Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library In fa* 1 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 http://archive.org/details/staterightsphotoOOIewi_0 STATE RIGHTS PHOTOGRAPH FROM THE , RUINS OF ANCIENT GREECE, APPENDED DISSERTATIONS ON THE IDEAS OF NATIONALITY, OF SOVE- REIGNTY, AND THE RIGHT OF REVOLUTION. By PROF. TAYLER LEWIS, UNION COLLEGE. God reqnireth that which is past.— Ecclesiastcs, iii, 15. ALBANY : WEED, PARSONS AND COMPANY PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS. 1865. STATE RIGHTS : A PHOTOGRAPH FROM THE RUINS OF ANCIENT GREECE, WITH APPENDED DISSERTATIONS ON THE IDEAS OP NATIONALITY, OF SOVE- REIGNTY, AND THE RIGHT OF REVOLUTION. By PROF. TAYLER LEWIS, UNION COLLEGE. God requireth that which is past. — Ecclesiastes, iii, 15 \ ALBANY: WEED, PARSONS AND COMPANY, PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS. 1865. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and sixty-four, By WEED, PARSONS & CO., in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York. JOHN K. PORTER AND DEODATUS WRIGHT, THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY] TAYLER LEWIS. PREFACE. This little book is written for all loyal and thinking men, whose minds are intent upon the preservation of the American nationality. They will see the application of the parallel, whatever they may think of the manner in which it is now presented. One merit, however, the writer would claim for the brief picture he here offers to the public. It is strictly true. It is not overdone. It cannot be overdone. If it fails, it is in falling short of the reality of that state of things which we have called a political hell. There is one thing that prevents this from being realized, as it ought to be, even by scholars. They are so much occupied with the poetry, the philosophy, the fair literature of Greece, that they neglect the details of her minute political history, and so form a very inade- quate view of its political horrors. The aim of the writer has been to show this latter feature truthfully, and, at the same time, graphi- cally, by selecting those points of the old Greek political life, in which it so marvelously resembles our own. The more he studied it, the more he was struck with the perfection of the parallel. If there is something which has the appearance of repetition in set- ting it forth, it is to keep vividly before the mind the one idea of the book. Autonomy was the bane of Greece ; the doctrine of " state rights " and " state sovereignties," has been, and is yet, the rock of danger to the American Nationality. This idea is never lost sight of. In every seeming digression it is still remembered, and other topics are treated only to make the return to it more clear and effective. God has given us a mirror in the past. Let us not be like " him who beholds his natural face in the glass, then goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." In the history of Greece we have a guide book for almost every step we may take. God grant that this brief effort to call attention to it, may be of some avail in this most trying crisis of our Ameri- can nationality. Schenectady, September 16, 1864. STATE RIGHTS. The saddest book in the world is Grote's History of Greece. Yet sad as it is, there is no one for us more instructive. We often hear our government spoken of as a great experiment. Nothing like it was ever known before. We have been accustomed, too, to regard it as something lying altogether out of the usual track of his- tory. All references to the ancient republics have been despised as pedantic and irrelevant. Christianity made a difference. Men were continually saying this whose Christianity did not excel, and whose ordinary moral and political virtue fell below that of Pericles and Thucy- dides, very far below that of Aristides and Socrates. And then again, there was that magic word " representa- tion," as though a stream could rise above its fountain, or any outward change of mode could produce a change in human nature, or make the representative to be in the long run, any thing higher, or better, or more intelligent than the represented. For all government is representa- tion in some form, and to fancy for ourselves any peculiar defense here was but to cheat ourselves with a word, and all the mischiefs it might occasion when it came to be, as all such words in time most certainly will, mere political cant. A more complete exemplar cannot be found for us than is presented in the States of Greece. Look at her map. How beautifully unique the territory, as though it had been expressly formed for one great nation, composed of people speaking one common language, having one com- mon origin, one common heroic age, one common store- house of tribal and national reminiscences ! " When the erished forever in the battle of Ohseroneia. Greece presented the first great proof of a fact of which we are now in danger of furnishing another and more ter- rible • example to the world. It is the utter impossibility of peace, in a territory made by nature a geographical unity, inhabited by a people, or peoples, of one lineage, one language, bound together in historical reminiscences, yet divided into petty sovereign states too small for any respectable nationalities themselves, and yet preventing any beneficent nationality as a whole. No animosities have been so fierce as those existing among people thus geographically and politically related. No wars Avith each other have been so cruel ; no home factions have been so incessant, so treacherous, and so debasing. The very ties that draw them near, only awaken occasions of strife, which would not have existed between tribes wholly alien to each other in language and religion. It is easy now to trace this rapid degeneracy in Greece, and to determine its causes. Had Athens been successful in the long Peloponnesian war, it might, perhaps, have been remedied. The success of this most national of all the states might have laid the foundation of a Grecian imperium — not of conquest, nor of monarchy, but of united national institutions forming a noble commonivealth in which every thing might have been as free as in generous Athens itself; for it was a feature of the times then, as it 29 is now, that those states whose domestic institutions were the most despotic, had ever the most to say of liberty and independence. So among ourselves ; it was not in Massa- chusetts, but in South Carolina and Mississippi, that there arose filibustering schemes for the deliverance of enslaved countries, and the cry of " extending the area of freedom." The noble Athenian people, on the other hand, ever showed in all their history, that their love of individual freedom was ever in harmony with the Panhellenic passion, and derived its purest inspiration from it. It was the generous love of all Greece to which, ambitious as Athens was of Attic glory, she so often sacrificed her own prosperity as a sectional part. After the melancholy close of the Peloponnesian war, the Grecian history becomes a rapidly dissolving view. An absolute autonomy for every part, or for any part, is dis- covered to be impossible. The Spartan alliance, her (fv^ax'id as it was mildly called, is found to be more griev- ous than any attempt of Athens to establish a common nationality. And now there arises a new feature in these political complications. The plea of necessity comes in. It presents itself just as often as may be demanded for the convenience of the stronger power. Sparta had gone to war for the independence of the cities. She was fighting for all Greece, the battle of " state sovereignty ;" so it was said then, as it is claimed for Jefferson Davis now. But, after the sad downfall of Athens, no one of the weaker states could be allowed, at pleasure, to depart from the new Confederacy. If any proposition of this kind came from Argos, or from the old conquered Messene, or from any of the " liberated isles," as they were called in the Lacedaemonian cant, she made the same answer that Jef- ferson Davis gave to the Eemonstrants of North Carolina. True they were sovereign states — had not Sparta fought long and hard for that — but then, this sovereignty, this autonomy, must be properly understood, it must cease to be perfect sovereignty sometimes, it must keep itself within some proper bounds of expediency. Their departure might 30 endanger the alliance or produce local inconvenience. It was bad to have an enemy, or an independent state that might become an enemy, between Lacedaemon and Thebes, or between Lacedasinon and Athens. And so the state rights of Corinth and Megara became just about as valu- able, and as tenable, as those of New Jersey would be, lying in her petty sovereignty, between New York and Pennsylvania. With these greater powers on each side of her, demanding transitus for purposes of war or commerce, she will find her own petty legislature a feeble defense to her railroad grants, and her precious sovereignty a very poor exchange for that invaluable " state right," she once possessed in all-protecting nationality. She might protect her own oyster men against those of Delaware. She might exclude her own niggers from her own common schools, and from her own theological seminaries. These high acts of sovereignty no one might think fit to dispute with her. But she must not assume to lay taxes on travel or trade between Xew York and Philadelphia, or forbid the pas- sage of an army, if that should be deemed necessary. In all such cases it would soon be found that there were other " state rights," or state conveniences, coming in collision with her sovereignty, and, of course, in the absence of any national regulator, there can be no other arbiter than the power of the stronger. The greater this national regu- lator, the less motive for any despotic acts ; the farther removed from narrow local jealousies, the more conserva- tive of all true and valuable rights. But this she has lost, and now she must make most, of the mighty powers that lie under " her great seal." A mere glance at the position of this state upon the map (and we might have taken almost any other state as well) is enough to put to silence all the famed logic of Calhoun, with every argument that ever came from that pestilent storehouse of mischief, "the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions." Let us look at this matter carefully. If New Jersey always possessed this right of sovereignty, or if she never surrendered it, or has a reserved right to take back what 31 she gave without reserve (although this last supposition involves a sheer absurdity) then, a fortiori, must she have had it during the revolution. It follows, then, that she could have refused confederacy, or could have withdrawn from it. She could have made a separate treaty with Great Britain, or she could have stood alone. She could have declared herself a sovereign power in the earth, and no other state would have had a right to question it. She could have forbidden Washington to cross the Delaware on that cold Christmas night when he took the Hessians. She could have told him not to put the tread of his foreign army upon her " sacred soil," just as Maryland warned back the regiments of Massachusetts when speeding on to the defense of the national capital. If not, why not ? Where is the defect of the argument, if there is any sound- ness in these state rights premises ? Would Washington, however, have respected such a prohibition ? Would other parties ever have allowed it under any plea, whether it had been prescription or inherent sovereignty, or that most sacred thing, the Duke of York's land patent ? But this was a case of necessity, one may say. Yes, and it has been a case of necessity ever since. It is a case of necessity now — as strong at this moment as it was in the revolution. For this necessity is but the organic law of which we speak — the shaping power of history, giving every thing its place and proper sovereignty. It is God that makes nations. "He it is that hath determined the times before appointed, and the bouuds of their habi- tations." The "powers that be are ordained of God." We have quoted these texts before, but they can bear to be often preached from. Paul is a better authority here than Calhoun, or the Kentucky resolutions, or even the patent of the Duke of York. God never made Xew Jer- sey to be a sovereignty, and that is the best of all reasons why she should never assume to be one. Cases of neces- sity! why, there are every where just such — every where in our history, every where in our geography. Attempts at separation put them in a stronger light than ever; they 32 reveal others that never had been suspected before. The national agony in the crises of dislocation shows, beyond all abstract reasoning, the vile logic, as well as the damn- ing sin of secession. Endless were the negotiations in Greece arising out of such a state of things. The difficulty was felt in every part. Sparta contended that the isles should be indepen- dent, the small as well as the greater. Each should have autonomy. But then it would not do that any of them should be on friendly terms with Sparta's rival, or furnish naval stations, or commercial advantages to her enemies, whether old or new. And so, too, Elis must yield some of her sovereignty, that Sparta might have more coast room, and an easier access to the Gulf of Corinth. The cities of Euboea must have autonomy, but then it is also necessary that there should be a strong Lacedaemonian power there, with certain fortresses as pledges of security, in order to counteract the influence of the near lying Attic state. To be sure, they must all have autonomy, but then nothing must be allowed to weaken autonomy's great defender, the Peloponnesian confederacy. This kind of reasoning would have had a just and noble aspect had it been employed, as conservative of the integ- rity of a great Grecian nationality, and as a defense against foreign power, Persian or Macedonian. To preserve un- impaired the Hellenic wholeness — to guard against expo- sure of it to foreign invasion, or any insidious foreign intervention, through the weakening or defection of any part, would have been a sublime policy worthy of Pericles and Demosthenes. But the little great men, who preached state rights in all these petty commonwealths, could not see this. It was too large for their angle of vision, just adapted, as it was, to the diminutive and the near. They could not reach the height of this great argument, even as Mr. Davis himself cannot now see how his plea of confed- erate inconvenience, as against Xorth Carolina, or the danger which her departure would occasion to his own power, cuts up by the roots every argument he has em- 33 ployed for the right of secession. If North Carolina can- not be permitted to go in peace (even with an acknow- ledged and solemnly guaranteed right to do so), because she would make a chasm between Virginia and Georgia, or lose to the Confederacy the security of the Southern coast, we think immediately of the chasms, and deformi- ties, and insecurities, that this doctrine of secession brings to a structure far more beautiful, far more beneficent, hav- ing far more right to live as one of the great "powers ordained of God." We cannot let you go, says Davis; he treats it, and rightly too, as something more than a matter of conventionality; we will make war upon you, if you dare to think of leaviug us — and Gov. Vance seconds the cry. But the war for the nation, that is an atrocious wrong ; to shed blood in defense of this precious national integrity, such a proceeding fills our pious peace men with horror. North Carolina would make a hiatus in the unnat- ural Southern monstrosity; Davis thinks that very bad; but secession disfigures the fairest geographical territory to be found on the globe'; it separates from their sources the mouths of mighty rivers ; it leaves, for extended fron- tiers, arbitrary lines of most surpassing ugliness, and which nothing in nature or history can render permanent ; worse than an inundation of the sea, it cuts off that Gulf corner of our land, with all its costly national works, so essential to our security against a foreign foe, or, what is worse, makes it the seat of a domestic enemy who may, at any time, expose to that foreign foe the most vulnerable and mortal part of our political organism. Though North Carolina has an abstract right, doubtless, its assertion would be practically very inconvenient. Mr. Davis can- not part with the Eoanoke and Albemarle sound ; but secession may, with impunity, cut oif from the United States the keys of Florida, the bay of Mobile, the mouth of the Mississippi, with all its countless advantages to the North and West ! There must be no chasms in the new power ; but Ohio (even to this the doctrine brings us) has a right to secede, though her doing so would leave an 5 34 impassable hole in the very centre of the old nationality. It all comes to this; the larger, the more beneficent, the more natural, and, because the larger and the more natu- ral, therefore the less jealous and selfish power, is thus ever to be watched, and causelessly assailed ; whilst, on the other hand, the smaller the subdivisions the more sacred their rights, though history proves that such petty sovereignties have ever been among the greatest nuisances on earth. Such was the reasoning in Greece; such is it now with us, when men contend against nature, history and geo- graphy, as well as the most solemn national compacts. We are not contending against true state rights, any more than against the rights of families and individuals. They need not be opposed' to each other or confounded. There is a clear and indelible distinction between national and municipal rights, between national and municipal government. It exists in the very nature of things and ideas. The latter may be safely carried to any extent con- sistent with its own legitimate internal aims, and the safety of that embracing whole which gives to the parts all their dignity and value. Local government, for local purposes, is no new thing, first tried with us. It exists, more or less, in every nationality. It is exercised, of necessity, and to some degree, in the most despotic and consolidated, whilst in such a political structure as ours, it forms a prominent, and, if not abused, a most salutary feature. It may be defined as a political power that ever looks within, un- acknowledged by foreign nationalities and having no relations to them except through an outer nationality, of which it forms an organic part. Thus Connecticut and Ohio have a less dependent social jurisdiction than Corn- wall or Middlesex, but they are equally unknown to the world of sovereign nations. True national government, on the other hand, may be defined as looking both within and without, though the latter is its "predominant aspect as it will appear in history. It has in charge all foreigt relations. Besides this, it is the only power that can fcrulj 35 regulate intercourse between its parts. Both are summed up in this ; there is committed to it, and of necessity com- mitted to it, its own preservation, and the preservation of the parts in the preservation of the whole of which they are parts. The general idea of national existence being thus stated, the question arises, what belongs to it? What specific powers are the least that can be assigned to it? The answer comes from the very idea of an organic political body forming a true sovereignty — that is, according to another of Mr. Lincoln's terse definitions, acknowledging no human power above it on the earth. Conventionalities may modify these powers ; the manner of their exercise may be regulated by a national understanding which becomes its constitution for that purpose, but they derive not their origin from it — their sanction from it. They in- here in the very idea of nationality itself. In other words, given a true nation — whether as made by history or other- wise — and these powers are given. Let us attempt to define them. A true nation has, first of all, and above all, the power of self-preservation, of preserving its own existence accord- ing to its organic law, which is the theoretical idea or con- stitution which history has given to it. As following directly from this, it has the i^ower (acting through this higher organic law, and without violating the mode pre- sented by its conventional constitution), of making that conventional constitution, from time to time, such as will best contribute to this great end of preserving its own national being* which is assumed to be a "power ordained * This idea, so well expressed by Mr. Lincoln, of the nation being above all, and older than all, is fundamental to all true conservatism. It is rather a curious fact, that in the floating cant of the times, this word, conservative, should be assumed by men holding a doctrine, that inevitably leads to national disintegration. Of ail destructive political heresies, the worst is that which now seeks to pass itself uuder this honored name. It is still more strange when we think of those to whom the appellation is now given. The word conservative, whatever may be its political souudness. has heretofore been associated with respectability, with intelligence, with social order, with individual and social morality. Who are now the conser- 36 of God," beneficial to itself and to the world. From this great fundamental right, flow out all the rest. It has all powers relating to foreign intercourse. It has the war- making power, the treaty-making power, the foreign com- merce regulating power. It has, in the other aspect, all powers in the ultimate relating to the internal inter- course between the parts, and which those parts cannot exercise without a coufusion and an insecurity inconsistent with the common welfare, both of parts and whole. Hence it has the internal revenue power, the post-office power, or the trust which such a whole alone can well and safely exercise, of harmoniously conveying the internal intelli- gence. It has the internal commerce regulating power ; it has the inter-civic power, or the determination of the one common citizenship, the same and unchangeable in every part. Again, it has all the powers that spring from both of these aspects, the foreign and the domestic, in their combined relation to the national well-being and the national existence. Hence it has the navy creating power, the fort and armory building power, the port establishing power, the public road making power, so far as there are demanded facilities of intercourse and of internal improve- ments that may be necessary to national compactness, national strength, and national defense. As embracing all these aims, it has that great attribute of nationality ever regarded as inseparable from, and involving the idea of sovereignty — the money making power. We might mention others, which, although inherent in the idea of nationality, have their outer manifestation only in some peculiar aspects of modern civilization, such as the estab- lishment of coast surveys, or expeditions for geographical and scientific discovery, or the granting of copyrights for the encouragement of literature, or for any other healthful exercise of the human intellectual powers that would only vative masses ? They are the refuse of our great cities, they are the rioters and negro burners of New York, they are men who, in former days, have been known as filibusters, favorers of the slave trade, and of every wild adventure opposed as well to the law of nations, as to the laws of the land in which they dwell. 37 be cramped, if not wholly hindered, by the petty jealousies of narrow, local legislation, ever the more violent and des- potic in proportion to its narrowness. Add to this all powers necessary for carrying into effect the foregoing, and we have the general sum of what belongs to true sovereignty, what a nation must possess from the simple fact alone of its being a nation. These powers belonged to that great nation, that most peculiar historical and geographical unity we called the United States. They are mostly specified in its written constitution ; but this is declaratory rather than originat- ing. The power that made that constitution, and might have made it otherwise, must have contained all these powers inherently before. They may have been wrapped up, undeveloped, unexercised, in some degree unthought of, but they were there. Had that instrument contained but one clause ; had the convention from which it derived its outward form and modus operandi made and recorded but this one single utterance, and that not an enactment, but a declarative statement, that this territory we call the United States, of right, ought to be, and, in fact, was, a nation among the nations of the earth, such declaration would have contained in it, and carried with it, every one of these powers ; or had it added one single organizing clause in lieu of all others, giving to one man, to be chosen every year by the votes of the people, the entire national administration, executive, legislative and judicial, such a form of government would be indeed most defective, but that one man thus representing the national mind and the national will, would have rightly had in himself all these prerogatives of peace and war, of commerce, revenue, money, national defense, and national existence. Some of these powers raay lie long in embryo, but they are born in time. Some of them were not outwardly developed in the first years of our separate history, but they are contained in the very idea of nationality, and must have found a way to assert themselves under any organic form, however defective and hindering. Jefferson 3"8 asserted, and asserted rightly, that even in the old articles of confederation, apparently weak as they were, lay the power of state coercion. Under onr present constitution, all such developments have a regular and easy birth. There is a regular organic mode through which the consti- tution, and the government under it, may assume any form, and may become any thing that the exigencies of the national existence and well-being may demand. Through the prescribed modes of constitutional change, it may become more consolidated, or less consolidated ; if the popular or national mind and national will organically acting demand it, it may approach nearer to monarchical and aristocratical forms, or it may recede farther from them ; it may become more democratic, or less democratic ; it may allow slavery every where, or wholly free itself from slavery ; it may leave greater powers in the states than they now possess, or it may in time, and proceeding in the regular course of constitutional amendment, whollj' obliterate politically every state line. Through all this, it is the same life, and in fact the same constitution, for it is acting according to that organic law which constitutes national as well as physical identity. It is, too, the same national mind and will in all these varied aspects of its manifestation. It is the one national soul linking into a common identity, the past, the present, and the future. It is, in short, the one nation living on forevermore, and which Cicero so impressively says, was not made to die. Hence, there is one thing which it cannot do — we mean, of course, rightfully do. It cannot destroy itself. There is no provision in its life for death. It may violently com- mit suicide like a man, but the act is unnatural to it ; it is abhorrent to its organism. God, too, may destroy it ; but such a catastrophe, we may well suppose, only happens when it has rendered itself incapable of any beneficent function, and become a nuisance upon the earth. The danger of our becoming such a nuisance is now, as it anciently was in Greece, wholly on the side of this doctrine of state rights. It is a very old habit of men " to cry 39 fear, where uo fear is," but there is nothing for us to apprehend in the other direction. The states are not in danger from the nation ; they never have been. The local powers will never want their noisy advocates. But why should there be any jealousy between them ? In the har- monious workings of our beautiful structure, national and municipal powers, as we have attempted to define them (or state powers, if the name is preferred), are mutually inter- penetrating in act, though so distinct in idea. When we speak of our national government, especially to a foreigner, we generally have in mind the articles made in 1787, and commonly called " the Constitution of the United States." But this is a very inadequate view of the matter. Our frame of government, as one harmonious nationality in its outward and inward workings, is rather that majestic yet complicated structure which combines all that is gene- ral, all that is local, all that is national, and all that is municipal, in one great charter of rights and duties ; so that should a foreigner ask to read our constitution, it would be right to give him the book containing all — the state and national constitutions combined in one — as the only complete description of our organic life. This is our constitution with its many chapters and sections — this is our law of national being. Each state charter is a part of the great national understanding, and so, on the other hand, the national constitution enters into that of each state, as much as though it had been recited verbatim in the preamble, or declared to be a part of it by an appendix expressly added for that purpose. Here is solved wliat has seemed to some the perplexing problem of state and national allegiance. They are one and the same. The man who swears to support the constitution of Virginia in all its integrity, does, in the same act, and even if he took no other oath, swear to maintain the constitution of the United States — the constitution of that whole of which Virginia is a constituent part,, and without which neither Virginia nor her constitution would be what they now are. 40 Such a nationality has truly existed in this geographical territory contained by the Lakes, the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Mississippi. It arose out of the one and entire British sovereignty. It was announced in the declaration of independence ; it was the living principle of the war that followed ; it was solemnly confirmed in the treaty of peace made with Great Britain in 1783. There were but two parties known in that transaction. It was the English treating w 7 ith the then acknowledged American sove- reignty. It was the old Anglo-Saxonism acknowledging the nationality of the new. No one of these several sovereign states — so claimed to be — was ever acknow- ledged as such by any power on the face of the earth. They never had a war, or peace, or commercial alliance, with any foreign state. As sovereignties, as nations, they are utterly unknown to history. The true American sovereignty, on the other hand, has never since ceased to be one and entire. It has, at times, been feeble indeed, but never shared with any other. If this is not so, then we have an anomaly in politics. If we have not been a nation — one nation — then, for the space of ninety years, has there been no political sovereignty ot any kind within these limits — nothing that could be called by the name. In every other portion of the earth, among all other people, however civilized or barbarous, there has ever been some one acknowledged supreme political power, sovereign to all without ; here, in this fair territory of ours, there has been no national existence. If the state rights doctrine be true, it has, during all this time, and as far as foreign pow T ers are concerned, been a blank political waste. For nearly a century, we have been speaking, and acting, and living a lie. But even this lie, bad as all lies are, is better than the reality that would have been without it. If a delusion, it has done something to keep the peace. We shudder at the thought of thirty off more such sovereignties as New Jersey, filled with such politicians as our state rights men generally are, being crowded within these bounds. To 41 say nothing of any bloody horrors, such as never ceased in unhappy Greece, what a loss of all dignity, of all politi- cal value, what a sinking of all that is high and heroic in national reminiscences ! Let us try and imagine such states acting their little mischievous part on the theater of history. New Jersey sending ambassadors to France or Russia; the high and mighty state of North Carolina entering into articles of everlasting amity, or chivalrously engaging in war, with Great Britain ! What farces would these be ! And then their political annals, what sublime reading that would be! Events taking place in a very small territory may, indeed, have an everlasting page in history, but then they must be connected with something that is intrinsically great, something wide reaching in its influence upon the destinies of mankind. The little Greek states, beside their connection with the old heroic deeds of the Homeric and Anti-Persian Panhellenism, had some- thing of a history of their own, going far back, some of them, into remote antiquity; but there is nothing historical in New Jersey and North Carolina, except as connecting them with some greater historical whole. Guilford and Monmouth are not their battlefields, any more than Gettysburg belongs to Pennsylvania. Over all of them had we better draw the veil of everlasting oblivion, than have them remain as monuments of our deep dishonor when the state rights doctrine shall have wrought its ruin in our land. The lamentable error in Greece was the factious preven- tion of any such nationality ever being formed. With us it is more than an error. The great, the ineffable crime in our land is the seeking to destroy such nationality after it had existed full and strong for eighty years, after genera- tions had been born under it, receiving its rights and privileges as a precious inheritance from their fathers, and transmitting them as the most invaluable legacy to their children. Nor is this latter fact of least importance in our argument. It is higher and stronger than any con- ventionality. No paper constitution has such a sanction 42 as this silent course of nature, bringing out the unborn, and placing them, at the very origin of their earthly existence, in the stream of historic influences, and under the educating power of settled institutions. It is the seal that God sets upon the work. It connects the present with the past and the future. Generations thus born under law, are ever, by their very law of continuity, transforming the conventional cement into organic growth, and convert- ing what might seem, outwardly, the work of man into a true historic " power ordained of God." But let us not lose sight of Greece, that most instructive mirror that God has given us for our perfect illumination. We see reflected there our own picture in its minutest lights and shades. Her past projects itself into our future, and from it there is no great difficulty in telling what will be the next step, if we follow on the downward course of her sad history. Along with this cry of autonomy, and often in practical inconsistency with it, there arose in Greece the doctrine of " the balance of power." We know the wars that this has occasioned in modern Europe. But the adjustment of those larger and natural sovereignties has a benefit counterbalancing the inevitable evils. When the attempt is to apply it between petty sovereignties arbitrarily divided, and without any ethnological ground to warrant it — too small for any beneficent ends, and having, therefore, no right to exist — it becomes evil and evil only. There is no power so despotic as well as so mischievous as petty power. A rabble of such contemptible nationalities, placed in near contiguity, where they may be ever snarling at and biting each other ! It is a den of vipers ; and any act of God in history, whether through foreign subjugation or otherwise, that closes its hissing mouth, is to be desired and prayed for by every true friend of humanity. Along with this never settled balance of power doctrine, there came into use a peculiar political vocabulary. Such a state was to be attacked for Atticizing; another was charged with Laconizing; all mutually reproached each other with Mediizing, and this was the truest of all. In 43 the assertion of their wretched autonomy, Sparta, Thebes, Athens, Argos, the Isles, the Colonies, had each their deputies at the foreign Persian court intriguing against each other, and all secretly courting this once vanquished power, to the disadvantage of their rivals. It entered into the spirit and proceedings of their home factions as they existed in each state. The 'sratpstai, the secret party meet- ings, the political clubs or caucuses, had often with them the secret foreign emissary to encourage and report. The fact is repeatedly alluded to by the later historians, and well may it remind us of some features that are beginning to appear in our own photograph. We are startled some- times on looking at some exhumed relic of ancient art. How like ourselves and the work of our own times? The Persian legate in secret conclave with a faction at Corinth or Sparta, plotting the overthrow of some rival party at home, or in a neighboring state ! Such a mere passing allusion in Xenophon, or Thuycidides, is like an old in- scription dug out of some mouldering ruin. Clear away the rust of age, bring out the letters in their distinctness, and what do we see? It is the veritable record of an event which has already taken place among us, and which bids fair, if rebellion triumphs, to be often repeated in our history. It is the British embassador privately meeting with a political club in New York, or visited, as he states, by the leaders of a political faction, who come to consult with him about foreign intervention, and the time for it that would be most favorable for their party interests. O the unchangeableness of human nature! History is a repeating cycle. " The thing that has been is that which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun." This was the Greece that had vanquished the millions of Xerxes, aud rescued all Ionia from the Oriental sway. She is now suffering Ionia to go back to the yoke, and the Isles to fall under the Persian dominions, just as we, in our impotence, see Mexico under a Germau Emperor, and Peru suffering from the insults of Spain. We cannot help ourselves, for men who once sat in an American senate 44 are now waiting for recognition at the court of Bonaparte, and New York merchants are closeted with Lord Lyons in preparing planks for the platform of a political convention. O Hellas, how rapid thy degeneracy ! This deep degra- dation was not long after 10,000 Greeks had defiantly traversed the length and breadth of the Persian Empire. There were yet old men who had heard their fathers tell of Salamis, as we now hear of Bunker Hill and Yorktown ; and now here are the Greeks waiting in the ante-chamber of the Persian monarch, and presenting the same melan- choly humiliating spectacle that we shall exhibit when faction and " state rights " shall have reduced us to the same condition of political imbecility. It is to be noted as an important feature in her history, that though clamoring for autonomy, Greece still had her confederacies. She was ever making confederacies, and dissolving them as fast as made. It was the struggle of nature and history against utter anarchy. But these con- federacies had no national bond, no geographical unity, no common historical reminiscences to keep them to- gether. They did not last long enough to make any history of their own. They were formed on every pretext that faction could throw up. It was now Sparta and Thebes and Corinth against Athens. Again it was Sparta and Corinth against Thebes. In these continual up turnings we find even Athens and Sparta leagued together against Boeotia. It was nothing strange that such unnatural antagonisms should now and then give occasion to equally- strange alliances. There is a capricious pleasure, some- times, in showing how those who have fought fiercely with each other, can fight all the harder for it, against those whom political convulsions have made for the time their common foes. Thus Massachusetts and South Carolina may some day be found fighting together against Penn- sylvania and Virginia. There were times when Athens became nearly isolated. Demagogues in other states assailed her very much as New England is now assailed. But she had an intrinsic superiority that made it impos- 45 sible she should ever be despised. Her high culture, her literature, her philosophy, gave her a proud position, even when her political power was most weakened. Even the dull Boeotian could not help feeling that there was something very respectable in the Attic- alliance. That, in such a condition of things, the smaller and weaker states must suffer every kind of injustice, we need not history to inform us. They were situated just as Dela- ware will be, when the full control of her bay and river is wanted for her strong neighbor Pennsylvania, and there is no higher power to prevent the latter from doing just as she pleases. Phocis and Elis, Megara and Sikyon, the smaller cities of Thessaly, the scattered and helpless Isles, the distant colonies, were ever at the mercy of the larger states, and endangered by every new and shifting con- federacy. They still kept crying out for autonomy, and it was conceded to them in appearance, but nothing could be more unreal. It was Qver made the occasion of the most despotic proceedings on the part of the larger states in their continual contentions with each other. Thebes was getting too strong, and so Sparta was seized with a sudden passion for the independence of the Theban de- pendencies. Thebes must grant autonomy to the lesser cities which, with her, formed a sort of Boeotian confede- racy as a counterpoise to the Peloponnesian. Sparta had a right to demand this ; for was she not the champion of Grecian independence ? When it was demanded of her in like manner, to give autonomy to certain cities of Elis and Arcadia, which she had taken under her protection, she had ready immediately the answer of Jefferson Davis and Gov. Vance, to the Eemonstrants of North Carolina. It was not convenient. It would make chasms in her boundaries; it would weaken her frontier. Sparta must be strong — for was she not the great upholder of auto- nomy, the bulwark of state rights — and, therefore, in her case, the principle must yield, or seem to yield, to a wise expediency. We have dwelt upon the picture minutely and at length, 46 from a strong desire to impress it vividly on the minds of the readers. The truth cannot be exceeded; but the sad- dest tiling of all is the thought, how, amid all this, the old national glory was obscured, and the proudest remem- brances of Grecian history lost their hold upon the mind. And this was no merely romantic or unreal injury. Every nation has its heroic age. It is a beneficent provision of God in history. Such heroic age is the fountain of its political life. When this dries up, that life withers, and decrepitude, premature decrepitude, rapidly ensues. Most strikingly was it so in Greece. As autonomy rings upon the ear, we hear less and less of the old Homeric days — less and less of Marathon, and Salamis, and Therm opy la? , and Plataea. Have we not some similar experience here ? The years are brief, but they are already making a rapid difference in the national feeling. In a large portion of our country the Fourth of July is no longer celebrated. Washington's birth-day is beginning to bring up only the saddest associations of ideas. It is becoming painful to read of Bunker Hill and Saratoga. We lay the book aside with the mournful hope, that God will bring again the time when the feeling of the heroic shall not be lost in the heavy depression that now accompanies its perusal. A nation loses immensely when it loses this. We, of all people, can least afford it; for our heroic age, though bright, was brief. Once gone from its due place in our memories, and it is gone forever. We have no historical materials out of which to construct again its reality or its semblance. This utter loss of the heroic, as connected with the old Hellenic reminiscences, is especially seen in what is called the Peace of Antalcicjas, made in the year 387 before Christ. It was some time before the closing catastrophes, but we select it as the period of deepest degradation, making sure what must sooner or later come. There was a spasmodic revival of the old glory in the days of Pelo- pidas and Epaminondas, but it was a flickering and tran- sient flame. Thebes had her brief turn after Athens and 47 Sparta, but nothing could stay the degeneracy, or heal the mortal wound that had been given to the true Grecian independence in the base transaction on which we are dwelling. There died the last hope of any Hellenic nationality. They got a peace at last, but what a peace ! It was, indeed, soon to be broken like the numberless truces and armistices they had made before ; the old com- pound fracture was past healing; but transient as was this peace of Antalcidas, this is not the main thing in it to which we would call attention. It was rather the painful picture it presents of Grecian degradation. In this respect, it could sink no lower. The subsequent subjugations of Philip and the Eomans could add nothing to this deep dishonor. The influence of Persia in Grecian politics had long been felt — an influence arising not from her own power, but from Grecian divisions, from their foolish autonomy, their insane cry of state rights. This, however, is the first instance in which that foreign power, that ancient enemy, opeuly and diplomatically appears as the dictator in Gre- cian affairs, under the pretense of protecting the independ- ence of the Grecian states. The Oriental despot assumes the position of defender of Greece against herself. Her endless and bloody wars shocked his notions of humanity; he is horror struck at the fratricidal strife. The parallel that all this presents with some things in modern times, is certainly a very curious one. Thucydides in his iv. Book, sec. 50, gives us quite a graphic account of a very singular correspondence between Sparta and the Persian king. The letters had been intercepted by Aristides, the captain of an Athenian ship of war. They were transferred, says the historian, from the Assyrian character, and in them Artaxerxes is found complaining of the Lacedaemonians that he cannot tell what they mean yiyvwtfxsiv S n 0ouXovrai.) Their plain laconic style, in which they so prided them- selves, had suddenly become tortuous and diplomatic. It was the same difficulty that Napoleon finds in determining what the South means to do with Slavery. But the obscu- 4$ rity was not greater than the inconsistency. The Spartan chivalry had, in former days, been the greatest revilers of the Persian power. It had been their political capital, just as in onr times, abuse of England and the charge of British influence was ever the standing party weapon of onr Southern democracy. British gold for the Federal- ists and the Whigs, Persian gold for the Athenians ; the comparison runs on all fours. So Sparta, in her political diplomacy, was ever claiming to be the peculiar champion of the ancient Monroe Doctrine. She was ever accusing the other Grecian states of Mediizing. Especially was this charge made against Athens, the most truly Grecian and national of them all. But what do we now behold ? It is an appearance as full of instruction as it is of strange historic interest. When the traveler looks back from a certain hill in Germany, he sees painted on his far distant rear horizon, a giant figure that seems to move when he moves, and to stand still when he stops to gaze upon it. It is caused by a peculiar state of the atmosphere. A simi- lar phenomenon is sometimes brought out in the mirage of time. We pause on some mount of history and look back. Far off there beckons to us the passionless ghost of anti- quity. Is it the Spectre of the Brocken that is mocking us with such fantastic imitations of our own acts ? Is it our own shadow thrown back two thousand years over the intervening waste of time ? It is ourselves we see, our own inseparable image deriding us with an unmistakable fac simile of our own folly and crime ! There we stand ; Mason and Slidell at London and Paris — Antalcidas at the Court of Susa — far distant in the flesh, but, in the timeless spirit, all the same. Here we find Sparta soliciting inter- vention from Artaxerxes, promising in return, not cotton, for that was a thing unknown in those days, nor the eman- cipation of the Helots, but the annexation to Persia of Ionia and the Isles. We next see the Spartan ambassador side by side with the Persian envoy at the Sardis confer- ence, and seconding him in the dictation of the humiliating terms. Eead the account of it as given in Xenophon's 49 Hellenics. " It was a treaty ready made," says the historian, "brought down by the satrap Tiribazus, along with Antal- cidas, the Spartan legate ; it was read aloud by the Per- sian, heard with silence and submission by the Grecian deputies, after he had called their special attention to the royal seal," — farfsigag ja> fiatfikiug tupeM — as though in this significant act lay the special degradation of the whole affair. How curt this intervening despot's style ! How clearly does he show his consciousness that it is not the men of Marathon to whom he is now talking. So brief is the royal document that we give it in full : " Artaxerxes, the king, thinks it right that the Greek cities in Asia should be 1m, and also of the isles Clazomense and Cyprus. It is his will that the other Grecian cities, both small and great, should have autonomy. Whichever party does not accept the peace, I will make war against them with my Grecian allies, both by sea and laud, with ships and money." (Signed and sealed, Artaxerxes.) What a tableau was here ! Tiribazus showing thein the king's seal, Antalcidas, the Spartan deputy, affirming its authenticity, the others standing meekly by and receiving — autonomy. Their precious "state rights!" They have them now at the hands of the Persian monarch. Our view of the humiliating scene is concluded when we call to mind what autonomy really was under the Spartan rule, with its Dekarchies, or consular boards, its Harmosts, or agents to keep the peace, in all the states that force or diplomacy brought under her influence. It is just such autonomy as will be fouud in a Southern Confederacy, should Tennessee or Arkansas venture to assert their real independence. It is just such " state rights," and just such "free speech." as will be allowed to Massachusetts, should a slaveholding oligarchy, protected by France and England, be allowed again to establish itself in our land. "This base and unholy act" (ajV^pov xal dvo'ciov sp/ov), as Plato calls it in the Menexenus, was resolutely opposed 50 by the Athenians. How bitter it was for them is seen in the mournful Oration of Isocrates.* It sounds like a wailing dirge over the last hope of true Grecian inde- pendence, and of a true Panhellenic commonwealth; but the bitterest thing of all was the dictatorial style, and the insulting interference, of the foreign power brought in by the very people who, in former days, had most reviled it, and who claimed then to be the peculiar guardians of Grecian rights. Alas ! says this polished orator, "have we come to this?" 6 /3a P /3apo£ y.r/js-ai svog rapt with the spirit of prophecy, he spake aloud that oath-like appeal to the old heroes of Longinus, De Sublimitate, I and XVI. 55 Hellas, oux stfnv, oux soviv, oVwg ^aaprsre, " No, my co u ii try 111 6D , no, men of Athens, ye have not failed. It cannot be, it cannot be, that ye have erred — on ma tons en Marathoni ; no, I swear by those who died in the battle front of Mara- thon, by those who formed the phalanx in Plataea, by those who conquered in the sea fight at Salamis and at Arteinisiuin — by the many and brave who now lie in the jmblic sepulchres — to all of whom alike, O iEschines, and whether they fell in the hour of victory or defeat, the state hath awarded a glorious burial; and justly, too, for that which was the only work for brave men to do, that they all did — what the Deity allots to each, to that they all sub- mitted." Those heroic deaths were not in vain, even though Greece were lost. The resistance would show that she died not without a struggle. Its great idea would lie embalmed in the world's memory, giving fragrance to patriotism and to loyalty, through all time. It would stand as a protest against the wrong, a never dying appeal in favor of the right, all the more valuable from the precious blood by which it was confirmed, all the more prophetic of future success in some similar effort, where the cause of Grecian disaster should stand out as a warn- ing beacon to republics in the remote latter days of the world. The blood of the martyrs is not shed in vain. Such were the men of Marathon, such were the men of Gettys- burg, even should there be a longer or a shorter eclipse of the American nationality. But such an event we must not anticipate. Our near approach to a known castastrophe is the best warning against it, and so may be the best means of escaping a similar fate. Paradox as it may seem, yet time, in its winding course, sometimes brings us strikingly near the remote past. In the late funeral ser- vices at Gettysburg, we seem to be living over again some of the most solemn scenes in Grecian history. In the ora- tion of Mr. Everett on that occasion, we have something that may well compare with the choicest parts of Athenian 56 oratory.* But it is still very different with us from what it was with the Athenians, when Demosthenes uttered his sublime apostrophe to the dead. We have had no such crushing defeats, no such disasters, as then seemed to take away all hope. We know that we are strong, if domestic treachery, with its lying' names of conservatism, state rights and state sovereignty, do not undermine our strength. Our foreign foes, though mighty, are far away, and our inward traitors are every day lessening their power to harm, by revealing more and more of their turpitude. Above all, we know that we are in the right; and, though God may suffer the right, at times, to be overborne — though He may have great issues, and great probations, which we may not clearly understand, whereby one right is post- poned to another, yet the history of the world cannot be all an unending experiment. " God hath not made all men in vain." There must be something final and settled ; there . must be some experiments that terminate in success, though many seeming failures, in the world's long and painful his- tory, may have been preparatory to it. We will hope on that it will be so with this nationality of ours, so wonder- fully born, so wonderfully preserved, so marked in all its historical growth by providential interpositions, and having such high evidence — equal to, may we not not- say sur- passing, that of any other nation — that it was truly " a power ordained of God." * Mr. Everett may well Recalled the American Isocrates. He has all the polish of that Grecian orator, whilst excelling him in cogent clearness of statement and reasoning. His funeral oration at Gettysburg will ever be regarded as a most choice and classic production, ranking with that of Pericles on a similar memora- ble occasion, to which Mr. Everett so effectively alludes. But there was one sen- tence uttered in the presence of those graves that will become household words, ever coming up as oft as Gettysburg is mentioned. It was one of the unstudied sayings of Abraham Lincoln, in his brief introduction to the orator of the day. Their pathos and their power are enhanced by the unconscious greatness and sim- plicity of their utterance. " The icorld xuill little heed, nor long remember, what we SA Y here, but it can never forget xohat they DID here." In the simple contrast lies the moral sublime of the diction and the thought. Notwithstanding the speak- er's depreciation of his own language, so modest and unaffected, the saying will not be forgotten, for it is inseparably linked with the grandeur of the deeds. 57 It is because we believe it to be His work, that we think it will not die — at least a death so young and premature. Man did not make it ; man, therefore, has no right to un- make it, not even all the men of the nation combined. And here comes up a question to which we have briefly alluded before, and which the reader will pardon us for dwelling upon again. Horace Greeley is a most sagacious, and — however strange the assertion may seem to some — a most conservative politician. There is, however, a doctrine of his to which we can never subscribe, and which we regret his ever putting forth. In the beginning of our national contest, when we were all looking on with be- wildering amazement, and " wondering whereto this thing would tend," he seemed to maintain the right of peaceable separation, in a general convention called for that purpose, and by proceedings under constitutional forms. We can- not assent. The nation, acting in accordance with its organic law, can undergo almost any modification, or change of outward form, or inward state, short of an abso- lute self-negation ; it can rightly do almost everything else ♦ than a voluntary act of self-destruction. AYe trace three stages of power, but nowhere do we fiud any right or ground for such proceeding. In the first place, there is no such power given in the present written constitution. It contains provisions for amendment, but none for dissolu- tion. It excludes it ; for amending implies the continuance of the constitution amended, and of the nation, or body politic, of which it is the constitution. In the second place, the men of the convention which formally enacted that constitution had no right to put in such a provision ; for they were delegated there for no such purpose. They were sent to make a form of government for a nation, a constitution as full or as brief, as rigid or as flexible, as finished or as amendatory, as the national exigencies might seem to require ; but they were not authorized to destroy the nation itself, or to make any provision for such destruc- tion. Neither, in the third place, could the people who thus delegated them, by any majority, or by any unauimity 8 58 even, have given them this power. It was not theirs to give. The men of that generation alone, however unani- mous, were not the natiou. They were only a part of the nation or the then flowing form of an unchanging, and an undying whole. Past generations had still an interest ; future generations a still deeper interest. The dead of Bunker Hill and Saratoga have a protest here ; this was not that for which they fought and died. The dead of Gettysburg look forth from their graves ; they, too, have a voice in the question whether they shall be graves of glory or dishonor. The unborn are demanding their inheri- tance. The men of 1787 did not make the nation, and they had no right, as we have no right, to unmake it. It was not theirs ; it is not ours, except to preserve and trans- mit, not to destroy or suffer to be destroyed. God made the nation ; it cannot be said too often. He made it to live on, a representative of the spiritual and the timeless, amid the flowing generations. He ordained it as a power in the earth, and He alone has the right to destroy it when it ceases to fulfil the great end of its being. We received it as a trust ; we owe it to God, and to the world, and to the unborn, that it should continue thus to live on. Any repudiation of this higher bond is of the same base nature with that lesser repudiation which has been practiced by the men who would now cancel our national existence. If it be called revolution, we can only briefly answer here, that that can never be an abstract or unconditional right. It is, as we are aware, a vexed question, but, to our mind, all its difficulties are at once settled by the simple thought that revolution never can be a right, except when, and where, it becomes a duty — a most solemn and imperative duty. Let the Davis rebellion be judged by this, and there is no need of any other argument. God may destroy the nation ; but God is placable ; " there is forgiveness with him that he may be feared./' We will "cover ourselves with sackcloth; it may be that he will turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not." Humbly we will confess our manifold sins, our 59 foolish boasting, our vile party corruption, our excessive commercial worldliness, and last, though not least, our heaven-defying oppression of the poor and the weak, our harsh outlawing of those "little ones," whose lowly care God had made our high probation, and around whom we ought to have thrown the safeguard of law in propor- tion to their exposure and their weakness. National repentance may avert his wrath, even for that sin of sins, the unholy and unchristian Dred Scott decision. But what is the political crime of the North? Let men cry out fanaticism as much as they please ; they can make no other record than this. According to our best intelli- gence, and our clearest conscience — in both of which attri- butes of humanity we claim, at least, an equality with our opponents either North or South — we voted in a Presi- dential election. TVe were prepared to abide its issue, if defeated, or its reversal in the constitutional way. This is our case — the whole of it. When the sun went down on the first Tuesday in November, 1860, a new political issue arose over all the land. All preceding ones, such as banks, tariffs, annexations, etc., had been temporary, superficial, endurable if wrongly decided, or capable of easy remedy. This was a vital issue ; the life of the nation was involved. All other issues were buried until this was decided, and so decided as never to come up again. How often had we boastiugly said to the world — look here — see this great people — how zealously we contend at the polls, what a sudden calm of order and conservatism immediately follows the verdict of the ballot-box. Shall that proud assertion ever be made again ? This was the new issue of that eventful day. From morn till night had the little papers, emblems of our national trust in human- ity, been falling, like snow-flakes, thick and fast, over all the wide extent of our land. Even as they lay silent, and yet uncounted in the ballot-boxes, this issue of issues arose. It was as though during that solemn hour every man who had voted, had personally promised every other man — yea, had sworn it with a solemn oath — that what- 60 over that verdict should be, it should have its legitimate political effect, and its fair political trial, until in like man- ner solemnly reversed — so help him God. Thus virtually pledged himself — by the very act of voting — every man to every man, every candidate to every other candidate, every Republican to every Democrat, and every Demo- crat to every Republican. As we walked together to the polls, this was the spiritual word that day ascending — this was its sound to ears opened to the perception of spiritual things. The man of the losing party was more bound in honor, as well as in conscience, that this all superseding issue should be sacredly maintained. He was more bound in true policy, even as he would want the same security in some future issue of a similar kind. Ballots or bullets. They who now affect to talk in deprecation of war, and in favor of the "peaceful ballot" as taking its place, are talking absurdly, if not treason- ably. " Coercion is opposed to the genius of our institu- tions ; Democrats repudiate it ; our remedy is the peaceful ballot-box." Such was the absurdity uttered by one on taking the chair of the late Democratic state convention of Xew York. The ballot-box ! It lies in ruins and tram- pled under foot. They who fight for it may, with some consistency, maintain its sacredness. They who give all the aid they cau to its violators, and yet can prate of " the peaceful ballot," have nothing but the excuse of utter stolidity to shield them from the consciousness of the most detestable hypocrisy. ADDENDA. # ADDENDA. I. The City State, and the Empire. It may be plead on behalf of Greece, that in those early times, the city state, as Dr. Lieber well remarks, was the normal type of government for a free people. The empire state, on the other hand, as exhibited in the Assyrian and Medo-Persian powers, was the standing type of despotism. Men lived in cities and walled towns as a condition of defense against outward aggression ; and so they were drawn into separate commonwealths having outward secu- rity for their prominent idea, instead of the general ends of beneficent government. Both of these were fallacies, as viewed from the stand-point of a more advanced civili- zation, or even as judged from the progress made in those later days of the Grecian history with which our parallel was mainly occupied. The empire was not peace, and the city republic was ofttimes the most cruel, as it was the most petty of depotisms. The consolidating oriental principle, and the little Greek states, both violated, though in different ways, that true idea of nationality which God had designed as the ground, and rule of division, for bene- ficent political institutions. The empire tendency, such a favorite in the East, brought into one unnatural congeries a confused mass of heterogenous nationalities. They were the work of violence, of conquest, of warlike ambition, having in view no governmental end of any kind, whether 64 true or false. They had no true anion of parts, much less that deeper and more organic thing-, a vital unity. They were ever falling to pieces, ever changing their outer and inner form, ever destroying and superseding each other. God permitted them, as instruments of discipline and pun- ishment. So we are especially taught in that storehouse of political wisdom, the Jewish prophetical books ; and the teaching has been confirmed by all history, ancient and modern : " Thou, O Lord, hast ordained them for judg- ment ; O, mighty God, thou hast established them for cor- rection." There are still such unnatural empires, forcing together separate peoples in direct violation of ethnology and geography ; but they are " among the things that have waxed old, and are ready to vanish away." If the Assy- rian power, the Caliphate, the political tornado called in history the empire of Tamerlane — if all these have x>assed away, what exemption can be expected for those feeble imitations of the ancient scourges that are now found in the Austrian and Turkish dominion ? The Eoman power had a work of civilization which God gave it to perform, and Eussia may be spared for centuries to serve some similar end among the wild hordes that make up its unwieldy bulk ; but all these are abnormal political exist- ences, just so far as they extend beyond the bounds of an ethnological, linguistic, and geographical unity. No less a fallacy, though of an apparently opposite kind, shows itself in that free city type of government, such a favorite in Greece, and which made it for so long a time, a sea of kindred blood. As the one forced together diverse and inharmonious nationalities, so the other kept violently apart, and ever in most sanguinary strife, men who spoke the same language, who had one common origin, one common fund of mythological tradition, whose social habits and political ideas were almost identical, and among whom colonial and family relationships so crossed each other as to give each part a direct interest in every other part, and in the whole. 65 This is dwelt upon here to avoid any interruption of our argument elsewhere, and to obviate an objection that might, perhaps, arise to a superficial thinking. The Scrip- tures are a vacle mecum for us in politics as well as in theo- logy. In Gen. x : 5, 31, Deut. xxxii : 8, Acts xvii : 26, we find the true doctrine, the only one that can give peace to the world, and in the light of which alone we can regard nations as being truly and beneficently, " powers ordained of God." The Bible is as much opposed to a false cos- mopolitanism as it is to imperialism and popular anarchy. God meant that men should live in separate political organisms, " each people after its tongue, in their land, after their nations." In this way " He divides to them their inheritance, as he separates the sons of Adam, and sets the bounds of the peoples." It is true, " He hath made us all of one blood;" but it is "that we may live apart on all the face of the earth ;" to which end " He hath determined the times before appointed, and the limits (opodsoVas the termini or fixed local settlement) of their habitations." Such was the declared purpose away back in that historic morning of our race, when He divided the human speech, — whether we regard this as initial cause, or itself an early effect of the human dispersion. Such a division into nations, when clearly understood as a divine ordinance, is more consistent with a true fraternity than any cosmopolitan scheme of a sincere yet mistaken re- form. Communism of nations might be found as alien to such brotherhood as communism of families. But the principle must neither exceed nor fall short. If blood has flowed from the effort to hold distinct nationalities in one unnatural empire, having no real ties of kin and language to bind them together, it will continue to flow, and much more copiously, when the still more frantic attempt is made to establish separate petty sovereignties to which God, the great ordainer of nations, hath given no ethno- logical warrant, and in localities where nature and geo- graphy give them no right to exist. Sclavonians, Ger- mans, and Italians, crowded together in one despotic 9 66 dominion is bad enough; but Germans, or Italians, divided up into twenty petty and contiguous despot- isms is far worse. So xVmericans, Creoles, and Spaniards, bound up in one filibustering empire, would make a very bad amalgam ; but it would not compare for mischief with a state of things in which the father in Massachu- setts, the sons in Ohio, brothers in New York, and cousins in Tennessee, should find themselves alien members of separate and ever warring sovereignties. II. • jSTatioxality and Sovekeignty. "Res publica — populus — nou omnis hominum coetus quoquo modo congrega- tus, sed coetus multitudinis, juris consensu et communione sociatus. — Cic. Rep n i, 24. A nation or people is a political whole, acknowledging no outward control but God, and having no inward con- straint but its own self-developing organic law. A true nation must have these six characteristics : First — It is severed as a whole from all other political wholes. Second — It severs its parts from all other wholes or parts, so that they can maintain no relation to things without except through this embracing totality. Third — It maintains a relation to its own parts, such as can be claimed by or toward no other whole or parts. Fourth — It has one life or citizenship, or, which is the same thing, the individual who is a citizen in any one part is, ipso facto, and by no special grant or concession, a citizen in every other part. Fifth — It has an organic law, more or less limited, which is the highest or " supreme law of the land ; " — that is, the law every where, any law of any part to the contrary not- withstanding. Sixth — It bas an administrative power which is made to bear upon every part, and upon every individual citizen of every part, in enforcing obedience to this organic law, and all other laws made in pursuance thereof; this administra- tive power being executive, legislative, judicial, either separate or blended, held either by one man, or by a body or bodies of men, all representative of the one national will 68 as it expresses itself regularly and organically through these one or more departments. These elements every true nation must possess ; and so, on the other hand, that which thus possesses them is thereby a nation. They belong to every nation, irrespec- tive of its form. Be it monarchy, absolute or limited, the limit is only on the administrative power, not on the nation itself ; be it aristocracy or democracy, be it repub- lican, oligarchical, feudal, federal, consolidated, — these are but forms of the organic law, varied expressions of the one national will, whether slow or fast, conservative or impa- tient, enlightened or ignorant ; they affect not the idea of nationality, and the essential element that lies beneath it. Russia is a national will, very ignorant, it may be, very inflexible, very slow-moving, because it knows so little of itself and of its strength ; but, notwithstanding, as truly a national will as the constitutionally regulated, and the constitutionally uttered will of England and the United States. Again, a nation never creates itself. It is a ivliole in distinction from a mere sum or aggregate, and as such is the work of God and history, or rather of God working in history. This has been mentioned before, but we would present a few additional thoughts, which could not well be introduced into the current text without too much impeding the main argument. This impossibility of self- creation is from the very nature of things, since a whole cannot be made of parts without something previously determining that whole of which they are to be parts. A mere sum or aggregate may have nearness and relation ; it may have something that may be called union, but it has no true unity. It may arise from the coming together, accidental or otherwise, of independent parts, still remain- ing independent after the aggregation, but it is no true coetus (to use Cicero's term) or congregation. It is, at the most, a mere alliance, arbitrary in its inception, in its continuance, and in its dissolution. This is the imnctum differentiae to which we would call special attention. On 69 one side of it lies the notion of Jefferson Davis and his allies, on the other the true idea of our national being, for whose life or death we are now contending. Thus there may be leagues, partnerships, alliances offens- ive and defensive, or any gathering of separate nationali- ties, for longer or shorter times — for greater or lesser pur- poses. The European Congresses are of this kind ; but the parties to such leagues or alliances never lose nor impair their autocratic relations to each other, or to other nation- alities outside of the vinculum.* The reason is, there is no organic relation, no organic unity or wholeness. They have, in other words, no corporate life, simply because they do not act upon individuals, as our national government does, directly, and without having to call in any other agency. If they act at all, it must be an outward, me- chanical action on composing masses — not that chemical vitality which goes down to the very atoms of the organic structure. A national whole, once born, and however born — whether from some slow process of history, or as aided in its growth by shaping, conventional, swathing bands — becomes one of the powers ordained of God, and takes its ijlace among similar powers that He hath constituted in the earth. It is not for one generation more than for another. It is for all generations, and is to exert an influence upon all genera- tions as they follow each other — making them what they otherwise would not be ; thus, in one sense, becoming their creator f rather than their creature to be destroyed and cast away by them when they pleased. It is to be the edu- cator of the unborn ; and every new growth that thus con- * Each of these parties may be, at the same time, parties to other alliances, com- posed of other nationalities, and having in view other purposes. f In this sense "we are born of the law," as Socrates most impressively argues in the Crito. It is a noble passage, in which "the Laws" (or the Government) are apostrophised, and represented as expostulating with the man who is claiming the right to violate them. "You owe us all" (say the oi No/xoi) ; "we are the foun- dation of all; from us comes the family; from us comes the institution of marriage ; ds syevv^daixsv q^eig — we have begotten you ; and after you were born, from us you received your nurture and education." Such is the tenure of citizenship. Crito, 50 D. 70 tinually comes out of the future so strengthens the national growth, so perfects its form and symmetry, so deepens the roots of its vitality, that it becomes more legitimate, more holy, more an object of reverence as the work of God, with every year of its existence. It is a much greater crime to assail the life of our nation now, than it would have been sixty years ago. As such "power ordained of God," a nation is an intelligence, a will, and a force. It has a moral char- acter, and an accountability. When once born, by what- ever quickening event in history that may have been, it is in some things left to itself, like any other moral agent. The form it shall assume and the power it shall exercise, as monarchical, democratic, republican, flexible or consoli- dated, is afterwards, in good measure, its own shaping work, though even this, in the start, is very much affected by the same outward formative power which gave it its historical and geographical totality. But the national essence is irrespective of all these forms, and so is the national sovereignty. Our political habits of thought make us peculiarly the subjects of delusion here. Some would be startled at the idea that our repub- lican nation, with all its subdivisions of political agency, with all its checks and limitations, is as absolute a power and as absolute a sovereignty as that of France or Eussia. A little thought, however, enables us to go beyond the form into the substance of this matter. The sovereignty in every state is the national mind, acting through the national will, and aided by the national force. But this mind and will are very different in different states. In one it is an ignorant mind and will, ferocious or stupid, and acting by no rule. It is that lowest form of a will that is hardly distinguishable from impulse, appetite or bare volition. It is a lawless mind and will, whether it take the form of a wild impulsive democracy, or of an unlimited despotism, in which form it is the same unrea- soning national power represented by one man. In another, the mind of the state is the law, — vofc avsu 6pi!sws, "mind 71 without passion," as Aristotle defines it* — the settled law of the state, fundamental, organic, general, specific, local and municipal, ordaining, originating, permitting. Throuah this the nation thinks and wills and acts, this is the true public sentiment, this is the true vox populi, and so far as such is the meaning and realization of the term, does it approach to being what it is so often falsely, called, " the voice of God." It is not simply lawless volition, but a true will, voluntas instead of voluntas — a will of reason, quae quid cum ratione desiderata Such a will of such a state is simply the expression of the law, or cor- porate reason, and the providing the forces necessary to secure its healthy action, its constant organic movement, in all its varied departments. And so it is with what is called the sovereignty. This is as great, as absolute, in the one case as in the other. If there be any difference in this respect, we may say that in the constitutional state, there is in fact, a higher sove- reignty, inasmuch as it is occupied with higher objects, and so requiring, in truth, a higher power. A rational or constitutional nation limits itself, and that is what the lawless sovereign (be it a lawless people or one man repre- senting such lawless people), cannot do, — is, in fact, too weak to do. The power thus employed may be called latent, like latent heat in chemistry, but it is by no means lost. There comes in here that analogy, which has been such a favorite in the best political writings (whether literal or allegorical), from Plato's Eepublic to Bunyan's City of Mausoul. It is the parallel between the state and the individual spirit, — the inward government of one soul, and the government of many souls linked together in one rovidence of God determines this, and gene- rally makes it clear. It is seen in the kind of men that are raised up for such a purpose, and in all that gives to such a period and to such men the aspect of the heroic and the reverence of mankind. In the case of the South, there could be no such griev- ance, for a reason that has been often stated, that the gov- ernment against which this right of revolution is claimed, is purely republican, with a most flexible organic mode through which the national mind and will can ever present their fair expression. In other political forms, irregular action may be demanded, because the organic action is too slow, or so clogged that the only way to healthy political life is through a temporary breakage of the ill-working 11 82 machinery. The disease, in this case, is in the organiza- tion, and revolution is the cure. Republican govern- ments, on the other hand, are established for the very purpose of obviating any such necessity. This is the great argument in their favor. Without it they are no better than monarchies in regard to the chief excellence claimed for them, whilst inferior in other elements of stable and healthy government, for which this organic remedy, it was thought, would more than compensate. Thus viewed, then, in their relation to the two forms, the two ideas change names and places. What is a means of health in the one case, becomes a deadly poison in the other. In a republican state revolution is the disease, and the healthy life of the nation demands that the evil spirit, with its false claim and principle, should be wholly exor- cised from the soul and body politic. But let us take a more practical view of this vexed question. Confusion has arisen from wrong naming. Everything is not a revolution that is so-called. The name was unfortunately given to our national birth-strug- gle, and much false reasoning has been the consequence. It certainly was not such a revolution as those that have taken place in England and France. In fact nothing like it had ever before existed, in any noticeable sense, in human history. It stands by itself as a case of colonial separa- tion, violent indeed, because resisted, but coming in the natural order of things, and therefore intrinsically right. The colonial relation has ever been regarded as analogous to the parental. Like that, too, it is expected in time to be dissolved, socially and politically, though ever preserv- ing the kindred tie. Thus the settlement of a colony is the planting of a future nation, divided geographically, and destined, in its very inceptive idea, for political sever- ance, though retaining still the other ethnological relations. A common speech, a common lineage, a convenient geo- graphical position adapted to the development of inward and outward commerce, — these are the conditions of na- tionality, and when the last demands it, there is ground 83 for severance, even though the first two are unchanged. So has it been held from the beginning, or since the human race commenced its long work of subduing and settling all parts of the earth, "every one after its tongue, after their families, in their nations." The Greeks had the true colo- nial idea, however great the errors they committed in re- spect to their home relations. We especially cite them, because the Eomans had no colonies in this true sense of the term. They were a conquering people, and their colo- nial, especially their extra-Italian ones, were, for the most part, mere military stations. Their mission was " to sub- due," rather than cultivate and settle the earth. Modern his- tory has returned, in some measure, to the more natural and civilizing Greek idea, though somewhat modified by the selfish, empire-extending Eoman spirit. There has been too much reference to the power and wealth of the parent state. Yet still the true notion of the colony has not been lost, and our own signal assertion of it will probably be the principal means of restoring it to the world in all its political integrity. What the colonial idea truly is, ap- pears in the established language by which it is character- ized, even when abused. Webster well defines a colony as "a company of people transplanted from their mother country to a remote country to cultivate it, (colonia, from colo,) and remaining subject to the jurisdiction of the pa- rent state ; when such settlements cease to be subject to the parent state they are no longer colonies." It is a child going to a new home, receiving help for a time, but with an undoubted looking to future independence. This idea of relationship, and yet of expatriation, is most affectingly presented in some of the religious ceremonies that an- ciently took place in the founding of such a foreign house- hold. They carried with them the sacra patria, "the sacred things of the father land" — whatever was held in highest reverence and would longest preserve the home feeling, whilst, at the same time, most clearly indicating the mutually cherished idea of a new home, a new national life, of which these ceremonies and " sacred paternities" 84 were the significant symbols. Chief among these was the solemn transportation of the "sacred lire," kindled from the most interior shrine, or religions hearth, of the mother city (c penetrali url)is Hep romp turn ct accensum), and ever to be kept alive in the distant land to which they were going. Thucydides calls it craXaioj vaj*o£, "the ancient colonizing law."* It had the same . significance as "the nuptial torch" given to the newly married, the same idea of a new life coming out of the old, and carrying on the succession of individual and national births. So also it was the cus- tom, after the colony was settled, to send back legates, in majorem patriam, to the "old country," on certain solemn occasions, to take part in its public sacrifices — thus renew- ing the flame from its primeval source. The outward is ever flowing, the inward meaning stands the same for all men and for all ages. Our fathers took from the altars of England the sacred lire of her religious and political institutions ; but it was not to increase the English power, as such, nor to extend the English domin- ions. It was to be preserved for a new altar, a new tem- ple, and a new home, to arise in the fulness of time — a new and distant people perpetuating England's glory, and all the more effectually, from the very fact of the expected political separation. The same radical import may be traced in the docu- mentary language that becomes fixed in the forms of colo- nial settlement. Colonists are described as men who go to " distant lands " — to " foreign parts." Their object is set forth to be the settlement of " waste or unknown coun- tries." Geographically, they expatriate themselves. The jurisdiction of the mother state is, or ought to be, simply for their protection. Ee venue derived from them can properly be applied to no other purpose. Making it the object to enrich the mother country, to the injury of their political growth, is a monstrous violation of law revealed in the historical world as clearly as any that God has established in the physical. In the colonizing spirit there * See Thucydides, I, 24, and Duker's note, with his reference to Polybius. 85 is carried out that great plan for the dispersion of the nations, commencing in the plain of Shinar. Steadily west- ward has been the movement — at least in the main and most vital stream of humanity — until the circuit of the earth has been nearly completed. During this long march, nation has ever been begetting nation, until we find the youngest of these embryo powers to be one of our own planting on the far Pacific* * The opinion may be an unpopular one. even among our most loyal men, but the writer would not hesitate to express it, that the extension of our republican state beyond the Mississippi, except so far as security was concerned, or for the planting of future colonies, was a grave political error. It was a departure from one of the essential ideas of a true nationality, as demanding compact and well-defined geo- graphical position. Every people have suffered, in the end, from a violation of this principle. They have either ruined themselves, or been compelled to return to their old natural and historical boundaries. Rome had to come back to Italy, weaker and more broken than though she had never been the mistress of the world. France has often overflowed, but only to subside each time, with shame and loss, into her old channel. She has never gained strength or any true glory by depart- ing from that ancient Gallic site which God had " appointed as the bounds of her habitation." England is now in peril from the same cause, unless she holds all her extra territory as in trust for future political organizations. Have we not also a warning here ? The dauger is all the greater from the fact that this passion for extra territory always connects itself with a false nationality to the marring of the true idea. It is the nationality of empire and conquest, instead of that which God has established in language, lineage, and position. We have furnished already a most notable example of this. The Xorth has always held the true idea, modest and unassuming, in proportion to its depth and substance. We were charged with want of national spirit. Ten years ago the claim was all made for the men of the South. Who more national than they, with their "manifest destiny," their '•an- nexations," their Cuba i: wrestings," their filibuster expeditions to "extend the area of freedom ? " In the Xorth. political solidity was desired, rather than any indefinite surface-spread having no natural bounds to determine it in any direction. Xo small portion of our present troubles may be traced to this false nationality, thus ending in the denial of the true. How closely have they been connected with the exciting questions that arose out of the purchase of Louisiana, the annexation of Texas, and the war with Mexico ! All this territory to the Pacific, and to the unbounded Xorth, is now in our possession. It is a fearful trust, and we are bound to exercise over it a wise political guardianship. But this should ever be in view of the possibility — yea, of the extreme probability — that these remote parts, separate from us by deserts, seas and mountains, will one day become separate nationalities. Such an event would be no violation of our national principle. These remote regions formed no part of our original territory. They were unknown to our national birth-struggle, whilst, on the other hand, they are associated with the most disorganizing elements in our history. A single row of states west of the Mississippi is all that is essential to our true national strength. The desert that lies beyond, and all beyond that, and so on to the far Pacific, should 86 Colonies have no share in the government of the mother country, and this fact alone makes the case of their sepa- ration, whether violent or peaceful, a totally different thing from what is commonly called revolution in a home state that has long formed one political whole. Has the time come for the political change? That is the only question. Such change ought to be peaceful. A birth travail, how- ever, may be one of the high designs, and appointed means of Providence, to give the young nation a bolder and stronger position in the great family of nations. In this way Holland was made one people. Without its hard contested war it would have been a nest of miserable Dutch Principalities, instead of a powerful commercial state.* And so, had we dropped quietly and gradually from the mother's lap, we might have been an ever-brawling house- hold, or that mischievous brood of petty sovereignties that some say we are. The one common war with mother Britain made us one nation, if nothing else had concurred to give us that claim and title — one vital, vigorous nation, wherein, after that, no part had a right to claim a separate interest, or to shut out any other part, or parts, trom any part of the total community for which all had together fought and bled. Our severance, too, came none too early. Either the colonial growth must have been most unjustly hindered, or we should have become, long ago, too numer- ous and too unwieldy for a proper care to be exercised over us by the distant parent land. That one people should continue to be governed by another thus remotely distant is politically unnatural. It defeats the colonial idea, which be regarded by us as held in trust, with a reverent looking to the developments of Providence, and with a feeling of acquiescence should these point to future politi- cal separation. An American Pacific nation, the child of the older Atlantic power ; there would seem in this a harmony both historical and geographical. Should such a time ever arrive, it would be found that the conceded independence of these distant parts is far more consistent with our true nationality than that irregular and indefinite annexation which was sought by the authors of our present troubles, and, as it now most plainly appears, as the very means of national disorganization. * The United Provinces of Holland had not been, strictly, colonies of Spain ; but the resemblance is near enough to justify its use in the argument. 87 is the fulfilling the ancient ordinance of God in the set- tlement of the unknown and uncultivated parts of the earth with new nations, ever carrying with thern an older civilization. A colonial severance, then, being improperly called a revolution, let us consider that to which the name is more properly applied, and we shall find it also to present fea- tures utterly opposed to this abnormal Southern claim. England and France have had their revolutions, strictly such. They are always violent, involving more or less of departure from the regular course of the organic life, and, in fact, seeking their justification on the very ground that that organic life had become diseased, and could only be restored to health by this harsh and anomalous remedy. Sometimes the irregularity has been comparatively slight, as in the English revolution of 1688. It was more violent and radical in the one that preceded. The French revolu- tions have presented still more of this destructive and anomalous action ; but amidst them all, whether English or French, there has been one thing ever prominent — one idea never lost sight of — that forever separates these pro- ceedings from the claim set up for insurrection in our land. These revolutions, instead of being denationalizing, that is, seeking to destroy a nation, or even to divide it, have been eminently characterized by the directly opposite spirit. The national idea was never so vivid, the nation itself was never so strong, as when the revolution was at its intensest heat. England was never so much England, one and indi- visible — never so much a nation, proud of its nationality, as in the days of Cromwell. France was never so much one mighty France, without the least thought of national severance, as in the maddest paroxysms of her terrible revo- lutions. A proposition to divide France, the Xorth from the South, the East from the West, the Mediterranean from the Atlantic, or the sources of her rivers from their mouths, would have been received with horror. It would at once have united all parties in opposition to it. Robespierre, and Lafayette, Jacobins and Loyalists, Republicans and 88 Imperialists, would all have suspended their lesser strife in resistance to such a catastrophe. Nor is such a feeling* a mere blind prejudice. It is higher and truer than our rea- soning. It is the instinct of preservation, innate in every organic structure, from the vegetable up to the human — from the individual man, in his strong passion for life, to the greater social and spiritual organisms to which God and history have given a true political vitality. This feel- ing ennobles a nation. It is the foundation of national character, and the great conservator of the idea of national responsibility. It has been ever weak in the South, owing to sectional causes that need not now be specified. It has been ever strong in the North and West. It was growing with our growth ; or if it has been checked, or weakened, in any degree, it has been owing to that dena- tionalizing doctrine of state sovereignty which some have so assiduously taught. This feeling of political wholeness, as the ground of poli- tical responsibility, was the conservative power that saved all that was valuable in France. A severance in space would have had all the evil effect of a severance in time — cutting off the nation from its historical reminiscences by destroying its geographical identity. But this was the very thing to be preserved ; and so, amid all the convul- sions of the French people, it was still the same France. Her interior divisions were all changed, but the historical whole remained intact and fair as ever. Monarchy, feu- dality, nobility, all went down ; the body politic assumed all forms — royalty, absolute and constitutional, republi- canism, extreme democracy, imperial despotism, — but the nation, the one indivisible nation, still survived. It came out stronger than ever. The storm had actually increased its cohesive and self-conserving power. In all other things there was the wildest radicalism. During these political upheavings the idea of popular self-government, or of "government founded solely on the consent of the gov- erned" — to use the language of the times — was carried to the extreme of democratic extravagance ; but it never 89 touched this national idea, and this national life which lived on amid all outward and organic mutations. The right of self-government was ever of the w T hole, and for the whole. It was as though even in ungodly and atheistical souls, there was still a recognition of something higher in government than the mere earthly work. Man was, in- deed, something more than an instrument in political crea- tions; he had his lower human province; forms were his to mold as he pleased in less or greater flexibility; the mode in which a people should exercise their nation- ality, or their right of self-government, was, in great mea- sure, left to their own responsible agency ; but beyond this there was a limitation. "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." It was the word of God as uttered in his- tory. Peoples and nationalities themselves were His work. Here man, of his own will, or under any abstract pretense, had no right to meddle. If ever he acts in the severance or dissolution of a nation, it must be as the ac- knowledged instrument of God ; it must be from a cause so urgent, or from a reason so holy, as to leave no doubt of the divine commission. If it was not this religions feeling that restrained the French people, it was some- thing resembling it — something that took, for them, the place and form of worship. It was the reverential instinct of nationality that awed their souls and checked their wildest progress. This right of self-government, as claimed in France, was the right of the whole, as a whole, or of each part, even the humblest part, as a part, to a share in the government of such whole, and in all the vast benefits that came from being a member of so strong and glorious a totality.* * A false idea ever involves itself in contradictions. The setting up a right of separate self-government in a part, is a denial of any true right of self-government in the previous whole, since such right in the whole is immediately estopped by the action of any part. The inconsistency goes farther than this. It must deny the most important right of each part ; that is, its right in every other part, involv- ing its right of sharing in the self-government of such a whole, as a much more valu- able thing (so deemed by it) than any petty government of its own solitan r self. It is, also, the destruction of all national morality, inward as well as outward. As 12 90 Essentially different from it was the claim of severance, or of separate government, by each part, and, of course, by each part of each part. No revolutionary feeling, in all its dissolving madness, could tolerate such an assertion for a moment. The Sans culottes would have been as much opposed to it as the proud old noble in his chateau. Dan- ton would have been as far from giving it countenance as the haughtiest Bourbon on his throne. In explanation of this, it might be said, perhaps, that France had been a nation for ages. But what had made and kept her such ? It was this very sentiment that God had implanted as part of our social human nature, giving entity and identity to nations once historically formed, and clothing them with all those attributes of responsible being which the Scrip- tures predicate of political communities as clearly as of individual men.* It should be borne in mind, however, as a most important fact in our present reasoning, that in the early history of France there was far less of this historic organizing power than has marked our own political growth. It took ages to bring her out of her chaos of loose feudalities into political symmetry and compactness. there can be no internal trust, no self-confidence, or consciousness of national integ- rity, so there can be no external responsibility exercised by or towards a people when such right is claimed as inherent in any and every part. It destroys national identity, a thing in which other nations have a claim and an interest. No treaty can be made with such a people ; no loans can be made by or for them ; there can be no sound political or commercial intercourse to which they are parties. Where such a principle prevails, there is no true political existence. It is a deformed polypodal monster, without any responsible soul, or even any principle of bodily cohesion. A nation owes it to other nations to preserve itself. It is the only way it can fulfill its obligations to them. Without this there can be no "law of nations," as there can be, in fact, no true political science nor political philosophy. * It is a striking feature of the Scripture language, this continual recognition of the identity, or, as we might well call it, political personality, of nations. Israel, Egypt, Assyria, are as distinctly addressed with exhortation, praise, rebuke, as David and Solomon. The component individual atoms are ever flowing, but the nation lives on. It is threatened with retribution in ages to come for crimes com- mitted in ages past. It is not one generation, or one set of men, punished for the sins of another, but the same indivisible political being, regarded as ever carrying its moral responsibilities with it down to the time of its utter dissolution, when it disappears from the earth. 91 The historic causes that had made her a monarchy so strong and homogenous in the days of Louis XIV, had less of shaping unity than the identities of race and lan- guage, the affinities of colonial enterprise, the mutual dependencies, the catholicity of ideas, the ecumenical con- gresses, the one long birth war, the sworn compacts, the solemn treaties with foreign powers, that, all combined, made us one great rejniblican state — such as it was in the days of Andrew Jackson, when we were defying all the world, and the very men who would now tear us to pieces were the loudest in their talk of carrying the E Pluribus TJxmi, the one American flag, trom the isthmus of Darien to the shores of the Frozen ocean. The French preserved this strong feeling of nationality during the period of what may be called their intensest individualism. It was held sacred all the time they were shouting their loudest for the "rights of man" in their most ultra form. And in this there was no inconsistency. The whole glory of the revolutionary idea — when it has any glory — has been its conservative plea, as the only means of preserving a cherished nationality from that de- struction which wrong government would inevitably bring upon it. The welfare of parts, and of individuals, is involved. "The French people, the French nation, one and indivisible" — this was the revolutionary tocsin. They had suffered from monarchy, they were suffering from the wildness of an untamed democracy, they were in danger of military despotism ; but no evils, under any form of government, could be so great, in the end, as those that would arise from a severed France, presenting again the petty despotisms, as well as the weakness of the Mero- vingian dynasties. These despotisms might take a differ- ent form in modern times, but a great nation was the best protection against either extreme of excess that bad gov- ernment might present ; and hence each individual French- man instinctively felt that his highest political good was connected with the idea of one great and indivisible France. If there was national vanity, there was also 92 something higher and more conservative in the thought. Hence it is that such revolutions, with all their excesses, have actually strengthened the nation as an organic power; they have given it a new impetus of life, a new glow of national feeling, promising a perpetuity that was endangered by the diseases and corruptions of the old stagnant body. The design, in dwelling upon these points, is to show the antipolar difference between this historical phenomenon called revolution — as it has been exhibited in England and France — and any claim that may be set up for the South- ern secessionist, either by himself, or by his sympathizing friends in Europe. What would the editor, or readers, of the London Times think of a movement that threatened to divide England by a line north and south, or that should cut off from their mouths the sources of the Severn and the Thames, or sever the connection with Scotland, or re- duce England, in short, to that old Heptarchichal anarchy which had so much less of germinal nationality than the loosest historical tie that ever bound together our embryo colonial membership ! This Southern claim, as made by Jefferson Davis in one of his late messages, is, in fact, a new thing under the sun. It is a monstrosity, having no parallel, nor likeness, in his- tory — this assertion of a right to cut a nation in two, and that at a period of its most vigorous life. It is like asking a strong healthy man to submit to amputation, as the right (if we may indulge so strange a supposition) of the part demanding it, without any regard to the pain and loss of life that may come to the whole, and to every other part as having its life and highest well-being involved in the conservation of such whole. Opposition to this by the loyal parts — in other words, uncompromising war with it — is simply matter of neces- sity. We are compelled to fight it as we would the wolf who has his fangs upon our throat; and that wolf might just as well claim to be "let alone," or to be acting in self- defense, as the secessionist. Mr. Lincoln sees the case intui- 93 lively, and, in his peculiar way, reaches out, at once, to the conclusion. He gives it in the form of an apothegm, or enthynieine, in which the whole reasoning is involved in a skillful statement of the fact : ll Tlu ivar will cease on the part of the nation when it shall have ceased on the part of those ivlw began it" Peace, in the usual form of nego- tiation (as between parties foreign to each other) would, in this case, be simply surrender. It must be a peace that preserves our nationality entire. Any other is not only undesirable, but impossible ; for the very attempt to make it is a dissolution of stronger and more sacred bonds than it can ever bind again. When we see this, and learn to act steadily upon it, then only can we cherish the idea of peace, whether in the near or in the distant view. No treaty can be made with the men — for no treaty can hold the men — who have trampled under foot the constitution of the United States. The entire argument here may be summed up in two brief propositions. The first is a simple statement of fact, the second a conclusion following irresistibly from it. Proposition 1st. The United States is a nation. Waiving any other proof of this, such as has been else- where advanced, we may rest it simply on the historical facts presented by the past eighty years. No one would venture to deny the nationality of England, France or Holland; but what evidence is there of such nationality that has not existed in our own case ? We define a man from the acts of a man. There can be no better rule for nations. We might begin first with acts that are purely interior, though having an outward relation. To this class belong all public works that would never have had a being, had it not been for such a res-piiblica, or acknowledged tvholeness. Every fortress, custom house, navy yard, ship of war, &c, is a visible proof of our nationality. But we prefer, as more striking evidence, though not more con- clusive, the national acts that have characterized us in our foreign relations. What, in this respect, have France and England done that we have not done ? Wars, treaties of 94 peace, commercial alliances, extra-tradition acts, commis- sioning- and reception of ambassadors, consuls, interna- tional agents of every kind — national courtesies, national protests — all acts, in short, that can be found in modern history as peculiar to the acknowledgment of national being, have been transacted lij us, and with ns, as one people represented, in such transactions, by one acknow- ledged national power, to which alone the foreign power could bind itself, and from which alone, as the one party bound, it could seek redress of grievances alleged. Euro- peans have known here but one such national entity. Such, both in the letter and in the spirit, has been the language we have held to them and they to us. " There shall be firm peace and amity between the British nation and the subjects of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, on the one hand, and the United States of America and the people and citizens thereof, on the other;" such is the style of every treaty.* For eighty years have such forms been assented * The denial of a nation's totality would seem to be a denial of its national exist- ence. It would also seem to follow, as a matter of course, that between a nation so denying, and one so denied, all treaties of every kind must be at an end ; since they were made between two supposed wholes, and can have no validity on any other hypothesis. Two such nations are in a state of nature to each other ; there can be no "law of nations " nor political code of any kind between them. They do not know each other. The treaties between us and Great Britain were made with the United States, as a geographical and political whole, far better defined than that conglomerate mass commonly called " the British Empire." England has, therefore, no right to limit her own relations to a part of the United States, or to deal with other parts, in any way, as though they were not parts of such a whole. This was the attitude she assumed at the very start of the rebellion. Of late, however, the British ministry would seem to have gone even a step farther. It appears, in a late state paper of Lord Russell, that they have ever regarded us as at least two separate peoples, — though, for nearly a century, treating with us and in all respects dealing with us, as one. He talks of the "friendship England has ever entertained for the South as well as for the Xorth." There is no mistaking this language. If held by us in regard to the relations of England, Scotland, Ireland, India, Canada, Australia, they would immediately understand its import. Now Lord John Russell is no great political philosopher, but his position gives his speech a significance, which, it would seem, must demand an explanation from our government. If it has been " Xorth and South," and not " the United States of America," that Great Britain has been so long dealing with, it is high time that our mutual positions in the family of nations should be better understood. Where is the old United States, the only United States known to England, or to the world ? The South does not claim to be it, in any 95 to by our commissioned ambassadors, ratified by our Senate, signed by our President, carried out by acts of Con- gress, declared valid by our one national Supreme Court, acknowledged by all the people collectively, acted upon iu our nation's history, and held judicially binding upon every individual man in his individual responsibility. There is no higher proof, in kind, of national existence, and in the degree and frequency of such action, during our eighty years historic life, we have been exceeded by no nation under heaven. Proposition 2d. Given a nation — every part of such nation having a corporate character, and every part of such part, down to the individual citizen, have, thereby, acquired a right in the whole nationality, and in all its parts, which no other part, or parts, could take away from him, or them, without injustice. TTe apply this to the United States. It results directly from the idea, we have so labored to impress, of a true nation as having a real, pervading national life — showing itself to be real by the fact that a hurt to it in any one part is felt in every other — thus making it essentially dif- ferent from a mere mass, or mass-meeting, having no such interpenetrating and vitalizing unity. From such fact of vitality it follows that the violent severance of a nation, instead of being merely an assertion of self-gov- ernment, or of self-defence, by the part that attempts the severance, is, in fact, in the very face of such idea of self- government in its most true and important aspect as the right of the whole, and of each part in the whole. It would be wrong if these loyal parts were few ; it acquires a corresponding degree of enormity when the parts thus wronged are a great majority of the old political body. The "social compact" theory, once such a favorite with a certain class of political writers, requires, in some way, the assent of each part to the formation of a state. Without sense. The Xorth alone has no title to the historical epithet. The United Stares is no longer a political existence ; it is gone from the political map, or it is what it has ever been, one and indivisible. 96 here accepting or controverting any such theory, it is suf- ficient to say that there is far more power, as well as truth, in the argument, that in a state once formed, and how- ever formed, the protest of even one part should avail against its wanton dissolution. When it has become the fouutain of political life to generations born under it, every portion, however minute, acquires a vested right in its continuance. Much more is this true of the whole. And here we recur again to the old analogy between a nation and the individual ; a man's right to be born may be questioned; his right to live after being born is certainly a higher and less disputable claim. If it be objected that the course of reasoning here adopted respecting parts and wholes, and national vitali- ties, is too metaphysical and abstract, it may be replied that all truth of highest value runs up, at last, into the metaphysical and theological. Only when we get above the flowing — or find in the flowing an abiding life and types of things that stand — do we truly attain to the harmony of ideas. The purest theory, too, is ever the most practical, as is shown by the practical mischiefs that, in the long run, ever result from the neglect, or contempt, of its teachings. The United States — the nation so called — is a high reality, distinct from the flowing individual masses of men and women that now seem to compose it, and that rind in it their highest earthly rights. It is one of the creations of God, as much so as the earth and man. It came down to us from the past ; it will go from us into the future. As far as our mundane being is concerned, "we perish, but it remaineth" — imperfect, indeed, yet still most real — sharing, like other creations, in the destiny of the mutable and the temporal, yet still presenting one of the highest earthly figures of " the Dominion that passeth not away." Such views may be pronounced mystic or transcendental, but woe to the people by whom they are wholly neglected. For Secessionists themselves, however, there is an appeal which even they must admit to be eminently practical, involving, as it does, that most intelligible, if not most 97 elevated mode of reasoning, entitled the argumentum ad homines. A very efficient medicine is sometimes extracted from very poisonous materials. We have employed this process in the use before made of that most shameless of political papers, the Ostend Manifesto. In a similar man- ner may Henry A. Wise be made to serve the cause of truth and loyalty. We summon to the witnesses box this arch-secessionist. Ten years ago, in the then loyal but now rebellious city of Eichmond, he gave the follow- ing most significant toast : 44 The Rights of the States — and, foremost among them, the Right to the blessed Union of the States." We appeal from Henry A. Wise, drunk with secession in 1864, to Henry A. Wise sober in 1851. His doctrine is true, and most admirably stated. It contains a mine of political philosophy. A more complete exhibition of the highest "state right" was never so concisely made. The men now in rebellion at the South — all who sympa- thize with them at the North — are the worst foes to the political dogma of which they claim to be the peculiar advo- cates. They, on the other hand, who would wage uncom- promising war with such rebellion, are the true friends of state rights, and especially of that which is "foremost among them," the right of the states — the right of each state — the right of each individual man of each state — to all the benefits of nationality, strength, security, protec- tion from abroad, peace within, popular glory, humanitarian progress, and spiritual elevation, that have flowed, or may be expected to flow, from the blessed union of the STATES. 13 ......... ... mm