“ Had the Abolitionists, instead of the Slaveholders, revolted, and undertaken to upset the Government and dissolve the Union, nine-tenths of these rioters would have eagerly volunteered to put them down. It is the fear, stimulated by the recent and glorious triumphs of the Union Arms, that Slavery and the Rebellion must suffer, which is at the bottom of all this arson, devastation, robbery, and murder. ”

“ But even if the workingmen should fail—even if so-called law and order should beat them down in blood—why, that would be better than starving. We would, at least, have our revenge on the men who have coined our sweat and muscles into millions for themselves, while they think that dip is good enough butter for us, and do not care whether our families get a living or not. ”

“ Threats of dissolution, if executed, become rebellion and treason. The machinery of this government is now moving onward in its majestic course. Custom-houses, post-offices, land-offices, army, navy, are fulfilling their prescribed circle of duties. ”

“ This was the origin of the revolt; and a calumny more heartless can never be imagined than that which would convert this rich and holy defence of life, liberty, and property, into an aggression for the extension of slavery. ”

“ Eighty men and women, most of them hounded and persecuted in their own countries, were here able to address large meetings, gather in daily session, and discuss openly such vital problems as revolution, syndicalism, mass insurrection, and individual acts of violence, without any interference from the authorities. ”

“ But would such a measure, on the part of government, be tolerated by the labouring poor in a free country? or rather ought it to be tolerated? Would not insurrections, rick-burning, prison-breaking, martial law, and ten thousand convictions for sedition be the result? ”

“ It was not till the town was thoroughly waked up, and found the bridges guarded by armed men, and guards stationed at all the avenues, that the people found that they were prisoners. So soon as the facts became known, a panic immediately ensued, and the number of the insurrectionists at once, in the imagination of the frightened people, increased from fifty, which was probably their greatest force, including the slaves that had been forced to join them, to from four to six hundred. ”

“ Slavery succumbed, not more to military force than to the eternal verities. And rebellion surrendered not alone to Grant and his legions, but also to the loyal men and women who stood behind them, and to the churches and colleges, the mills and mines and storehouses, the homes and herds and harvests of the mighty North. ”

“ I have men and regiments at my disposition: some I have led to believe that the uprising is ordered by the General; others that the friars are bringing it about; some I have bought with promises, with employments, with money; many, very many, are acting from revenge, because they are oppressed and see it as a matter of killing or being killed. ”

“ Heretofore, Colored people, to some extent, have fled North from bondage, and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual Emancipation and deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from.
"Their old masters will give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freed men, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race. ”

“ The crowding together of men in camps and quarters—want upon one side, and excess on the other, occasioned contagious distempers, which were more fatal than even the sword. In this long and general confusion, all the bonds of social life were broken up;—respect for the rights of their fellow men, the fear of the laws, purity of morals, honour, and religion, were laid aside, where might ruled supreme with iron sceptre. Under the shelter of anarchy and impunity, every vice flourished, and men became as wild as the country. ”

“ This character of the proletarian general strike has often been pointed out, and it has the effect of frightening the greedy politicians, who understand perfectly well that a Revolution conducted in this way would do away with all their chances of seizing the Government. ”

“ The sudden emancipation of the slaves, the precipitate transition from slave-labor to free-labor society, naturally called out the violent opposition of the popular habits and prejudices which had been identified with the abolished system, and the passions of the war, still burning after defeat, threatened to inflame this new contest. ”

“ At once unrest and even riots are started. Strikes become the order of the day, and there is a general unrest. Creation of public sentiment, legislation, and what not are tried but without the desired results. Everything is tried except the right thing. ”

“ Just as, under the old law of England, the rebel was executed with circumstances of special atrocity, so at the present time, under the name of crushing rebellion, men are tortured and flogged, no quarter is given, they are executed without trial, their private property is pillaged, their towns and villages are destroyed, their women violated, their children killed, penalties are imposed on districts owing to acts for which the population is not collectively responsible—and nothing said. ”

“ If I am asked how I would be understood in the use of these terms, Regicide, Jacobinism, Atheism, and a system of correspondent manners, and their establishment, I will tell you.
I call a commonwealth Regicide which lays it down as a fixed law of Nature and a fundamental right of man, that all government, not being a democracy, is an usurpation, [31] —that all kings, as such, are usurpers, and, for being kings, may and ought to be put to death, with their wives, families, and adherents. ”

“ The Revolution had destroyed all discipline, and all respect for the Civil Authorities; and the soldier, accustomed to the license of a camp, was ready to follow any leader that could promise him plunder, in lieu of his arrears of pay. ”

“ Riots were of daily, almost hourly, occurrence, but they were repressed with an iron hand, and the rioters were shot down in the streets without mercy; for, though siege and famine were bad enough, anarchy breaking out amidst that vast sweltering mass of human beings would have been a thousand times worse, and so the King, who, assisted by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Council, had assumed the control of the whole city, had directed that order was to be maintained at any price. ”

“ You may pathetically plead to the people’s majority, that the divided lands will not give much more than the length and breadth of his grave to each mob-proprietor. They will answer, “We will have what we can get;—at all events, you shall keep it no longer.” ”

“ At last, I bethought me of the expedient of an invasion,—at that word I knew that every true friend of his country would grow pale, would see the odious consequences of slavery in their native deformity, and turn with disdain from those vile panders to vice and misery, those sanguine enthusiasts of mischief, who would artfully reconcile them to every species of want, oppression, and unfeeling barbarity, as the necessary consequences of the principle of population. ”

“ No agitators, no clubs, no epidemical errors, ever were, or will be, fatal to social order in any nation. Nothing but the guilt of the upper classes, wanton, accumulated, reckless, and merciless, ever overthrows them Of such guilt they have now much to answer for—let them look to it in time. ”

“ Will not the same cause that produced agitation in 1820, when the Missouri Compromise was formed,—that which produced the agitation upon the annexation of Texas, and at other times,—work out the same results always? Do you think that the nature of man will be changed; that the same causes that produced agitation at one time will not have the same effect at another?
This has been the result so far as my observation of the slavery question and my reading in history extend. ”

“ The transcripts from my plantation books, which I send you herewith, do not, in my judgment, give a fair idea of the workings of the free-labor system. I had to contend not only with the complete disorganization of the State, socially as well as politically, but I was subjected, at various periods, to guerrilla raids. These interrupted labor on the estate for days and weeks at a time, and carried off quantities of provisions, live stock, plows, etc., all of which had to be immediately replaced at great cost. ”