E 458 rosecution of the war, is an auxiliary of the public enemy. The question is, whether war with the emancipation Proclamation shall be maintained against the rebellion, or whether the rebellion shall be allowed to go on unresisted on account of the Pro- clamation ? In other words, whether aid shall be given to the administration of Abraham Lincoln or the usurpation of Jefferson Davis. Great dissatisfaction has also been created by permitting arbitrarj' arrests by military authority in States which are loyal, and in which the machinery of the Courts is in fuL operation. Condemnation of these in speech or through the press is one of the prerogatives of free discussion. But when opposition is carried to the extremity of withholding support from the government in carrj^ing on the war, or rushing into open resistance to it, a crime is committed and the public enemy is aided and encouraged. This is now the imminent danger which threatens the 6 democratic party. Opposition to the measures referred to has degenerated into opposition to the war. The law authorizing a draft of men to replenish the ranks of the army has been virulently condemned by leading members and lead- ing presses of the democratic party y and every eifort has been made to defeat its execution and to prevent the government from getting men under it. It has been denounced as un- constitutional, arbitrary, unprecedented, and a measure of tyranny to which the Anglo-Saxon race has never submitted. These misrepresentations, sustained in many instances by high authority, have done much to render the measure odious and to defeat its purpose. Of the necessity of the act I have nothing to say, except- ing what all know, that it was found impracticable to keep up the numerical force of the army to the proper standard by voluntary enlistment. It was passed by Congress under a sense ostitutional History of England. It was adopted in Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia, under the colonial regime, and continued after they had thrown off their allegiance to the British crown. It had the leading features of tlie present draft — substitutes and pecuniary contribution as a commutation for personal service. It was continued by the United States, under the Articles of Con- federation, till Congress, under the Constitution, was invested with the unlimited power to " raise and support armies." It is peculiarly and preeminently an Anglo-Saxon method^of j)ro- viding for great public emergencies : but in the heat of party strife men become as untrue to history as they are to the duties of citizenship. In this State the denunciations hurled against the present draft by the press, and by men high in position, led to the most disgraceful riot known to the history of the country, in which hundreds of lives were lost, and delayed the execution of the measure for a period, which will not fall short of two months. If the law had been cheerfully obeyed ; if those who have been busy in denouncing it had been as earnest in their appeals to the patriotism of the people to carry it out, a great public dishonor would probably have been averted, and Lee's army, the last dependence of the insurgents, might ere this have been hopelessly crippled or dispersed. From the period of the Confederation, this mode of re- plenishing the army has been called a draft, and the men enrolled for service drafted men. The federalists in 1814 gave it, in order to render it odious, the name of conscrip- tion. The same course is adopted by its enemies now. Some who are supporters of the law have, it is true, with a looseness of expression by no means creditable to them, applied to it the term by which it was stigmatized by the enemies of the 8 democracy, in the war of 1812 : but it is unknown to tlie law and to tlie instructions of the government, and a persist- ence in the use of a term which suggests the severe French system of compulsion, and keeps out of view the compara- tively mild Anglo-Saxon draft, cannot be dictated by a pat- riotic motive. In 1814, after the desperate contests on the Niagara fron- tier, when it became necessary to fill up the ranks of the army, and when volunteering, as now, had become an un- certain reliance, Mr. Monroe, then acting Secretary of State and Secretary of War, and afterward President of the United States, proposed several plans, one of which, and the most prominent, was a draft. Mr. Madison, w]io was President, referred to it in terms of approval in his message to Con- gress. Mr. Monroe, in his letter to the Committee of the House of Pepresentatives, defended the measure in a clear and un- answerable argument, from wliich tliere is room only for tlie following extracts : " In proposing a draft as one of the modes of rcaising men in case of actual necessity in the present great emergency of the country, I have thought it my duty to examine such objections to it as occurred, partic- ularly those of a constitutional nature. It is from my sacred regard to the principles of our Constitution that I have ventured to trouble the Committee with any remarks on this part of the subject." " Congress have a riglit by the Constitution to raise regular armies, and no restraint is imposed in tlie exercise of it, except in the provisions which are intended to guard generally against the abuse of power, with none of which does this plan interfere." " An uncjualified grant of power gives the means necessary to carry it into effect. This is a universal maxim, which admits of no exception." " The commonwealth has a right to the service of all its citizens, or rather the citizens composing the commonwealth have a right collec- tively and individually to the service of each other to repel any danger which may be menaced." /Uo ' " The plan proposed is not more compiilsive than the militia service." These extracts indicate the tone of tlie argument in favor of the constitutionality of the measure, as well as its neces- sity, its propriety, and its justice. The measure was immediately assailed as unconstitutional by the leading federalists in Congress, It was denounced as an odious conscription, and in much the same language as its opponents denounce it now. Jeremiah Mason, of New Hampshire, admitted to have been the ablest federal sena- tor in Congress at that time, spoke against it. Mr. Goldsborough, a federal senator from Maryland, said : " A few years past, and the name of conscription was never uttered ' but it was coupled with execration. Last year it found its way into a letter from the Secretary at War to the Chairman of the Military Com- mittee, and it was then so odious that it was but little exposed to view. This year we have conscription openly recommended to us by the Secre- tary at "War [Mr. Monroe] in an official paper; and worst of all, it finds champions and advocates on this floor." In the House of Eepresentatives, Mr. Cj-rus King, a fed- eral member from Massachusetts, said : " James Madison, President of the United States, is the father of this system of conscription for America, as his unfortunate friend Bonaparte was of that of France : this he announced in his message, before referred to, as follows : ' I earnestly renew, at the same time, a recommendation of such changes in the system of militia as, by classing and disciplining for the most prompt and active service the portions most cai)able of it, will give to that great resource for the public safety all the requisite energy and efficiency.' "His plans, therefore, substantially embraced by these conscription bills, were afterward submitted to Congress by his Secretary of "War, James Monroe, and by him attempted to be recommended to the Ameri- can people by the plea of necessity : ' So spake the flend, and with necessity, Tlie tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.' 10 "Yonr President further says in the same message: 'We see the people rusliing Avith enthusiasm to the scenes where danger and duty call. lu offering their blood they give the surest pledge that no other tribute will be withheld.' If this be true, sir, where is the necessity of violating the Constitution to impose on the people a military despotism and French conscription!" Mr. Morris S. Miller, a distinguished federal member from Utica, said : " The plan which gentlemen wish adopted is conscription. They call it classification and penalty —classification and draft. Sir, there is poison in the dish : garnish it as you please, there is poison still. You call it classification The times demand that things should be called by their right names — this is conscription, and with features more hideous than are to be found in the exploded system of our unfortunate cousin of Elba." " What are the plans by wliich you intend, to fill your army? I object to them all as unconstitutional and inexpedient. They all look to force, and you have no right to raise an army except by voluntary enlist- ment." "Mr. Chairman: This plan violates the Constitution of your country. It invades the riglits of State Governments. It is a direct infringement of their sovereignty. It concentrates all power in the General Government, and deprives the States of their necessary security." " Much less can I forget that the Governor of NewYork (Mr. Tompkins), who has lent himself to the Administration as the pioneer of conscription, did pardon a horse-thief on condition that he should enlist." "I have followed four children to the tomb. Under present circum- stances ought I repine their loss? When I see the attempt to fasten this conscription on ns, ought I to regret that they have gone to heaven? My daughters, had they lived, might have been the mothers of conscripts: my sons might have been conscripts themselves." "I have carefully examined this conscription question with all the seriousness and attention required by the solemnity of the occasion. I have exercised that small measure of talent which it has pleased the Almighty to bestow upon me, and I have arrived at this conclusion : the plan of conscription violates the Constitution : it trenches on the rights of the States, and takes from them their necessary security ; it destroys all claim to personal freedom ; it will poison all the comforts of this peo- ple. In this belief I have no hesitation to say that I think it will be re- sisted, and that it ought to bo resisted." /J/ 11 Leading men of the democratic party have carried into this war the same hostility to the draft tliat Judge Miller and his federal associates in Congress carried into the war of 1812. Thereis this difference,h owever, and one by no means favorable to the opponents of the draft of the present day. Judge Miller's hostility to it was before it became a law; and his was a legitimate opposition, having for its pur- pose to prevent the adoi>tion of the measure. On the other hand, those who follow in liis footsteps resist the draft with all the moral power they can exert in order to defeat the exe- cution of a law definitively passed by both houses of Congress. Judge Miller, as a member of Congress, and a part of the law- making power, had a perfect right to oppose the measure in debate and by his vote. But those who resist it when it has become a lav/, not only viohite one of the first duties of clti- zensliip, but array themselves against the war by attempting to defeat the execution of a measure so essential to success as the recruiting of our armies. While it is the highest duty of the citizen in time of war to sustain the government against the public enemy, there has been no epoch in the history of the Eepublic, in which this obligation was more imperative than it is at the present moment. Not only is our national existence threatened by the Southern insurrection, but our enemies abroad have been busy, while domestic discord has bound our hands, in violat- ing the time-honored policy of the country. Spain has appropriated to herself another of the fertile islands of the Gulf France has overthrown the authority of a neighboring Eepublic, and is seeking to place an Austrian monarcli on an American throne. Great Britain, forgetful of her history and her good faith, and reckless of international obligations, has become a secure base for naval enterprises by rebel- 12 lions citizen's, to ravage, our commerce and insult our flag. In view of these public wrongs, and of the day of reck- oning which must come, it is no. time for our citizens to relax their ties of allegiance, or to inculcate theories which strike at the foundation of the military power of the govern- ment. On the contrar}^, it is the duty of the statesman, Avho loves his country, and would resent her wrongs, to cherish and keep alive that spirit of devotion wdiicli will enable us to present against all foes, whether domestic or foreign, an • unbroken front ; to proclaim and to exemplify in his conduct the only doctrine worth}' of a patriot, that in time of war the government is entitled to the hearty and zealous support of the whole people against the common enemy. Let me return a inoment to the year 1814. Previous to the debates in Congress referred to, important movements were in progress in the State of New York. At a special session of the Legislature, called in the month of September by Governor Tompkins, before Mr. Monroe presented his plan for a draft, Mr. Van Burcn, then a young member of the Senate, brought forward several measures to infuse new vigor into the prosecution of the war. The most prominent was a bill to place at the disposal of the general govern- ment 12,000 men for two years, to be raised by a classiflca- tion of the militia of the State. This measure encountered the most violent opposition from the federal members of the Legislature ; but it passed both houses, and became a law on the Slth of Oct. 1814, nine days after Mr. Monroe's plan was submitted to Con- gress. Of this bill Col. Benton, in a letter to the Mississippi Convention in 1840, said, that it was " the most energetic war measure ever adopted in this country." Mr. Niles (sec his "Ilcgister," Vol. 7, Nov. 2G, 1814) /^r 13 says : " The great State of New York lias taken a stand that says [to the Hartford Convention] thus far shalt thou go and no fartlier;" and at page 123, same volume: "The LegisLature adjourned on the 24th of Oct. after passing sev- eral acts of great importance. Among them is an "act to raise 12,000 men to be paid, fed, and subsisted by the United States. The men are to be raised by an equal clas- sification, and are intended as a permanent force to relieve the militia," &c. Thus it will be seen that the draft, which was proposed in Congress and adopted in New York, and which was denounced by the federalists as a conscription, as unconstitutional, ar- bitrary and tyrannical, had the support of Madison, Monroe, Tompkins, Yan Buren, and other great men of the demo- cratic party; and had not the treaty of peace, concluded at Ghent in Dec. 1814, put an end to the war, there is little doubt that this mode of replenishing the army would have been adopted in Congress as it was in New York. The course of those who are denouncing and resisting the measure now, in nearly the same manner and the same lan- guage as that in which the federalists denounced it and its authors, Madison, Monroe, and Tompkins, is in great danger of placing the democracy of the country in a position of open hostility to the government and to one of its leading war measures. If this course is persisted in and sustained by the great body of the party, its downfall is certain. Tlie danger can only be averted by an honest and unqualified support of the war. It is not enough to pass patriotic resolutions and declarations of principle. These are a mere deception un- less they are followed up by consistent acts, and by putting forward as representative men those, who have given evi- dence in their conduct that their hearts are in the great 14 struggle, in wliicli the country is engaged for tl\e preserva- tion of its life. If tliis be not done, the democracy will in- evitably draw down upon itself the popular distrust, Avhich fell upon the federal party at the close of the war of 1812, and rendered its resuscitation impossible. Into tliis abyss I will not consent to be dragged down. I have been all my life a member of the democratic party. Its principles as proclaimed by Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson, have always been, and ever will be my guides ; and while I do not deem it compatible with my military duties to take an active part in political contests, I shall do all in ray power, to rescue the part}', from the destruction with which it is menaced by the impolicy, the partisan spirit, and the want of patriotism by which some of its leading men are actuated, and to rally it, so far as my humble efforts avail, to the support of tiie government and the preservation of the Union. If it cannot be saved, I will not be an agent in its downfall. But if it is doomed to succumb to the influence of unfaithful leaders and pernicious counsels, my hope still is, that the great body of its members will, before it is too late, re-assert its ancient principles, and combining with the conservative elements of the country, will resume its proper influence in the conduct of public affairs, and guide us, as in the better days of the Kepublic, under the sacred banner of constitutional liberty and law, in our majestic nuirch to prosperity and power. I am, very respectfully, Your obedient servant, JOHN A. DIX. Messrs. Matt II. Carpenter, Lkvi IIuBiti:Li>, C. J). liolilNSOX. rf f \ \ LIBRBRY OF CONGRESS e 012 028 985 > \-, ' 7 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 012 028 985 8 pH8^