The Life of Jefferson Davis

It is this confusion of ideas, it is this confounding of terms, this changing of language, this applying of new meanings to words, out of which, I think, a large portion of the dispute arises. For instance, it is claimed that President Pierce, in using the phrase “existing and incipient States,” meant to include all Territories, and thus that he had bound me to a doctrine which precluded my strictures on what I termed squatter sovereignty. This all arises from the misuse of language. An incipient State, according to my idea, is the territorial condition at the moment it changes into that of a State. It is when the people assemble in convention to form a constitution as a State, that they are in the condition of an incipient State. Various names were applied to the Territories at an earlier period. Sometimes they were called “new States,” because they were expected to be States; sometimes they were called “States in embryo,” and it requires a determination of the language that is employed before it is possible to arrive at any conclusion as to the differences of understanding between gentlemen. Therefore, it was, and, I think, very properly, (but not, as the Senator supposed, to catechise him,) that I asked him what he meant by non-intervention, before I commenced these remarks.

In the same line of errors was the confusion which resulted in his assuming that the evils I described as growing out of his doctrine on the plains of Kansas, were a denunciation, on my part, of the bill called the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. At the time that bill passed, I did not foresee all the evils which have resulted from the doctrine based upon it, but which I do not think the bill sustains. I am not willing now to turn on those who were in a position which compelled them to act, made them responsible, and to divest myself of any responsibility which belongs to any opinion I entertained. I will not seek to judge after the fact and hold the measure up against those who had to judge before. Therefore I will frankly avow that I should have sustained that bill if I had been in the Senate; but I did not foresee or apprehend such evils as immediately grew up on the plains of Kansas. I looked then, as our fathers had looked before, to the settlement of the question of what institutions should exist there, as one to be determined by soil and climate, and by the pleasure of those who should voluntarily go into the country. Such, however, was not the case. The form of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill invited to a controversy – not foreseen. I was not charging the Senator with any responsibility for it, but the variation of its terms invited contending parties to meet on the plains of Kansas, and had well-nigh eventuated in civil war. The great respect which even the most lawless of those adventurers in Kansas had for the name and the laws of the United States, served, by the timely interposition of the Federal force and laws, to restrain the excited masses and prevented violence from assuming larger proportions than combats between squads of adventurers.

This brings me in the line of rejoinder, to the meaning of the phrase, “the people of a Territory, like those of a State, should decide for themselves,” etc., the language quoted against the President in the remarks of the Senator. This, it was announced, was squatter sovereignty in its broadest sense; and it was added, that the present Executive was elected to the high office he holds on that construction of the platform. Now, I do not know how it is that the Senator has the power to decide why the people voted for a candidate. I rather suppose, among the many millions who did vote, there must have been a variety of reasons, and that it is not in the power of any one man to declare what determined the result. But waiving that, is it squatter sovereignty in its broadest sense? Is it a declaration that the inhabitants of a Territory can exercise all the powers of a State? It says that, “like the people of a State,” they may decide for themselves. Then how do the people of a State decide the question of what shall be property within the State? Every one knows that it is by calling a convention, and that the people, represented in convention, and forming a constitution their fundamental law, do this. Every one knows that, under the constitutions and bills of rights which prevail in the republican States of this Union, no legislature is invested with that power. If this be the mode which is prescribed in the States – the modes which the States must pursue – I ask you, in the name of common sense, can the language of the President be construed to mean that a territorial legislature may do what it is admitted the legislature of a State can not; or that the inhabitants of a Territory can assemble a convention, and form a fundamental law overriding the organic act, to which the Senator has already acknowledged they stand subject until they be admitted as a State?

We of the South, I know, are arraigned, and many believe justly, for starting a new question which distracts the Democratic party. I have endeavored, therefore, to show that it is not new. I have also asserted, what I think is clear, that if it were new, but yet a constitutional right, it is not only our province, but our duty to assert it – to assert it whenever or wherever that right is controverted. It is asserted now with more force than at a former period, for the simple reason that it is now denied, to an extent which has never been known before. We do not seek, in the cant language of the day, to force slavery on an unwilling people. We know full well there is no power to do it; and our limited observation has not yet made us acquainted with the man who was likely to have a slave forced upon him, or who could get one without paying a very high price for him. He must first have the will, and, secondly, he must put money in his purse to enable him to get one. They are too valuable among those by whom they are now owned, to be forced upon any body. Not admitting the correctness of the doctrine which the Senator promulgated in his magazine article in relation to a local character of slave property, I recognise the laws of nature, and that immigration will follow in the lines where any species of labor may be most profitably employed; all, therefore, we have asked – fulfillment of the original compact of our fathers – was that there should be no discrimination; that all property should be equally protected; that we should be permitted to go into every portion of the United States save where some sovereign power has said slaves shall not be held, and to take with us our slave property in like manner as we would take any other; no more than that. For that, our Government has contended on the high seas against foreign powers. That has entered into our negotiations, and has been recognized by every government against whom a claim has been asserted. Where our property was captured on the land during the period of an invasion, Great Britain, by treaty, restored it, or paid for it. Wherever it has suffered loss on the high seas, down to a very recent period, we have received indemnity; and where we have not, it was only because the power and duty of the Federal Government was sacrificed to this miserable strife in relation to property, with the existence of which, those making the interference had no municipal connection, or moral responsibility.

I do not admit that sovereignty necessarily exists in the Federal Government or in a territorial government. I deny the Senator’s proposition, which is broadly laid down, of the necessity which must exist for it in the one place or the other. I hold that sovereignty exists only in a State, or in the United States in their associated capacity, to whom sovereignty may be transferred, but that their agent is incapable of receiving it, and, still more, of transferring it to territorial inhabitants.

I was sorry for some of the remarks which he thought it necessary to make, as to the position of the South on this question, and for his assertion that the resolutions of the convention of 1848 put the pro-slavery men and the Abolitionists on the same ground. I think it was altogether unjust. I did not think it quite belonged to him to make it. I was aware that his opponent, in that canvass to which I referred, had made a prophecy that he was, sooner or later, to land in the ranks of the Republicans. Even if I had believed it, I would not have chosen – and it is due to candor to say I do not believe – …

Mr. Davis. Well, it is unimportant. I feel myself constrained, because I promised to do it, to refer to some portion of the joint record of the Senator and myself in 1850, or, as I have consumed so much time, I would avoid it. In that same magazine article, to which I have referred, the Senator took occasion to refer to some part which I had taken in the legislation of 1850; and I must say he presented me unfairly. He put me in the attitude of one who was seeking to discriminate, and left himself in the position of one who was willing to give equal protection to all kinds of property. In that magazine article the Senator represents Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, as having endeavored to discriminate in favor of slave property, and Mr. Chase, of Ohio, as having made a like attempt against it; and he leaves himself, by his argument, in the attitude of one who concurred with Mr. Clay in opposition to both propositions.

I offered an amendment to the compromise bill of 1850, which was to strike out the words “in respect to,” and insert “and introduce or exclude,” and after the word “slavery” to insert the following:

“Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to prevent said territorial legislature passing such laws as may be necessary for the protection of the rights of property of any kind which may have been or may be hereafter, conformably to the Constitution and laws of the United States, held in, or introduced into, said Territory.”

Mr. Chase’s amendment is in these words:

“Provided further, That nothing herein contained shall be construed as authorizing or permitting the introduction of slavery, or the holding of persons as property within said Territory.”

Whilst the quotation in the magazine article left me in the position already stated, the debates which had occurred between us necessarily informed the Senator that it was not my position, for I brought him in that debate to acknowledge it.

On that occasion, I argued for my amendment as an obligation of the Government to remove obstructions; to give the fair operation to constitutional right; and so far from the Senator having stood with Mr. Clay against all these propositions, the fact appears, on page 1134 of the Globe, that, upon the vote on Chase’s amendment, Douglas voted for it, and Davis and Clay voted against it; that upon the vote on Davis’ amendment, Clay and Davis voted for it, and Douglas voted against it.

Mr. Douglas. The Senator should add, that that vote was given under the very instructions to which he referred the other day, and which are well known to the Senate, and are on the table.

Mr. Davis. I was aware that the Senator had voted for Mr. Seward’s amendment, the “Wilmot proviso,” under these instructions, but I receive his explanation. Mr. Berrien offered an amendment to change the provision, which said there should be no legislation in respect to slavery, so as to make it read, “there shall be no legislation establishing or prohibiting African slavery.” Mr. Clay voted for that; so did Mr. Davis. Mr. Douglas voted against it. Mr. Hale offered an amendment to Mr. Berrien’s amendment, to add the word “allowing.” Here Mr. Douglas voted for Mr. Hale’s amendment, and against Davis and Clay. Then a proposition was made to continue the Mexican laws against slavery until repealed by Congress. I think I proved – at least I did to my own satisfaction – that there was no such Mexican law; that it was a decree, and that the legislation which occurred under it had never been executed. But that proposition by Mr. Baldwin, which was to continue the Mexican laws in force, was brought to a vote, and again Mr. Douglas voted for it, and Mr. Davis and Mr. Clay voted against it. When another proposition was brought forward to amend by “removing the obstructions of Mexican laws and usages to any right of person or property by the citizens of the United States in the Territories aforesaid,” I do not find the Senator’s name among those who voted, though, by reference to the Appendix, I learned he was present immediately afterwards, by his speaking to another amendment.

Thus we find the Senator differing from me on this question, as was stated; but we do not find him concurring with Mr. Clay, as was stated; and we do not find the proposition which I introduced, and which was mentioned in the magazine article, receiving the joint opposition of himself and Mr. Clay; and yet his remarks in the Senate the other day went upon the same theory, that Mr. Clay and himself had been coöperating. Now, the fact of the case is, that they agreed in supporting the final passage of the bill, and I was against it. I was one of the few Southern men who resisted, in all its stages, what was called the compromise, or omnibus bill. I have consumed the time of the Senate by this reference, made as brief as I could, on account of the remarks the Senator had made.

Coupled with this arraignment of myself, at a time when he says he had leisure to discuss the question with the Attorney-General, but when there was nothing in my position certainly to provoke the revision of my course in Congress, is his like review of it in the Senate. As I understood his remarks, for I did not find them in the Congressional Globe the next morning, he vaunted his own consistency and admitted mine, but claimed his to be inside and mine outside of the Democratic organization. Is it so? Will our votes on test questions sustain it? The list of yeas and nays would, on the points referred to, exhibit quite the reverse. And it strikes me that, on the recent demonstrations we have had, when the Democratic administration was, as it were, put on its trial in relation to its policy in Kansas, the Senator’s associations, rather than mine, were outside of the Democratic organization. How is it, on the pending question – the declaration of great principles of political creed – the Senator’s position is outside of the Senate’s Democracy, and mine in it, so that I do not see with what justice he attempts that discrimination between him and me? That the difference exists, that it involves a division greater or less in Democratic ranks, is a personal regret, and I think a public misfortune. It gives me, therefore, no pleasure to dwell upon it, and it is now dismissed.

Mr. President, after having for forty years been engaged in bitter controversy over a question relating to common property of the States, we have reached the point where the issue is presented in a form in which it becomes us to meet it according to existing facts; where it has ceased to be a question to be decided on the footing of authority, and by reference to history. We have decided that too long had this question been disturbing the peace and endangering the Union, and it was resolved to provide for its settlement by treating it as a judicial question. Now, will it be said, after Congress provided for the adjustment of this question by the courts, and after the courts had a case brought before them, and expressed an opinion covering the controversy, that no additional latitude is to be given to the application of the decision of the court, though Congress had referred it specially to them; that it is to be treated simply and technically as a question of meum et tuum, such as might have arisen if there had been no such legislation by Congress? Surely it does not become those who have pointed us to that provision as the peace-offering, as the means for final adjustment, now to say that it meant nothing more than that the courts would go on hereafter, as heretofore, to try questions of property.

The courts have decided the question so far as they could decide any political question. A case arose in relation to property in a slave held within a Territory where a law of Congress declared that such property should not be held. The whole case was before them; every thing, except the mere technical point that the law was not enacted by a territorial legislature. Why, then, if we are to abide by the decision of the Supreme Court in any future case, do they maintain this controversy on the mere technical point which now divides, disturbs, distracts, destroys the efficiency and the power of the Democratic party? To the Senator, I know, as a question of property, it is a matter of no consequence. I should do him injustice if I left any one to infer that I treated his argument as one made by a man prejudiced against the character of property involved in the question. That is not his position; but I assert that he is pursuing an ignis fatuus– not a light caught from the Constitution – but a vapor which has arisen from the corrupting cess-pools of sectional strife, of faction, and individual rivalry. Measured by any standard of common sense, its magnitude would be too small to disturb the adjustment of the balance of our country. There can be no appeal to humanity made upon this basis. Least of all could it be made to one who, like the Senator and myself, has seen this species of property in its sparse condition on the north-western frontier, and seen it go out without disturbing the tranquillity of the community, as it had previously existed without injury to any one, if not to the benefit of the individual who held it. He has no apprehension, he can have none, that it is to retard the political prosperity of the future States – now the Territories. He can have no apprehension that in that country, to which they never would be carried except for domestic purposes, they could ever so accumulate as to constitute a great political element. He knows, and every man who has had experience and judgment must admit, that the few who may be so carried there have nothing to fear but the climate, and that living in that close connection which belongs to one or half a dozen of them in a family, the kindest relations which it is possible to exist between master and dependent, exist between these domestics and their owners.

There is a relation belonging to this species of property, unlike that of the apprentice or the hired man, which awakens whatever there is of kindness or of nobility of soul in the heart of him who owns it; this can only be alienated, obscured, or destroyed by collecting this species of property into such masses that the owner is not personally acquainted with the individuals who compose it. In the relation, however, which can exist in the north-western Territories, the mere domestic connection of one, two, or, at most, half a dozen servants in a family, associating with the children as they grow up, attending upon age as it declines, there can be nothing against which either philanthropy or humanity can make an appeal. Not even the emancipationist could raise his voice, for this is the high road and the open gate to the condition in which the masters would, from interest, in a few years, desire the emancipation of every one who may thus be taken to the north-western frontier.

Mr. President, I briefly and reluctantly referred, because the subject had been introduced, to the attitude of Mississippi on a former occasion. I will now as briefly say, that in 1851, and in 1860, Mississippi was, and is, ready to make every concession which it becomes her to make to the welfare and the safety of the Union. If, on a former occasion, she hoped too much from fraternity, the responsibility for her disappointment rests upon those who fail to fulfill her expectations. She still clings to the Government as our fathers formed it. She is ready to-day and to-morrow, as in her past, and though brief, yet brilliant history, to maintain that Government in all its power, and to vindicate its honor with all the means she possesses. I say brilliant history; for it was in the very morning of her existence that her sons, on the plains of New Orleans, were announced, in general orders to have been the admiration of one army and the wonder of the other. That we had a division in relation to the measures enacted in 1850, is true; that the Southern rights men became the minority in the election which resulted, is true; but no figure of speech could warrant the Senator in speaking of them as subdued; as coming to him or any body else for quarter. I deemed it offensive when it was uttered, and the scorn with which I repelled it at the instant, time has only softened to contempt. Our flag was never borne from the field. We had carried it in the face of defeat, with a knowledge that defeat awaited it; but scarcely had the smoke of the battle passed away which proclaimed another victor, before the general voice admitted that the field again was ours; I have not seen a sagacious, reflecting man, who was cognizant of the events as they transpired at the time, who does not say that, within two weeks after the election, our party was in a majority; and the next election which occurred showed that we possessed the State beyond controversy. How we have wielded that power it is not for me to say. I trust others may see forbearance in our conduct – that, with a determination to insist upon our constitutional rights, then and now, there is an unwavering desire to maintain the Government, and to uphold the Democratic party.

We believe now, as we have asserted on former occasions, that the best hope for the perpetuity of our institutions depends upon the coöperation, the harmony, the zealous action of the Democratic party. We cling to that party from conviction, that its principles and its aims are those of truth and the country, as we cling to the Union for the fulfillment of the purposes for which it was formed. Whenever we shall be taught that the Democratic party is recreant to its principles; whenever we shall learn that it can not be relied upon to maintain the great measures which constitute its vitality, I, for one, shall be ready to leave it. And so, when we declare our tenacious adherence to the Union, it is the Union of the Constitution. If the compact between the States is to be trampled into the dust; if anarchy is to be substituted for the usurpation and consolidation which threatened the Government at an earlier period; if the Union is to become powerless for the purposes for which it was established, and we are vainly to appeal to it for protection, then, sir, conscious of the rectitude of our course, the justice of our cause, self-reliant, yet humbly, confidingly trusting in the arm that guided and protected our fathers, we look beyond the confines of the Union for the maintenance of our rights. A habitual reverence and cherished affection for the Government will bind us to it longer than our interests would suggest or require; but he is a poor student of the world’s history who does not understand that communities at last must yield to the dictates of their interests. That the affection, the mutual desire for the mutual good, which existed among our fathers, may be weakened in succeeding generations by the denial of right, and hostile demonstration, until the equality guaranteed, but not secured within the Union, may be sought for without it, must be evident to even a careless observer of our race. It is time to be up and doing. There is yet time to remove the causes of dissension and alienation which are now distracting, and have for years past divided the country.

If the Senator correctly described me as having, at a former period, against my own preferences and opinions, acquiesced in the decision of my party; if when I had youth, when physical vigor gave promise of many days, and the future was painted in the colors of hope, I could thus surrender my own convictions, my own prejudices, and coöperate with my political friends, according to their views, as to the best method of promoting the public good; now, when the years of my future can not be many, and experience has sobered the hopeful tints of youth’s gilding; when, approaching the evening of life, the shadows are reversed, and the mind turns retrospectively, it is not to be supposed that I would abandon lightly, or idly put on trial, the party to which I have steadily adhered. It is rather to be assumed that conservatism, which belongs to the timidity or caution of increasing years, would lead me to cling to – to be supported by, rather than to cast off, the organization with which I have been so long connected. If I am driven to consider the necessity of separating myself from those old and dear relations, of discarding the accustomed support, under circumstances such as I have described, might not my friends who differ from me pause and inquire whether there is not something involved in it which calls for their careful revision?

I desire no divided flag for the Democratic party, seek not to depreciate the power of the Senator, or take from him any thing of that confidence he feels in the large army which follows his standard. I prefer that his banner should lie in its silken folds to feed the moth; but if it unrestrainedly rustles, impatient to be unfurled, we who have not invited the conflict, shrink not from the trial; we will plant our flag on every hill and plain; it shall overlook the Atlantic and welcome the sun as he rises from its dancing waters; it shall wave its adieu as he sinks to repose in the quiet Pacific.

Our principles are national; they belong to every State of the Union; and though elections may be lost by their assertion, they constitute the only foundation on which we can maintain power, on which we can again rise to the dignity the Democracy once possessed. Does not the Senator from Illinois see in the sectional character of the vote he received, that his opinions are not acceptable to every portion of the country? Is not the fact that the resolutions adopted by seventeen States, on which the greatest reliance must be placed for Democratic support, are in opposition to the dogma to which he still clings, a warning that if he persists and succeeds in forcing his theory upon the Democratic party, its days are numbered? We ask only for the Constitution. We ask of the Democracy only from time to time to declare, as current exigencies may indicate, what the Constitution was intended to secure and provide. Our flag bears no new device. Upon its folds our principles are written in living light; all proclaiming the constitutional Union, justice, equality, and fraternity of our ocean-bound domain, for a limitless future.

CHAPTER VII

ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN – HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE EVENT – THE OBJECTS AIMED AT BY HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY IDENTICAL IN THE DISCUSSION OF EVENTS OF THE LATE WAR – NORTHERN EVASION OF THE REAL QUESTION – THE SOUTH DID NOT ATTEMPT REVOLUTION – SECESSION A JUSTIFIABLE RIGHT EXERCISED BY SOVEREIGN STATES – BRIEF REVIEW OF THE QUESTION – WHAT THE FEDERALIST SAYS – CHIEF-JUSTICE MARSHALL – MR. MADISON – COERCION NOT JUSTIFIED AT THE NORTH PREVIOUS TO THE LATE WAR – REMARKS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS – OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN – OF HORACE GREELEY – SUCCESSFUL PERVERSION OF TRUTH BY THE NORTH – PROVOCATIONS TO SECESSION BY THE SOUTH – AGGRESSIONS BY THE NORTH – ITS PUNIC FAITH – LOSS OF THE BALANCE OF POWER – PATIENCE OF THE SOUTH – REMARKS OF HON. C. C. CLAY – WHAT THE ELECTION OF MR. LINCOLN MEANT – HIS ADMINISTRATIVE POLICY – REVELATIONS OF THE OBJECTS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY – WENDELL PHILLIPS – NO SECURITY FOR THE SOUTH IN THE UNION – MEETING OF CONGRESS – MR. DAVIS’ ASSURANCE TO PRESIDENT BUCHANAN – CONCILIATORY COURSE OF MR. DAVIS – HIS CONSISTENT DEVOTION TO THE UNION, AND EFFORTS TO SAVE IT – FORESEES WAR AS THE RESULT OF SECESSION, AND URGES THE EXHAUSTION OF EVERY EXPEDIENT TO AVERT IT – THE CRITTENDEN AMENDMENT – HOPES OF ITS ADOPTION – DAVIS WILLING TO ACCEPT IT IN SPITE OF ITS INJUSTICE TO THE SOUTH – REPUBLICAN SENATORS DECLINE ALL CONCILIATORY MEASURES – THE CLARKE AMENDMENT – WHERE RESTS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF DISUNION? – STATEMENTS OF MESSRS. DOUGLAS AND COX – SECESSION OF THE COTTON STATES – A LETTER FROM JEFFERSON DAVIS TO R. B. RHETT, JR. – MR. DAVIS’ FAREWELL TO THE SENATE – HIS REASONS FOR WITHDRAWING – RETURNS TO MISSISSIPPI – MAJOR-GENERAL OF STATE FORCES – ORGANIZATION OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT – MR. DAVIS PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES

As had been foreseen, and, indeed, as was the inevitable sequence of the disruption of the Democratic party, Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the Republican party, was, in November, 1860, elected President of the United States. This was the supreme and sufficient incitement to the adoption of the dreaded resort of disunion. As the occasion which finally brought the South to the attitude of resistance, the event acquires vast historical importance.

When it is conceded that Mr. Lincoln was elected in accordance with the forms of the Constitution, having received a majority of electoral votes; that the mere ceremony of election was attended by no unusual circumstances, we concede every possible ground upon which can be based an argument denying its ample justification of the course pursued by the South. Such an argument, however, leads to a wholly untenable conclusion, and may be easily exposed in its hypocritical evasion of the real question. We are here required to note the distinction between cause and occasion. As the final consummation of tendencies, long indicating the result of disunion, this event has an appropriate place in the recapitulation of those influences, and can be rightly estimated only in connection with their operation.

Trite observations upon the influence of passion and prejudice, over contemporary judgment, are not necessary to a due conception of the obstacles which, for the present, exclude candor from the discussion of the late movement for Southern independence. In the face of the disastrous overthrow of that movement, the wrecked hopes and fortunes of those who participated in it, discussion is chiefly serviceable, as it throws additional light upon the development of those eternal principles in whose ceaseless struggles men are only temporary agents.

History and biography are here most intimately blended; beginning from the same stand-point, they encounter common difficulties, and aim to explore the same general grounds of observation. So far as a verdict – from whatever tribunal, whether rendered at the bar of justice or in the award of popular opinion, when the embers of recent strife are still fiercely glowing – can affect the dispassionate judgment of History, the Southern people can not be separated, either in fact or in sentiment, from Jefferson Davis. He was the illustrious compatriot of six millions of freemen, who struck for nationality and independence, and lost – as did Greece and Poland before them; or he and they were alike insurgents, equally guilty of the crime of treason.

With an adroitness which does credit to the characteristic charlatanism of the North, an infinite variety of special questions and side issues have been interwoven with the narrative of the late war, for the obvious purpose of confounding the judgment of mankind regarding the great question which really constitutes the gravamen of the controversy. Conspicuous among these efforts, from both audacity and plausibility, are appeals to the sympathies of the world, in consideration of the abolition of slavery, which it is well known was merely an incident, and not the avowed design of the war.

Persistent in its introduction of the moral question of slavery, the North seeks to shield itself from the reproach justly visited upon its perpetration of an atrocious political crime, by an insolent intrusion of a false claim to the championship of humanity. Whatever may be the decision of Time upon the merits of slavery, it is in vain for the North to seek escape from its responsibility for an institution, protected and sustained by a government which was the joint creation of Southern and Northern hands.

The attempted dissolution of the Union by the South was a movement involving moral and political considerations, not unlike those incidental to revolutions in general, yet presenting certain peculiar characteristics, traceable to the inherent and distinctive features of the American political system. These latter considerations constitute a vital part of its justification. The South did not appeal only to the inalienable right of revolution, which is the natural guarantee of resistance to wrong and oppression. Nor did the States, severally, as they assumed to sever their connection with the Union, announce a purpose of constitutional revolution, or adopt a course inviting or justifying violence. Mr. Davis and those who coöperated with him, neither by the acts of secession, nor the subsequent confederation of the States under a new government, could have committed treason against Mr. Lincoln, since they were not his subjects. Nor yet were they traitors to the Government of the United States, since the States of which they were citizens had rescinded the grant of powers voluntarily made by them to that Government, and begun to exercise them in conjunction with other powers which they had withheld by express reservation.

It is impossible to conceive a movement, contemplating such important political changes, more entirely unattended by displays of violence, passion, and disorder. A simple assertion, with due solemnity, by each State, of its sovereignty – a heritage which it had never surrendered, but which had been respected by innumerable forms of recognition in the history of the Union – and the exercise of those attributes of sovereignty, which are too palpable to require that they shall be indicated, was the peaceable method resorted to of terminating a political alliance which had become injurious to the highest interests of one of the parties. Could there have been a more becoming and dignified exercise of the vaunted right of self-government? It is that right to which America is so conspicuously committed, and which has been such an inexhaustible theme for the tawdry rhetoric of Northern eloquence.

Even in the insolence of its triumph, the North feels the necessity of at least a decent pretext for its destruction of the cardinal feature in the American system of government – the sovereignty of the States. With habitual want of candor, Northern writers pretend that the Constitution of the United States does not affirm the sovereignty of the States, and that, therefore, secession was treason against that Constitution to which they had subscribed; in other words, the created does not give authority to the creator —i. e., the Constitution, which the States created, does not accredit sovereignty to the States, and, therefore, the States are not sovereign. It is not pretended that the States were not, each of them, originally independent powers, since they were so recognized by Great Britain, in the plainest terms, at the termination of the first revolution. Nor is it asserted that the union of the States, under the title of United States, was the occasion of any surrender of their individual sovereignty, as it was then declared that “each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence.” A conclusive demonstration of the retention of sovereignty by the States is seen in the entire failure of the Constitution, either by direct assertion or by implication, to claim its surrender to the Union.

If the sovereignty of the States be conceded, the South stands justified as having exercised an unquestionable right. It was never formally denied, even at the North, until Mr. Webster, in his debate with Mr. Calhoun, affirmed the doctrine of the supremacy of the Union, to which conclusion the Northern masses sprung with alacrity, as an available justification for compelling the submission of the South to the outrages which they had already commenced.

Volumes of testimony have been adduced, proving the theory of State sovereignty to have been the overwhelmingly predominant belief among the statesmen most prominent in the establishment of the Union, and in shaping the policy of the Government in its earlier history. Argument proved an unavailing offset to the stern decrees of the sword, and is quite unnecessary so long as the unanswerable logic of Calhoun, Davis, and a score of Southern statesmen remains upon the national records – a perpetual challenge, as yet unaccepted, to the boasted intellect of the North, and a significant warning of the final adjudication of the centuries. We shall intrude no argument of our own in support of State sovereignty, upon which rests the vindication of the South and her leaders. Before us are the apposite and conclusive assumptions of men who have been the revered sources of political inspiration among Americans.

The Federalist, that most powerful vindication of the Constitution, and earnest plea for its adoption by the States, assumes that it was a “compact,” to which “the States, as distinct and independent sovereigns,” were the parties. Yet this doctrine, the basis upon which rests the august handiwork of Madison and Hamilton, the “architects of the Constitution,” when applied by Davis and his compatriots, becomes treason! Such is the extremity to which despotism, in its wretched plea of expediency, is driven; and the candid, enlightened American of to-day realizes, in his country, a land in which “truth is treason, and history is rebellion.”

Chief-Justice Marshall, the great judicial luminary of America, and an authority not usually summoned to the support of doctrines hostile to the assumptions of Federal power, gave most emphatic testimony to the propriety of the States’ Rights view of the relations of State and Federal authority. In the Virginia Convention which ratified the Constitution, he said: “The State governments did not derive their powers from the General Government. But each government derived its powers from the people, and each was to act according to the powers given it. Would any gentleman deny this? He demanded, if powers not given were retained by implication? Could any man say, no? Could any man say that this power was not retained by the States, since it was not given away?” The view so earnestly urged by Marshall, was not only avowed generally, but Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania insisted upon a written declaration, in the Constitution, of the principle that certain attributes of sovereignty, which they did not delegate to the Union, were retained by the States.

Mr. Madison, whose great abilities were taxed to the utmost to secure the ratification of the Constitution by Virginia, vigorously and earnestly defended it against the allegation that it created a consolidated government. With the utmost difficulty, he secured a majority of ten votes, in the Virginia Convention, in favor of the Constitution, which his rival, Patrick Henry, denounced as destructive of State sovereignty.

Defining the expression, “We, the people,” Mr. Madison said: “The parties to it were the people, but not the people as composing one great society, but the people as composing ‘thirteen sovereignties.’” To quote Mr. Madison again: “If it were a consolidated government, the assent of a majority of the people would be sufficient to establish it. But it was to be binding on the people of a State only by their own separate consent.” Under the influence of these arguments, and others of the same import from Mr. Madison, whom she thought, from his close relations to the Constitution, high authority upon all questions pertaining to its character, Virginia finally acceded to the Union. It is especially noteworthy, however, that Virginia, when becoming a party to the Constitution, expressly affirmed, in the most solemn manner, the right to “resume” her grants of power to the Federal Government.

In deference to the accumulated evidence upon this subject, came the unqualified statement, from eminent Northern authority,[14 - William Rawle, of Philadelphia, an able lawyer and constitutional expounder. Mr. Buchanan, in his history of his own administration, thus mentions him: “The right of secession found advocates afterwards in men of distinguished abilities and unquestioned patriotism. In 1825, it was maintained by Mr. William Rawle, of Philadelphia, an eminent and universally-respected lawyer… His biographer says that, ‘in 1791, he was appointed District Attorney of the United States,’ and ‘the situation of Attorney General was more than once tendered to him by Washington, but as often declined,’ for domestic reasons.”] that, “This right [of secession] must be considered an ingredient in the original composition of the General Government, which, though not expressed, was mutually understood.”

But whatever may be thought of the prescriptive and inherent right of sovereignty, exercised by the South in withdrawing from the Union, as deducible from the peculiar nature of the American system, and as expounded by the founders of that system, there can be no question as to its entire accordance with the spirit of American polity. Authority is abundant in support of the assertion that, not even in the North, previous to the inception of the present revolution, was the idea of a constrained connection with the Union entertained. From every source of Northern opinion has come indignant repudiation of a coerced association of communities, originally united by a common pledge of fealty to the right of self-government.

Upon this subject Mr. John Quincy Adams spoke in language of characteristic fervor: “The indissoluble link of union between the people of the several States of this confederated nation is, after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come (may heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other – when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collision of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited States to part in friendship from each other than to be held together by constraint.”

Even Mr. Lincoln, whose statesmanship is not likely to be commemorated for its profundity or scholarship, fully comprehended the exaggerated reverence of the American mind for the “sacred right of self-government.” Now that his homely phrases are dignified by the Northern masses with the sanctity of the utterances of Deity, assuredly there should be no apprehension that his opinions may not be deemed conclusive. In 1848, Mr. Lincoln said: “Any people whatever have the right to abolish the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right.”

A brave affirmation was this of the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, that “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;” and one which would have commanded the united applause of the North, then and now, had the application concerned Hungary, Poland, Greece, or Mexico. But, with reference to the South, there was a most important modification of this admirable principle of equity and humanity. When asked, “Why not let the South go?” Abraham Lincoln, the President, in 1861, said: “Let the South go! Where, then, shall we get our revenue?” And the united North reëchoed: “Let the South go! Where, then, shall we look for the bounties and monopolies which have so enriched us at the expense of those improvident, unsuspecting Southerners? Where shall we find again such patient victims of spoliation?”

Mr. Horace Greeley frequently and emphatically, previous to the war, affirmed the right of changing its political association asserted by the South. Three days after the election of Mr. Lincoln, in November, 1860, his paper, the New York Tribune, said: “If the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace… We must ever resist the right of any State to remain in the Union, and nullify or defy the laws thereof. To withdraw from the Union is quite another matter; and whenever any considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Republic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets.” On the 17th of December, 1860, the Tribune said: “If it [the Declaration of Independence] justifies the secession of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the Federal Union in 1861.”

Such are a few illustrations, to which might be added innumerable quotations, of the same import, from the most prominent sources of Northern opinion. Never has there been a question so capable of positive solution and easy comprehension, when subjected to the test of candid investigation, and never so successful a purpose to exclude the illumination of facts by persistent and ingenious misrepresentation. The North has reason for its extravagant exultation at the skill and audacity with which the brazen front of hypocrisy, for a time, at least, has successfully sustained, in the name of humanity and liberty, the most monstrous imposition and transparent counterfeit of virtue ever designed upon an intelligent age.

To the triumphant historical vindication of the South, there remains only the essential condition of a clear and truthful statement of the provocations which impelled her to adopt that long-deferred remedy, which is the last refuge of a people whose liberties are imperiled. Secession, however strong in its prescriptive or implied justification as a principle, was not to be undertaken from caprice, or trivial causes of dissatisfaction.