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"FORrmCE, AND PEACEABLE SEPARATION. 
 
 CITIZEN'S 
 
 DEMOCRATIC ADDRESS, 
 
 TO THE 
 
 PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF OHIO, 
 AND THE PEOPLE OF TSE SEVERAL STATES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WEST AND NORTH. 
 
 "PRO LOCIS, F0CI3, ET ARIS." 
 
 CINCINNATI: 
 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR. 
 1863. 
 
.3 
 
 Army Wor Collegs 
 June 20 1933 
 
PEEFA 
 
 At this supreme hour of destiny for the free States, we call 
 on Northern thinkers to emancipate themselves, in order 
 to save their own section from destruction. The old Union 
 of the States is gone ; but we can preserve the Constitution, 
 and thereby our liberties and prosperity, with diminished 
 power and territory. 
 
 There will be two confederacies hereafter. Ours, in the 
 North, can always rise superior to that in the South in 
 proportion, only, as we excel in the knowledge of our 
 Federal system, and in our adherence to it, through all 
 report, in principle as well as practice. 
 
 We must cling, henceforth, all the stronger, to the 
 Constitution ; for the threatening danger is, that the huge 
 State of New- York, and its huge metropolis, will, at once, 
 attempt to get rid of constitutional obligations, and to change 
 the Federal system into a consolidated democracy. Like 
 old Rome, New-York, if we allow it, will assume to be 
 the imperial head of a nominal republic, with the other 
 States, especially the boundless West, for outside provinces. 
 She will be governed by her interests, irrespective of the 
 Constitution. She first tried to coerce the South ; and, per- 
 ceiving that policy a failure, she next endeavored, by her 
 
 (iii) 
 
attacks on Lincoln's administration; her appeals to constitu- 
 tional guaranties, and her intimations of physical resistance 
 to acts of Congress, to wheedle the South back into the 
 T^nion : now, all these shallow devic«8 having failed, she 
 returns, like a dog to his vomit, to her first line of con- 
 duct, in order to co;^solidate the Federal system, by foster- 
 ing a usurpation of Federal powers, executive and legistative ; 
 by incurring a IfaJt piflblic debt ; and by lording it in the 
 North. It is New- York that has poisoned the foolish West 
 against New-England, because she dreads the Yankee rivalry 
 . — intellectual, political, financial, and commercial. And sun- 
 dry politicians have been inveigled into that plain mistake. 
 The New- York monopoly of the whole trade of the United 
 States, North and South, has made that metropolis the great 
 monstrosity it is : and, foreseeing the separation, she is striv- 
 ing to grasp the monopoly of the trade, both ways, of the 
 whole North with the markets of the world. 
 
 The interest of Ohio and the interior States is exactly 
 adverse. We want two New-Yorks on the Atlantic, so that 
 we may have competition, which is the life of trade; and 
 we want, more than any thing else, and will have, the free- 
 dom of those inland seas — the Mississippi and the St. Law- 
 rence — M'hich New- York is interested to blot out of exist- 
 ence, in order to continue the rail-road injustice of the last 
 two years, which has confiscated the two last Western har- 
 vests, and which is concentrated in Wall-Street. The small 
 States of the East, and the whole Mississippi Yalley should 
 take timely warning. 
 
 It is an age when size is greatness, numbers power, 
 and money omnipotence. Unless we heed the lessons of 
 this Address, even while the battle rages, we will find 
 ourselves, at the end of the war, instead of freemen with 
 personal rights, and free Stiites with sovereign rights, Btript 
 
of every badge of self-government, under a civil or mili- 
 tary consolidation, centralized in the city of New-Yoi'k by 
 the force of some major-general, or the frand of statesmen, 
 to whom that city is the fulcrum. From the very edge o( 
 such a precipice, which it is wise to foresee, and patriot- 
 ism to denounce, we call on the interior States, Ohio at 
 their hedfl, to prepare their minds against a more intolei-ablo 
 despotism than the present. When this sectional war with 
 the South comes to an end, by an acknowledged separa- 
 tion, the law of self-preservation will force us to fly to 
 tlfe State-Eights doctrine of the Federal system. We must 
 assert our right to choose our associates for the State of 
 Ohio and her sister States, and make such reservations, ex- 
 pressly of our social and political independence, as will deter 
 any set of masters from trying their hands at consolida- 
 tion of State-sovereignties into one Imperial Eepublic. The 
 foundation of the Federal system is the unanimous conseni 
 of the States, who are each and all its voluntary constit- 
 uents, and solely bound within the union by their separ 
 ate consent. "When we take our stand there, we are safe; 
 for the fortress that never yields to secret or open foe, t( 
 blows or bribes, is for both men and States, in peace and 
 war, the same — it is the rock of principle. 
 
A-D DUE SS 
 
 TO THE 
 
 PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF OHIO, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 PEOPLE OF EACH OF THE SEYEKAL STATES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WEST AND NORTH. 
 
 Our public men are all unfortunately committed, so that they 
 can give us little good and much bad advice. But at such a 
 time of sorrow and dismay, the State has a right to the opinions 
 of her most humble private citizens, whose lives and actions 
 have established a character for truth, intelligence, courage and 
 virtue, and, consequently, we have felt bound to present our- 
 selves to you with our solution of the present deplorable crisis 
 in State and Federal affairs. We are in favor of merging this 
 war at once into peace, as soon as possible, and for preparing 
 our public mind for a separation of the States. Our mode of 
 operation will be by the discussion, which we have herein 
 opened, and to which we challenge all who are worthy, to en- 
 lighten the people upon our Federal system. We can take it for 
 granted that both. South and North, are united upon their res- 
 pective policies, and had better separate, but that the people of 
 each border State should decide its future alliance by its own 
 convention ; our armies to be employed, if necessary, to enforce 
 the settlement, and for no other purpose. 
 
 The people, at large, must understand, theoretically and 
 practically, what is really the matter, in order to be able to 
 answer the question: " What is to be done about it! " Whoever 
 is afraid or unable to give them good advice, should be silent; 
 but we have assumed the respojisibility of making known, by 
 this paper, the nature of the general calamity, with the appro- 
 priate and only means for its removal. The root of the evil 
 lies, then, in the total mistake committed by the Administration, 
 and countenanced by many of its opponents, with respect to 
 the true theory of our form of Government. The organized 
 Republican party, assisted, from the first, by some of the 
 Democrats, who were confounded by the magnitude of a most 
 abrupt and stupendous crisis, have whollv departed from all 
 
 7 
 
8 PEACEABLE SEPARATION. 
 
 the conditions of the Constitution ; overturned not only that 
 ])royi3ion for the pernumence of u Federal Government, but 
 the very principles upon which alone it can stand. They have 
 done more : and in the place of Washington's work — the Federal 
 Constitution of the United Stiites done at Philadelphia, in 1787, 
 — the hideous consolidation of power in Congress and the Presi- 
 dent has been set up at the capitol of the United States, tliis 
 year, which has already made a ruin of the land that work 
 was meant to bless. We expect very briefly and compactly, 
 but completely, to demonstrate these two propositions, and to 
 trace them all more to ignorance than ambition, so that those 
 who think and act for us in public life, shall have the means, 
 both to oppose, and, what is tar more important, to demoralize 
 the Administration. There is no other way to get rid of the 
 autliority of President Lincoln and the other lawyers who com- 
 pose his cabinet, and of that of the Senators and Congressmen 
 who have girt him round with their support, but to prove their 
 theory of the Government to be untenable, and themselves 
 hostile to, because ignorant of, the Constitution. If it gets to 
 be generally suspected by the leaders of the people, that those 
 in power are not simply guilty of abuses of rightful authority, 
 but that they have mistaken their powers and can not show 
 any authority for waging this war of States, and for oppressing 
 citizens at home, then they will find themselves speedily, instead 
 of absolute masters of affairs, trustees discredited by their constit- 
 uents ; they will see their policy and measures repudiated, and 
 themselves compelled to desist, and to give way to honest, capa- 
 ble and faithful public servants. If such a demonstration can 
 be made, it is worth far more than all other agents for the 
 settlement of the controversy, and it is pre-eminently due to 
 the toiling masses and citizen soldiery. ■ The Democracy intend 
 to displace the Administration, and to govern in its stead ; but 
 the Democracy must put their right to supercede the Eepub- 
 licans upon such terms, as will satisfy the judgment, and 
 attract the affections, and rew\ard the confidence of the people. 
 If the people are still to be dealt with by them, after the 
 change, as formerly, then the people have no interest in their 
 success, for it will be only a change of masters, and not a 
 ahange of system. The swarm of tax consumers, who have 
 become so bloated by war expenditure wrung from the property 
 and labor of the producers, had better remain upon the carcass 
 of the Republic, than to give place to as many lean and hungry 
 successors, having more remorseless appetites, and the same 
 opportunity. We must satisty the people that they are not to 
 be the Ioscts, but the great gainers in a pecuniary view, by a 
 restoration of our society and Government of the North, or 
 
DEMOCRATIC ADDKE3S. 9 
 
 we can not have their united and vigorous co-operation. And 
 we feel bound, also, to say that we have no conlidenec in any 
 domestic appeal to physical force, especially not in our present 
 circumstances. We have not yet exhausted the argument, we 
 have never fairly advanced to the proper point uf argument, 
 and v;e feel culpable for not having before made this elfurt tu 
 enlighten the people, and brought to their aid, by iree, full, 
 radical, public discussion, the utmost possible force of intellect, 
 so as to provide the means for popular organization. "We call 
 loudly, therefore, upon the thinkers of the country to respond 
 to our summons to debate, and relying upon the sacredness of 
 belief which no man, even in himself, can long control, still less 
 in another, and upon the integrity of our order, we challenge to a 
 reply the whole Kepublican intellect in one array. To those 
 who say, it is too late to discuss our fate, whether they wish to 
 evade their duty or not, we proudly respond, that truth, even in 
 the red and stricken field of battle, never comes too late ; and 
 more, we say, that there is no other mode of resettling our 
 institutions, nor of bringing again among us even the show of 
 comfort and prosperity, except by discussion and ncgociation. 
 it does not matter what may be the fate of our arms, for ci>me 
 weal or woe, there will be a future at the end, which alike in- 
 volves both our perisliable Government and our imperishable 
 society, the mortal and the immortal conditions of humanity 
 and of civilization in these once free and happy States. AVhat 
 that future shall be, concerns us, much as the present concerns 
 uSj far more than the present, and it requires of this generation 
 its best exertions now for the safety of ourselves and the destiny 
 of our descendants. In this supreme hour, the darkest and the 
 unhappiest which ever came upon the hopes and fears of any 
 modern people, we see the shaclow on every brow, and we hear 
 the beating of every human heart, as we draw, breathless and 
 helpless, nearer and nearer to the verge of the cataract. Yet, 
 have we no unfounded confidence, but the confidence of cause 
 sustaining us through the premises and to the conclusions of 
 our appeal to the wisdom and integrity of the people. "VVe feel 
 that the time has come, which tests the talents, and which tries the 
 souls of men; and that from the roaring abyss at our feet the 
 summer soldier and the sunshine patriot must shrink back with 
 horror; but we know that with intellect, and with ciiaracter 
 more than intellect, and with sound ptditical principles more 
 than all, we shall be able to carry with us safely over it our liberty 
 and the Constitutions, State and Federal, by which alone 
 liberty can be retained in the Northern States. If v.e shall be 
 compelled, as we think we are, to give up the fellowship of the 
 Southern States, we can preserve for ourselves, what are now 
 
10 PEACEABLE SEPARATION. 
 
 in dfingor, the same system of society and government as we 
 had betore the war, and we can recover gradually from the 
 sh(.»ck of a partial dissolution of the Union, — perhaps we may 
 ultimately expect some reconstruction of the old relations of 
 all the States ; or if not, such an amicable organization of all 
 other than our political interests, as will, to a great extent, 
 continue to associate our destinies. AV^e do not think our armies 
 and navies are strong enough to accomplish their purpose; nor, 
 by any jioesible sacrifice of lives and fortunes, that they can 
 be increased to that extent. To subjugate, you must break 
 down the spirit of a people; it is not sufficient to whip their 
 armies, but you must crush their resolution. There never has 
 been an^^ time when the Southern public spirit did not rise as 
 high for defense as ours for attack, and it never was more in- 
 domitable than at the present moment. Nor will the failure 
 of our armies bring with it any disgrace, but the contrary. It 
 will only prove to the world a truth of some importance, to 
 them as well as to us, which is, that upon their own soil 
 Americans are invincible. The map of the United States has 
 decided the pending contest far' more than the armies of the 
 United States. Not the stars, in their courses, have fought on 
 the Southern more than on the Northern side ; but it has been 
 far otherwise with the weary miles of road, the swollen streams, 
 the fathomless mud, the inhospitable climate, the famished 
 country, incessant snows and rains, and the dividing ridges of 
 impregnable mountains. The same misfortune is reserved for 
 any Southern army, which may be bold enough to carry the 
 contest into our Northern States. It would be overtaken by a 
 more speedy and total discomfiture than any recorded in the 
 war. We most sincerely hope, for the sake of both sections, 
 that there may never be such an experiment. There remarks 
 made, M-e proceed to the true solution of the crisis. 
 
 The question at issue, according to our minds, is not, then, 
 one of abuse, but one of the usurpation of Federal power — a 
 new view to us, but containing wholesome doctrine, which, 
 although it may more deeply criminate the Administration, 
 will also embarrass many leaders ou the Democratic side, who 
 have thoughtlessly given color to the war, and now confine 
 themselves to barren criticism on Lincoln's manner of con- 
 ducting it. Yet these leaders have conceded Lincoln's hon- 
 esty; and if, therefore, he have the legal right to make war 
 upon the South, in the inevitable evils of its pursuit, he is only 
 the victim of circumstances, over which he can not exercise 
 any more control than a Democratic successor. And we 
 doubt if there would be any public advantage in dismissing 
 the Tresident, if we adhere to his hypothesis. Indeed, there 
 
DEMOCRATIC ADDRESS. 11 
 
 is an apology for his opening of hostilities, and for the carlv 
 false position of some democrats. The fall of Sunipter was 
 long prepared by the mntnal criminations of the sections, by 
 the mutual injustice of their reciprocal estimates, and by a 
 total miscalculation of the magnitude of the strife. For many 
 years, the most disparaging comments upon each other were 
 fashionable on both sides of Mason and Dixon's Line; legisla- 
 tive and executive reprisals and the protective taritf policy, 
 with the breach of the compact about fugitive slaves, had fired 
 both Southern and Northern hearts. The collision had to 
 come — and horrible as it has been, both then and since, there 
 was no escape from it. It may have had one good effect: it 
 has opened the eyes of all but the blind on both sides. Here- 
 after, there will never be so much left of the bad habit of un- 
 derrating an adversary. Yankees and Southerners will not 
 love, but they must respect, each other; and that is the best 
 security ever invented for preserving the international peace. 
 And, therefore, we are disposed to forgive much of what has 
 happened, in consequence of the frenzied passions of the 
 country. But there we stop, and will not advance, voluntar- 
 ily, another single step. The war should have never been 
 begun, the war should be stopped at once, and the war must 
 Boon be arrested by mutual exhaustion, or by the universal in- 
 tervention of good and patriotic citizens. It can only be 
 arrested, however, by the utter exhaustion of the parties, or, 
 if any earlier, by the force of constitutional truth, which shall 
 be plainly stated, and fearlessly announced. It is to invite the 
 latter, and not to wait for the other alternative, that we pro- 
 pose to show, beyond denial, Lincoln's misunderstanding of the 
 Federal system he is attempting to administer ; and Lincoln's 
 want of constitutional power to make a sectional war of States. 
 The popular intervention we speak of is not to be, therefore, 
 by display of numbers, nor by any open or other use of phja- 
 ical force. But it is to be by calling to our aid the only invin- 
 cible ally in this struggle — the fundamental truth which Lin- 
 coln's errors have violated. If he has wholly mistaken his 
 duty, as the President of the United States, from the begin- 
 ning, he, or his successor, if he do not, must retrace his steps 
 in obedience to the Constitution which, although shivered, by 
 almost every act of his Administration, into pieces, has still a 
 sacred power over our minds, even in the midst of such a 
 whirlwind of war and homicide, and corruption, and degener- 
 acy as rages everywhere over the land. Our Western j)eople, 
 at any rate, can be made to perceive and adopt the path of 
 safety. We can almost alone put a stop to the war, and 
 restore the violated Federal system which has been so seriously 
 
12 PEACEABT^ SEPAEATIOJr. 
 
 disturbed, altlioiijih wo Avill 1)0 eoinpollod to submit to the rnp- 
 tnre of the TInion, and the depavtnre of the seceding States, 
 nntil some future chiy, when they sliall ask to be not only 
 neii^hbora, but friends}, and, perhaps, to be readmitted into the 
 L'nion, 
 
 What is Lincoln's mistake? It is in supposing that our gov- 
 ernment was a consolidated democracy, responsible for the 
 action of the States as well as that of the Federal head, and 
 not a confederation, where tlie States are bound by their sepa- 
 rate consent, the Federal head being only their agent for certain 
 purposes. He made that announcement when he had left 
 Springfield but a day's journey behind, at Indianapolis, on hia 
 road to Washington, in the Spring of 18(31, He told the citi- 
 zens of Indiana, in a stump speech, "that there was a great 
 excitement about this thing of State Rights ; that he did not 
 pretend to understand it, but he supposed it was the same thing, 
 for his part, as county rights, which he did understand to be sub- 
 ject to the sovereignty of the State : and a State in the Union 
 would be subject to the sovereignty of the Union. Indeed a 
 county might be larger than a State and have the advantage of 
 numbers. There seemed, to him, to be nothing in so called State 
 Rights." That speech has been the key-note of all his official 
 life : he has followed up his doctrines so as to make himself, in 
 fact, conformable to his theory, the Imperator of the Common- 
 wealth, instead of the constitutional President of the United 
 States ; and that commonwealth, instead of a decentralized con- 
 federation of States, a conglomerated consolidation of corpora- 
 tions, founded, like a State, upon the social compact. He con- 
 siders the sectional war of sovereign States, in which he is en- 
 gaged, a rebellion of counties only, — which, if it were so, would 
 be a revolutionary civil war, — and he has demanded, success- 
 fully, from Congress, all the money and men, and other means, 
 he wants, in order to prevent what he supposes to be the destruc- 
 tion of the Constitution, the Union, and the American people. 
 
 What sums he has wasted — what lives has he not destroyed ? 
 The value of two such States as Ohio and Indiana — one-fourth 
 of the whole North, sunk and sinking, and as many vigorous 
 youth called to the field, as they both contain, of the military 
 age, aTid already one half of these are dead and buried, or dis- 
 abled for life ; and almost every household is bewailing its pov- 
 erty and its losses, and the young women of marriageable age 
 nearly all deprived of their rights to husbands and families! 
 
 What a sweep of the be>!om of destruction, such as never 
 overcome, before, any portion of the Westoru Ilemispjiere, 
 And all owing to an original mistake of Lincoln in reference to 
 the nature of Ins office and of our institutions, which is now to 
 be demonstrated. 
 
DEMOCUATIC ADDRESS. 13 
 
 Never, did such consequences turn upon any question, as u})ou 
 this, Whether the United States of America are held togetlier 
 by virtue of a compact between sovereign and independent 
 States ; or whether the Federal Constitution, like the Constitu- 
 tion of a single State, is founded upon the social compact, and, 
 therefore, upon the personal, unanimous consent of vt^hat are 
 falsely called the American people ? If the system under which 
 we live be founded in its associate part as it is in its dissociate 
 parts, upon the principle of the social compact, then we con- 
 cede tliat Lincoln was justified in retorting force by force, and 
 in the steps he has taken to retrieve the power of the Federal 
 government. But if, as we expect to clearly show, our Federal 
 system is a system of governments, united by a constitutional 
 compact resting on the consent of the States, respectively, and 
 not upon any unknown political constituency called the whole 
 American people, then h'is steps, from first to last, have been a 
 violation of the Constitution, and an infraction of the undoubted 
 right of each and every State to self-government. 
 
 This theory of the Federal system appears from its history. 
 The legal proposition on which the right of the Colonies to 
 resist the British Parliament rested, was that each of the thir- 
 teen Colonial Legislatures was co-ordinate to the other, and to 
 the Imperial Legislature, and, therefore, that, although the 
 executive was single, the legislative departments of tlie Em 
 pire w^ere fourteen different bodies of representatives, each 
 equivalent and independent, and neither superior nor subordi- 
 nate, to the others. The matter of fact on which arose the 
 duty of resistance, was that the Imperial Legislature, wanting 
 money for the British people, taxed the Americans for a share. 
 At first, there was some plea of convenience and equity to just- 
 ify the demand ; but soon it became a speculation, and public 
 justice being violated by the mother country, the Colonies 
 claimed that they alone could tax themselves upon the true 
 principles of the British Constitution; and that self-taxation 
 was the true and only governmental criterion of self-govern- 
 ment The strife arose and increased, and became a most 
 memorable contest of discussion and remonstrance for ten • 
 years, preceding the outbreak at Lexington, when both sides ap- 
 pealed to arms. There never was a better intellectual ])repara- 
 tion than ours for the Revolution. The origin and object of 
 society, the nature and limits of government were most deeply 
 and anxiously examined, and the liritish theory was refuted by 
 the sharpest and boldest minds of that or any period ; and sub- 
 sequent events turned upon that first intellectual victory, pre- 
 ceding the clash of arms. Before any battle, the British Gov- 
 ertmieut had been beaten in the argument. These previous 
 
14 PEACEABLE SEPARATION. 
 
 public discussions secured and consecrated the secession of 
 1776. The rarliament desperately claimed the right, at last, 
 to bind the ( blouies in all cases whatever ; and the investiga- 
 tion of the claim led to the discovery that she had no right to 
 do so in any case. The King said he never would consent to 
 separation, but consented. Independence followed a seven 
 years' war, which followed a more important ten years discus- 
 sion, to be followed, in turn, by the most perfect system of 
 government the world ever has produced. We do not intend 
 to describe the stages of the struggle, either moral or militaiy, 
 but we confine ourselves to the question, whether it is possible 
 that the new States could have entertained any idea of reject- 
 ing the theory of States Rights for which they went to war with 
 the mother country, and, immediately after their double vic- 
 tory, would have adopted her notion of consolidation, founded 
 upon the social compact? We all tnow the truth to have 
 been according to a common sense view of that question. The 
 system of confederation for carrying on the war, and the Con- 
 stitution by which, after nine years, and in 1787, it was super- 
 seded, were, at all events, entirely clear of the least likeness to 
 a social-compact form of government. The so-called social 
 compact is an unanimous agreement by all the people of a 
 State to set up a society, bound together politically by its Con- 
 stitution providing for the form of government. The theory 
 requires unanimity ; but in practice a very large majority 
 might properly make such a compact binding on the whole, 
 and by the same rule revoke the social compact, and dispense 
 with the established form of government for some other. All 
 the thirty-four States, which lately composed the Union, were 
 organized in this manner; which is familiar knowledge to the 
 country ; but the Union itself, as all know as familiarly, was 
 the fruit of an express Federal compact, to which the separate 
 States became conjointly the constituents. 
 
 Our doctrine is equally established by the analysis of the 
 Federal system. Whatever question may be raised with res- 
 |)ect to the extent of its powers, there is none, whatever, about 
 ' their origin : but there is as little about their nature ; they 
 come from the separate ratification and consent of each State 
 to the Constitution, which says that it is binding not over 
 the fictitious constituency, called the American people, but 
 " between the States." it can be amended by the States, but 
 not by the pe0]'le as a whole, or by any fraction of the people 
 of the United States. The nuichinery of the States for eveiy 
 pur})use not necessary to foreign and interstate offices is re- 
 served to them; and their State bounds and State Rights are 
 likewise expressly guarded — its declared object being to form 
 
DEMOCRATIC ADDliESS. 15 
 
 "a more perfect union" than existed under tlie old Confedera- 
 tion. "Union" of States, not of the people, U8 .also con- 
 clusively appears from our escutcheon with its motto, E plurir 
 hus unum — one out of many — and our emblem flag of all the 
 States, represented upon one field by tliirteen stripes and 
 thirty-four stars — a star for each — a constellation fur all. 
 
 Such a system, of course, has been perverted by the ambition 
 and cupidity of some of the parties, and by the incessant efibrts 
 of powerfully organized tax consumers, M'hosc object has been 
 the plunder of the Federal Treasury. These schemes have had 
 various fortunes, but, on the whole, have always increased, arc 
 increasing, and ought to be diminished. But, by such means, 
 the Union began to be moved from its just foundation, in times 
 of profound peace; and, before the last Lincoln war period, it 
 leaned on its base towards the perverted social-coinpact doctrine. 
 It was so much easier to get bounties and appropriations on 
 pleas of " the general welfare," for the simulated benefit of 
 " the whole people," that Lincoln found it ready to change its 
 base altogether for his purpose. Not that he understands his own 
 proceedings, or can distinguish between the social compact, and 
 any other, or even opposite system of government. He is quite 
 as unable to comprehend constitutional law, as he is to resist the 
 logic of events, which has propelled him against the wind and 
 tide of his promises and his prejudices on negro slavery, since he 
 has been in office: a career which, if laid down by lines upon 
 the map of the last two years, would reseinble any of Cook's 
 voyages, which were prosecuted with as little purpose, and ended, 
 at last, as Lincoln's will end, deviously, but disastrously. His 
 advisers have been asincapableof vindicating themselves as the 
 President. They have counselled him to resort to the pretext 
 of public necessity ; and to the extension and actual employ- 
 ment by some galvanic process, of what they suppose his right- 
 ful functions of commander-in-chief; and, finally, to that extra- 
 ordinary abstraction, the so-called " war power." The first of 
 these, is the plea of tyrants ; the second, to the patriot's eye, 
 looks like a horse and lance, and rueful countenance Quixotic 
 caricature, about as good as the original knight of La Mancha, 
 and the last is the despotism of the dark ages and old 
 countries. They are all disreputable and dangerous departures 
 from duty, but the acts of the last Congress have obliterated both 
 State boundaries and institutions, and State and popular rights, 
 and made the arbitrary will of Lincoln the supreme law. For 
 a long time, it was doubtful whether the sinews of the war 
 could be supplied ; whether the soldiers could get their pay and 
 subsistence from the Treasury. The arrears were heavy, the 
 prospect of payment remote; but the Secretary seems to have 
 
IG TEACExiBLE SEPAKATIOX. 
 
 overcome tluit ((hstacle, and to have established a ncAV Cah'for- 
 iiia under his official roof, from which as many millions are to 
 issue in a year, as the placers yield in a decade. Congress, in 
 expansion of previous prodigality at the last session, enter- 
 tained his wish to make sixteen hundred millions of Federal 
 notes and bonds, and a large portion of that unexampled pro- 
 fusion v/as granted, but with such intentional complication, 
 that he can not, nor can any other, tell how much wealth is 
 placed at his disposition. It is only possible to compare him 
 and his treasures to that great picture, by Milton, in "Paradise 
 Lost ! " * with the people of the United States, instead of Pan- 
 demonium, for a back ground. This hard money prince of 
 bankers had treated his lieges after the satanic fashion, and it 
 was not without a deadly controversy that they succumbed to 
 his bad treatment. Having speciously borrowed all their money, 
 and strained their credit early in his perplexity, he totally for- 
 feited his implied and express engagements ; turned short upon 
 his benefactors, and proposed their total extermination by the 
 lingering death of taxation. They resisted their fate for two 
 months, last winter, but finally, by w^hat reason or coercion we 
 know not, gave in, and are now co-operating w^ith the United 
 States' Treasury, to force loans, after a fruitless appeal for popidar 
 subscriptions, from the universal poor and destitute. It was a 
 spectacle only for the imagination of the blind poet himself: 
 that two months' scene, during which the banks barred the way 
 of the Secretary, and a privileged order formed the bulwark 
 of Democracy. It is gone, at last: but what will not a thousand 
 millions in such hands sweep away. 
 
 Lincoln and his advisers will ultimately find out that their 
 proper refuge is not in necessity, nor constitutional chieftain- 
 ship, nor in the war power, but in the doctrine of a social com- 
 pact federal systeyn. His leader in the House of Representa- 
 tives, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, Thaddeus 
 Stevens, is too bad and bold a man to give out the proper doc- 
 trine of any government. He is worse, if possible, than the 
 three Secretaries, of State, War and Treasury componnded. He 
 laughs to scorn the Constitution. He says, nine-tenths of the 
 acts of Congress are contrary to it, and that it is not only over- 
 thrown, but that he will not consent to have it, nor the old Union 
 ever reste>red. He is the frantic leader of the desperate, who 
 have pushed past even the second sta^e of usurpation,, the doc- 
 
 * Upon ft throne of royal slate, 
 
 Thsit fur oiitslione tlie wealth of Onnns and of Ind,. 
 Or \vh( le the gorgoous East pours ou its princes ; 
 
 Burbai-Je pcjirls, and gold, Satan exalted, sal,. i 
 
 By merit raised to that bud eraiiicace. 
 
DEMOCllATIC ADDRESS. i< 
 
 trine. of the social eompacf, to the third of niilitai'V despotism, 
 with its martial law, provost-gnnrds and provo8t-marshals, de- 
 partments of great extent for major-generals, and courts of 
 summary jurisdiction and countless spies and executioners. 
 He is hanging over the abj'ss of the fourth stage of our institu- 
 tions, which he seems determined to reach: that of revolution. 
 But Lincoln may be compelled by his circumstances, whicli now 
 have him subject to control, to accompany Stevens in his doctri- 
 nal crusade, as he has first repudiated, and then followed Fre- 
 mont on slavery. We give such specimens of the acts and 
 actors of the Federal drama, to illustrate our condition, rather 
 than minutely to furnish its perfect description. AVe are no 
 committee on the conduct of the war, and make no comments 
 upon it. We might refer to the heated and mistaken sentiments 
 sent to the newspapers from the tedious encampments of our 
 armies, but we can only hope, the soldiers are not willing yet 
 to destroy wilfully our Government, although they would, if 
 not enlightened, probably be bad enough to destroy a few ob- 
 noxious men. ]3ut the great army of ofiicers, who are nearly 
 all unfortunate, give a most vivid illustration of human nature. 
 If there are fifty thousand of them, who cost their country an 
 average of two hundred dollars a month, say, ten millions for all 
 per month, and one hundred and twenty millions a year, then 
 we can perceive an astounding reason for their love of wai*. 
 If their opinions are to prevail, and there are only half of fifty 
 thousand ofiticers, and the half of one hundred and twenty mil- 
 lions of dollars a year paid by our people for shoulder straps : 
 as they never did, could, or would earn a tithe of the money at 
 ordinary pursuits in pjeaceful times, their temptation is clearly 
 on the fighting side. 
 
 Although our burden of proof is entirely independent of 
 any criticism on the President's policy, and the acts of Con- 
 gress, we must here refer to their great features, as illustrating 
 the argument we are uow about to push to its second stage. We 
 wish the sting of ignorance, which we charge upon the liepub- 
 licans, already sharp enough to fulfill the formula of Se)crates, 
 to be made sharper by reference to their misdeeds. The Greek 
 sage thought that the only preparation for knowledge, and, 
 therefore, for reformation, was in pushing his opponent, by 
 arguments, to the wall, so that he had to admit he had commit- 
 ted the mistake of supposing he knew what he was talking 
 about, when, in point of fact he was entirely ignorant of it. 
 Thus it was, by his masterly cross-examination of pretendeis, 
 and their self-confutation, that the first logician the world 
 ever beheld, in her infancy, and the facile princ>ps of all ages 
 since, including ours, routed his adversaries ^nd established 
 2 
 
IS PEACEABLE SEPAKATION. 
 
 jnorals and trntli in their dominion over mankind. After 
 twenty-two hundred years his* mii^hty name remains, and his 
 high authority continues to be ever the same. 
 
 Lincoln has, then, upon an erroneous hypothesis of his own 
 powers, and by the aid of Conj^ress, after divers excuses, made 
 a complete overthrow of all previous American ideas of govern- 
 ment, as well as of the institutions which provide for such 
 trustees of the people as himself; and he has literally set up a 
 despotism — and being in a state of war — a military despotism. 
 He began with asking Congress for seventy-five thousand sol- 
 diers, in order to suppress, in southern States, military oi-gani- 
 zations to resist the law, and too powerful for his civil otticers, 
 and he is now acting upon the Russian or Austrian declaration, 
 that "as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, in time of 
 war, I suppose / have a right to tale any measure which may 
 test suhdiie the enemyP Pui-suant to this end he has leveled 
 American liberty and institutions under successive outrages. 
 
 1, Struck at the very foundations of property, by his ])rocla- 
 mation of the 1st of January last, freeing the slaves in rebel- 
 lious States, so as to facilitate the victory over their masters. 
 Is not such a pernicious example but the ready precedent for 
 those who will repudiate the accruing war-debt, which may roll 
 up to the amount of the slave-property, but can never be half 
 as profitable? 
 
 2. Struck at the foundations of personal liberty in the free 
 States, by his proclamation of the 24th of September last, 
 denouncing disloyalty, and establishing, all over their territory, 
 an ofticial machinery by which States are cut up into police- 
 districts, each with a district provost-nuirshal, backed by a mil- 
 itary force, and controlled by the provost-marshal-general, at 
 "Washington. This district provost-marshal is required to sup- 
 press bad practices and obnoxious sentiments, and arrest improper 
 citizens : he being the judge, jury and jailor, and no reserve 
 made with respect to age, sex, or condition. Any citizen, at 
 any hour, under any circumstances, may be torn away from his 
 country and be transported to distant dungeons, without exam- 
 ination, or trial, or specific charge, or legal warrant. Hundreds, 
 within a year, have experienced such a fate — women as well as 
 men — and thousands are expecting it. 
 
 ?y. Struck at the courts of justice, by destroying their sacred 
 right to interpose the shield of the law between official ven- 
 geance and its victim, and at the same time has secured indem- 
 nity from Congress for such injustice, which closes all avenues 
 of future redress. The courts are no longer temples of refuge 
 to innocence; they have been superseded both by the semi- 
 martial-law an(4the provost-marshal machinery. 
 
DEMOCRATIC ADDKESS. 10 
 
 4. Struck at the foundations of public and private credit, bv 
 making creditors release their debtors for Federal notes ; anil 
 by constructing an enormous debt of complicated charac- 
 ter, and associated darkly with a mystcrions banking-system 
 which is intended to take away fix)m "the i)Oor what little'prO]>- 
 «rty they might have saved from the wrwk of the Union. It 
 was not enough their sons and daughters were sa(;rific'ed to tiie 
 Moloch of war, their savings must be borrowed and wasted by 
 the government without their consent. 
 
 5. Struck at the integrity of the States, by dividing Virginia 
 in two without any pretense of the only consent which can author- 
 ize it: the free will and consent of that State, taken first as 
 an entirety ; and, secondly, the sense of the so-called new State. 
 
 6. Struck at the whole theory of the Federal system, by the 
 Conscription Act, before which he had unconstitutionally thrust 
 soldiers of the Federal army into the territory of all the States 
 of the North, without the constitutional consent of their govern- 
 ments, and by which he claims to put aside the Constitution 
 and do anything he likes " to subdue the enemy." The States, 
 each of them, has a right to its own militia for self-defense, 
 the men and officers, until they have been mustered into Fed- 
 eral service; and no other earthly power can constitutionally 
 draft them, and call them " national forces," without crushing 
 the whole confederation of States, by that blow, into a consolid- 
 ated democracy. It is the end of the Constitution and of the 
 Union under the Constitution. 
 
 7. Struck at all the fundamental conditions of American 
 liberty, in dispersing peccable assemblies by the bayonet, in 
 ordering candidates for political offices not to canvass, under 
 pain of displeasure, and of not being allowed, if elected, to 
 serve; in suppressing newspapers, and fettering the use of 
 speech, thought and publication, and in partially disarming the 
 people. 
 
 8. Struck at the distinction of races, by recognizing the 
 equality of the blacks, and by authorizing their enlistment in 
 the North, and their mixing with white troops. Has disarmed 
 the people of the great and fallen city of New Orleans, who were 
 charged with want of affection for the Federal Government, 
 and in various ways stimulated the slaves, who have the range 
 of the houses, as well as the freedom of the city, in the day- 
 time, and are locked up in their masters' dwellings, with the 
 whole family of women and children, at night, to arson and 
 murder; by exhibiting other slaves in military array, under 
 the stars and stripes, officered by blacks and whites. 
 
 9. Struck at the humane provisions of the Constitution res- 
 pecting treason, by sweeping confiscations of the property of 
 
20 PEACEABLE SEPAEATIOK', 
 
 the snspcf'tcd, wliich arc properly forbidden for any longer 
 period than the life of a traitor; and by announcinjr new' and 
 illegal definitions of tlie highest of State crimes. We can not 
 avoid reference, only, to the horrid threat of exterminating the 
 M-hites of the South, and giving np their plantations to slaveg, 
 for which we hope the fonl fiend himself, and nobody in 
 hnman form, will choose coolly to make himself responsible. 
 
 1(1. Struck, not only at State and personal rights, but at 
 State lines themselves, which, by his system, no longer exist, 
 except as boundaries for provost-marshal districts, and for mu- 
 nicipal corporations, subordinate to the Federal Government, 
 as counties are to States. 
 
 11. Struck at the dignity of human nature and the only trne 
 organization of society, by silencing the natural leaders of the 
 people, who are opposed to his usurpation, aiid whose higli 
 mission in peaceful times it is, by open, free, calm and wise 
 discussion, to advance the standard of intelligence and virtue 
 to every part of the land, and in times of danger to appease 
 the passions, warm the hearts, inform the understandings, and 
 guide the steps of those who look to them for counsel and 
 example. That divinely constituted state of society has been 
 overthrown by the acts of the Administration, and the social 
 pyramid is inverted upon its apex. In place of the civil 
 strength and order which reigned before, we have chaos and 
 paralysis. The misguided attempt to supply the places made 
 vacant in our organization, by the expense, waste, corruption, 
 confusion and horrors of war, and the violent ingress among 
 peaceful citizens and pursuits, of the h#rdes of military leaders 
 and followers, the habits and the abuses of military camps, 
 can only terminate in the destruction or change of om* institu- 
 tions, unless now at once arrested. 
 
 And yet, frightful as this array of charges is against Lin- 
 coln and his Administration, we do not hesitate to say that it 
 accords to the theor}^ of the Federal system, which, although 
 utterly false, can be suggested for him, and has been thus far 
 acted upon, not only by Republicans, but by some Dem.ocrats — • 
 we mean, that all these doings can be vindicated by holding 
 that the Federal system is founded upon a social compact of 
 the whole American people. In that most erroneous — most 
 untenable — most fatal assumption, the genius of Lincolnism 
 will, some day, place himself to defend his party, and destro}^ 
 his country. It is a most serious and responsible duty to bring 
 tiiis theory to the test, as we have already done, by comparing 
 it with the established f^icts of Iiistory and philosoj)hy ; and 
 we will now further do so in the simj>lest and most familiar 
 form of analysis and demonstration. We will take our own 
 
DEMO€KATIC ADDKKSS. 21 
 
 example; wo. will propose the case of the State of Ohio, by way 
 of comparison : and suppose that Lincoln was the Governor, 
 instead of Tod; and that the Cont^ress was an Ohio Ix^g'islaturc 
 at Colnmbus, instead of Washington. Let us, also, confound 
 the eighty-eight counties, as Lincoln does, with the thirty-four 
 States ; and then create the same strife, beginning at one 
 county, say Hamilton, and running up to a score, say the 
 whole tier of counties on the Ohio river. 
 
 At the start, we have the case of eighty-seven counties en- 
 deavoring to coerce one recusant county, in order to defeat her 
 ]>urpose of separating from the others, and joining herself to 
 Kentucky; and, as the contagion spreads, the case of sixty- 
 eight against twenty counties. Now, t^ccording to our public 
 law, the whole people of Ohio are one homogeneous people, 
 comprising the State of Ohio, and all of them are citizens of 
 Ohio, and of no other State, any more than the people of any 
 other State are people of Ohio, and not their own people. The 
 people of Ohio, before she became a member of the Union, 
 formed a social and political organization, bound up indissolu- 
 bly together by what the law calls the social compact, resting 
 upon the unanimous consent of every soul on her soil into a 
 State. Ohio was the same integral thing after her admission, 
 as before; she was a State; and there can be no State without 
 sovereignty, which is the test of peoplehood or public man- 
 hood — a term correlative to majority or the private manhood 
 of individuals. 
 
 Startling as tlie declaration may be, it follows, logically and 
 irresistibly, from these premises, that Governor Lincoln M'ould 
 have the right, if the case were as supposed, to call upon the 
 Legislature to assist him in coercing Hamilton county and the 
 border counties into their old relation to the State. He would 
 have the right to make war, on behalf of the counties loyal to 
 the^State, against the dislo3'al counties, and to crush any domes- 
 tie opposition to his progress, almost, if not quite, to the point 
 of exliaustion of the State resources, and completely setting 
 aside the Constituti<3n. It would be a w-ar of self-defense, 
 against an attempt to destroy the peoplehood, the one, firm, 
 united, and inseparable entirety of the State of OSiio, or, at least, 
 to tear away a vital portion of it. And it would be analogous 
 to the case of defense of life or limb, in an individual, where 
 self-preservation became the supreine law, and aggressors are to 
 be repelled by every means, and at all hazards. It is suicide to 
 permit it, and can only, at worst, be homicide to prevent it, and 
 justifiable homicide instead of unjustifiable suicide. The Legis- 
 lature w^ould pass any laws that might be required, the citizens 
 would volunteer, or could be compelled, if necessary, to fight 
 
22 PEACEABLE SEPAKATION. 
 
 it out. And the peo])le, eoi masse^ could change the Constitn- 
 tion or suspend it, and g-o, intentionally, into a state of actual 
 revolution, to prevent the secession of its territory and the 
 death of its sovereignty. There is no doubt about their consent 
 to such extremes in such a case ; and as little that it would be 
 asked as well as given. And why not, when, according to our 
 American doctrine, evenj people liave the right, at any time, 
 to alter, abridge, or do as they please -with their Constitution 
 and government and set up any other. This is sovereignty, or 
 the final constitution-making power, above the laws and superior 
 to any other power by which the totality of the people, but not 
 a majority nor any other fraction, can create or destroy their 
 institutions. It is inalienable, and, like a circle or a square, it 
 is indivisible and has no equivalent : on earth it has no supe- 
 rior. Tlie whole people of Ohio, for example, may make a dic- 
 tator to-morrow, and pledge him the support of the last dollar 
 and of the last man ; and we hold that a very large majority, 
 in practice, may do it : eighty -seven counties against one, cer- 
 tainly, in order to protect the State against county-disintegra- 
 tion. What would be the use of hesitation or of complaint?' 
 
 Governor Lincoln, of Ohio, whose institution of domestic 
 government rests upon the ground of the social compact of all 
 the people of Ohio, might, in such an extremity as is suggested, 
 do almost anything to arrest the evil, and use means far more 
 sanguinary than any to Avhich he has resorted. Such would be 
 his legal right, and such his revolutionary duty ; but we do not 
 assert, that even in the case of county-secession, there might not 
 have been so much apprehension of the recusant as morally tO' 
 justify the attempt to throw off the allegiance of her citizens to^ 
 the State. 
 
 Thus is presented to you, fellow-citizens, the great fact that the 
 present sectional war of States is no question of county-rebellion, 
 nor of mere abuse of delegated power, it is a question of polit^jcal 
 systems, which is not to be ignored by us, nor to be solved other- 
 wise than by science and logic, if solved to the credit of the 
 parties. Until we can show that the Union rests on the social 
 compact, or can show^ that there is no difference between a 
 social compact and a confederation of States, then the North 
 has lost, as England lost, the intellectual victory, which is- 
 always conclusive of the result. 
 
 And this is the point tu speak of the superficial view taken, 
 of the great struggle, by the empirics of the Kurtli. 
 
 They are roused, principally, as it would appear, by their own 
 calamities: by arbitrary arrests; by the suspension of hahea» 
 corpns ; by interference with their right to speak and print, 
 and the privations and dangers of imprisonment. On the heart 
 
DEMOCKATIC ADDRESS. 23 
 
 of the issue they have a rabble of notions as vague as those 
 are, generally, which are entertained by every body about the 
 rights of other people. Various and discordant, and by no 
 means persistent, are their opinions of the line of duty for 
 themselves. They are for the Union as it was, and the Constitu- 
 tion as it is ; for the more or less vigorous prosecution of the 
 war, and then not for any kind of prosecution ; indeed fur the 
 vigorous prosecution of a peace; and they are, lately, for join- 
 ing a Southern Confederation and leaving out Xew-Kiiglaiul, 
 and they call mass-meetings to hear stories of personal trouble 
 brought on them by Lincoln, because they have meddled with 
 the way that he has done his business, whicli meddling they take 
 occasion to deny, or to conceal, or to justify by the Constitution. 
 They regard their own j)ersonal griefs as irregularities of the 
 government, not being set down in conformity to its functions as 
 prescribed by law. They complain that forms are not respected, 
 just as the almanac-farmer does who loses his crop by a fall of 
 rain or hail, or snow or frost, out of season, when he blames 
 the weather. They have never yet got so far into the subject 
 as to dream that the Federal system has been destroyed by the 
 vengeful hostilities which have wrenched it asunder in the pres- 
 ent war. Those who do stop a little to consider whether the 
 Federal government has a right to coerce a State or not, and 
 " whose failings lean to virtue's side," do so unscientifically 
 and upon authority alone. They resemble the rude Indian 
 astronomer, who had no idea of the globe's suspension upon a 
 principle in space, but thought that it was either round or flat, 
 and was sure, at all events, that it stood upon the broad back 
 of an elephant, which stood, in turn, upon the broader back of 
 a Gallipagos turtle, which, however, unlike all his descendants, 
 had the faculty of standing upon nothing. After all, those 
 Northern statesmen who have addressed themselves to the 
 solution of the crisis seem to have been stopped at the thresh- 
 old, and, as we have suggested, with the stimulus of ambition 
 and the love of spoils compelling them to utterance, have, thus 
 far, been only able to join themselves to Lincoln, body and 
 soul, in doctrine, as the oriental joins himself to his idol. After 
 much incantation and astrology, they proclaim that none but 
 democrats should be elected to office, for that they can do 
 Lincoln's business better than he is doing it himself. The peo- 
 ple might have expected such shallowness of mind, such ]>ov- 
 erty of thought and such hardness of heart from the caucus 
 politicians who have so long cultivated duUnes and silence, and 
 made themselves ridiculous by confinement to their own stupid 
 society, during all the year, except that barren season when 
 they are to be seen and lieard, making night hideous and owls 
 
24 I'EACEARLE SEPARATIOX. 
 
 rospectrtl)le, at every election-precinct, from Dan to I]eersliel<a. 
 The intellectual fannne at the North is far more intoleraI»le 
 than the -want of liread and meat at the South ; and if we con- 
 tiime to relj on the put-house and cross-roads, for supplies of 
 democratic doctrine, it will be all over with us, and we shall 
 not achieve nor enjoy the conquest we propose. 
 
 A most profound and unexampled disturbance has taken ];>lace 
 in our Federal system ; it has gone the length of a disruption 
 of the one-third of the wholS, and the utmost danger to the re- 
 mainder of the States. And as circumspection and reflection, 
 at such a time, should be the great pursuits of all the thinkers 
 of the land, let us not empirically dismiss such a sad and over- 
 whelming catastrophe, M'ithout looking into its higliest heights 
 and its deepest depths ; looking about us, before and after, and 
 well weighing all the consequences near and remote. Above 
 all, Tet us ascend to the cause of it, and ascertain by what laws 
 the system has been shakqji, and by what resources its wounds 
 can be healed ; and if it must be permanently divided, as it is 
 now threatened, into two confederations, let us make the best 
 of it, preserving thereby our lives, fortunes and~~honor, and 
 what is of, at least, equal worth, the principles of such a system 
 among ourselves, whatever may be its ultimate fate in the South. 
 And let the masses of the people cease to pay any attention 
 whatever to the noise makers and non-experts, whose opinion 
 would not be taken upon the interpretation of a deed for an inch 
 of ground, or a contract for a day's wages. At least, we hope 
 to be spared the repetition of their jargon so hurtful to good 
 counsel, and, probably, the producing cause of the evils of our 
 times. Let us all resort to the wisdom, patience and science of 
 those who make no noise, and, by a constant habit of discussinn 
 and comparison, are likely to be equal to an emergency. Take 
 their advice, and if it sink into your minds, then it will soon 
 enter into the enactment of the laws, and, before and after that 
 period, will control the Government, and bring both blessings 
 and bei^etits by the hundred fold. 
 
 If the solar system, which is fortunately not in man's hand, 
 but in God's, and which is, therefore, organized in perfect con- 
 trast to our Federal system, were disturbed to like extent, by 
 some portentious intrusion of force and discord, to the ruin of 
 half its spheres, relying implicitly upon Providence, we should 
 nevertheless take the opinions of learned astronomers, not known 
 at all to our leading men, our men of high honor, our ward 
 and township politicians. And we should be sure to spurn 
 other advice, especially the speculations of "the member from 
 Hamilton," etc., on the stupendous occasion, llis appearance, 
 as a teacher upon such a scene, would be resented by the pub- 
 
DEMOCRATIC ADDKESS. 25 
 
 lie of all classes, even on tbe lowest forms of the common 
 schools. And why should he intrude, or be tolerated upon any 
 account during such soleum iftoments as have, at last, astoinulud 
 and demented the people of the States of the North and West, 
 not less than those of the South ? 
 
 It is not, we confess, upon any other party, in politics, than 
 the old State Riglits' Party, which is immortidized by the Ken- 
 tucky and Virginia Resolutions, and the Report upon Federal 
 relations, in 1798, that we can rely fur the safety of the Con- 
 stitution, which is all there is to save, the Union being gone to 
 fragments. We can not, certainly, stake licart or hope in such 
 an issue upon tlie Republicans who rose out of an ephemeral 
 convulsion of the country, an avowedly unconstitutional party, 
 which denied the equality of the States. We can have as little 
 reliance upon the American Party, which has always been, also, 
 an unconstitutional party, denying the equality of citizens, and 
 which is now, atiter bitter opposition, and even aversion, uniting 
 with its violence to the Constitution, the twin violence of that 
 instrument by the Republicans. To neither of these, who are 
 not only false in doctrine, but positively phrenzied in action, 
 can we commit, for any considerable period, the fortunes of the 
 great Republic: — and least of all, hope for any noble settle- 
 ment of our aflairs. Some organization being necessary with 
 its strength of numbers, intelligence, patriotism and renown, to 
 meet the tremendous weight of responsibility, we are compelled 
 to turn our eyes upon that party whose priesthood presided 
 when all the favors of Providence to the colonies were crowned 
 by the gift of the Constitution, wiser as its authors believed, than 
 those who framed it, and the creature not so much of the men 
 who deliberated, as of the circumstances so ordered by higher 
 powers that their feet could not go astray. 
 
 Lincoln has at his back all the organisations, except that of 
 the States' Rights' Party. Both the Americans and Repub- 
 licans support his administration. He is in office, and possesses 
 the control over his cabinet and the rest of the Executive, over 
 both branches of Congress, over the Judiciary. He commands 
 the army and navy, and the treasury. Capital and credit seem 
 to have resolved to make with him common and inseparable 
 cause. The big cities of the North, and their banks, and 
 merchants, and professional men ; the pulpits and the free 
 sdiools ; the teachers ; the vast majority of the press : these are 
 all holding up his hands, and their own, for a more and more 
 vigorous prosecution of the war of sections. Nor is that all. 
 Lincoln has his doctrine too, although that being a thing not 
 obvious to the senses, he does not yet comprehend it ; but it is 
 the only foundation for his acts, and, therefore, must, at length, 
 
26 TEACEABLE gEPARATIOX 
 
 o-<'t the credit it deserves of liaviti<^, for two years, furnished 
 that niii form rule by wliich they are squared. He will avow, 
 Bome day, tiiat he thinks he is justified in all he has done, by 
 the soeial-conipact doctrine, giving him authority to go forward 
 in the name, and for the best interest of the whole American 
 people. In spite of the history and theory of the system he ad- 
 ministers, in spite of the language he is compelled to use when 
 Bpeakingof our institutions, Union, Federal, tinited, all implying 
 a combination of sovereignties, a confederation of States, he 
 will insist that onr Union is but the aggregate of the whole 
 American people. 
 
 There is nothing, therefore, which can protect the system, 
 and enable lis to dislodge its enemies, and afterwards bring it 
 back to the spot of its origin, and the orbit to which it belongs, 
 except the announcement of the doctrine, and an explanation of 
 the theory of State Rights. ^Ve know tliat any abstruse thing is 
 distasteful to the North, where there are so many extemporaneous 
 talkers and people of insight. It will bo called theoretical, 
 and, possibly, metaphysical, to banish shams and errors, and 
 restore the controversy to its principles ; to which we reply 
 that it is both, and if intended as a reproach, we explain that 
 we have a great regard for theory, because it is w^hat men 
 think; and that as to metaphysics, it is not mere scholastic 
 refinement, but it is the process of analysis and generalization, 
 and synthesis, by which the relations and the laws of flicts are 
 established. And we have to say, that by these two qualities 
 of thinking, and logical thinking, is man distinguished even 
 more than by the human form, from the lower animals. 
 
 The South has from the very beginning, and before the pres- 
 ent century, upon occasion of the Alien and Sedition laws, by 
 the pen of tiie civil chiefs of the Revolution, Jeflerson and 
 Madison, set forth, in fit and express terms, her views of State 
 Rights, and of the limited powers of the Federal Govern- 
 ment. Her exposition has never since been answered, but 
 was at once acce])ted, not less by the people than by the 
 leaders. Adams fell — Jefferson rose; and the doctrines of 
 Jefferson and his school have been the rule of constitutional 
 interpretation. They are cut into the tables of the law, along- 
 side of the text itself. And the short expression of them is as 
 follows : 
 
 " That the 2)eoph?s of the several States of the United States 
 are united as parties to a constitutional compact^ to whioh 
 the people of each State acceded as a separate and sovereign 
 comvumity^ each l)i7iding itself hy its own particular ratifi- 
 cation ; and that the Union^ of ivhich the compact is the 
 lond, is a Pinion hetween the States ratifying the same; 
 
DEilOCKATIC ADDRKSS. 27 
 
 {and Contra,) that the assertion, that the people of the United 
 States, taken collectively as individuals, are ^low, or ever have 
 been, imited on the principle of the social comjyact, is not 
 only untrue, hut contrary to the most certain historical facts, 
 and to the clearest deductions of reason and justice^ 
 
 We must follow the Sonth iu her creed thus expressed, or 
 we mnst wander away after strange teachers, and be lost iu 
 the lab)u-inth of glosses and raystitications. The South will 
 adhere to her ark of safety to the last; and she has mani- 
 fested by the vigor of her arms how important it is to tight 
 upon a clear and definite knowledge of her rights. With res- 
 pect to the acts of secession, they are based upon three formid- 
 able grounds, which get great support from the first example 
 of the secession of the Colonies from England in 1770. 
 
 1. That there was a special reservation of the right to 
 secede recited by the States of New York, Virginia and 
 Rhode Island in their respective ratifications or accessions to 
 the Constitution. By public law, all these reservations inure 
 to the other States. 
 
 2. That by the law of co-partnership among individuals,, 
 from which the Federal compact can not, in principle, be dis- 
 tinguished, any member of the firm may withdaw at his pleas- 
 ure, which withdrawal dissolves the co-partnership, and makes 
 all the joint property thereafter common property. There can 
 be neither damages nor coercion, because the retiring partner 
 has only exercised a right belonging to every one, where there 
 is no limitation of time in the agreement. — 3 Kent, 53. 
 
 3. That the American Revolution was not only a secession, 
 but that secession was the great, new, radical, political right 
 which that Revolution originated. The controversy was begun 
 for the rights of Englishmen, viz., representation and self- 
 taxation, trial by jury of the vicinage, habeas corpus, free 
 speech, free press, free worship, written forms of criminal pro- 
 cedure, etc., etc.; but it ended in establishing colonial inde- 
 pendence. The whole struggle was analogous to the present 
 one, being for the undoubted right of self-government, and 
 carried on between colonies, all slaveholding, with the parent 
 Stat-e, which was non-slaveholding. The Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence is the law of the situation in 18(33, as it was of 
 1776-83, and its leading truth is, that governments can only 
 stand on the consent of the governed ; and that every people 
 have the right to alter or abolish their form of government, 
 and set up any other. They may, therefore, alter the Confed- 
 erate, or any other part of the Federal system, or destroy it, 
 so far as they are concerned, altogether. Any other doctrine 
 contradicts the philosophy of the^Revolution, and repudiates 
 
28 TEACEADLE SEl'AKATION, 
 
 the Declaration, and it reconstructs the overtiirown assumption 
 of Eiiirhuid, that her will, and not that of the colonists, should 
 be the law of the New World. 
 
 Whatever criticism may be made upon these points of justi- 
 fication, it will be agreed by all dispassionate patriots' that 
 they demand a reply; and the people of the Northern States, 
 as well as the Southern, have a right to be told, at the bar of 
 miiversal, civilized public opinion, what are the grouuds upon 
 which they are assailed and sought to be overthrown. Before 
 that august and final tribunal, on the pending issue of Ameri- 
 can rights and duties, do the parties to the present war take 
 their stand ; they can not plead to the jurisdiction, nor expect 
 to evade the deliberate, final judgment of theii- cause. 
 
 We are in favor of such a conclusion of the matter as stated in 
 the beginning. We are for no supererogation, so far as North 
 or South are concerned. They ought to separate, and will 
 separate: the question is not whether they could agree to it 
 theoretically in some assembly, or before an umpire. The sep- 
 aration is an accomplished fact. The only question is about 
 ^ihe border States of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Tennessee 
 'and Missouri, and both prudence and principle require that 
 each of these should deliberately come to her decision, where 
 she will go, in her own convention. We have always, since 
 the year ISGO, been opposed to any attempt, by Crittenden res- 
 olutions, or otherwise, to amend the Constitution. They were 
 so perfectly futile, as to impeach the good sense of the people. 
 Three-fourths of the States had to consent to tolerate slavery 
 south of 3Q^. 30' and abolish it north of it. They never could 
 be had. by any earthly possibility, and the age of miracles 
 has followed the example of the age of chivalry. We are, for 
 the same reason, and many others, opposed to any call for 
 conventions of Western, or Southern, or Eastern States, or for 
 a national convention. Futile and also preposterous. Nor are 
 we to be answered that the Stjuth commenced the war. That 
 is, at least, doubtful in spirit — for he who makes the blov/ we 
 give him inevitable, is the ]-esponsible person. Nor do we 
 care to know in this, any more than in cases of conjugal strife, 
 who begun it. The point remains that the relation is compatible 
 or not, and that decides the question of union or separation, 
 and not any casualty. Like quarrelsome man and wife, both 
 are always right, and neither in the wrong; and the Union is 
 (juite as much involved in bad feeling, as ever was any unha})py 
 household. What we do perfectly know is, that, if we people 
 of the North lived in the South, we should, in all human prob- 
 ability, take their view of the whole controversy with the same 
 conlidence \ve now feel ujwn our side. And nothing can be more 
 
democeatic adduess. 29 
 
 certain than that, if we were only ca])able, standing wliore we 
 lire, of reversing the case, we would come to the very opposite 
 opinion. It is certainly most instructive to us, and conclusivo 
 of the merits of this controversy, that, if we did perfoirni only 
 our bounden duty, as logicians, of changing Y)laces with the 
 South, in this discussion, and reversing, thereby, the parties 
 only to the contest, without touching its merits, we should 
 decide the question of right whatever we miglit say of expe- 
 diency, precisely as the South has done. 
 
 Let us suppose, for the argument's sake, that Ohio, because 
 she disliked slavery and slaveholders, or free trade, or both, 
 determined to hold no more intercourse with slavelioldcrs, or 
 free traders, but would withdraw from any longer union with 
 them, under a common government, and advise her Northern 
 sisters to do likewise, which they would be apt to do; and 
 suppose, the South, instead of good-natured assent, flew into 
 a passion, and attempted coercion and subjugation, with invasion, 
 by land and water, of Ohio and the North ; " what arrogance 
 and folly ! " would not every one of us exclaim ? and how 
 entirely subversive of the terms and spirit of the Union of oui 
 fathers ! If the South insisted on a tight, she would be accom- 
 modated, and, doubtless, expelled from our territory, although 
 she might be as strong as we think ourselves, and we as weak 
 as we say they are at the South. And that leads to a kindred 
 suggestion, that, if we had been as much the weaker as we are, 
 relatively, the stronger section, we would never have engaged 
 in hostilities to restore the Union and the Constitution. And 
 that to another, that we deceive ourselves about the compari- 
 son of strength, which has had so much to do with our self- 
 deception about invincible Northern arms. The conditions of 
 our battles and campaigns are unequal, and against us. We 
 are compelled to go after the adversary, strangers in an unknown, 
 hostile, and distant country ; on such terms, the two sections 
 are equally matched, much more so than any body has publicly 
 admitted. A dwarf lifting Muth his shoulder can raise inore 
 than a giant at arm's length, which is the actual disadvantage 
 on our side. And that leads us to a further observation, that 
 we have no more idea of submitting to the South, than we have 
 of subjugating her. If she dares to undertake what wo arc 
 prosecuting against her, a war of invasion, then, upon her own 
 doctrine, which is nothing more nor less than that of Belt- 
 defense, we are for giving her the same reception. As to the 
 navigation of the Mississippi, the interests of Louisiana and 
 the South are quite as great, in its perfect freedom, as are ours. 
 That State made it the condition of her entering the Confeder- 
 ation of Southern States, and they have continually offered it 
 
30 I'EACEABLE SErARATION. 
 
 to US, and if we do not get it, the refusal will he a wanton 
 breach of compact, f(jr which we will have somethin^i; to fight 
 about. And as to perpetual border wars, with which we are 
 asked to torment ourselves; although our relations may not 
 always be peaceful, we shall not have more strife on the Mis- 
 sissippi than we have had upon the St. Lawrence ; and, indeed, 
 after the dreadful lessons of our existing struggle, it will be 
 quite as natural to anticipate a long period of harmony and 
 nnitual respect, as any renewal of hostilities. It is certain that 
 the future will never catch us so ill prepared for resorting to the 
 arbitration of force, nor, probably, so eager to demand it. The 
 influence of the West, in favor of free trade and low tariffs, 
 and hard money, which have become her fixed ideas, will have 
 a most powerful tendency to promote good relations with our 
 neighbors on the left bank of our inland seas, and we presume, 
 it is neither blindness nor treason, to expi-ess the hope that we 
 may, sometime, be divided only by the long water line of 
 separation ; nor even to pi'edict that that line may become one 
 of communication always, and, ultiniately, of close connection 
 as friendly nations, and, perhaps, of actual union in the old 
 form of political association. Perchance, the removal of the 
 capital, or the election of a great Western President with a 
 genius commensurate with the demands of the continent, or 
 some movement of the affairs of the world, or some special 
 providence, may prepare the way for that desirable event. It 
 must not be looked for this generation ; it may come the next, 
 if we discontinue the war. 
 
 It would seem not oidy desirable, but almost inevitable, tha< 
 the day must come, when, under institutions identical or kin- 
 dred to those we have, all the people of the valley through 
 which the Father of Waters spreads his branches, like the mus 
 tard-tree of the Bible, which sheltered the birds of the air, will 
 gather themselves together, into one political society, with 
 ''One from Many," E phirihus Unum^ still the motto, and the 
 flag of beauty and of glory, the emblem still of an ocean- 
 bctund Republican Confederation. 
 
 But the past only is ours, and the fleeting present is hasten- 
 ing away into the far future, over troubled and treacherous 
 tides. AV^e feel that peace is blessed at all times and places, 
 if it be honorable; and that peace which terminates the strife 
 of brethren is both blessed and honorable: on the contrary, 
 that of all the horrors, war is the most horrible ; and, that, of 
 all wars, sectional wars are the most vindictive, sanguinary, 
 and deplorable. 
 
 In the name uf the youth of both sexes, who are so cruelly 
 cut off and consumed by the sacriflces to Moloch ; in the name 
 
DEMOCRATIC ADDRESS. 31 
 
 of the old of both sexes, who ai-e so deeply tried, so heavily 
 taxed by losses of goods, and terrible losses of sons and daugh- 
 ters ; in the name of humanity and philanthropy ; in the venera- 
 ble name of our distressed country ; in the name of general 
 public opinion, which at last holds sway ; in the name of reli- 
 gion, and of that great and good God, wdio is Lord of all — we 
 implore our fellow-countrymen and countrywomen, of the sev- 
 eral States of the West and Xorth, to pray for peace and the 
 timely separation of the belligerants, so that we may hear, 
 again, the voice of reason and the counsels of the wise, and 
 turn back the flames of universal conflagration from our homes, 
 our hearths, and our altars. 
 
 EQUAL RIGHTS, 
 
 COMMON SENSE. 
 
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