STATE OR PROVINCE?
BOND OR FREE?
" The vital principle of Equality, which cements the Union of the States."
Madison.
ADDRESSED PARTICULARLY TO THE PEOPLE OF ARKANSAS.
0
1861.
EMORY UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
STATE OR PROVINCE?
BOND OR FREE?
" The vital principle of Equality, which cements the Union of the States."
Madison.
ADDRESSED PARTICULARLY TO THE PEOPLE OF ARKANSAS.
BY
ALBERT PIKE.
1861.
STATE OR PROVINCE? BOND OR FREE?
I address these pages to the people of Arkansas; and I offer
no apology for doing so, because it needs none.
For now, as always heretofore, I seek no office at their hands,
nor to serve any end of private profit or ambition. I need not
ask their permission to write this, or to print it; and it is of course
entirely optional with every one to read it or throw it aside. If
the views it contains are correct,' they may effect some good, in
convincing, or strengthening the convictions of, others. If they
are incorrect, they will serve this good end, at least, that they
will provoke other men to confute them and so unveil the truth.
Such as they are, I present them as those of one, who, while he
has no more interest in the State than other of his fellow-citizens,
has as much interest therein as any of them. They are at least well-
considered, honest, and not prompted by passion.
"All experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed
to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves
by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed
Declaration op Independence.
We are in the midst of a revolution; and, as is usual, those
who are hurried along in its vortex are, for the most part, igno-
rant of the real causes that have produced the revolution, and of
the depth to which the questions involved in the controversy
have struck their roots downward among the very foundation-
stones of the Republic.
Appeals to the wonsense of the people sometimes prove effectual;
and the tendency in all political controversies is to limit and nar-
row questions, and to present them in a practical and empirical
manner; because abstract principles, even when fundamental, do
not appeal to most men with a thousandth part the force of consi-
derations of present economy, policy or expediency. You must
crystallize an abstraction into a fact that oppresses, before you can
arouse a people by it. It is well when a great crisis occurs, that
4
compels the discussion of the first principles of the Government;
and when great Constitutional propositions are debated, without
appeal to lower or meaner considerations. Then the debate is
lifted above the low flat level of ignominious and angry disputa-
tion, and we breathe the thin clear atmosphere that wraps the
mountain tops where Truth and Reason sit enthroned.
The men who were successively overwhelmed by the French
Revolution, had very inadequate conceptions of the causes that
produced it. Those who looked on from a distance were pro-
foundly ignorant of these causes; and History, in endeavoring to
develop them, has shown herself ludicrously shallow and super-
ficial. It was not until De Tocqueville pointed out in detail the
manifold abuses and oppressions for long years before the Revo-
lution heaped on the common people of France, that we began to
understand its real causes.
Earthquake and volcanic eruptions occur suddenly for the
most part, and without audible premonition: but the causes, ele-
mental or chemical, which beget them, have none the less been
long in operation, silently, incessantly, potently.
Nothing is more essential to the statesman and the people alike,
than to understand the true causes that bring about sudden catas-
trophes; for thus only they can understand the reach and depth
of the questions involved, or even what at heart those questions
are. And without knowing that, neither statesman or people
can know or even guess at the true remedy, or what it is the part
of wisdom in the given case to endeavor to do.
Nothing can be settled, until the pith of a controversy is
reached and understood. The physician who should mistake the
sporadic pustules on the skin for the actual disorder, and under-
take to treat them alone, would be fortunate if he did not kill his
patient; and statesmen who undertake to patch up by'compro-
mise controversies caused by radical differences of opinion on
great fundamental principles, are like quacks who pretend to cure
with cataplasms of roots and herbs, cancers whose roots cling
around the very core of the heart.
This, which is now in progress in our country, is clearly a
Revolution. It has marched with swift steps. The Southern
States are rapidly retiring from the Union, and preparing to seek
peace and safety in a new confederacy. We can now look back
and see that the current of events has been incessantly drifting
us towards this consummation for forty years, little as most of our
statesmen believed or even expected it. The Northern States
look on, amazed, incredulous, almost distrusting their own senses,
busily conjecturing what can be the cause of this movement.
They assign for it this or the other reason—that power is passing
away from the South, and therefore it is for revolution; that the
slave oligarchy are indignant because they cannot have protec-
tion for their chattels in the common territory. It is a mere
5
temporary ebullition, many think, that will soon pass away, and
the waters be calm and still again. The Union is too strong in
the affections of the people to be permanently dissolved : a little
wholesome chastisement of the refractory States will soon bring
them back into the national fold: a few ambitious politicians
have led the South astray, taken: it by surprise, and obtained only
unreal majorities for secession, while the mass of the people were
in favor of the Union; it is a rebellion of the slavery propagan-
dists; but still the mob has taken everything into its own hands;
and there is a genuine Reign of Terror.
All this is the merest babble. Revolutions that shatter empires
are not improvised, under the spur of a causeless excitement, by
a few schemers or malcontents. Habit is a stronger bond of
union than affection, and its influence can only be destroyed by
the operation of sufficient causes, acting for a long time. It
is continual dropping only, that wears away the stone. The pre-
sent movement is a general, and for the most part spontaneous,
uprising of the People; and he is a very shallow pretender to
statesmanship who supposes it to be the ebullition of a mere tern-
porary fit of passion. We all act very much from instinct; and
peoples do so no less than individuals. They are often uncon-
scious of the true springs of their action; and it is well when
they possess that unerring instinct that warns them of the ap-
proach of an unseen danger. The symptoms of a disease are not
the disease itself; the chill is only a consequence of the internal
and organic malady. The Border States do not appreciate the
questions involved in this controversy; but reproach those further
south that they have lost no fugitives, and yet secede because
the North refuses to comply with its obligations to return them.
The question of southern rights in the Territories, too, they say,
is an abstraction, because we have now no longer any Territory
into which Slavery can go. This is, in the truest sense, to mis-
take the mere symptoms for the disease.
So men tell us that these troubles are altogether owing to the
rash and violent course of politicians north and south, and chiefly
to the passage of the Nebraska and Kansas bill. They say that
it could all have been avoided, if our public men, and especially
the Democratic leaders, had only been wise and patriotic. That
may be true. If the ship had not sunk, the man would not have
drowned. All men, as well as all circumstances, are instruments
used by Providence to effect its great purposes. Why and to
what use blame the instrument? But for too much or too little
rain, the grain-fields would have laughed with their golden waves.
If George III. and Lord North and the British Parliament had
been wise, the Colonies would not have revolted—then. Was it
not as well for them to revolt then f Could they always have re-
mained Colonies? Was it not well that king and minister and
Parliament would not listen to Chatham and Barre?
6
Mr. Seward, who is ambitious to wear the honors of philoso-
phic statesmanship, and thinks to attain them bj antitheses and
paradoxes, pronounced, a year since, that there was an " irrepres-
sible conflict" begun between the North and the South. It was
true; but it was not true in the sense in which he applied it.
The real controversy between them is as old as the Constitu-
tion itself. For it is a radical difference as to the very nature
of the Government; and it arrayed against each other the first
parties formed in the Republic. The Southern States hold, as
Jefferson and Madison and all the Anti-Federal party held, that
the General Government is the result of a compact between the
States; a compact made by the States, amendable by the States
only, and dissolvable by the States whenever it fails to answer
the purposes for which they created it. The earliest symbol of
the Union—a chain, composed of thirteen circular links, each per-
feet in symmetry and complete in its separate identity—well ex-
pressed the true nature of that union, and the Southern States'-
rights doctrine. The Northern States, on the contrary, hold that
there is no such compact; that the whole people of all the States,
as an aggregate and unit, made the Constitution; and that there
is no right of secession retained by a State; from which, by our
American common law, it results as an inevitable corollary, that
whenever the majority of voters of the whole Union choose to
exercise the power, notwithstanding the mode provided by the
Constitution for its amendment, they may call a Convention, not
of the States, nor in each State, but of the whole People of all;
and, the majority being there represented, may set aside the pre-
sent Constitution of the United States, and make a new one, mak-
ing, if they please, of the whole Union a single State, and of the
States mere Counties.
For it is fresh in our recollection that the People of New York,
not many years since, held a Convention, in utter contempt of
their Constitution, and of the mode which it provided for its
amendment, and made a new Constitution, which the highest
Court of that State held valid; and it governs that State now.
And it will also be recollected that it was earnestly argued, by
Southern men, only two years ago, that the People of Kansas
would have a right to change their Constitution, in defiance of
the provision contained in it, prohibiting any change for a certain
length of time.
If seven men agree to go into business together, and make a
contract to that effect, and three of them hold that it is an ordi-
nary partnership they have established, while the other four hold
that it is a corporation—if such were the different understandings
of the parties in framing the contract, perhaps on the principle
that there is no contract unless the wills of the contracting parties
agree, there would be no contract between them at all. It clearly
7
could not be a mere partnership for part, and a corporation for
part, of them.
If the difference were even only one of interpretation, it would
continually reappear in the various transactions of the parties;
and it is very evident that, being so radical and fundamental a
disagreement, it would in a little time render continuance of the
connection impossible.
That is precisely the case with the Union which is now being
dissolved. There is a difference as wide and substantial between
this Government, as its nature is understood by the fifteen Slave-
holding States, and the same Government, as its nature is under-
stood by the nineteen Non-Slaveholding States, as there is between
Constitutional Monarchy in England and Imperial Absolutism in
France.
We should not consent to remain a day in such a Government
as Mr. Webster confirmed the North in holding this to be. We
do not believe that a centralized and consolidated government,
built on the theory that the people of all these States were massed
into one in order to make it, can have perpetuity or even contin-
uance. To us the value and only recommendation of the Govern-
ment are that it is the result of a compact between the States,
that no individual action, but only State action, is constitutionally
felt in the General Government, and that the States remain as
they were when they achieved their independence, "Free, Sove-
reign, Equal, and Independent States."
This radical difference of opinion, as to the very nature, and of
course as to the poivers, of the General Government, could not
help but continually develop itself in legislation as well as in the
creeds of parties. Upon it, as I have said, the first parties in the
Republic were formed; and parties degenerated into factions when
other and pettier questions pushed it to one side. It is a difference
of opinion that cannot he reconciled;—and the Northern people are
nearly two to our one.
While they hold that this is simply a government of popular
majorities, and degrade the States to the rank of Parishes or Coun-
ties, they have become too strong for us, outnumber us in people
and States, receive a hundred thousand emigrants per annum,
have open space wherein to make six or seven new States, and
announce it as their ultimatum that we shall not expand south-
wardly or south west ward ly, but slavery shall be prohibited in all
territory hereafter acquired.
He who reflects on all this, cannot well fail to see that separa-
tion was but a question of time. Sooner'or later the North and
South could not help but divide, unless the powers of Govern-
ment were placed and kept in the hands of the wisest Statesmen
of each. If they were habitually intrusted to second-rate men,
disintegration was inevitable. How much more so, if possible,
when the pulpit in the North assumed the powers of legislation,
8
and stirred a practical question that jeopardized the safety of
every home in the South, aroused its pride, and touched its
honor? It became as easy to destroy the Union as the crazed
incendiary found it to burn the Temple of Diana at Ephesus.
The party which calls itself Republican has at length succeeded
to power. In the controversies that have finally resulted in the
election of its obscure candidate to the Presidency, the questions
chiefly discussed have been those provoked by the feeling in the
North against Slavery; and particularly that of the rights of the
Southern States and their citizens in the common territory.
If it was then important, it is now still more important to under-
stand the real issue between the North and the South, and the reach
and extent of the principles involved. For now we are about to
sever the bonds that have for seventy-three years held us together,
and to create and set on foot a new government for ourselves; and
it is especially essential that the ground of separation should not
be misunderstood by any considerable portion of our own people,
that a mere corollary should not be mistaken for the essential
principle involved, and that a part of our people and some of our
States should not imagine that there is no more vital principle or
broader question at issue, than the interests of slave-owners and
the right of emigration into uninviting and inhospitable terri-
tories.
Abstract theories of government rarely enlist the passions of
the people. They operate chiefly on the minds of Statesmen.
But when these theories, applied to and developed in facts, become
palpable realities, then the popular heart is moved by them, and
they beget revolutions. .
I, for one, have not deplored the agitation of the question of
slavery. For in its discussion have been all the time involved
the very essential nature and terms of the compact under which
our national system exists. The questions to which Slavery has
given rise could not have remained unsettled, nor been ignored,
and the real issues are far graver than that of the right of a
Southern citizen to emigrate to a Territory with his slaves.
The theory of the North, that the People of all the States, as
one People, made the Government, has become a living reality in
practice. The doctrine of the North as to the Territories is but
an application of it; and if the Southern States, from Delaware to
Texas, do not mean to abandon their Constitutional faith, admit
that there is no union of the States, and submit to the worst of
absolutisms, that of a foreign majority, they must stand shoulder
to shoulder, one firm unbroken phalanx, in this great emergency,
and prove to the world that they are strong, wise, and patriotic
enough to form and maintain a Constitution and Government for
themselves.
This issue concerns little Delaware as much as it does Louisiana,
if not more; and Kentucky and Virginia as much as it does Ala-
9
bama and Georgia. And it concerns the man who owns no slaves
quite as much as the man who owns them, as I think can be de-
monstrated; and this is what I wish to show.
The first resolution of Calhoun, introduced by him in the
Senate, on the 22d of January, 1833, asserted: " That the People
of the several States composing these United States, are united
as parties to a constitutional compact, to which the People of each
State acceded as a separate Sovereign Community, each binding
itself by its own particular ratification; and that the Union, of
which the said compact is the bond, is a union between the States
ratifying the same."
Webster, in his Speech delivered the 16th of February, 1833,
maintained, against this proposition: " That the Constitution of
the United States is not a league, confederacy or compact between
the people of the several States, in their Sovereign capacities; but
a government proper, founded on the adoption of the People, and
creating direct relations between itself and individuals."
He said: " It is the People, and not the States, who have
entered into this compact; and it is the People of all the United
States." . . . "The Constitution is founded on the consent of
the People? . . . " The tlnion is not the temporary partner-
ship of the States. It is the association of the People, under a
Constitution of Government."
There is the great theoretical question now at issue. It is the
most fundamental of all questions; since the construction and
consequences of every compact must chiefly depend upon the
question, who made and are the parties to it. Its decision must
decide what is the proper name for the system we are under;
what is citizenship of the United States; what our paramount
allegiance; what, treason; where is the proprietorship of the
territories and the rights and relations of those who go thither;
what, the rights of the States and their citizens therein.
And, I think, on this question always depended the perpetuity
of our National life. I do not think it was ever possible long to
preserve the Union on the theory adopted by Federalism and
expounded by Webster. I do not think it was worth preserv-
ing on it; and I do not think the theory was true, or that it ever
found the least real countenance in the Constitution, interpreted
by the ordinary rules of legal construction.
The Constitution must be construed by the same rules as other
instruments. Where the language is not ambiguous or obscure,
it must speak for itself, and you cannot resort to other means of
ascertaining its meaning, such as the debates in the convention
that adopted it. Where the sense is, according to legal rules, not
doubtful, it cannot be varied or qualified by proof that it was not
10
so intended. Men must see to it that they use such language as
will not speak in a contrary sense to what they mean. No other
rule would be just to all the parties. And, moreover, in the pro-
cession of the ages, a time comes when these extrinsic aids to
construction disappear and the instrument stands by itself, to
speak for itself, and be construed by its language alone. It is so
with Magna Charta. At least, the cotemporaneous or precedent
circumstances, acts and words fade partially away, and become
dim and indistinct, as the monument on which they cast their
light, becomes hoary and venerable with age.
The Constitution, it is true, created one Nation for certain pur-
poses, and " a Government proper, founded on its adoption by
the People" [of each State separately as one political unit], "and
creating direct relations between itself and individualsbut it
does not, therefore, follow that it is not itself a compact between
the several States, in their sovereign Capacities.
Webster said of Calhoun, "If he admits our instrument
of Government to be a Constitution, then, for that very reason, it
is not a compact between Sovereigns; a Constitution of Govern-
ment and a compact between Sovereign Powers, being things
essentially unlike in their very natures, and incapable of ever
being the same;" and he afterwards said, that there was no compact
between the States, because the people only ratified a Constitution,
or form of Government. Is it true that a compact between Sove-
reign States cannot create or produce "a government proper" over
the People of both ? Why is it true, if it be so ? Could not two
or more Sovereign Powers, by compact made between them, con-
stitute themselves into one Nation? Is it true, as Mr. Webster
evidently imagined, that this could not be effected by the concur-
rent but distinct consent of each of the States; but only by the
concurrent consent of all the people of both or all, in their indivi-
dual capacity, and acting, in that matter, as a unit.
Scotland and England were separate and independent States and
Kingdoms. Now they are, with Ireland, but one Nation. Surely
that was effected by the separate but concurrent action of each
State or Kingdom. The only difference is, that our Constitution
required the action of each State to be endorsed by the determi-
nation of its People, in convention, and not by the act of its
Legislature; while in England and Scotland, the action of the
Parliament of each Nation was the act of the Nation.
The first question to be determined, evidently is, " Who made
the Constitution?"
When the Delegates from twelve of the thirteen States met
together in that Convention which sat in 1787, and framed our
present Constitution, each of the thirteen States was an independ-
ent Republic, formally so acknowledged by each other, by Eng-
land, and by all the world, all being simply linked and leagued
together by " a firm league of friendship with each other, for their
11
common defence, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and
general welfareIt was expressly stipulated by the articles of
confederation of the year 1777, that " Each State retains its Sove-
reignty, freedom, and independenceand their joint or general in-
■terests were managed by " The United States in Congress assembled,"
that is, by a meeting or coming together of Delegates, not less
than two, nor more than seven in number from each State; in
which Congress or meeting each State had one vote, and paid its
own Delegates. Each State raised its necessary quota of all
moneys needed for general purposes, in proportion to the value
of land within it held by private title. No judiciary was provided
for, except Prize Courts, and Special Tribunals or Boards to try
controversies between the States. If moneys were borrowed, the
debt was due by the States as joint debtors. To exercise the most
important of the powers delegated, the assent of nine States was
necessary. Each State retained the title to its lands, and it was
finally provided in these words: " and the articles of this Con-
federation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the
Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time here-
after be made in any of them, unless such alteration be agreed to in a
Congress of the United States, ancl be afterwards confirmed by the
Legislature of every State."
tinder these Articles of Confederation, all acts of a national
character were done by all the States jointly. It was declared to
be a simple league or partnership of the States; and in contem-
plalion of law, the States concurred in and themselves did every act
done, and exercised every power of Government. In fact, the
powers of making war and peace, treaties and alliances, of send-
ing and receiving ambassadors, providing by law rules in regard
to captures and prize, establishing prize courts, and courts for the
trial of piracies and felonies on the high seas, borrowing money
and emitting bills on the credit of the United States, coining
money and regulating its value, fixing the standard of weights
and measures, regulating trade with Indians, establishing and
regulating Post Offices, and exacting postage, making rules for
the government of the land and naval forces, building and equip-
ping a navy, necessarily made the States, for certain purposes, one
nation; and several of these powers could be committed to a
Committee of Delegates, one from each State, to be exercised in
the recess of Congress. The powers expressed necessarily in-
volved other incidental powers; and there was a government
proper, though with very limited powers, to be exercised by
Representatives of the States, and which " created direct relations
between itself and individual citizens."
But the powers so to be exercised were not sufficiently extensive,
nor intrusted to efficient hands. The States discovered that larger
powers must be conceded, that there must be something more than
a mere partnership of the States, and that another Body Politic
12
must be created, for tbe management of the national affairs, with
the necessary officers and machinery to render it efficient. But
we may safely challenge any one to show that they meant that
this new system should be created, not by themselves, not by the
States, but by the People of all the States, amalgamated for the
purpose and occasion, and for all future time into one mass. They
still intended a union of the States, but a more perfect union—a
term which imports that the self-same persons or members before
united, were to be drawn more closely together; and not that a
new union was to be made, of other persons.
The phrase, " The United States of America, in General
Congress Assembled," was adopted in the Declaration of Indepen-
dence: and the Articles of Confederation provided that" the style
of the Confederacy" should be, "The United States of Ame-
rica." This term, no one will doubt, under that system at least,
did not mean one political Unit or Entity, but a mere union and
concurrent action of the States as States, each acting as an Indi-
vidual. No body corporate or politic, distinct in law from the
members, was created; and the style of the Confederacy was in
substance the same as if it had been, " The Thirteen American
States, united in a firm league of Friendship, and for certain purposes
acting in concert."
The Delegates from twelve of these States (Rhode Island not
being represented), who assembled in Convention in 1787, had no
power to adopt a Constitution, to carry into effect any change
in the existing system, or to put in operation a new Union or
Government. Any change in the existing system had, as we have
seen, to be confirmed by the Legislature of every State. Their
only power was to draft a Constitution, and submit it to those States,
for each separately to consider and enact or reject it.
The Convention did settle and frame a draft of a Constitution,
which provided that its ratification, i. e., the acceptance and adop-
tion of it as the act of their States, by the Conventions of any
nine States, should be sufficient for its establishment " between the
States so ratifying the same."
Webster well said: "It is to be remembered, that the
Constitution began to speak only after its adoption. Until it was
ratified by nine States, it was but a proposal, the mere draught
of an instrument."
If he had been arguing the question before a court, he would
have seen, or if he had not, would have been speedily made to
feel, that by this remark he conceded away his case. If the Consti-
tution began to speak only then, it was because it was in law and
fact the act of those persons in law, who ratified it; for, ratifying,
they mode it. They spoke through it, and it was their deed, and
they the only parties to it; and they, he said, were the States, and
so indeed they were.
The legal rules as to Principal and Agent apply as entirely to
13
transactions of this nature as to any others, and legal ideas only
are correct ideas in regard to them. For they are the rules and
ideas of universal justice and right reason, and by them the
nature, effect and validity of the acts of all agents must be
determined.
A Commonwealth or State is one Person, whose will, by virtue
of the compact of many men or States, is to be received for the
will of them all. A multitude of men, or several States or Cor-
porations, are made one Person, whenever they are united into one
political organization, which exercises the powers of government
by means of the appropriate instruments. Each of the twelve
States in question was a political and moral Being, Person, and
Entity, in law, separate and distinct in its individuality and action
from each and all of its citizens or people; just as a Bank is a
distinct individual in law from its Stockholders, who may continu-
ally shift and change, while its individuality remains always the
same. They do not jointly owe.its debts. They are not sued when
it is sued; and it may sue and contract with any one or more or
all of them. The Delegates of 1787 were agents, each of his own
Slate, and of it alone ; and they declared, at the end of the Con-
stitution, that what they had done, was "done by the unanimous
consent of the States present."
When the Principal adopts and ratifies the act of his agent, he
makes that act to have been in law his own act, from the begin-
ning. That is so, even when the act is such a one that it might
be the agent's; as, for example, a purchase of goods. Here the
agents did not assume to act finally for or to bind their Principals.
They simply drafted a Constitution, to become operative, and be
an actual, living, effectual instrument, only when nine States
should have accepted it as the act of each. Until then, it was
like a deed drafted by a scrivener, but not sealed or signed. The
ratification by the States was the signature and sealing; and by it
they made the Constitution. It was not the Constitution of 1787,
but of the 21st of June, 1788; on which day the ninth State,
New Hampshire, accepted and ratified it; and on which day it
was delivered as their deed, and became a binding and operative
compact between Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia,
Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, and New
Hampshire ; those States then solemnly and in unison making this
declaration (in which Virginia united five days, and New York
thirty-five days after): "We, the People of the United Slates, in order
to form a more perfect Union, establish .justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America."
In January, 1786, Virginia, by her Legislature, had proposed
a Convention of Delegates from the States, for the purpose, osten-
14
sibly, of augmenting the powers of the Congress in respect to the
regulation of commerce. It was held at Annapolis, in Septem-
ber, 1786, only five States being represented, and it confined its
action to a recommendation that all the States should appoint
Commissioners, who should meet at Philadelphia on the 2d Mon-
day of May, 1787, "to take into consideration the situation of the
United States, to devise such further provisions as shall appear
to them necessary to render the Constitution of our Federal
Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union; and to
report such an act for that purpose, to the United States in Con-
gress assembled, as, when agreed to by them, and afterwards con-
firmed by the Legislatures of every State, will effectually provide for
the same."
This recommendation being placed before the Congress, it re-
solved, on the 21st of February, 1787, that the Convention re-
commended should be held, "for the sole and express purpose of
revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and
the several Legislatures such alterations and provisions therein
as shall, when agreed to in Congress, and confirmed by the States,
render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of the
Government, and the preservation of the Union."
The draft of the Constitution having been laid before Congress,
it ordered, on the 28th of September, 1787, that it should "be
transmitted to the several Legislatures, in order to be submitted
to a Convention of Delegates chosen in each State by the people
thereof, in conformity to the resolves of the Convention."
It having been accordingly ratified by Conventions in eleven
States, Congress, on the 13th of September, 1788, taking it as
thereby in full force, and not needing its ratification, simply fixed
the times and places for taking the preparatory steps, and setting
on foot the government under it.
If, therefore, the radical change in the very nature of the
government which Webster insisted upon, really was made by
the Constitution, it is at least certain that no such fusion of the
people of all the States into one mass, no such compact of indi-
viduals, instead of a compact between States, no such government
created by the people of all acting as a unit, as the one sea of many
waves, and not by the States as political and equal entities, was
anticipated or dreamed of in advance.
And, if the reader will now lay down this pamphlet, and before
proceeding with it, read the Constitution and its amendments from
beginning to end, he will at once agree with me, that no such
intention or purpose is distinctly announced anywhere in that in-
strument. If it makes the change, it does it by implication only;
and the strongest argument for it is, that it begins with the phrase
"We , the People of the United States, .... do ordain."
This, it is continually reiterated, shows that the States did not
create the Government, but the one People of all the States; not
15
the People of each State, giving the State's consent; but all the
individuals, in all the States, each individual giving his own con-
sent. The argument is pardonable, in the mouth of a man inno-
cent of all knowledge of the law; but only there. It is simply a
question whether the word " People" is to be taken collectively or
distributively; and every lawyer who knows anything, knows that
the expression, taken by itself and unexplained, admits as natu-
rally and legitimately of one construction as of the other. The
use attempted to be made of it has simply been a fraud on un-
learned men, which a lawyer would never have tried to practise
on a court.
The Constitution itself declares who made it, in the most posi-
tive and unmistakeable terms. "The ratification of the Gonven-
lions of nine States," it declares, " shall be sufficient for the establish-
ment of this Constitution, between THE STATES so ratifying
the same." He that ratifies, makes: and if the States did not
ratify and so make the Constitution, it never has been in force at
all.
In ratifying the Constitution, each State had one voice; and it
would have been defeated, if eight States only had ratified it,
though by the unanimous vote of every man in their limits; and
though these were a large majority of all the voters of all the States.
The Convention of 1787, which framed the Constitution, was
composed of Delegates who derived all their powers from the
States, each acting by its Legislature. They were " appointed
by the several States." And when the Congress of the States, in
September, 1787, received the draft of a Constitution from that
Convention, they transmitted it to the several Legislatures of the
States, " in order to be submitted to a Convention of Delegates
chosen in each State by the People thereof." Nine States, in
September, 1788, in the old Congress, made the enactment to put
the Constitution in operation; on the ground that a the several
States" had " ratified it."
Amendments to the Constitution are to be " ratified by the Legis-
latures of three-fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in
three-fourths thereof." In either case, it is the State that ratifies.
It follows, that, if the States did not make the Constitution, if it
is not a Constitutional Compact between them, then, whenever
amended, it will be in part one thing and in part another; in
part made by the States, and in part by the individuals who com-
pose the whole people of all the States.
So that the Constitution itself plainly and positively declares
who made it, and who are to amend it. Nor is it these declara-
tions alone that consolidationism has to ignore. It is continually
confronted by the explicit language of the instrument. "New
States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." Union
of what! Of course of such members as those to be admitted into
16
it—of States. " The United States shall guarantee to every State
in this Union a Republican form of Government."
As to the word " People," it was not used for the first time in
tlfe Constitution. The Congress of Delegates, which assembled
in September, 1774, called themselves, in their more formal acts,
" the Delegates appointed by the good people of these Colonies." No
one ever dreamed that that meant that those Colonies had become
one people—a political unit. The word was taken distributively,
as meaning the good people of each separate Colony. These
Delegates were appointed, some by the popular or representative
branch of the Colonial Legislature, and some by Conventions of
the People. The Supreme Power, in each Colony, was thus as-
serted to reside in the people of that Colony, as one integral unit,
and eaUi people was one entity and person complete in itself. The
very first act of these Delegates was to decide and declare that in
determining questions in the Congress, each Colony should have
one vote. It was, therefore, the Colonies in council. The second
Congress, elected in the same way, met in May, 1775; and in
July, 1776, as all the world knows, 11 the thirteen United STATES
of America, in Congress assembled," uttered their great Declaration
of Independence. By it, " the Representatives of the United
States of America, in General Congress assembled," did " in the
name, and hy the authority of the good People of these Colo-
nies" [using the word "people" precisely as it was afterwards
used in the preamble of the Constitution, and in the same sense,
of the People of each Colony, meaning each by the people of each]
"solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are and
of right ought to be free and independent States."
The articles of confederation professed to be made, " the better
to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among
the people of the different States in this Union;" and provided for
" the people of each State free ingress and egress to and from any
other State."
The Constitution gives no indication of any intention to use
tbe word " people" in any new or enlarged sense. No hint is
given of an intention to change the nature of the Union, or the
parties to it. It was a union of States, and it was to continue so,
only a more perfect union of the same. The very attesting clause
of the Constitution reads: " Done in convention hy the unanimous
consent of the States present."
Madison, who certainly knew, as well as any man, by whom
the Constitution was understood at the time to be made, has
given his testimony in the strongest terms: He said, in a letter to
Judge Roane, on the 29th June, 1821: "Our governmental sys-
tern is established by a compact, not between the Government of
the United States and the State Governments, but between the
States as Sovereign Communities, stipulating each with the
other a surrender of certain portions of their respective authori-
17
ties, to be exercised by a common Government, and a reserva-
tion for their own exercise, of all the other authorities."
In September, 1829, he wrote, that it was a fundamental error
to suppose that the State Governments were parties to " the Consti-
tutional compact" from which the Government of the United States
results. And he says: "The real parties to the Constitutional
compact of the United States are the States, that is, the people
thereof respectively in their Sovereign character, and they alone,
so declared in the Resolutions of 1798, and so explained in the
report of 1799. . . The Constitution of the United States was
created by the People composing the respective States, who alone
had the right."
The government of a State, as contradistinguished from the State
itself, is not a legal Person or Being, but merely the Officers and
instruments through which the State acts and exercises her powers.
As it was proposed to transfer certain of the powers of govern-
ment from the Persons in law, the States, which then held and
exercised them by means of their Legislatures and other Depart-
ments and officers, it was held that the People of the Stat# alone
could, in effecting that result, be regarded as the State; that if
the Legislature alone did it, it would not be done by the State,
because to do it was not a power vested in the Legislature. The
will and decision of the people, in the Convention, was the voice
of the State; for the State did not cease to exist, nor was its vital-
ity suspended temporarily, and society resolved into its original
elements, so as to allow the People as a mass of individuals, to take
action which should not be the action of the State. The State in
Convention adopted the Constitution, and transferred certain of its
powers to the Nation, and imposed limits and restrictions in
many respects on its own action and powers.
In his letter to Webster, on the 15th of March, 1838, he
expresses his view still more distinctly. He says: " It is fortu-
nate when disputed theories can be decided by undisputed facts.
And here the undisputed fact is, that the Constitution was made
by the People, hut as embodied into the several States who were
parties to it; and, therefore, made by the States, in their
highest authoritative capacity."
Webster criticized the phrase "constitutional compact," de-
daring it a new term, invented by "the grammarians of the
school of nullification;" and said we might as well speak of a
constitutional deed or bill of exchange, as of a constitutional com-
pact between sovereign powers. On both points he was very
unfortunate. The phrase was not new; it was used deliberately,
and more than once, in the same sense wherein Calhoun used
it, in the report of 1799, written by Madison; and as to the
meaning of the word, he was equally at sea. He said that a con-
stitution and a compact are things radically different. They are, on
2
18
the contrary, things radically the same. Both words come from
the Latin, and retain their original meaning. One of the mean-
ings of constituere is, to accord, agree upon, concert a thing together ;
constitutum is often used by Cicero to mean agreement or com-
pact; and Quintillian, the grammarian, says: "Constitutio est
in lege, more, judicato, pacto"A constitution consists in law,
custom, judgment or compact."
Mr. Webster said that the States, by the constitution, promise
nothing, and engage themselves to nothing. That was the poorest
of quibbles. The first lesson a lawyer learns, if he ever really
learns anything, is to look through the words into the substance
of things. It makes no difference in what particular form any
instrument is drawn ; and a promise implied is as much a promise
as one expressed. What would be thought of a lawyer who
should read over a deed of conveyance, and finding no warranty.
or express covenant of any kind, should say, "why, the grantor
here promises nothing, and engages himself for nothing ?" or who,
reading a charter of incorporation, should say, "these parties are
commanded, empowered, restricted, enjoined, by this instrument; but
they promise nothing and engage for nothing ?"
When the States consented that the Supreme Court should have
jurisdiction " of controversies between two or more States," surely
they engaged themselves to submit to the jurisdiction and abide
the judgment rendered. If they did not promise and bind them-
selves not to enter into any treaty, coin money, emit bills of
credit, pass bills of attainder, and other laws, and maintain navies,
how came these provisions to be obligatory on them ? Thq people
of the United States had no power to prohibit the doing of these
things by a State. The. people of Virginia had no right or power
to say that New York should not do them. She agreed to that.
Did the States not agree to give full faith and credit to the public
acts, records and judicial proceedings of each other? By what
process against individuals could the General Government prevent
the granting of a title of nobility by a State ? or prevent a State
from entering into a compact with another State or a foreign
power? Did not the States agree to deliver up criminals and
fugitives? What absurdity to say that these are not agreements,
promises and engagements made by the States, and the observance
of which is insured by their plighted faith alone.
The States exercise, or at least should exercise, all the powers
of the General Government, under the Constitution. The Legis-
lative power is vested in "a Congress of the United States." The
same phrase was in the Articles of Confederation,—"The United
States in Congress assembled;" and there pains was taken, as it
were, to impress it on the mind that the States, themselves present
as Peers, in this Amphictyonic Council, met face to face and trans-
acted the common affairs. It was a fine idea, not thrown aside
by the Constitution. Our acts of Congress still are enacted by
19
"The Seriate and House of Representatives of the United States
of America in Congress assembled." It is not the Senate and
House that are assembled in Congress, but the several United States
of America; often as we now lose sight of that fact, that great fact,
which is the distinctive characteristic of our government, and in
which alone was hope of safety and assurance of continuance.
In this "coming together, assembling," \_Congressus~\ of the
States, it is the States, in legal contemplation, that sit and vote by
their agents. No State can "be deprived of its equal suffrage
in the Senate." It is its vote that is given there.
And it was meant that the States should also vote in the House.
The Representatives were to be " apportioned among the several
Slates f and chosen "by the people of the several States." The
State of New Hampshire was, at first, "entitled to choose three;"
Massachusetts, eight; and so on. "Each Slate shall have at least
one Representative." To "represent" is " to make present." It is
the State that is made present there.
The Executive power is vested in " a President of the United
States of America." Each State appoints a number of electors
equal to her vote in both Houses of Congress. They give her
vote. Thus, the electors do not represent the popular vote. The
smallest State has her two senatorial votes. It is as if the Presi-
dent were elected by a Convention of both Houses of Congress.
If the Electors fail to elect, the States, each giving one vote, elect
the President, in the House; and the Yice-President, each giving
two votes, in the Senate.
The Judicial power is vested in judges, appointed by the Presi-
dent who is elected by the States and represents them, and con-
firmed by the States in the Senate.
And, in short, there is no political act done by the United
States, in which the voices of all the people of all the States aFe
taken as one mass, and concur, the majority governing. The
People only act through their organizations as States.
These have always been the Southern Democratic or States-
rights doctrines.
The celebrated Virginia resolutions of 1798, to which the
Democratic party has ever since adhered, were drafted by
Madison", but submitted and defended in the State Legislature
by John Taylor, of Caroline, the great apostle of strict con-
struction. These resolutions thus announced the opinion of Vir-
ginia as to the nature of the Constitution itself, and the limit and
extent of the powers of the National Government; and the South
now claims no more than the Mother of States then claimed:—
"2d. The General Assembly most solemnly declares a warm
attachment to the union of the States, to maintain which it pledges
all its powers; and that, for this end, it is their duty to watch
over and oppose every infraction of those principles which con-
20
stitute the only basis of that Union, because a faithful observance
of them can alone secure its existence and the public happiness."
"3d. -That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily de-
clare, that it views the powers of the federal government as result-
ing from the compact to which the States are parties, as limited by
the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that
compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the
grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate,
palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by
the said compact,, the States who are parties thereto, have the right
and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of
the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the
authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them."
That the mover of the resolution consented to strike out the
word "alone," in the 3d resolution, which, as originally submitted,
declared that the States alone were parties to the compact, does
not at all prove, as has been argued, that the friends of the mea-
sure were " anxious not to transgress the bounds of historic truth
and do violence to the language of the Constitution, by affirming
(what was not accurate) that the States alone are parties to the
compact, founded and confirmed by that instrument." It only
proves that, in order to avoid debate, and to obtain, if possible,
unanimous assent to the resolutions, they consented to omit a
word which was in reality not necessary, and whose omission in
no way weakened the position assumed. The resolution still
asserted that the Constitution was a compact, and a compact be-
tween the States. So did the Kentucky Eesolutions of 1798, re-
affirmed in 1799, and said to have been drafted by Mr. Jefferson;
for, as drafted, they declared:—
" 1. Resolved, That the several States composing the United
States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited
submission to the general government; but that by compact under
the style and title of a constitution for the United States, and of
amendments thereto, they constituted a government for special
purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers,
reserving each State to itself \ the residuary mass of right to their
own self-government; and, that whensoever the general govern-
ment assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative,
void, and of no force; that to this compact each State is an integral
party; that this government, created by this compact, was not made
the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated
to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the
constitution, the measure of its powers; but that as in all other
cases of compact, among parties having no common judge, each
party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions
as of the mode and measure of redress."
I do not know that it has ever occurred to any one to remark,
that Webster's reliance on the phrase " We, the People of the
21
United Slates," necessarily assumed that that phrase meant the
People of the -New United States, under the Constitution, as con-
tradistinguished from the Old, under the articles of Confedera-
tion. If it meant the Confederated United States, and their people,
and that they adopted and ratified the Constitution, then the
violence done the phrase by Webster is too manifest for argu-
ment.
Now, as the power or powers, the party or parties, that so
ordained and established the Constitution, were those that had an
actual and legal existence prior thereto, inasmuch as the creator
must exist before the creature, and the ordainer before the thing
ordained, the phrase " We, the people of the United States," neces-
sarily meant the people of those United States previously existing,
under their previous Confederation, acting as such, in the only
mode of action then competent for them, and through their then
existing lawful organs. Consequently, it was the people of each
of the confederated States, while confederated—the people of each
State, acting by themselves as a unit, or one party, separate and
distinct from the people of every other State—that did ordain and
establish the Constitution.
That is, the States, such as they were while confederated, created
the new Government; and the preamble is essentially and ex-
actly the same as if it read: " We, the States of Virginia, Massa-
chusetts, &c., now united in a Confederation, do, acting in concert,
but each for itself, ordain and establish this Constitution." And
thus it was that the States reserved, each to itself and to its people,
all powers not granted by it and its people to the General Go-
vernment.
But it does not follow, because the States made the Constitu-
tion, and assemble in Congress, that therefore this is simply an
alliance or a league of the States. There is only one language in
which their action in making it, and the results of that action, can
be intelligibly described; and that is legal language. Let us look
at the matter by the light of legal principles; not by that of mere
precedent, or of narrow technicalities, but of those accurate modes
of consideration and definition of the nature of political and social
aggregations, which the law has adopted, in order to attain jus-
tice, and, as a means to that end, to give clear, distinct, just, and
adequate ideas of the relations of associations to the individuals
who compose and create them.
A town, city, parish, or county is a municipal corporation. So
is a State, though with larger powers ; and so is the United
States. The people are the corporators in all but the last, and
whether they or the States are corporators in that makes it none
the less a corporation. The States, satisfied of the inefficiency of
the Confederation, resolved to create a body politic and corpo-
22
rate, to be called "The United States of America." That the
United States fs such a corporation, and not merely a partnership
of States, is evident from the very definition which the law gives
of a corporation, and from the powers and capacities with which
it is invested.
A " corporation," or " body politic and corporate," is defined
to be "a body created by law, composed of individuals united
under a common name, the members of which succeed each
other, and may be continually changed, the ideal body remain-
ing one, identical, and the same, notwithstanding the change of
persons." . "
It is "a body of individuals, having perpetual succession, and
invested with the capacity to act in more or less respects as an
individual; an artificial being, existing only in contemplation of
Jaw; the creature of law; the great object in creating Avhich is,
to bestow the character and properties of individuality on a col-
lective and changing body of men."
When A, B, and 0 form a mere partnership or joint stock
company, they contract, they sue, they convey, and take by con-
veyance, in their joint or partnership names. But when the law
incorporates the same persons into an insurance or other com-
pany, it contracts, sues, conveys, and takes by conveyance. The
law regards the company as a person, having an individuality
of its own, separate and distinct from that of A, B, and C; its pro-
perty not being in law their property, nor its debts their debts.
It is a person in law. So is a city, a county, or a State. The
law, by a kind of poetic personification, invests the creature of it3
imagination with the character, attributes, and capacities of a
real and actual being. And so the Constitution regards the
United States.
For all the necessary requisites of a corporation belong to the
United States; inasmuch as without being such it could not in
any one respect act as an individual or single person in law; and
it does so in many. It has individuality and continuing identity.
It is one and the same to-day as it was yesterday, and will be
to-morrow. The great object is effected of bestowing the cliarac-
ter and properties of individuality on a collective and changing
body, an aggregate and series of men and States. Individual
citizens are born and die, succeeding each other in constant
change, and new States are formed and enter into the Union, but
"the United States" remains in law the same. It is a Nation.
It takes property by purchase, or by treaty after conquest; it
grants and conveys land ; it contracts obligations, issues bonds,
sues and is sued, pleads and is impleaded, has a common seal,
and possesses a variety of powers, privileges, and immunities.
The plurality of States no more makes it plural than the plurality
of citizens of a State makes the State a mere partnership of its
citizens. The property of the United States is not in law the
23
joint property of the States. Its .debts are not their debts ; nor
are the States parties in law to its bonds, its grants, or its treaties.
When the Constitution was made, each State was a corpora-
tion, with such powers and franchises as the people of each had
chosen to invest it withal. When the Constitution took effect,
and the United States began its corporate national existence, it
took such powers and was invested with such prerogatives as the
people of the several States, acting in their corporate capacity as
States, chose to confer; and those of the States remained as be-
fore, except so far as they were limited and narrowed, or wholly
taken away by the new charter.
Thus it was that the Fathers succeeded in effecting what had
never before been attempted, or suggested as possible—the form-
ing, at one and the same time, of a Union of independent confede-
rated States, co-equals, and retaining their individuality as States;
and a national Unity or single nation, for all necessary national
purposes. They did not create some non-descript creature, in
■part a League or Confederation, and in part one nation and one
people; but they created that which was at one and the same time,
both a League and Union of many States, and one State. The
motto, " e pluribus unum," did not mean that the many were fused
together or chemically combined into one unity ; but that, con-
tinuing many, they were at the same time one.
And not only were the United States meant to be one nation
for all the particular purposes specified in the Constitution, and
independent and equal States for all other purposes, but by a beau-
tiful application of the same law of corporations, their corporate
character as one nation appears or disappears, as we shall see,
whenever it is necessary it should do so, for the interest or ad van-
tage of the States that are the corporators.
In reality, the government was still the States confederated.
That was the substance of the thing. In law, and by a fiction,
there was a legal being, a supposed person and entity, with a dis-
tinct individuality, as a unit and corporation, called "The United
States of America." The States used, as it was meant they should
use, that fiction, as a mode of concentrating their action. They
were the sole corporators; and the citizens of each, mingled with
no other persons, were that State.
If this was not what the Fathers effected—if the States did not
create the Government, and continue to be the only members of
the Union—if the Constitution made the People of a State to be
distinct and different from the State, so that they could act, and
the State not act—then the government could not help sooner or
later becoming the unbridled rule of a mere majority, a pure De-
mocracy, with only imaginary checks and balances; and the Con-
stitution could only be a frail and feeble barrier of shifting sand,
against the hungry waves of Passion, Ambition, and Fanaticism.
If the States did not compose this Union, and were not the
24
members of it, then, called by whatever name, they were mere
municipalities, and their crown and robes of sovereignty the mere
tinselled trappings of the theatre. It was then folly to prate of
State rights and State pride. The old Commonwealths, in whose
bosom it was deemed an honor and good fortune to be born, had
laid aside their greatness and their glory, and could no longer
demand allegiance of their sons, nor extend to them protection.
If they were so emasculated and reduced in circumstances, so far,
below their original high estate, as to be mere images and coun-
terfeits of States, then there was little hope for the perpetuity of
our institutions, and little in them for other nations to admire or
for us to boast of. And it is because the South finds it impossible
longer to resist this wretched and degrading doctrine in the Union,
that it is now seeking safety out of it, and on the point of creating
a new government, that shall repose on the solid foundation of
the equality, independence, and sovereignty of the States. On
which side shall Arkansas stand in this great controversy ?
If the Union could have continued, as it ought to have done, and
would have done, if men had been wise, we should insensibly
have become more and more one nation. Our common flag
would have made us so. Time and habit would inevitably have
consolidated us, and the antagonisms of race would have died
out, or combined in harmonious action. Every war we engaged
in would have made the feeling of oneness more and more irre-
sistible. None, I think, ever served under that flag, who did not
for the time feel, with a conviction more potent than all the argu-
ments and logic of statesmen could produce, that we were one
nation, in name, fame, and destiny; who did not feel that our
national motto, E Pluribus Unum—One, made up of many—was
a true definition of the nature of our Government—the manifold
welded into the one—oneness grown out of the manifold.
There was no necessity for any irrepressible conflict between
the sections. There was no necessity for hatred, jealousies, and
wrong-doing. We have been unnecessarily set against each other, ,
by fanatical folly and unprincipled ambition in the North, and
passion and rashness in the South. The harm is done. The
silver chain of Union is broken; and the restoration of harmony
is now as impossible as it is between husband and wife, when,
estranged by their own tempers or evil counsellors, their domestic
dissensions have been paraded in court, and divorce granted, not
alone from bed and board, but from the bonds of matrimony.
That they could and ought to have lived together in peace, makes
the sentence none the less irrevocable, the separation none the
less eternal. But if we had not been estranged, argument and
logic would soon have become powerless against the feeling that
we were one Nation and one People; and it would have become
necessary for all men, whatever their theoretical opinions, to make
up their minds, and reconcile themselves to it the best way they
25
could, that, as the years glided past us, the Union continuing, we
should regard ourselves more and more as one nation, whatever
might be the true meaning of the Constitution; and this conse-
quence would have been the inevitable result of circumstances,
and a mere act of forced obedience to the great laws of God,
which constitute what we call human nature.
See, now, by one example, how beautifully these legal princi-
pies give effect to the rights of the States.
It is an inflexible legal principle, that whenever a fiction is
interposed, it is always done in order to give effect to rights, to
protect valuable interests, and to attain the very heart of what is
just about the matter. The fiction cannot be made an instrument
of evil, nor an invader of rights. It cannot be used for the pur-
pose of eluding the intention of the parties; but it is always an
instrument and an organism by which to reach the substance and
essential reality of things. You incorporate certain persons into
a bank: the fiction that there is a legal being, the bank, separate
and distinct from each corporator, when substantially it is but a
limited partnership, is invented and used for their protection, to
carry out their intention, to make their action effectual, and not
to annihilate the substantial relations and essential equities that
exist between them.
Thus, whenever the United States became, in any mode whatever,
by purchase or conquest, the owner of land, that land was in sub-
stance the land of the several States. Its legal capacity to act as
an individual, the fiction of its identity separate from the States,
would be used to give effect to, and make fully available, all the
rights of the States and the people of each State, in and upon that
common property. They could not be used to annul or render in-
effectual those rights. Whenever the effectuation of those rights
demanded it, the fiction would vanish, and the States be regarded
as the real owners of the lands, the Lords Proprietary.
When a portion of country thus became the common property
of the States, it was held in trust for them by the Unjjed States;
in the same sense, somewhat inaccurate, in which the property of
a corporation is said in the law to be held in trust by it for the
corporators. The meaning is, that in law it is its property, but
in reality it is theirs; that, so far as it is necessary, in order to
carry out their intentions and subserve their interests, the law
will use the legal fiction, and regard it as its property; but when
justice and convenience require the fiction to disappear, it will
regard it, as it really is, as theirs.
Now, besides their real ownership of the land, the States had
great political and social interests in the territories, considering
them as nascent or embryotic States. Each State had the right
to demand that they should be opened as wide to its own citizens,
as to those of any other State or number of States; and the
Southern States, that they should have a fair chance in the peace-
26
ful struggle for additional political weight and power in this eon-
federacy. The duty of each to its own citizens also gave it a right
to insist that they should not be directly or indirectly excluded
from the common territory. It had necessarily the right to
demand that they should be there protected in the enjoyment
and possession of whatever they carried thither, that was their
property by its laws. And, if the Constitution really warranted
the Northern States in Congress, or the people of a Territory, in;
denying the South these equal rights in the common territory,;
then it was the duty of the Southern States at once to withdraw
from a Union in which they never were equals. , \
Short-sighted men imagined it wTas we, who, insisting in I860
on these rights of the South, brought upon the Country the dan-
gers of Disunion ; but a truer wisdom taught us, that only in the
principle we proclaimed was safety, and that we were the truest
Defenders of the Constitution and the Union. Whether present
victory or defeat awaited us, was of little moment. Truth would
still march onward in serene majesty, whether we stood or went
down in the shock of the battle. The South would at last rally
to the flag of the equality of the States and the protection of all
constitutional and legal rights, when the passions and angers of
the contest should have passed away; and its States would stand
with linked shields, in one compact and solid phalanx, demanding
in the calm tones of conscious power the maintenance of the
Constitution as the condition of the continuance of the Union.
They have demanded that, if indeed some of them have not
condescended to beg for it. What is the result ? The Republi-
cans in Congress refuse Concession and threaten Coercion. They
accept no propositions of Compromise. The personal-liberty
laws of many Northern States, that make it an infamous crime
in a master to reclaim and recover his slave, legally, under the
laws of the United States, still remain unrepealed. , Although
the Supreme Court solemnly decided, if it decided nothing
else, in the Dred Scott Case, that a negro cannot be a citizen
of the United States, fifteen thousand of them voted in Ohio
for Lincoln. The whole North with one voice declares that
there shall be no more slave territory; and its mo§t powerful
States tender arms, men, and money to the General Government,
wherewith to subjugate the South. What was it the right and
duty of the Southern States to do, when it thus became evident
that folly and fanaticism, rapacity and lust for power and office,
taking the Northern men captive, have rendered it impossible
for them longer to remain in the Union as the equals of the
Northern States, or without abandoning the cardinal tenets of
their political faith, unless new and ample guarantees can be
obtained? and what mode of procedure offered a rational hope
of the obtaining of such guarantees?
It is the deliberate opinion of at least seven of the Southern
27
States, that withdrawal from the Union is the course most proper
to be adopted, the only remedy of efficacy sufficient/to cure the
disease and bring the North to its senses, if indeed any remedy
can effect that. In those States and others, the only question has
been, not as to the right or propriety of secession, but as to the
expediency and policy of separate secession, as compared with
separation by the conjoint action of all or several of the Southern
States. It is evident that the right of all or several to secede,
must depend upon the right of each to do so. For the right, if it
exists at all, flows from this, that the States are the parties to the
compact, and a gross violation of it by the majority of the States,
to the injury of any one, gives that one, and each one so injured,
the right, at its option, of regarding it as at an end and rescinded.
The right must needs be the individual right of each State. Cer-
tainly it is qualified by the interests of the other States that have
not violated the compact, as almost all rights are, in societies of
States or individuals. But still, each State having the right to
secede, must determine for itself as to the propriety or expediency
of the act; and that right has already been exercised by six
States, and will in a few days be exercised by one more.
This right of secession is strenuously denied by the Northern
States, and even by a respectable number of persons in the South;
but as a right to be exercised only in an extreme case, of grave
violation of the Constitution, when there is no other sufficient
remedy, it seems to me that in the very nature of things it could
not have been parted with by the States; and that its exercise is
neither treason or rebellion.
The right to secede flows necessarily from the fact that the
States made the Constitution. If one party to a compact violates
it, the other may at his option treat it as rescinded; or, as
Webster once said: "A bargain broken on one side is broken
on all sides."
James II., of England, procured all the Twelve Judges of the
Realm to decide, when the question had been purposely raised,
and was in issue, that he had the power to dispense with the pro-
hibitions of an Act of Parliament, and remove the disabilities
imposed by it. It is not impossible that some future President
and Congress may find a majority of the Judges of the Supreme
Court, as pliant to work their will. If it were to be procured to sus-
tain the Constitutionality of an Act of Congress abolishing Slavery
in certain States, would there still be no right to secede on the part
of those States? If, acting upon the notion that one people made
the Constitution, Congress should call a Convention of Delegates
from all the States, and, the South refusing to sit there, the Con-
vention, representing the popular majority, should proceed to
change the Constitution, and annul important rights of the South,
would there still be no right to secede? The States are equally
as much bound by any amendments to the Constitution regularly
28
made, as by the original articles. If the North were to multiply
its States until it had three-fourths of all, and then change the
basis of representation in the Senate, fixing it according to the
population of each State, and so depriving every Southern State
of that whereof the Constitution expressly declares no State shall
ever be deprived, "its equal suffrage in the Senate," all other
remedies failing, would there be no right to secede? The new
Senate is the sole judge of the elections and qualifications of its
members. It admits, for example, ten from New York, and de-
cides that Delaware is entitled to but one. There is no remedy
for this in the Uftion, no appeal to the Courts; Power is lawless,
and fnajorities unreasoning. Is there still no right to secede?
Absolutely to deny the right of Secession, is to say that the
constitutional rights of the Southern States may be denied, and
they continually insulted and outraged; that all remedies in Con-
gress, in the Courts, and elsewhere may fail them ; that the other
States may violatp the Constitution at every point, and yet that
they may hold the Southern States in the bonds of obedience to
it; and that the latter will yet have no right to throw off this in-
tolerable yoke, and escape from this humiliating serfdom, by say-
ing that " a bargain broken on one side is broken on all sides,"
and that they withdraw from a union that no longer deserves
that name.
Admit the right in the extremest case, and you concede the
whole principle. Then it only becomes a question of the suffici-
ency of the cause. I admit that the cause must be grave to be
sufficient. I admit that the remedy is a severe and extreme one,
fit to be used only in the last resort, and when all others have
failed; and I am now satisfied that no other remedy could cure the
disease under which the body politic now labors, if indeed that
of Secession has that virtue. No remedy less sharp and decisive
could have brought the North to its senses. Indeed, it still seems
to be far from sane. I am now satisfied that even Secession, even
the formation of a Southern Union, will not cure the Northern
people of their fanatical delirium, unless it bring upon them such
ruin as nations have rarely experienced, and experiencing lived.
That the South has, and has long had, ample cause for separa-
tion, few men, at the South, will be disposed to deny. We need
not fear, on that point, to demand the judgment of an impartial
world. For that our rights have long been jeopardized and
denied, and the Constitution shamelessly violated by the North-
ern States, it is in vain for any one to endeavor to dispute.
The provision of the Constitution that guarantees the return of
fugitive slaves, is virtually annulled. It costs as much to reclaim
a slave as he is worth, and exposes the owner, in many of the
Northern States, to be harassed by suits civil and criminal, that
make his remedy worthless to him. For this deliberate, shameless
violation of the compact, persisted in and become habitual, the
29
South has the present right to dissolve the Union. A State that
so nullifies a part of the Constitution, loses all right to any of its
benefits; and the Southern States might well have insisted that
Connecticut, Yermont, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and other of
the Northern States should be expelled with ignominy from the
Union, as the condition of their own continuance in it.
A person who speaks for Massachusetts in the Senate has lately
arraigned the Southern States as " the Barbary States of the
Union," before the bar of the world, and impeached the courage,
the honor, and the decency of all their people, in stilted Ciceronian
sentences, steeped with gall and bitterness, and reeking with ma-
lignant falsehood. No one should have replied a word. And
when his State formally, and with the intention of branding the
insult in upon the South, endorsed his harangue and made it her
own, either her Senators should have been expelled, or those of
all the Southern States ought, in strict justice to their constituents,
to have withdrawn from that desecrated and dishonored chamber.
If they had done so, the whole South would have leaped up with
one great cry of joy and applause, and have made the act their
own.
It is common enough to hear it said that the right of secession
is a revolutionary right. That is mere nonsense. Revolution is
the means of compelling an acknowledgment of rights denied.
The rights so denied are not revolutionary, though there is a
right to resort to revolution, if they cannot be otherwise enforced.
The former right must exist before the latter can arise. There
can be no right to deny a right. The exercise of other rights
than secession might produce revolution; but it would be a sole-
cism to call them "revolutionary"rights—a solecism only explain-
able by the incurable propensity of men to use words that mean
nothing. Such is the right, in the Senate or House, to be exercised
in extreme cases, of refusing to vote supplies, in consequence of
unconstitutional conduct on the part of the Executive or the other
branch of Congress. The exercise of this right might produce
revolution and destroy the government; but it could be none the
less a perfect right, and the revolution the consequence, not of
its exercise, but of the unconstitutional act which made it ne-
cessary.
So the exercise of the President's power of vetoing an act of
Congress might produce revolution ; but nevertheless these and
all other such rights and powers are great conservative ones, in-
tended to exist, and to be resorted to when extreme measures
only will arrest an evil otherwise incurable and deadly. The
right to secede is a power in reserve, acting as a restraint upon
majorities of the States that might otherwise encroach upon and
at last annul the rights of the minorities under the constitution.
The existence of such a right, though never exercised, is beyond
calculation conservative. Deny it, deny that if the Supreme
30
Court persists in holding an unconstitutional act to "be constitu-
tional, a State, injured by such decision, may, as a last resort^
when all others fail, withdraw from the Union, and you annihi-
late one of the most important checks of the system.
At any rate, the question of the right of secession is receiving
a practical solution. South Carolina, Florida, Alabama; Missis-
sippi, Georgia, and Louisiana have already, by formal ordinance
adopted in convention, withdrawn from the Union, and become
each a foreign country to usj if it is possible for a State to do so
by her own solemn act; and in a week or two more, Texas will
have in like manner severed the bonds of union, and resumed
her independence.
There may be different opinions as to the necessity, wisdom,
policy and expediency of this measure. I, for one, did not believe
that the necessity of resorting to this extreme remedy was as yet
upon us. I thought we ought not to despair, so long as there
was hope of a returning sense of justice in the Northern States.
I doubted whether secession would prove a remedy for any of our
evils, or give any additional security to our rights; and above all,
I was enthusiastically attached to the Union, under whose flag I
had fought. Disunion seemed to me equivalent to downfall, dis-
aster and ruin, whereby we should become a mock and a by-word
all over the earth.
And I thought, that, when separation should become inevitable,
the Southern States ought not to secede separately, but that they
should act in concert, meet in convention, decree the separation,
construct and set on foot a new government, and thus, being
strong to repel attack, make it insanity on the part of the Northern.
States to attempt to dragoon them into submission.
That was rny individual opinion. Perhaps Arkansas thought
so. But the other Cotton States did not think so; and they have
acted for themselves. Can they ever return into the Union ? Is
any compromise possible, with which they and we ought to be
satisfied ? And how can such a compromise be effected? These
are the only questions that now concern them. The rest are ob-
solete; and these equally concern us.; for the inexorable decrees of
destiny will compel us to unite with them. Events, as is usual
in Devolutions, have outrun us. What was possible yesterday
is not possible to-day. What is possible to-day, will be impossible
to-morrow. The Republican leaders have made compromise for
the present impracticable. The concessions that would at first
have saved Charles the First of England, and Louis the Sixteenth
of France, their thrones and heads, withheld too long, wer,e
counted as nothing, when granted; and such is the effect of delay
in our case.
No concessions would now satisfy, and nonq ought now.,to
satisfy the South, but such as would amount to a surrender of
the distinctive principles by which the Republican party coheres,
31
because none other or less would give the South peace and
security. That party would have to agree that in the view of the
Constitution, slaves are property; that Slavery might exist and
should be legalized and protected, in territory hereafter to be ac-
quired to the Southwest; and that negroes and mulattoes cannot
be citizens of the United States, nor vote at general elections in
the States. They would have to repeal their laws that make it a
crime in a master to reclaim his slave, that menace him with the
penitentiary, and are meant to rob him of his property; and,
instead, they would have to agree to deliver that property up in
good faith.
For that party to make these concessions would simply be to
commit suicide; and therefore it is idle to expect from the North,
so long as it rules there, a single concession of any value. They
will not be made, if ever, until the People, impoverished and dis-
tressed, if not invaded by universal ruin and general bankruptcy,
with starvation in the cities and destitution in the fields, shall
have learned no longer to intermeddle with what in nowise con-
cerns them. Then proper concessions may be made, by the gene-
ral consent of the people; and if so made, the settlement will be
permanent. But if made sooner, under the influence of a tempo-
rary terror, or by the management of politicians, the immediate
result could not fail to be, as indeed it would most probably be
in any event, after whatever solemn settlement, that, as soon as
the danger of disunion was over for the time, as soon as the se-
ceding States had returned into the Union, an agitation would
commence in the North, stirring it to its profoundest depths.
The compromise would be denounced from every pulpit and
rostrum and in every canvass, as a league with hell and a cove-
nant with the Devil. Those who made it would be politically
slaughtered ; and after such convulsions as the country has never
felt, the whole work would be undone, and the Southern States
be forced again to secede, when secession would have become
a farce.
It is certain that none of these concessions can be had at pre-
sent; and events will not wait until they can be obtained. Per-
haps a compromise might be brought about, if we had breathing
time. It would require a year or two, at least. Except so far as
they tend to prove to the South that it is impossible now to ob-
tain any guarantees from the North, thus urging upon the Border
States prompt and vigorous action, all the propositions, plans, and
projects for a compromise are not worth the paper they have been
written on.
We were often enough told in 1860 that the territorial question
was a mere abstraction, since we had no territory as to which the
matter was not actually settled. Strange! how much men are
like bats in the daylight!
The Northern States are now nineteen to our fifteen—counting
32
Delaware as one of ourselves. They outnumber us, in white
population, nearly two to one. They increase, principally by
foreign emigration, in a much larger ratio than we do. They
have a great country yet to be peopled, sufficient to make six or
seven States. British America will, in all probability, desire to
become, at no distant day, a part of the Union, if it continues;
and a simple act of Congress will admit it. The North announces
it to be its fixed determination, that there shall be no more slave
territory; and, therefore, we must either acquire no more from
Mexico, or, if we do, we must consent to see it made into Free
States. We may fight for and help to pay for more territory;
but we must do so for the benefit of the Pharisees among the States,
alone. How long would it be, under that system, before Che
union of North and South would be like that between England
and Ireland; which, obtained by bribery, has been always main-
tained by force ?
It is strange that statesmen do not see that here is the great
question between the sections. To expand is the destiny and
necessity of every young and growing nation. It is a law of its
being. You cannot repeal it; and if you oppose it, it will crush
you. By the law of growth and by natural right, the Southwest
is as much ours, as the Northwest, is the heritage of the Northern
States. This law is more imperative with us, because another
law is superadded, by which slavery gradually drifts off to the
southward, seeking more profitable fields of labor.
Now the North says to us: "We will expand indefinitely to
the Northwest, and make new States there, as Europe pours upon
our shores her Teutonic and Celtic multitudes. Our political
power in the Confederacy shall increase daily, in a continually
accelerated ratio; if we acquire territory to the Southwest, we
will fill that likewise with our Yandalic hordes, until our States
number three-fourths of the whole. In the mean time, you shall
remain as you are. You shall not expand to the Southwest; and
we will also force slavery to recoil and disappear from the Border
States."
On this point they will make no concession. The Compromisers
hardly dare to ask them to do it. Do not deceive yourselves,
Virginia and Kentucky! with vain hopes! There will be no con-
cession on this point.
W e have four millions of slaves. How many years will elapse
before we have ten millions ? These—all—are to be henceforward
confined to the present Southern States. No doubt it will be well
enough so, during our lifetime; hut how will it he with our children f
Are we ready, in order to purchase quiet and peace for ourselves,
to bequeath such a curse and calamity to them, as the perpetual con-
finement of slavery within its present limits would be ? Shall
we, to avoid a present danger, and that we may be permitted to
fold our hands and sleep in our dishonor, devise to them that
33
accursed legacy of a superabundant, swarming negro population,
denied outlet, until their labor, like that of white men elsewhere,
is not worth their food and clothing, and hunger and discontent
light the torches of servile insurrection, and Earth and Heaven
shudder at the hideous atrocities and horrors that follow ? I, for
one, will not consent to it. Better even Treason against an un-
righteous Government, than Treason against our own children!
Here is the true and great issue; and it concerns every man and
every woman in the South. We cannot sign the bond which the
North insolently demands, to this effect, that because we are "the
Barbary States" of the Union, and " Slavery is the sum-total of
all villanies," therefore we shall not seek to expand and grow.
For it is both our right and a necessity to grow and plant new
States. It is God's law; and the attempt to stay its operation
has already shivered the Union as one shivers a vessel of fragile
glass.
Devotion to the Union was for a long time an almost idola-
trous sentiment with nearly the whole South; and secession
seemed the sum of all horrors and disasters. But we are at last
compelled to look separation in the face. Most dangers seem
greater at a distance, than when we grapple with them. Seces-
sion, at hand, and in part consummated, does not seem to the
South one tenth so terrible, as when it frowned upon us while yet
in the future. The act once accomplished, or become inevitable,
men begin to find more and more reasons whereby to justify it; to
prove its necessity and its expediency; to show that a much
longer continuance of the Union was impossible; and that the evils
of separation were chiefly imaginary, or at any rate vastly exag-
gerated. They begin to think and say, that disunion does not
necessarily involve civil war, which can settle nothing and effect
nothing, at least in the direction of reconciliation. At any rate,
they say, it will produce neither anarchy nor disturbance in the
South; since it is the American nature to establish order and
maintain some sort of free government, even under the most
adverse circumstances; that in a little while the Southern States
will hold a Convention, adopt the present Constitution with a few
necessary amendments, and set a national Government on foot,
which all will at once respect and obey.
They begin even to say, that as the North entertains views of
the nature of the Government, radically and essentially different
from those which have always been the political religion of the
South, this must ultimately have divided the Republic; that the
people of the South and those of the North are essentially two
races of men, with habits of thought and action very unlike; that
the Southern States are essentially homogeneous, and perhaps no
people in the world is so much so as that which composes almost
their entire population; there being among them but a very
3
34
inconsiderable percentage of foreign blood, except in Louisiana •
and none of them having much in common with the character and
habits of New England, and of the States chiefly populated by
the swarms that have flowed forth from that teeming hive; while
the immense and incessant influx of Teutonic and Celtic blood
into the North, plays no unimportant part in making it and the
South more and more two separate and distinct peoples. ''
They begin to say that this North, so unlike the South, and'
with its different theory of the government, is becoming too strong
for us; that the present form of government has lasted its full
time, and separation is a merely natural process; since the coun-
try is too large and has too many varied interests for us longer to
continue one household; that the Union never was anything more'
than a truce, maintained by continual bribery of New England, ,
on the part of the other States, from the very first, with protective
tariffs, the carrying trade, fishing bounties, and other gratuities'
that she has continually clamored for.
If we add to this the fixed determination of the North to inter-,
meddle with slavery, and the equally fixed resolution of the South,
not to permit such interference, which, while dangerous, doubles
the wrong by coupling it with insult, it is not strange that South-
ern statesmen begin to think and say that it is well that separation;
has come now, before the North has become strong enough to
prevent it, and the South too weak to resist, with her public men
debauched perhaps by the manifold bribes that a great nation can
offer to avarice and ambition; and before Mexico had been occu-
pied by the North or a foreign power.
There is still a possibility of reconstruction and reunion. Buk
it will not last long unless wise men have control on both sides;,
and it will disappear at once and forever, if resort is had to the"
arbitrament of arms. Surely no man of ordinary intellect can.
be so blind as not to see that if from disunion civil war results,!
that will amply justify disunion, because, as there is neither desire
nor motive on the part of the South to aggress upon the North,!
hostilities must be initiated by those who were lately our allies,.
must be unjustifiable, malicious, revengeful—springing either,
from a determination to intermeddle with slavery after they have,
ceased to be responsible for it, and so to excite servile insurrection,,
with all its multiplied hideous horrors; or from a fixed purpose
to whip us back into the Union, in order that we may afterwards,
be their serfs. In either case, hostilities thus initiated will prove
that the alliance between us and them was unnatural and unfit,
and its longer continuance dangerous and disgraceful to us.
If disunion is not followed by war, there is no reason why it
should entail upon us any serious disasters. The Southern States
are large enough for an empire, and wealthy and populous enough
to maintain a government that all the world must respect. And
surely no true man in the South will believe that there is not
35
wisdom enough or patriotism enough among its people, to enable
them to construct, set on foot and maintain a constitutional go-
vernment, republican and conservative.
I can see only one mode in which peace can be maintained.
The border States ought to hesitate no longer. If they do, coer-
eion will be attempted by the Northern States, and they will be
parties to it. They should at once unite with the States that have
seceded and are yet to secede, meet them in convention, and aid
in framing a Constitution, and setting on foot a Government.
When thus united, the matter will have assumed quite a different
aspect from that which it wears at present. There will no longer
be half a dozen seceded States, but a new and powerful Confede-
racy, to attempt to coerce which would be simple fatuity. A war
against it would be too expensive a luxury for the North to in-
dulge in, and would moreover defeat its own purpose; since it
would not only render a restoration of the present Union impos-
sible, but would also make enmities eternal, which otherwise
would be only evanescent. A treaty of amity and reciprocity,
easily made if no blood is shed, will keep open the door, at least,
for complete reconciliation, and in the mean time make an alii-
ance more profitable to each country than an inharmonious Union;
and when their people were no longer responsible, as they now
think or pretend they are, for slavery within our limits; when
the outrages they now perpetrate with impunity would be acts
justifying war, those among them who regarded their substantial
interests would compel the fanatical and rascally to attend to their
own affairs, and let our property alone.
I do not see how war is otherwise to be avoided, or reconstruc-
tion hoped for. The delay of the Border States encourages the
Republicans. As soon as Lincoln is inaugurated, he cannot help
but attempt to coerce the seceding States, if the Border States still
delay. Laws will be passed in time, giving him men and money, and
requiring "the enforcement of the laws, and the collection of the
revenue." Emboldened by the hesitation of Yirginia, Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Maryland, we can see that the Republicans become
more insolent, and speak in bolder tones of rebellion and coercion.
Thersites Hale talks bravely, Lincoln objects to any compromise;
and the very fact that any States have seceded is ignored. The
names of their members are still called in both Houses.
Action, action, action, is necessary. The Southern States must
make common cause. Blame South Carolina as much as you
will, the attitude of the North, and all the acts of the Republican
party, go very far to prove, even to those most reluctant to believe
it, that the separation of the Southern States has not occurred a
clay too soon.
Lincoln, who declares against any compromise, selects Seward
for his Secretary of State. Sumner laughs in the Senate as the
Southern States withdraw; and Lovejoy exults at the prospect
86
of letting slip the dogs of war. The New York Journal of Com-
merce well says—
"Much of the zeal which is manifested among certain classes
all over the North, including many notorious law-breakers, for
the faithful execution of the laws in South Carolina and other
seceding States, is only an out-cropping of that intense hatred
against the South which thirty years' cultivation has produced.
At first, such malignity is measurably satisfied by hard words
and foul imputations. But as it becomes more fiendish and dia-
bolical, it craves higher-seasoned food. It longs to get at its
victim with a butcher-knife. It thirsts for blood. John Brown-
ism affords a temporary relief, but it is a hazardous business, and
too circumscribed. Murder by wholesale is what is wanted by
the class of fanatics to whom we allude; and a WAR, which would
make the slaughter legal [recollect their sacred regard for law],
and not expose their own precious lives to danger, would be just
the thing. A war, too, ostensibly to preserve the Union and en-
force the laws! Could anything be more exactly in point ?
"But this is not all. The view of these fanatics is not confined
to the butchery of masters, it looks also to insurrection among the
slaves. It is John Brownism on a large scale. And what an op-
portunity to inaugurate it, with the power and purse of the Govern-
ment to support the movement I"
More has been done in the last six weeks to satisfy the people
of the South that the mass of the people of the north are their
enemies, and that the continuance or restoration of fraternal rela-
tions with them is simply impossible, than had been done in ten
years before.
"Whatever we may have thought or wished, Fate has been too
strong for us; the die is cast, and the act clone. The Past is no
longer ours. The Present and the Future alone belong to us.
It is profitless to inquire who are to blame for the present condi-
tion of affairs, or to disclaim responsibility on our individual part.
Inexorable circumstances ever mould our destinies, and of these
the acts of other men are a great part. It is the condition of
human life that their acts should affect us potently for weal or
woe. We have now only to accept the responsibility, look the
Present steadily in the face, and take precautions and make pro-
Vision for the Future.
Beconciliation, by means of amendments to the Constitution to
be made or agreed to by the North, being simply impossible for
the present; first for want of time, and next because they cannot
be carried by three-fourths of the States, only one possible mode
remains. If the Southern States adopt the Constitution, with no
other amendments than such as are necessary for their protection,
and as experience has shown to be necessary, with none that can
be unfair or injurious to the Northern States; if they establish
and set on- foot a government under the Constitution so amended,
37
and invite the other States to unite with them under it, a restora-
tion of the Union, and a better Union are possible. There is, in
my opinion, no other hope whatever.
In the meantime, since the States that have seceded will surely
frame a Constitution and establish a government, the Border
States, including Arkansas, are called upon to decide what course
of action on their part will be most consistent with their honor,
and most conduce to their safety. A Statesman must know when
to abandon the Impossible, how dear soever to him it may be, and
how much soever his consistency is involved, and turn wholly to
that which is Practicable. Shall Arkansas share the fortunes of
her sister States, from whom most of her people come, who have
heretofore defended the same Constitution against a common ene-
my, and who are connected with her by all the ties of one blood,
the same habits of thought, the same prepossessions and customs,
the same interests, and a common destiny? Will she stand aloof,
and await the issue of the struggle, before determining with which
side she will cast in her fortunes? Or will she adhere to the
North, and become a party to all that may be done in order to sub-
jugate the seceding States ? Will she assist to do that ? Would
she even look on as a neutral, and without striking even one good
blow in their behalf, see them crushed under the brutal heel of
Power, or lashed back into the Union ?
If Arkansas and the other Border States mean to unite with
the Seceding States, in case proper guarantees are not given by
the North, they may as well do so at once. If any compromise
is patched up, somebody will be sold. No such guarantees can
be had. Accept such as you can get; and you will soon see what
convenient things words are, to cheat withal. Surely you will
not let the Seceding States alone make a final Constitution for the
Southern United States. It is not possible that any Southern
State can be willing to consent to that; can desire to be placed in
such position as that they must either simply accept or simply
reject that Constitution, after having had no voice in settling its
provisions ? Surely that would be beneath the dignity even of
a young State like Arkansas, and much more beneath that of
Virginia. For even Arkansas, let us hope, has sons whose wis-
dom and judgment might be of some value, and whose opinions
might exercise some influence and command some attention. It
will surely be very unfortunate if the sober, wise, conservative
counsels of Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and other of the Bor-
der States, should not be heard. It is of the utmost importance
that all of the Southern States should co-operate in making the new
Constitution, lest rash experiments should be tried and the old
landmarks injudiciously removed.
The fourth of March is near at hand. If Arkansas is then
found in the Union, she will be a party to whatever majr have
been or may then be done by the Government of the United
88
States. Its acts of coercion, its denials of the rights of the States,
its claims of more than Imperial powers, will be her acts, her
denials, her claims. When the Senate is convened by the new
President, if her Senators answer to their names, as I hope they
will not, whatever she does, they will find themselves, seven States
at least occupying no seats there, in a miserable minority; and
yet Arkansas will be a party to whatever acts of oppression may
be done there by the nineteen Northern States, and the jubilant
Abolitionists and Republicans who will then fill that gaudy gilded
chamber.
It must not be forgotten, that, if the Soutb returns into the
Union, she too will have to make, by implication as strong as
express agreement, certain concessions on her part. She will
never afterwards be permitted to protest against protective tariffs,
nor against laws securing the coasting and carrying trade to
Northern bottoms; nor against fishing bounties; nor against a
homestead law, to give land to the landless, offer bounties to
foreign emigration, and carry out Seward's project of peopling
the Territories with foreigners in preference to the native-born ;
nor against grants of land and money to build a Northern Pacific
Railroad withal; nor against internal improvements in the North-
ern States by the General Government; nor against the erection
of light-houses, and the construction of harbors, breakwaters, forts
on the Northern Lakes and North Atlantic Seaboard; nor against
the making of hot-beds, in which to force new States into a pre-
cocious maturity; nor against the acquisition of British America;
in short, that we shall in all the future never escape the necessity
of aiding with all our might in building up and strengthening
the North, until, a hundred-armed Briareus, only the feeble bar-
rier of its good faith shall restrain it from strangling us in its
embrace.
If this, or much of it, will probably be the fruit of even a com-
promise and settlement, we may readily imagine how powerless
to resist in all these respects we shall be, how ludicrous any
future attempt to resist will be, if we stand by and permit the
seceding States to be subjugated by the Federal Power. After
that, it would be supremely absurd for us to whisper even to our-
selves in our chambers, that this government is the result of a
compact between the States. The Virginia and Kentucky doc-
trines of 1798 would have become utterly obsolete; and the most
ultra Federalism the universal orthodoxy.
We cannot separate from the cotton growing States. As well
expect a limb severed from the human body, to live. " Sink or
swim, survive or perish," our destiny and theirs must be one.
We must manfully accept our destiny, meet the danger half-way,
and if overcome by it, deserve, at least, to have conquered.
The sober truth is, that a revolution of some kind had become
as indispensable as thunder storms are to purify the stagnant
39
atmosphere. The body politic had become sick, almost unto
death. Self had become everything, and the Country nothing.
Corruption, and the prostitution of public office and place to pri-
vate profit had become so almost universal, and so little disgrace-
ful, that without a great change it was not possible for the Re-
public to endure.
The Government had become a great market-house, in which
everything was bought and sold. It was well said, a year or two
since, in the Senate, that ours was the most corrupt Government
on the face of the earth. I am not sure but that all the distresses
and disasters, the ruin and reverses that may be consequent on a
long war will be well repaid by the patriotism, long unknown,
which under these stimulants and the pressure of public and pri-
vate adversities, will be developed and become common in the
South ; by the return to the simple habits of our fathers; by the
capacity, now unsuspected, in multitudes of men, to make great
sacrifices for their country; by the disappearance from public life
of the pestilent small Demagogues who infest all stations, and bring
to the discharge of the duties of place and office, only ignorance
and incompetency, and often dishonesty; and by the upraising by
God of great men in their places.
It is only in the shocks and conflicts caused by great questions
that great intellects rise and rule; and it is by them that the at-
tention of the people, habitually little given to profound reflec-
tion, is kept fixed upon public affairs, and their interest in those
affairs maintained. When there are no such questions, that ex-
cite and arouse the passions, and alarm those to whom the interest
and honor of the country are dear, then in the stagnant waters
corruption breeds; small questions make the turning points of
politics; and as they can as well be dealt with by small intellects
as by great ones, those busy and bestir themselves, and after a
little, pusb the truly great men from their places, and all becomes,
in deliberation as well as action, trivial and contemptible; the
petty intrigue, the low cabal, place put up for sale and power,
held in unwashed and unworthy hands, prostrated to the most
ignoble purposes. Great occasions and great controversies alone
produce greatness in a nation. When these die out, all is petty
squabbling and low manoeuvring.
If the worst should come, and re-construction of the Union be
at the last found to be impossible, there will still be no reason
for despair. Let the occasion and the State's necessity demand
Wisdom and Patriotism, and it will be found that men are as
wise and patriotic now as they were eighty years ago. Who is
there that is willing to admit even to himself, that the Southern
States are not wise enough to make and strong enough to main-
tain a free government ? When they meet in Convention to
frame one, they will, fortunately, not have to discover the great
principles of Constitutional Government. These are already
40
embodied in our present great Charter; and the experience of
seventy years has developed its few defects, and shown in what
respects and how it needs amendments.
Let us concur in making these amendments, or adopting this
Constitution, in establishing a Government for the Southern
States. Let us arm, and perfect our military organization. Let"
us invite the North again to unite with us, and offer them, if they
decline, a treaty of amity and reciprocity, peace and the mutual
benefits that flow from friendly intercourse. And having thus
done our duty, and provided for every emergency, we may tran-
quilly await the result, sure in any event that we shall not be
dishonored.
It is the common cry that the dissolution of this Union will be
the signal failure of our experiment of free government; and
make us a by-word and an object of contempt all over the world.
On the contrary, we are now proving that our institutions are not
a failure. The world never saw such a drama as is now being
enacted here. Without anarchy, without disorder, without inter-
ruption of the free and ordinary course of the laws, without
martial law or suspension of the habeas corpus act, or troops to
prevent or punish popular excesses, or even an increase of the
police, the separation of a great Confederation of Sovereign States
goes quietly on, with all the forms of law, all the solemnities of
deliberation, all the decorum that could characterize the most
ordinary proceedings in a period of profound peace.
Here only, in all the world, could such a spectacle be exhibited.
If war results from it, it will not be by our fault; but in conse-
queuce of Northern avarice reluctant to let those who have so
long been its tributaries go free, and resolute to substitute another
government for that which our forefathers made. And, whatever
their determination, if the present Union be not restored, and we
are such men as have heretofore built up empires, we shall esta-
blish a new Republic, that shall outlast us and our children, and
vying with its Northern Ally or Rival in arts and arms, surpassing
the proudest glories of their common Ancestor, shall still prove
to the world that the great experiment has not failed, and that
men are capable of governing themselves.