Edward William Johnston to the New Orleans 'Daily Crescent,' July 24, 1854

[IL SEGRETARIO (Edward William Johnston) at New York City to the New Orleans Daily Crescent, June 24, 1854. New Orleans Daily Crescent, Monday morning, July 24, 1854, page 2. This is my transcription. Extra paragraph breaks inserted for easier reading.]

NEW YORK CITY, 24^th June, 1854

You will have been wondering that I have written you so little. But the hand grows weary, as well as the head. Mine had been, for many months, unremittingly tasked. The machine of labor was severely worn, and needed a little the oil of ease, in order that it might once more run smoothly.

I have, therefore, been giving myself up to physical enjoyment, in a quiet country place, where the air was sweet with the breath of the green fields, where deep shades and cool streams freshened every thing around me, and where I had at will, the long-denied recreation of abundant books.

Trout-streams were at hand; and them, you may be sure, I did not leave unfrequented. For, whatever that contemner of the "gentle craft," my lord Byron, or other like bunglers, may imagine of what they do not understand, master Trout is a great composer of the mind as well as renovator of the body; not only a capital physician, but a poet and philosopher. Except his company, I have been, for some weeks, seeking none.

Meantime, having the happiness to be where mails come but seldom hebdomadally [weekly], I luxuriated in the delight of scarcely ever seeing the foul face of a newspaper – that most detestable of modern inventions. If every body else hated it as heartily as I do, or if they who make books were not become a still more odious crew than my own fellow-authors of newspapers, I might betake myself to some less wicked occupation, or even to some less vain one than that of trying to make men wise, in a democracy.

Sad, that labor, and ah! Usually but too futile that hope! Besides, however, that recruiting of the body and of the brain which I required, I had need, along my wide track through the Free States, to inform myself, as amply as possible, of the actual state of public feeling, in regard to the new contest between North and South, which that benignant measure, the Nebraska bill, has kindled up, so greatly to the advantage of both and so highly to the praise of their mutual wisdom.

I thought it more opportune to employ my time, for a while, in personally inquiring into the condition of this question, than in writing to you upon inferior matters, or upon this with a less carefully formed knowledge of the real state of things.

Of course, I was already in possession of quite as much as the Press at large and the politicians are wont to tell of subjects that are agitating the country: but what the Press and politicians report, in these cases, is often scarcely meant for the truth, or is at best but a guess of the general mind around them.

No, I want, in an instance like this, something more: I want to know whether or not their guesses are right; and, in order to ascertain this, I make it a point to see for myself how not the editors and the public men but the common people and the quiet retired folks really do think and feel. I have, therefore, been occupying, and shall continue to occupy myself much, in this way.

Wherever I pass, I converse on this topic, as much as I can, with high and low, the intelligent and the foolish, the sober and the mad. I extract their ideas, and I very freely give them my own.

Thus far, my inquiries present a very clear result: throughout the Free States which I have traversed, (Illinois, Michigan, New York, Connecticut and Western Massachusetts) the passage of the Nebraska bill has been attended by not only all those effects which I from the first foretold, but is, I fear, destined to produce still worse consequences than I originally apprehended.

I expected it to bring about an alienation of the great body of those who have heretofore stood the friends of Southern rights: but (not sufficiently considering how, in this business, fault begets fault and folly on one part engenders an answering folly on the other) I did not look for any thing beyond a great loss of friends, and had not gone on to calculate the passions likely to be stirred up by this question; which, indeed, unhappy and dangerous one as it is, is chiefly made so by the fact that it is one of little else but passion.

We call this a government of Opinion; and such it must be said to be. But Opinion is not necessarily Reason: on the contrary, it is often mere delusion. At times, in all countries ruled by opinion, false opinions arise and usurp the control which only true ones should hold. Now, Prince Opinion is, after all, but human, and therefore fallible.

How well he will decide will depend on the degree in which he is well informed. There are things of which he knows extremely little, merely because they lie mainly out of the reach of his observation. That, however, will by no means hinder him from undertaking to lay down the law in regard to them. For where he reigns unchecked, he is just as little modest as to the sufficiency of his wisdom and just as arbitrary as any other monarch.

In short, he will always decide by "the lights before him," though these be often little better than mists or sheer darkness. For Opinion, whether he see or not, always thinks he sees.

Now, whatever the advantages of this sort of Government, it has its inconveniences that cannot be escaped. The chief of these is its extreme instability. For winds or waves are hardly more capricious. To-day it blows this way; to-morrow it turns to the opposite point of the popular compass, and kicks you up a perfect hurricane. What are you to do? No sailor in his senses will attempt to stay on this course: for he knows he will be swamped, if he tries it.

Yet Master [John C.] Calhoun and his crew have been teaching you, in just such a case (this matter of slavery, where the whole sea of world-wide opinion was running high against you) not to hand a sail, but to press on, right in the teeth of the storm, and push for an extension of Slavery. Oh most discreet thought! Moment most auspicious for such an attempt! The weak to plan, not to defend what they have against the strong, but how openly to invade and conquer them! Did ever -- I will not say a wise man -- did ever a man in his senses devise such a scheme before?

Never, I aver, never! What! expect to extend Slavery, when not only the vehement prejudices of civilized mankind in general, but those of a large majority of our partners in this Government are in arms for its abolition? It is mere insanity to think of it. The only thing, the very utmost thing, to be rationally proposed by the Slave-interest, by those communities to whom Slavery is now and is destined long to be (whatever others may imagine) an integral and essential part of their own social being, is to contrive how, without coming to a direct contest (which, if it did not destroy them, would be certain to plunge them in terrible mischiefs) they may withstand, until it shall abate or change (as it will before long do) the present furious blast of opinion for this
purpose, there was and is but one course to be taken, that which the true statesmanship of that great citizen, Henry Clay, adopted: to disarm, by compacts and compromises, the most dangerous, the domestic portion, of the force that threatened us, and thus to interpose, between us and the rest of the world, the solid defence
of our whole Union.

Well, how was this to be brought about for us? Only in one way: by sacrificing to the North something of our adverse rights, and thus binding our else hostile confederates to uphold all the rest of those rights. This was accordingly done, by the Missouri Compromise; and done, unquestionably, at little real cost to the South: for the territorial restriction which we agreed to impose upon Slavery is, confessedly, one which it could not, except to a very slight degree, have overpassed, under any circumstances.

Our security was only to be purchased by a concession: we obtained it at a most moderate one: our great, our indispensable end was accomplished, almost without a sacrifice; and all this being entirely beyond denial, I must now ask what madness, what public lunacy ever exceeded that of the South, in suffering itself to be betrayed, by the shallow trick of two dirty little political hucksters, [Senator Stephen A. ] Douglas and Pearce [President Franklin Pierce], into the abandonment of all that had been achieved, for Southern safety and the peace of our confederacy, against the raging fanaticism of the day?

Where are we left by this repeal of the concession which we had rather obtained than made -- that of the Missouri restriction ? We are left utterly at sea again, to be buffeted worse than ever by the tempest of the world's opinion, swelled by a fresh disturbance, of our own conjuring up.

The great break-water to the North, behind which we rode in safety, is gone: instigated by those wretched lubbers, Middy Pearce [Pierce] and Boatswain Douglas, you have pulled it down, in order to get the benefit of the open sea and the full swing of every surge. You stand and justly stand attainted of ill faith, in breaking an old and solemn compact.

You have taken on yourself the odium (surely quite needless when already so hated for merely owning slaves) of territorial rapacity. You have raised a new anti-slavery agitation, probably to be the direst ever seen. Your Northern friends have abandoned or will abandon you, to a man. And, to crown all this, you have revoked the Compromise of 1820, so that the Fugitive Slave law (your great boon in that of 1850) can probably be executed no more, or will be repealed. Into what a situation have the counsels of your new guides plunged you!

I believe you know me to be no flattering monitor. I could tell you of the faults of the North, in this matter: but it is at present of greater concern to show you your own. For I shall probably, before I end, prove to you that not the Abolitionists, but a large part of your home-politicians, have been and are your worst enemies. 

IL SEGRETARIO.

[Re: The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which accelerated the momentum for an American Civil War.

This letter indicates that Edward William Johnston (1799-1867) traveled far and wide in this period. His negative Whiggish take on the Kansas-Nebraska Act was in alignment with Senator Sam Houston (1793-1863) of Texas, who later refused to join the Confederacy and went into retirement instead. The letter also reiterates Johnston's love of freshwater fishing.]

[Many thanks to Sue Davis, William Myers, Mary Davy and Sally Young for their ongoing research collaboration; in this case, specifically to William for providing a scanned copy of the original document.]