Reconcentration policy

“ Under their guidance the national policy became a policy of conciliation and compromise at any cost, and the national idea was deprived of consistency and dignity. It became equivalent to a hodge-podge of policies and purposes, the incompatibility of whose ingredients was concealed behind a smooth crust of constitutional legality and popular acquiescence. ”

“ We cannot, in my humble opinion, follow a policy of annexing outlying territories without forfeiting these advantages, without becoming involved in foreign quarrels, without losing the free hand and the immense benefits of the neutral position, and without endangering the moral vitality of our Republic. Nothing will, it seems to me, be more apt to keep us in the right way than the constantly and emphatically reiterated declaration by our Government that this is a war of humanity and that it will not be permitted to fall from the high level of the original purpose. ”

“ It must however be admitted, that in our constitutions and political disquisitions, a struggle between the light of our revolution, and the clouds of previous habits, is also discernible. The numerical analysis, a balance of orders or of powers, and a social compact between nations and their governments, often bewilder us, so as to exhibit reason and prejudice, striving for a reconciliation. Our policy, says one, abhors and rejects orders of men; but, replies the other, it loves and creates orders of power; as if power could exist abstractedly of men. ”

“ The spirit of this policy, if policy it can be called, is to do all that it is possible to do, to go as far as may be, and to measure one’s steps according to the necessities of [Pg 249] the day. It breathes no agitation; but it is to be an activity according to the laws, taking advantage of everything, making use of everything, and communicating life unawares to the country—this is precisely what has appeared in the late events, and this remains the character of the new crisis.
Are men aware of what it is that gives to this movement the weight of a true national manifestation? ”

“ So the statesmen proceeded to manufacture the "Reconstruction policy"—a policy more fatuous, more replete with fatal concessions and far more fatal omissions than any ever before adopted for the acceptance and governance of a rebellious people on the one hand and a newly made, supremely helpless people on the other. ”

“ The policy of the government has hitherto been centralization, that is, to draw the mass of the people from the frontiers to a common centre, in order the more readily to suppress any rebellion; and by depopulating the borders, to prevent the approach of foreign invasion. ”

“ They have seen the deliberations of the council and the volition of the camp distracted and paralyzed, by the interference of an influence anti-patriotic in itself, and too intimately interwoven with the paralyzing policy of the past, to admit the hope of relief from its incorporation with that which can alone avert the evils of the present crisis, and place the affairs of the country beyond the reach of an immediate reaction. ”

“ Truth, however bitter, must take the place of fancy. Ideas and institutions incongruous with the new social and political conditions must be displaced. The nation’s aims and policy should be stated boldly and clearly, and adequate machinery set up to achieve them. In a word, system will have to be substituted for confusion, method for haphazard. Destitute of a great or strong man, it behoves us to imitate our enemy and create a vast organization with branches all over the empire. But the influence of the government ever since the outbreak of the war has militated against all those reforms. ”

“ They are not messages of complaint but of triumph and achievement. Non-co-operators have every reason to rejoice at the Government’s adoption of the policy of repression, for it has been frankly the aim of non-co-operation to force this policy on Government. ”

“ But it is in external affairs that the nation must find, indeed has found, the old rules most inadequate. The policy of non-association which was desirable, even essential, to the young, weak state, whose only prospect of safety lay in a preservation of that isolation which her geographical position made possible to her, is and must be impracticable in a World-Power. ”

“ Even religious orders, societies for the promotion of economic good, and philanthropic organisations have to adopt a powerful repressive policy in order to concentrate their own strength and assert their own position in the society against the despotism of established customs and vested interests. Enforcement of strict discipline and principles of military organisation is the sole means of binding together the members of a new organisation for the furtherance of national interests. ”

“ The Nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts, through passion, what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of Nations has been the victim. ”

“ Your custom of intervening in trans-frontier disputes, and practically exercising authority outside our own borders, is diametrically opposed to the traditional policy of the Government. I am bound to admit that it seems to succeed in your case, but it needs exceptional men to carry it out. ”

“ Secondly, there are those, men of intellect and capacity, who, dissenting altogether from the doctrines propounded by the leaders of the revolution, and convinced that the separation will not be permanent, see the surest and safest mode of action in the total abstinence from all aggressive assertion of rights, and in a policy of laissez aller of indeterminate longitude and latitude. ”

“ Moreover, the policy with which an administration charged with the duty of maintaining itself and preserving the Union shall conduct a civil war, must be confined always to the existing condition of political forces, and to the public sentiment of the whole country. ”

“ PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:—If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. ”

“ In regard to foreign policy, I would deal with nations as equitable law requires individuals to deal with each other, and I would protect the law-abiding citizen, whether of native or foreign birth, wherever his rights are jeopardized or the flag of our country floats. I would respect the rights of all nations, demanding equal respect for our own. If others depart from this rule in their dealings with us, we may be compelled to follow their precedent. ”

“ Every nation, consequently, whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability, may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of their wiser neighbors. ”

“ Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.
Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis, as various crises develop. Any assistance that this Government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative. ”

“ It is evident, for example, that force and the threat of force can no longer and should not be instruments of foreign policy. ”

“ The hearts of a portion of the people have been perverted by that hostility, so that the powers delegated by the compact of union are regarded not as means to secure the welfare of all, but as instruments for the destruction of a part--the minority section. How, then, have we to provide a remedy? By strengthening this Government? By instituting physical force to overawe the States, to coerce the people living under them as members of sovereign communities to pass under the yoke of the Federal Government?... ”

“ The first step, it seems to me, towards governmental reform, is decentralization, with a return to the States, the civic communities and the individual citizens of nine-tenths of the powers and the prerogatives that have been taken from them in defiance of abstract justice, of the principles of free government and of the theory of the workable unit of human scale. In a word we must abandon imperialism and all its works and go back to the Federal Republic. ”

“ It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importanceof small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another. ”

“ In some States the carpet-bag governments have already broken down, and in others they cannot much longer endure. They have made it inevitable that in most, if not all of them, the control of local affairs should presently fall into the hands of those classes which, to a great extent, stood against us during the civil war. It cannot be avoided, unless you adopt a system of interference which will subvert the most essential principles of our government. ”

“ If there are still disturbances of the peace and order of society occurring, calculated to produce the impression that the security and the rights of citizens can be sufficiently protected only by the interference of the General Government, in your local concerns, you can dispel that impression by devoting your energies to the enforcement of the laws, thus proving the capacity of local self-government to accomplish its legitimate end here as well as elsewhere. ”

“ It evinces a disposition to separate the people from their government; to persuade them that they have different affections, principles, and interests, from those of their fellow-citizens whom they themselves have chosen to manage their common concerns, and thus to produce divisions fatal to our peace. ”

“ It was obvious to reflecting minds, that such a future separation of the states into absolute, independent communities with no mutual ties, or controlling national government, would be fraught with the most imminent dangers to their common safety and peace, and expose them not only to the chance of re-conquest by Great Britain, after such separation in detached contests, but also to all the hazards of internal warfare and civil dissensions. ”

“ Is it possible that those states who are ambitiously grasping at territories, to which in our judgment they have not the least shadow of exclusive right, will use with greater moderation the increase of wealth and power derived from those territories, when acquired, than what they have displayed in their endeavours to acquire them? We think not. We are convinced the same spirit which hath prompted them to insist on a claim so extravagant, so repugnant to every principle of justice, so incompatible with the general welfare of all the states, will urge them on to add oppression to injustice. ”

“ Their policy is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits. ”

“ The same reasoning would apply with augmented force to the case of a dismemberment, when each state should by itself constitute a nation. The very inequalities in the size, the revenues, the population, the products, the interests, and even in the institutions and laws of each, would occasion a perpetual petty warfare of legislation, of border aggressions and violations, and of political and personal animosities, which, first or last, would terminate in the subjugation of the weaker to the arms of the stronger. ”

“ A fourth ill effect of the exclusion would be, the banishing men from stations in which, in certain emergencies of the state, their presence might be of the greatest moment to the public interest or safety. There is no Nation which has not, at one period or another, experienced an absolute necessity of the services of particular men, in particular situations, perhaps it would not be too strong to say, to the preservation of its political existence. ”

“ In any case force was necessary to defend one local right against another, or to impose law and order on the localities, or to resist class government at the center, or to defend the whole society, centralized or decentralized, against the outer barbarian. ”

“ I can well enough conceive also that the United States in the first emergency might excite more fervent sympathies abroad by avowing a purpose not merely or even chiefly to maintain and preserve their existing constitutional organization, but to modify and change it so as to extirpate at once an institution which is obnoxious to the enlightened censure of mankind. ”

“ But the pattern of intervention and confiscation was the same. A State is a State, now as in the past, regardless of the size of its victim, and regardless of ideology affected by its management. It is always at war with Society. ”

“ That the community of interest and of power upon which peace must henceforth depend imposes upon each nation the duty of seeing to it that all influences proceeding from its own citizens meant to encourage or assist revolution in other states should be sternly and effectually suppressed and prevented. ”

“ The analogy between States and individuals or groups of individuals is not perfect, but there is sufficient analogy to make it not quite irrelevant to ask, whether after this war the view held by great States of the relations desirable between themselves will be that of the African chief or that of individuals in what we call civilized Nations. Nothing but experience convinced individuals that law was better than anarchy to settle the relations between themselves. And the sanction that maintains law is the application of force with the support of the great majority of individuals behind it. ”