Confederate "Heritage" Month 2009, April 11: Slavery and democracy

M.R.H. Garnett: democracy is incompatible with slavery, so democracy must go!

This post also draws on the 1862 publication I used in yesterday's post, Origin and objects of the slaveholders' conspiracy against Democratic principles, as well as against the national union by Henry O'Reilly.

O'Reilly's booklet presents text from a letter written in 1851 by M.R.H. Garnett of Virginia to another like-minded secessionist, William H. Trescott, in South Carolina. Lorenzo Sherwood writes in the booklet that it was composed "just after the Nashville Convention of 1850, where the plot to secede, as in now ascertained, was adopted and determined on." (The latter part of the sentence is an exaggeration.) The letter is described in the booklet's introductory comments as "fully significant of the matured designs of the secessionists" which shows "the issue as the TRAITORS THEMSELVES understand it." Garnett had written:

I must acknowledge, my dear sir, that I look to the future with almost as much apprehension as hope. You well object to the term Democrat. Democracy, in its original philosophical sense, is, indeed incompatible with slavery, and the whole system of Southern society. Yet, if we look back, what change will you find made in any of our State constitutions, or in our legislation, in its general course for the last fifty years, which was not in the direction of Democracy? Do not its principles and theories become daily more fixed in our practice? - I had almost said in the opinions of our people, did I not remember with pleasure the great improvement of opinion in regard to the abstract question of slavery. And if such is the case, what have we to hope for the future? I do not hesitate to say to say that if the question is raised between Carolina and the Federal Government, and the latter prevails, the last hope of Republican Government, and I fear of Southern Civilization, is gone. Russsia [sic] will then be a better Government than ours. (italics in original)

Garnett explicitly contrasts his ideal Republic of slavery with "democracy". And he takes comfort that the popular appeal of democracy has been tempered by what he saw as increasing acceptance of slavery among non-slaveholding Southerners.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2009, slavery