v «.k <•> •: * ^ a ' . **cF v^ v • Orals'" vi»y • ^ * : ^(P tr .v, ^ *.,"-• ^ O^ ♦.no* <0 A r <* TIT* ,o v 'o, »•» iPvs .0 .. ^ •■• a ^ "■• ^r ^ X 'V * V •— • V o*° .-A '" .* V .-. V jPv\ <* *< .7** ,0 o\^ V* :J[fc Xf* *< ■^^ ****** .0 > ^ v" ^6* ► "-.5BR-" /\ '°%W. : ♦♦*% 'SK-* /\ •? * ^ '•' r oK ^0* THE CAITS.ES AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, JOHN LATHROP MOTLEY, LL.D., D. C. L., It 7 } 7 AUTHOR OF "niSTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS," " HISTORY OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC." NEW YORK : D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 443 & 445 BROADWAY. 1861. ( 61505 '05 J tf CAUSES AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. The de facto question in America has been referred at last to the dread arbitrament of civil war. Time and events must determine whether the "great Republic" is to disappear from the roll of nations, or whether it is destined to survive the storm which has gathered over its head. There is, perhaps, a readiness in England to prejudge the case ; a disposition not to exult in our downfall, but to accept the fact ; for nations, as well as individuals, may often be addressed in the pathetic language of the poet, — "Donee eris felix, multos numerabis amicos ; Tempora cum fuerint nubila, nnllus erit." Yet the trial by the ordeal of battle has hardly commenced, and it would be presumptuous to affect to penetrate the veil of even the immediate future. But the question dejure is a different one. The right and the wrong belong to the past, are hidden by no veil, and may easily be read by all who are not wilfully blind. Yet it is often asked why have the Ameri- cans taken up arms ? Why has the United States Govern- ment plunged into what is sometimes called " this wicked war" ? Especially it is thought amazing in England that the President should have recently called for a great army of vol- unteers and regulars, and that the inhabitants of the Free States should have sprung forward as one man at his call, like men suddenly relieved from a spell. It would have been amazing had the call been longer delayed. The national flag, insulted and defied for many months, had at last been lowered, after the most astonishing kind of siege recorded in history, to an armed and organized rebellion ; and a prominent personage in the Government of the Southern " confederacy " is reported to have proclaimed amid the exultations of victory that before the 1st of May the same cherished emblem of our nationality should be struck from the capitol at Washington. An ad- vance of the " Confederate troops" upon that city ; the flight or captivity of the President and his Cabinet ; the seizure of the national archives, the national title deeds, and the whole national machinery of foreign intercourse and internal ad- ministration, by the Confederates ; and the Proclamation from the American palladium itself of the Montgomery Constitution in place of the one devised by Washington, Madison, Hamil- ton, and Jay — a constitution in which slavery should be the universal law of the land, the cornerstone of the political edi- fice — were events which seemed for a few days of intense anxiety almost probable. Had this really been the result, without a blow struck in defence of the national Government and the old Constitution, it is certain that the contumely poured forth upon the Free States by their domestic enemies, and by the world at large, would have been as richly deserved as it would have been amply bestowed. At present such a catastrophe seems to have been averted. But the levy in mass of such a vast num- ber of armed men in the Free States, in swift response to the call of the President, shows how deep and pervading is the attachment to the Constitution and to the flag of Union in the hearts of the 19,000,000 who inhabit those States. It is confidently believed, too, that the sentiment is not wholly ex- tinguished in the 9,000,000 white men who dwell in the Slave States, and that, on the contrary, there exists a large party throughout that country who believe that the Union furnishes a better protection for life, property, law, civilization, and liberty than even the indefinite extension of African slavery can do. At any rate, the loyalty of the Free States has proved more intense and passionate than it had ever been supposed to be before. It is recognized throughout their whole people that the Constitution of 1787 had made us a nation. The efforts of a certain class of politicians for a long period had been to reduce our Commonwealth to a Confederacy. So long as their efforts had been confined to argument, it was con- sidered sufficient to answer the argument ; but, now that secession, instead of remaining a topic of vehement and subtle discussion, has expanded into armed and fierce rebellion and revolution, civil war is the inevitable result. It is the result foretold by sagacious statesmen almost a generation ago, in the days of the tariff " nullification." " To begin with nulli- fication," said Daniel Webster in 1833, " with the avowed intention, nevertheless, not to proceed to secession, dismem- berment, and general revolution, is as if one were to take the plunge of Niagara, and cry out that he would stop half way down." And now the plunge of secession has been taken, and we are all struggling in the vortex of general revolution. The body politic known for 70 years as the United States of America is not a Confederacy, not a compact of Sovereign States, not a copartnership ; it is a Commonwealth, of which the Constitution drawn up at Philadelphia by the Convention of 17S7, over which Washington presided, is the organic, fundamental law. We had already had enough of a Confed- eracy. The thirteen rebel provinces, afterwards the thirteen original independent States of America, had been united to each other during the revolutionary war by articles of confed- eracy. " The said States hereby enter into a firm league of friendship vriih each other." Such was the language of 1781, and the league or treaty thus drawn up was ratified, not by the "people of the States, but by the State Governments, — the legislative and executive bodies, namely, in their cor- porate capacity. The continental Congress, which was the central adminis- trative Board during this epoch, was a diet of envoys from sovereign States. It had no power to act on individuals. It could not command the States. It could move only by re- quisitions and recommendations. Its functions were essen- tially diplomatic, like those of the States-General of the old Dutch Kepublic, like those of the modern Germanic Confedera- tion. We were a league of petty sovereignties. When the war had ceased, when our independence had been acknowledged in 1783, we sank rapidly into a condition of utter impotence, imbecility, anarchy. We had achieved our independence, but we had not constructed a nation. We were not a body politic. No laws could be enforced, no insurrections suppressed, no debts collected. Neither property nor life was secure. Great Britain had made a treaty of peace with us, but she scornfully declined a treaty of commerce and amity ; not because we had been rebels, but because we were not a State — because we were a mere dissolving league of jarring provinces, incapable of guaranteeing the stipulations of any commercial treaty. We were unable even to fulfil the conditions of the treaty of peace and enforce the stipulated collection of debts due to British subjects ; and Great Britain refused in consequence to give up the military posts which she held within our fron- tiers. For 12 years after the acknowledgment of our independ- ence we were mortified by the spectacle of foreign soldiers oc- cupying a long chain of fortresses south of the great lakes and upon our own soil. We were a confederacy. We were sov- ereign States. And these were the fruits of such a confeder- acy and of such sovereignty. It was, until the immediate present, the darkest hour of our history. But there were pa- triotic and sagacious men in those days, and their efforts at last rescued us from the condition of a confederacy. The " Constitution of the United States " was an organic law, en- acted by the sovereign people of that whole territory which is commonly called in geographies and histories the United States of America. It was empowered to act directly, by its own legislative, judicial, and executive machinery, upon every individual in the country. It could seize his property, it could take his life, for causes of which itself was the judge. The States were distinctly prohibited from opposing its decrees or from exercising any of the great functions of sovereignty. The Union alone was supreme, " any thing in the constitution and laws of the States to the contrary notwithstanding." Of what significance, then, was the title of "sovereign" States, arrogated in later days by communities which had voluntarily abdicated the most vital attributes of sovereignty ? But, in- deed, the words " sovereign " and " sovereignty " are purely inapplicable to the American system. In the Declaration of Independence the provinces declare themselves " free and in- dependent States," but the men of those days knew that the word " sovereign " was a term of feudal origin. When their connection with a time-honored feudal monarchy was abruptly severed the word " Sovereign " had no meaning for us. A sovereign is one who acknowledges no superior, who possesses the highest authority without control, who is supreme in pow- er. How could any one State of the United States claim such characteristics at all, least of all after its inhabitants, in their primary assemblies, had voted to submit themselves, without limitation of time, to a constitution which was de- clared supreme ? The only intelligible source of power in a country beginning its history de novo after a revolution, in a land never subjected to military or feudal conquest, is the will of the people of the whole land as expressed by a majority. At the present moment, unless the Southern revolution shall prove successful, the United States Government is a fact, an established authority. In the period between 1783 and 1787 we were in chaos. In May of 1787 the Convention met in Philadelphia, and, after some months' deliberation, adopted with unprecedented unanimity the project of the great law, which, so soon as it should be accepted by the people, was to be known as the Constitution of the United States. It was not a compact. Who ever heard of a compact to which there were no parties ? or who ever heard of a compact made by a single party with himself? Yet the name of no State is mentioned in the whole document ; the States them- selves are only mentioned to receive commands or prohibitions, and the " people of the United States " is the single party by whom alone the instrument is executed. The Constitution was not drawn up by the States, it was not promulgated in the name of the States, it was not ratified by the States. The States never acceded to it, and possess no power to secede from it. It " was ordained and established " over the States by a power superior to the States — by the peo- ple of the whole land in their aggregate capacity, acting through conventions of delegates expressly chosen for the purpose within each State, independently of the State Governments, after the project had been framed. There had always been two parties in the country during the brief but pregnant period between the abjuration of British authority and the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. There was a party advocating State rights and local self-government in its largest sense, and a party favoring a more consolidated and national government. The National or Federal party triumphed in the adoption of the new government. It was strenuously supported and bitterly opposed on exactly the same grounds. Its friends and foes both agreed that it had put an end to the system of confederacy. Whether it were an ad- vantageous or a noxious change, all agreed that the thing had been done. "In all our deliberations (says the letter accompanying and recommend- ing the Constitution to the people) we kept steadily in view that which ap- peared to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, safety, perhaps our na- tional existence.' 1 '' — Journal of the Contention, 1 Story, 3C8. And an eloquent opponent denounced the project for this very same reason — "That this is a consolidated Government (said Henry), is demonstrably clear. The language is ' we the people,' instead of ' we the State-.' It must be one great, consolidated national Government of the people of all tho States." And the Supreme Court of the United States, after the Government had been established, held this language in an important case, " Gibbons v. Ogden : " — "It has been said that the States were sovereign, were completely inde- pendent, and were connected with each other by a league. This is true. 8 But when these allied sovereignties converted their league into a Govern- ment, when they converted their Congress of Ambassadors into a Legisla- ture, empowered to enact laws, the whole character in which the States appear underwent a change." There was never a disposition in any quarter in the early days of onr constitutional history to deny this great fundament- al principle of the Republic. "In the most elaborate expositions of the Constitution by its friends (says Justice Story), its character as a permanent form of government, as a fundamental law, as a supreme rule, which no State was at liberty to disre- gard, to suspend, or to annul, was constantly admitted and insisted upon." — 1 Story, 325. The fears of its opponents, then, were that the new system would lead to a too strong, to an overcentralized Government. The fears of its friends were that the central power of theory would prove inefficient to cope with the local or State forces, in practice. The experience of the last thirty years, and the catastrophe of the present year, have shown which class of fears were the more reasonable. Had the Union thus established in 1787 been a confeder- acy, it might have been argued, with more or less plausibility, that the States which peaceably acceded to it might at pleas- ure peaceably secede from it. It is none the less true that- such a proceeding would have stamped the members of the convention — Washington, Madison, Jay, Hamilton, and their colleagues — with utter incompetence ; for nothing can be his- torically more certain than that their object was to extricate us from the anarchy to which that principle had brought us. " However gross a heresy it may be (says the Federalist, recommending the new Constitution) to maintain that a party to a compact has a right to revoke that compact, the doctrine has had respectable advocates. Tha pos- sibility of such a question shows the necessity of laying the foundation of our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated au- thority. The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people." Certainly, the most venerated expounders of the Constitu- tion — Jay, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, Story, Webster — were of opinion that the intention of the convention to establish a permanent, consolidated Government, a single commonwealth, had been completely successful. " The great and fundamental defect of the Confederation of 1781 (says Chancellor Kent), which led to its eventual overthrow, was that, in imita- tion of all former confederacies, it carried the decrees of the Federal Coun- cil to the States in their sovereign capacity. The great and incurable de- fect of all former Federal Governments, such as the Amphictyonic, Achaean, and Lycian Confederacies, and the Germanic, Helvetic, lianseatic, and Dutch ILcpublics, is that they were sovereignties over sovereignties. The first effort to relieve tlio people of the country from this state of national degradation and ruin came from Virginia. The general convention after- wards met at Philadelphia in May, 1787. The plan was submitted to a convention of delegates chosen by the people at large in each State for assent and ratification. Such a measure was liying the foundations of the fabric of our national polity where alone they ought to be laid. — on the broad consent of the people." — 1 Kent, 225. It is true that the consent of the people was given by the inhabitants voting in each State ; but in what other conceiv- able way could the people of the whole country have voted ? " They assembled in the several States," says Story ; " but where else could they assemble ? " Secession is, in brief, the return to chaos from which we emerged three-quarters of a century since. No logical sequence can be more perfect. If one State has a right to secede to- day, asserting what it calls its sovereignty, another may, and probably will, do the same to-morrow, a third on the next day, and so on, until there are none left to secede from. Granted the premisses that each State may peaceably secede from the Union, it follows that a county may peaceably secede from a State, and a town from a county, until there is nothing left but a horde of individuals all seceding from each other. The theory that the people of a whole country in their aggregate capacity are supreme, is intelligible ; and it has been a fact, also, in America for 70. years. But it is impossible to show, if the people of a State be sovereign, that the people of a county, or of a village, and the individuals of the village, are not equally sovereign, and justified in "resuming their sov- ereignty " when their interests or their caprice seems to impel them. The process of disintegration brings back the com- munity to barbarism, precisely as its converse has built up commonwealths — whether empires, kingdoms, or republics — out of original barbarism. Established authority, whatever the theory of its origin, is a fact. It should never be lightly or capriciously overturned. They who venture on the attempt should weigh well the responsibility that is upon them. Above all, they must expect to be arraigned for their deeds before the tribunal of the civilized world and of future ages — a court of last appeal, the code of which is based on the Divine prin- ciples of right and reason, which are dispassionate and eternal. No man, on either side of the Atlantic, with Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins, will dispute the right of a people or of any portion of a people to rise against oppression, to demand redress of grievances, and in case of denial of justice to take tip arms to vindicate the sacred principle of liberty. Few Englishmen or Americans will deny that the source of govern- 1* 10 ment is the consent of the governed, or that every nation has the right to govern itself according to its will. When the silent consent is changed to fierce remonstrance, the revolution is impending. The right of revolution is indisputable. It is written on the whole record of our race. British and Ameri- can history is made up of rebellion and revolution. Many of the crowned kings were rebels or usurpers ; Hampden, Pym, and Oliver Cromwell : Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, all were rebels. It is no word of reproach ; but these men all knew the work they had set themselves to do. They never called their rebellion " peaceable secession." They were sus- tained by the consciousness of right when they overthrew es- tablished authority, but they meant to overthrow it. They meant rebellion, civil war, bloodshed, infinite suffering for themselves and their whole generation, for they accounted them welcome substitutes for insulted liberty and violated right. There can be nothing plainer, then, than the American right of revolution. But then it should be called revolution. " Secession, as a revolutionary right," said Daniel Webster in the Senate, nearly 30 years ago, in words that now sound prophetic, — " Is intelligible. As a right to be proclaimed iu the midst of civil com- motions, and asserted at the head of armies, I can understand it. But as a practical right, existing under the Constitution, and in conformity -with its provisions, it seems to be nothing but an absurdity, for it supposes resistance to Government under authority of Government itself; it supposes dismem- berment without violating the principles of Union ; it supposes opposition to law without crime ; it supposes the violation of oaths without respon- sibility ; it supposes the total overthrow of Government without rev- olution." The men who had conducted the American people through a long and fearful revolution were the founders of the new commonwealth which permanently superseded the subverted authority of the Crown. They placed the foundations on the unbiassed, untrammelled, consent of the people. They were sick of leagues, of petty sovereignties, of Governments which could not govern a single individual. The framers of the Con- stitution, which has now endured three- quarters of a century, and under which the nation has made a material and intellec- tual progress never surpassed in history, were not such triflers as to be ignorant of the consequences of their own acts. The Constitution which they offered, and which, the people adopted as its own, talked not of Sovereign States — spoke not the word confederacy. In the very preamble to the instrument are inserted the vital words which show its character, " We, the people of the United States, to ensure a more perfect union, II and to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our pos- terity, do ordain and establish (his Constitution." Sic volo, sicjubeo. It is the language of a Sovereign solemnly speak- ing to the world. It is the promulgation of a great law, the norma agendi of a new commonwealth. It is no compact. "A compact (says Blackstone) is a promise proceeding from us. Law is a command directed to us. The language of a compact is, \\ v <, " » * <* ^-> * • • ■ \V ^- " / \ ifll^ a/\ -.ilif * : /^ IfRP ** v \ V J« ■ ■ — — •* WERT BOOKBINDINC Cranmlle Pa Marc* * AT *>V . © ■•/■\^