But what was the fate of the "Virginia resolutions"? For Virginia did not pretend that she had all the wisdom, and virtue, and patriotism of the country within her borders. She sent these resolutions to every State in the Union, and desired the opinion of their legislatures and their governors on the subject. Kentucky pa.s.sed similar resolutions; and Kentucky, you will notice, had just been made a State, in 1793--an off-shoot from Virginia; and, as the gentleman has told you, Mr.
Madison wrote the resolutions of Virginia, and Mr. Jefferson those of Kentucky. So that there was not any great independent support, in either State, for the views, thus identical, and thus promulgated by these two Virginians. Their great patriotism, and wisdom, and intelligence, are a part of the inheritance we are all proud of. But, when the appeal was sent for concurrence to New York, South Carolina, Georgia, Ma.s.sachusetts, and the New England States, what was the result? Why, Kentucky, in 1799, regrets that, of all the States, none, except Virginia, acquiesced in the doctrines; and the answers of every one of the States that made response are contained in the record which also contains the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. And that doctrine there exploded, and exploded forever, until its recurrence in the shape of nullification, in South Carolina, as part of the doctrines of this Const.i.tution.
We had another pressure on the subject of local dissatisfaction, in 1812; and then the seat of discontent and heresy was New England. I do not contend, and never did contend, in any views I have taken of the history of affairs in this country, that the people of any portion of it have a right to set themselves in judgment as superiors over the people of any other portion. I never have had any doubt that, just as circ.u.mstances press on the interests of one community or another, just so are they likely to carry their theoretical opinions on the questions of the power of their Government and of their own rights, and just so to express themselves. So long as they confine themselves to resolutions and politics, to the hustings and to the elections, n.o.body cares very much what their political theories are. But my learned friend Mr. Brady has taken the greatest satisfaction in showing, that this notion of the co-ordinate authority of the States with the nation, found its expression and adoption, during the war of 1812, in some of the States of New England. Well, gentlemen, I believe that all sober and sensible people agree that, whether or not the New England States carried their heresies to the extent of justifying the nullification of a law, or the revocation of their a.s.sent to the Confederacy, and their withdrawal from the common Government, the doctrines there maintained were not suitable for the strength and the harmony, for the unity and the permanency, of the American Government. I believe that the condemnation of those principles that followed, from South Carolina, from Virginia, from New York, and from other parts of the country, and the resistance which a large, and important, and intelligent, and influential portion of their own local community manifested, exterminated those heresies forever from the New England mind.
Next, we come to 1832, and then, under the special instruction and authority of a great Southern statesman, (Mr. Calhoun,) whose acuteness and power of reasoning have certainly been scarcely, if at all, surpa.s.sed by any of our great men, the State of South Carolina undertook, not to secede, but to nullify; and yet Mr. Larocque says, that this pet doctrine of Mr. Calhoun,--nullification, and nothing else,--is the absurdest thing ever presented in this country; and we are fortunate, I suppose, in not having wrecked our Union upon that doctrine.
Now we come, next, to the doctrine of secession. Nullification, rejected in 1798 by all the States, except Virginia and Kentucky, and never revived by them,--nullification, rejected by the sober sense of the American People,--nullification was put down by the strong will of Jackson, in 1832,--having no place to disturb the strength and hopes and future of this country. And what do we find is the proposition now put forward, as matter of law, to your Honors, to relieve armed and open war from the penalties of treason, and from the condemnation of a lesser crime? What is it, as unfolded here by the learned advocate (Mr.
Larocque), with all his acuteness, but so manifest an absurdity that its recognition by a lawyer, or an intelligent Jury, seems almost impossible? It is this: This Union has its power, its authority, its laws. It acts directly upon all the individuals inside of every State, and they owe it allegiance as their Government. It is a Government which is limited, in the exercise of its power, to certain general and common objects, not interfering with the domestic affairs of any community. Within that same State there is a State government, framed into this General Government, to be certainly a part of it in its territories, a part of it in its population, a part of it in every organization, and every department of its Government. The whole body of its administration of law, the Legislature and the Executive, are bound, by a particular oath, to sustain the Const.i.tution of the United States. But, although it is true that the State Government has authority only where the United States Government has not, and that the United States have authority only where the State has not; and although there is a written Const.i.tution, which says what the line of separation is; and although there is a Supreme Court, which, when they come into collision, has authority to determine between them, and no case whatever, affecting the right or the conduct of any individual man, can be subtracted from its decision; yet, when there comes a difference between the State and the General Government, the State has the moral right, and political right, to insist upon its view, and to maintain it by force of arms, and the General Government has the right to insist upon its view, and to maintain it by force of arms. And then we have this poor predicament for every citizen of that unlucky State,--that he is bound by allegiance, and under the penalty of treason, to follow each and both of these powers. And as, should he follow the State, the United States, if it be treason, would hang him, and, if he should follow the United States, the State, if it be treason, would hang him, this peculiar and whimsical result is produced,--that when the United States undertake to hang him for treason his answer is--"Why, if I had not done as I did, the State would have hanged me for treason, and, surely, I cannot be compelled to be hanged one way or the other--so, I must be protected from hanging, as to both!" Well, _that_, I admit, is a sensible way to get out of the difficulty, for the man and for the argument, if you can do it. But, it is a peculiar result, to start with two sovereigns, each of which has a right over the citizen, and to end with the citizen"s right to choose which he shall serve, and to throw it in the face of offended majesty and justice--"Why, your statute of treason is repealed as against me, because the State, of which I am a subject, has counseled a particular course of conduct!"
Now, gentlemen, my learned friend qualifies even this theory--which probably must fall within the condemnation of the perhaps somewhat harsh and rough suggestion of Mr. Justice Grier, of a "political plat.i.tude"--by the suggestion that it only applies to questions where the united States cannot settle the controversy. And when my learned friend is looking around for an instance or an occasion that is likely to arise in human affairs, and in this nation, and in this time of ours, he is obliged to resort to the most extraordinary and extravagant proposition by way of ill.u.s.tration, and one that has, in itself, so many of the ingredients of remoteness and impossibility, that you can hardly think a Government deficient in not having provided for it. He says, first--suppose we have a President, who is a Ma.s.sachusetts man.
Well, that is not very likely in the course of politics at present. And then, suppose that he is a bad man,--which, probably, my learned friends would think not as unlikely as I should wish it to be. And, then, suppose he should undertake to build up Boston, in its commerce, at the expense of New York; and should put a blockading squadron outside New York, by mere force of caprice and tyranny, without any law, and without any provision for the payment of the men of the Navy, or any commission or authority to any of them under which they could find they were protected for what they should do, in actually and effectually blockading our port. My learned friend acknowledges that this is a pretty violent sort of suggestion, and that no man in his senses would pretend to do such a thing, however bad he was, unless he could find a reasonable sort of pretext for it. Therefore he would, wisely and craftily, pretend that he had private advices that England was going to bombard New York. Now that is the practical case created by my learned friend"s ingenuity and reflection, as a contingency in which this contest by war between New York and the United States of America would be the only practical and sensible mode of protecting our commerce, and keeping you and me in the enjoyment of our rights as citizens of the State of New York. Well, to begin with, if we had a fleet off New York harbor, what is there that would require vessels to go to Boston instead of to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other places that are open? In the second place, how long could we be at war, and how great an army could we raise in New York, to put in the field against the Federal Government, before this pretence of private advices that England was going to bombard New York, would pa.s.s away, and the naked deformity of this bad Ma.s.sachusetts President be exposed? Why, gentlemen, it is too true to need suggestion, that the wisdom which made this a Government over all individual citizens, and made every case of right and interest that touches the pocket and person of any man in it a question of judicial settlement, made it a Government which requires for the solution of none of the controversies within it, a resort to the last appeal--to battle, and the right of kings.
(Adjourned to 11 o"clock to-morrow.)
SEVENTH DAY.
_Wednesday, October 30, 1861._
The Court met at 11 o"clock A.M., when _Mr. Evarts_ resumed his argument.
Gentlemen of the Jury: In resuming the course of my remarks, already necessarily drawn to a very considerable length, I must recall to your attention the point that I had reached when the Court adjourned. I was speaking of this right of secession, as inconsistent with the frame, the purpose, and the occasion upon which the General Government was formed; and of the ill.u.s.tration invented by my learned friend, and so improbable in its circ.u.mstances, of the position of the United States and one of the States of the Union, that could bring into play and justify this resort to armed opposition. I had said what I had to say, for the most part, as to the absurdity and improbability of the case supposed, and the inadequacy, the worthlessness, the chimerical nature of the remedy proposed. Now, you will observe that, in the case supposed, the blockade of New York was to be without law, without authority, upon the mere capricious pretence of the President--a pretence so absurd that it could not stand the inspection of the people for a moment. What is the use of a pretence unless it is a cover for the act which it is intended to cloak? In such a case, the only proper, peaceful course would be to raise the question, which might be raised judicially, by attempting, in a peaceful manner, to pa.s.s the blockade, and throw the consequences upon the subordinate officers who attempted to execute the mere usurpation of the President, and, following the declaration of the Divine writings, that "wisdom is better than weapons of war," wait until the question could be disposed of under the Const.i.tution of the United States. For you will observe that, in the case supposed, there is no threat to the integrity, no threat to the authority, no threat to the existence of the State Government, or its Const.i.tution; but an impeding of the trade or interests of the people of this city, and of the residents of all parts of the country interested in the commerce of New York. That port is not the port of New York alone. It is the port of the United States of America, and all the communities in the Western country, who derive their supplies of foreign commodities through our internal navigation, when commerce has introduced them into this port, are just as much affected--just as much injured and oppressed--by this blockade of our great port and emporium, as are the people of the State of New York. So that, so far from its being a collision between the Government of the State of New York and the Government of the United States, it is a violent oppression, by usurpation--exposing to the highest penalties of the law the magistrate who has attempted it--exercised upon the people of the United States wherever residing, in the far West, in the surrounding States, in the whole country, who are interested in the maintenance of the commerce of this port. I need not say that the action of our inst.i.tutions provides a ready solution for this difficulty. Two or three weeks must bring to the notice of every one the frivolity of the pretence of the Executive, that there was a threat of armed attack by a foreign nation. But if two or three weeks should bring the evidence that this was not an idle fear, and that, by information conveyed to the Government, this threat was substantial, and was followed by its attempted execution,--why, then, how absurd the proposition that, under the opinion of the State of New York, that this was but an idle pretext, for purposes of oppression, the State should fly into arms against the power exercised to protect the city from foreign attack! The working of our affairs, which brings around the session of Congress at a time fixed by law--not at all determinable by the will of the President--exposes him to the grand inquest of the people, which sits upon his crime, and, by his presentation and trial before the great Court of Impeachment, in the course of one week--nay, in scarcely more than one day after its coming into session--both stamps this act as an usurpation, and dispossesses the magistrate who has violated the Const.i.tution. And yet, rather than wait for this a.s.sertion of the power of the Const.i.tution peacefully to depose the usurping magistrate, my friend must resort to this violent intervention of armed collision, that would keep us--in theory, at least--constantly maintaining our rights by the mere method of force, and would make of this Government--at the same time that they eulogize the founders of it, as the best and wisest of men--but an organization of armed hostilities, and its framers only the architects of an ever-impending ruin!
My learned friend, Mr. Brady, has asked my attention to the solution of a case wherein he thinks the State Government might be called upon to protect the rights of its citizens against the operation of an Act of Congress, by proposing this question: Suppose Congress should require that all the expenses of this great war, as we call it, should be paid by the State of New York,--what should we do in that case? Nothing but hostilities are a solution for that case, it is suggested. Now, I would freely say to my learned friend, Mr. Brady, that if the General Government, by its law, should impose the whole taxation of the war upon the State of New York, I should advise the State of New York, or any citizen in it, not to pay the taxes. That is the end of the matter.
And I would like to know if there is any warlike process by which the General Government of the United States exacts its tribute of taxation, that could impose the whole amount on New York? As the process of taxation goes on, it is distributed through different channels, and presents itself as an actual and effective process, from the tax-gatherer to the tax-payer: "Give me so many dollars." And the tax-payer says: "There is no law for it, and I will not do it." Then the process of collection raises for consideration this inquiry--whether the tax is according to law, and according to the const.i.tutional law of the United States of America. And this tribunal, formed to decide such questions--formed to settle principles in single cases, that shall protect against hostilities these great communities--disposes of the question. If the law is const.i.tutional, then the tax is to be paid--if unconst.i.tutional, then the tax is not collectable; and the question is settled. But my learned friends, in their suggestions of what is a possible state of law that may arise in this country, forget the great distinction between our situation under the Federal Government and our situation as Colonies under the authority of the King and Parliament of England. It is the distinction between not being represented and being represented.
Why, my learned friends, in order to get the basis of a possible suggestion of contrariety of duty and of interest between the Government of the United States and the people in these States, must overlook, and do overlook the fact that there is not a functionary in the Federal Government, from the President down to the Houses of Congress, that does not derive his authority from the people, not of one State, not of any number of States, but of all the States. And thus standing, they are guardians and custodians, in their own interests--in their own knowledge of the interests of their own people--in their own knowledge that their place in the protection, power, and authority of the Government of the United States, proceeds by the favor and the approval of the local community in which they reside. So far, therefore, from anything in the arrangement or the working of these political systems being such as to make the Representatives or Senators that compose Congress the masters or the enemies of the local population of the States from which they respectively come, they come there under the authority of the local population which they represent, dependent upon it for their place and continuance, and not on the Federal Government.
Away, then, with the notion, so foreign to our actual, const.i.tuted Government, that this Government of the United States of America is a Government that is extended over these States, with an origin, a power, a support independent of them, and that it contains in itself an arrangement, a principle, a composition that can by possibility excite or sustain these hostilities! Why, every act of Congress must govern the whole Union. Every tax must, to be const.i.tutional, be extended over the whole Union, and according to a fixed ratio of distribution between the States, established by the Const.i.tution itself. Now, therefore, when any particular interest, any particular occasion, any supposed necessity, any political motive, suggests a departure, on the part of the General Government, from a necessary adherence to this principle of the Const.i.tution, you will perceive that not only are the Representatives and Senators who come from the State against which this exercise of power is attempted, interested to oppose, in their places in Congress, the violation of the Const.i.tution, but the Representatives and the Senators from every other State, in support of the rights of the local communities in which they reside, have the same interest and the same duty, and may be practically relied upon to exercise the same right, and authority, and opposition, in protection of their communities, against an application of the same principle, or an obedience to the same usurpation, on subsequent occasions, in reference to other questions that may arise. Therefore, my learned friends, when they are talking to you, theoretically or practically, about the opposition that may arise between co-ordinate and independent sovereignties, and would make the glorious Const.i.tution of this Federal Government an instance of misshapen, and disjointed, and impractical inconsistencies, forget that the great basis of both of them rests in the people, and in the same people--equally interested, equally powerful, to restrain and to continue the movements of each, within the separate, const.i.tutional rights of each. Now, unquestionably, in vast communities, with great interests, diverse and various, opinions may vary, and honest sentiments may produce the enactment of laws of Congress, which equally honest sentiments, on the part of local communities, expressed through the action of State legislation, may regard as inconsistent with the Government and the Const.i.tution of the United States, and with the rights of the States. But, for these purposes, for these occasions, an ample and complete theoretical and practical protection of the rights of all is found, in this absolute ident.i.ty of the interests of the people and of their authority in both the form and the structure of their complex Government, and in the means provided by the Const.i.tution itself for testing every question that touches the right, the interest, the liberty, the property, the freedom of any citizen, in all and any of these communities, before the Supreme Court of the United States. Let us not be drawn into any of these shadowy propositions, that the whole people may be oppressed, and not a single individual in it be deprived of any personal right.
Whenever the liberty of the citizen is abridged in respect to any personal right, the counsel concede that the Courts are open to him; and that is the theory, the wisdom, and the practical success of the American Const.i.tution.
Now, gentlemen of the Jury, but one word more on this speculative right of secession. It is founded, if at all, upon the theory, that the States, having been, anterior to the formation of the Const.i.tution, independent sovereignties, are, themselves, the creators, and that the Const.i.tution is the creature proceeding from their power. I have said all I have to say about either the fact, or the result of the fact, if it be one, of the existence of these antecedent, complete national sovereignties on the part of any of the original States. But, will my learned friends tell me how this theory of theirs, in respect to the original thirteen States, has any application to the States, now quite outnumbering the original thirteen, which have, since the Const.i.tution was formed, entered into the Government of this our territory, this our people? Out of thirty-four States, eleven have derived their existence, their permission to exist, their territory, their power to make a Const.i.tution, from the General Government itself, out of whose territory--either acquired originally by the wealth or conquest of the Federal Government, or derived directly or indirectly through the cession or part.i.tion or separation of the original Colonies--they have sprung into existence. Of these eleven allied and confederate States, but four came from the stock of the original thirteen, and seven derived their whole power and authority from the permission of the Const.i.tution of the United States, and have sprung into existence, with the breath of their lives breathed into them through the Federal Government. When the State of Louisiana talks of its right to secede by reason of its sovereignty, by reason of its being one of the creators of the Federal Government, and of the Federal Const.i.tution--one of the actors in the principles of the American Revolution, and in the conquest of our liberties from the English power--we may well lift our hands in surprise at the arrogance of such a suggestion. Why, what was Louisiana, in all her territory, at the time of the great transaction of the Federal Revolution, and for a long time afterwards, but a province of Spain, first, and afterwards of France? How did her territory--the land upon which her population and her property rest--come to be a part of our territory, and to give support to a State government, and to State interests? Why, by its acquisition, under the wise policy of Mr. Jefferson, early in this century, upon the opportunity offered, by the necessity or policy of the Emperor Napoleon, for its purchase, by money, as you would buy a ship, or a strip of land to build a fort on. Coming thus to the United States, by its purchase, how did Louisiana come to be set apart, carved out of the immense territory comprehended under the name of Louisiana, but by lines of division and concession of power, proceeding from the Government of the United States? And why did we purchase it? We purchased it preliminarily, not so much to seize the opportunity for excluding from a foothold on this Continent a great foreign Power, which, although its territory here was waste and uninhabited, had the legal right to fill it, and might, in the course of time, fill it, with a population hostile in interests to our own,--not so much for this remote contingency, as to meet the actual and pressing necessity, on the part of the population that was beginning to fill up the left or eastern bank of the Mississippi, from its source to near its mouth, that they should have the mouth of the Mississippi also within their territory, governed by the same laws and under the same Government. And now, forsooth, the money and the policy of the United States having acquired this territory, and conceded the political rights contained in the Const.i.tution of Louisiana, we are to justify the secession of the territory of Louisiana, carrying the mouth of the Mississippi with her, on the theory that she was one of the original sovereignties, and one of the creators of the Const.i.tution of the United States! Well, gentlemen, how are our learned friends to escape from this dilemma? Are they to say that our const.i.tuted Government, complex, composed of State and of Federal power, has two sets of State and Federal relations within it, to wit, that which existed between the General Government and the thirteen sovereign, original States, and that which exists between the Federal Government and the other twenty-one States of the Union? Is it to follow, from this severance, that these original Colonies, declaring their independence--South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia--are to draw back to themselves the portions of their original territory that have since, under the authority of the Const.i.tution, been formed into separate communities? Our Const.i.tution was made by and between the States, and the people of the States--not for themselves alone--not limited to existing territory, and arranged State and Provincial Governments--but made as a Government, and made with principles in respect to Government that should admit of its extension by purchase, by conquest, by all the means that could bring accretion to a people in territory and in strength, and that should be, in its principles, a form of Government applicable to and sufficient for the old and the new States, and the old and the new population. I need but refer to the later instances, where, by purchase, we acquired Florida, also one of the seceded States, and where, by our armies, we gained the western coast of the Pacific. Are these the relations into which the power, and blood, and treasure of this Government bring it, in respect to the new communities and new States which, under its protection, and from its conceded power, have derived their very existence? Why, gentlemen, our Government is said, by those who complain of it, or who expose what they regard as its difficulties, to have one element of weakness in it, to wit, the possibility of discord between the State and the Federal authorities. But, if you adopt the principle, that there is one set of rules, one set of rights, between the Federal Government and the original States that formed the Union, and another set of rules between the Federal Government and the new States, I would like to know what becomes of the provision of the Const.i.tution, that the new States may be admitted on the same footing with the old? What becomes of the harmony and accord among the local Governments of this great nation, which we call State Governments, if there be this superiority, in every political sense, on the part of the old States, and this absolute inferiority and subjection on the part of the new?
And now, gentlemen, having done with this doctrine of secession, as utterly inconsistent with the theory of our Government, and utterly unimportant, as a practical right, for any supposable or even imaginable case that may be suggested, I come to consider the question of the right of revolution. I have shown to you upon what principles, and upon what substantial question, between being subjects as slaves, or being partic.i.p.ants in the British Government, our Colonies attempted and achieved their independence. As I have said to you, a very brief experience showed that they needed, to meet the exigencies of their situation, the establishment of a Government that should be in accordance with the wishes and spirit of the people, in regard of freedom, and yet should be of such strength, and such unity, as would admit of prosperity being enjoyed under it, and of its name and power being established among the nations of the earth. Now, without going into the theories of Government, and of the rights of the people, and of the rights of the rulers, to any great extent, we all know that there has been every variety of experiment tried, in the course of human affairs, between the great extreme alluded to by my learned friend (Mr. Brady) of the slavery of Egyptians to their king--the extreme instance of an entire population scarcely lifted above the brutes in their absolute subjection to the tyranny of a ruler, so that the life, and the soul, and the sweat, and the blood of a whole generation of men are consumed in the task of building a mausoleum as the grave of a king--and the later efforts of our race, culminating in the happy success of our own form of Government, to establish, on foundations where liberty and law find equal support, the principle of Government, that Government is by, and for, and from all the people--that the rulers, instead of being their masters and their owners, are their agents and their servants--and that the greatest good of the greatest number is the plain, practical and equal rule which, by gift from our Creator, we enjoy.
Now this, you will observe, is a question which readily receives our acceptance. But the great problem in reference to the freedom of a people, in the establishment of their Government, presents itself in this wise: The people, in order to maintain their freedom, must be masters of their Government, so that the Government may not be too strong, in its arrangement of power, to overmaster the people; but yet, the Government must be strong enough to maintain and protect the independence of the nation against the aggressions, the usurpations, and the oppressions of foreign nations. Here you have a difficulty raised at once. You expose either the freedom of the nation, by making the Government too strong for the preservation of individual independence, or you expose its existence, by making it too weak to maintain itself against the pa.s.sions, interests and power of neighboring nations. If you have a large nation--counting its population by many millions, and the circ.u.mference of its territory by thousands of miles--how can you arrange the strength of Government, so that it shall not, in the interests of human pa.s.sions, grow too strong for the liberties of the people? And if, abandoning in despair that effort and that hope, you circ.u.mscribe the limits of your territory, and reduce your population within a narrow range, how can you have a Government and a nation strong enough to maintain itself in the contests of the great family of nations, impelled and urged by interests and pa.s.sions?
Here is the first peril, which has never been successfully met and disposed of in any of the forms of Government that have been known in the history of mankind, until, at least, our solution of it was attempted, and unless it has succeeded and can maintain itself. But, again, this business of self-government by a people has but one practical and sensible spirit and object. The object of free Government is, that the people, as individuals, may, with security, pursue their own happiness. We do not tolerate the theory that all the people const.i.tuting the nation are absorbed into the national growth and life.
The reason why we want a free Government is, that we may be happy under it, and pursue our own activities according to our nature and our faculties. But, you will see, at once, that it is of the essence of being able to pursue our own interests under the Government under which we live, that we can do so according to our own notions of what they are, or the notions of those who are intelligently informed of, partic.i.p.ate in, and sympathize with, those interests. Therefore, it seems necessary that all of the every-day rights of property, of social arrangements, of marriage, of contracts--everything that makes up the life of a social community--shall be under the control, not of a remote or distant authority, but of one that is limited to, and derives its ideas and principles from, a local community.
Now, how can this be in a large nation--in a nation of thirty millions, distributed over a zone of the earth? How are we to get along in New York, and how are others to get along in South Carolina, and others in New England, in the every-day arrangements that proceed from Government, and affect the prosperity, the freedom, the independence, the satisfaction of the community with the condition in which it lives?
How can we get along, if all these minute and every-day arrangements are to proceed from a Government which has to deal with the diverse opinions, the diverse sentiments, the diverse interests, of so extensive a nation? But if, fleeing from this peril, you say that you may reduce your nation, you fall into another difficulty. The advanced civilization of the present day requires, for our commercial activity, for our enjoyment of the comforts and luxuries of life, that the whole globe shall be ransacked, and that the power of the nation which we recognize as our superior shall be able to protect our citizens in their enterprises, in their activities, in their objects, all over the world. How can a little nation, made up of Ma.s.sachusetts, or made up of South Carolina, have a flag and a power which can protect its commerce in the East Indies and in the Southern Ocean? Again--we find that nations, unless they are separated by wide barriers, necessarily, in the course of human affairs, come into collision; and, as I have shown to you, the only arbitrament for their settlement is war. But war is a scourge--an unmitigated scourge--so long as it lasts, and in itself considered. But for objects which make it meritorious and useful, it is a scourge never to be tolerated. It puts in abeyance all individual rights, interests, and schemes, until the great controversy is settled.
If, then, we are a small nation, surrounded on all sides by other nations, with no natural barriers, with competing interests, with occasions of strife and collision on all sides, how can we escape war, as a necessary result of that miserable situation? But war strengthens the power of Government, weakens the power of the individual, and establishes maxims and creates forces, that go to increase the weight and the power of Government, and to weaken the rights of the people.
Then, we see that, to escape war, we must either establish a great nation, which occupies an extent of territory, and has a fund of power sufficient to protect itself against border strifes, and against the ambition, the envy, the hatred of neighbors; or else one which, being small, is exposed to war from abroad to subjugate it, or to the greater peril to its own liberties, of war made by its own Government, thus establishing principles and introducing interests which are inconsistent with liberty.
I have thus ventured, gentlemen, to lay before you some of these general principles, because, in the course of the arguments of my learned friends, as well as in many of the discussions before the public mind, it seems to be considered that the ties, the affections and the interests, which oblige us to the maintenance of this Government of ours, find their support and proper strength and nourishment only in the sentiments of patriotism and duty, because it happens to be our own Government; and that, when the considerations of force or of feeling which bring a people to submit to a surrender of their Government, or to a successful conquest of a part of their territory, or to a wresting of a part of their people from the control of the Government, shall be brought to bear upon us, we shall be, in our loss and our surrender, only suffering what other nations have been called upon to lose and to surrender, and that it will be but a change in the actual condition of the country and its territory. But you will perceive that, by the superior fortune which attended our introduction into the family of nations, and by the great wisdom, forecast, and courage of our ancestors, we avoided, at the outset, all the difficulties between a large territory and a numerous population on the one hand, and a small territory and a reduced population on the other hand, and all those opposing dangers of the Government being either too weak to protect the nation, or too strong, and thus oppressive of the people, by a distribution of powers and authorities, novel in the affairs of men, dependent on experiment, and to receive its final fate as the result of that experiment. We went on this view--that these feeble Colonies had not, each in itself, the life and strength of a nation; and, yet, these feeble Colonies, and their poor and spa.r.s.e population, were nourished on a love of liberty and self-government.
These sentiments had carried them through a successful war against one of the great powers of the earth. They were not to surrender that for which they had been fighting to any scheme, to any theory of a great, consolidated nation, the Government of which should subdue the people and re-introduce the old fashion in human affairs--that the people were made for the rulers, and not the rulers by and for the people. They undertook to meet, they did meet, this difficult dilemma in the const.i.tution of Government, by separating the great fund of power, and reposing it in two distinct organizations. They reserved to the local communities the control of their domestic affairs, and attributed the maintenance and preservation of them to the State governments. They undertook to collect and deposit, under the form of a written Const.i.tution, with the general Government, all those larger and common interests which enter into the conception and practical establishment of a distinct nation among the nations of the earth, and determined that they would have a central power which should be adequate, by drawing its resources from the patriotism, from the duty, from the wealth, from the numbers, of a great nation, to represent them in peace and in war,--a nation that could protect the interests, encourage the activities, and maintain the development of its people, in spite of the opposing interests or the envious or hostile attacks of any nation.
They determined that this great Government, thus furnished with this range of authority and this extent of power, should not have anything to do with the every-day inst.i.tutions, operations and social arrangements of the community into which the vast population and territory of the nation were distributed. They determined that the people of Ma.s.sachusetts, the people of New York, and the people of South Carolina, each of them, should have their own laws about agriculture, about internal trade, about marriage, about apprenticeship, about slavery, about religion, about schools, about all the every-day pulsations of individual life and happiness, controlled by communities that moved with the same pulsations, obeyed the same instincts, and were animated by the same purposes. And, as this latter cla.s.s of authority contains in itself the princ.i.p.al means of oppression by a Government, and is the princ.i.p.al point where oppression is to be feared by a people, they had thus robbed the new system of all the dangers which attend the too extensive powers of a Government. They divided the fund of power, to prevent a great concentration and a great consolidation of the army of magistrates and officers of the law and of the Government which would have been combined by a united and consolidated authority, having jurisdiction of all the purposes of Government, of all the interests of citizens, and of the entire population and entire territory in these respects. They thus made a Government, complex in its arrangements, which met those opposing difficulties, inherent in human affairs, that make the distinction between free Governments and oppressive Governments. They preserved the people in their enjoyment and control of all the local matters entering into their every-day life, and yet gave them an establishment, springing from the same interests and controlled by the same people, which has sustained and protected us in our relations to the family of nations on the high seas and in the remote corners of the world.
Now, this is the scheme, and this is the purpose, with which this Government was formed; and you will observe that there is contained in it this separation, and this distribution. And our learned friends, who have argued before you respecting this theory, and this arrangement and practice of the power of a Government, as inconsistent with the interests and the freedom of the people, have substantially said to you that it was a whimsical contrivance, that it was an impossible arrangement of inconsistent principles, and that we must go back to a simple Government composed of one of the States, or of a similar arrangement of territory and people, which would make each of us a weak and contemptible power in the family of nations--or we must go back to the old consolidation of power, such as is represented by the frame of France or England in its Government, or, more distinctly, more absolutely, and more likely to be the case, for so vast a territory and so extensive a population as ours, to the simple notion of Russian Autocracy.
That, then, being the object, and that the character, of our inst.i.tutions, and this right of secession not being provided for, or imagined, or tolerated in the scheme, let us look at the right of revolution, as justifying an attempt to overthrow the Government; and let us look at the occasions of revolution, which are pretended here, as giving a support, before the world, in the forum of conscience, and in the judgment of mankind, for the exercise of that right.
And first, let me ask you whether, in all the citations from the great men of the Revolution, and in the later stages of our history, any opinion has been cited which has condemned this scheme, as unsuitable and insufficient for the freedom and happiness of the people, if it can be successful? I think not. The whole history of the country is full of records of the approval, of the support, of the admiration, of the reverent language which our people at large, and the great leaders of public opinion--the great statesmen of the country--have spoken of this system of Government. Let me ask your attention to but two encomiums upon it, as represented by that central idea of a great nation, and yet a divided and local administration of popular interests--to wit, one in the first stage of its adoption, before its ratification by the people was complete; and the other, a speech made at the very eve of, if not in the very smoke of, this hostile dissolution of it.
Mr. Pinckney, of South Carolina, who had been one of the delegates from that State in the National Convention, and had co-operated with the Northern statesmen, and with the great men of Virginia, in forming the Government as it was, in urging on the Convention of South Carolina the adoption of the Const.i.tution, and its ratification, said:
"To the Union we will look up as the temple of our freedom,--a temple founded in the affections and supported by the virtue of the people. Here we will pour out our grat.i.tude to the Author of all good, for suffering us to partic.i.p.ate in the rights of a people who govern themselves. Is there, at this moment, a nation on the earth which enjoys this right, where the true principles of representation are understood and practised, and where all authority flows from, and returns at stated periods to, the people? I answer, there is not. Can a Government be said to be free where those do not exist? It cannot. On what depends the enjoyment of those rare, inestimable rights? On the firmness and on the power of the Union to protect and defend them."
Had we anything from that great patriot and statesman of this right of secession, or independence of a State, as an important or a useful element in securing these rare, these unheard of, these inestimable privileges of Government, which the Author of all good had suffered the people of South Carolina to partic.i.p.ate in? No--they depended "on the firmness and on the power of the Union to protect and defend them." Mr.
Pinckney goes on to say:
"To the philosophic mind, how new and awful an instance do the United States at present exhibit to the people of the world! They exhibit, sir, the first instance of a people who, being thus dissatisfied with their Government, unattacked by a foreign force and undisturbed by domestic uneasiness, coolly and deliberately resort to the virtue and good sense of the country for a correction of their public errors."
That is, for the abandonment of the weakness and the danger of the imperfect Confederation, and the adoption of the const.i.tutional and formal establishment of Federal power. Mr. Pinckney goes on to say:
"It must be obvious that, without a superintending Government, it is impossible the liberties of this country can long be secure.
Single and unconnected, how weak and contemptible are the largest of our States! how unable to protect themselves from external or domestic insult! how incompetent, to national purposes, would even the present Union be! how liable to intestine war and confusion!
how little able to secure the blessings of peace! Let us, therefore, be careful in strengthening the Union. Let us remember we are bounded by vigilant and attentive neighbors"--(and now Europe is within ten days, and they are near neighbors)--"who view with a jealous eye our rights to empire."
Pursuing my design of limiting my citations of the opinions of public men to those who have received honor from, and conferred honor on, that portion of our country and those of our countrymen now engaged in this strife with the General Government, let me ask your attention to a speech delivered by Mr. Stephens, now the Vice-President of the so-called Confederate States, on the very eve of, and protesting against, this effort to dissolve the Union. I read from page 220 and subsequent pages of the doc.u.ments that have been the subject of reference heretofore:
"The first question that presents itself"--(says Mr. Stephens to the a.s.sembled Legislature of Georgia, of which he was not a member, but which, as an eminent and leading public man, he had been invited to address)--"is, shall the people of the South secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, _I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought_. In my judgment, the election of no man, const.i.tutionally elected to that high office, is sufficient cause for any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Const.i.tution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government--to withdraw from it because a man has been const.i.tutionally elected--puts us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Const.i.tution. Many of us have sworn to support it.
"But it is said Mr. Lincoln"s policy and principles are against the Const.i.tution, and that if he carries them out it will be destructive of our rights. Let us not antic.i.p.ate a threatened evil.
If he violates the Const.i.tution, then will come our time to act. Do not let us break it because, forsooth, he may. If he does, that is the time for us to strike. * * * My countrymen, I am not of those who believe this Union has been a curse up to this time. True men--men of integrity--entertain different views from me on this subject. I do not question their right to do so; I would not impugn their motives in so doing. Nor will I undertake to say that this Government of our fathers is perfect. There is nothing perfect in this world, of a human origin. Nothing connected with human nature, from man himself to any of his works. You may select the wisest and best men for your Judges, and yet how many defects are there in the administration of justice? You may select the wisest and best men for your legislators, and yet how many defects are apparent in your laws? And it is so in our Government.
"But that this Government of our fathers, with all its defects, comes nearer the objects of all good Governments than any on the face of the earth, is my settled conviction. Contrast it now with any on the face of the earth." ["England," said Mr. Toombs.]
"England, my friend says. Well, that is the next best, I grant; but I think we have improved upon England. Statesmen tried their apprentice hand on the Government of England, and then ours was made. Ours sprung from that, avoiding many of its defects, taking most of the good and leaving out many of its errors, and, from the whole, constructing and building up this model Republic--the best which the history of the world gives any account of.
"Compare, my friends, this Government with that of Spain, Mexico, the South American Republics, Germany, Ireland--are there any sons of that down-trodden nation here to-night?--Prussia, or, if you travel further east, to Turkey or China. Where will you go, following the sun in his circuit round our globe, to find a Government that better protects the liberties of its people, and secures to them the blessings we enjoy? I think that one of the evils that beset us is a surfeit of liberty, an exuberance of the priceless blessings for which we are ungrateful. * * * * *
"When I look around and see our prosperity in every thing--agriculture, commerce, art, science, and every department of education, physical and mental, as well as moral advancement, and our colleges--I think, in the face of such an exhibition, if we can, without the loss of power, or any essential right or interest, remain in the Union, it is our duty to ourselves and to posterity to--let us not too readily yield to this temptation--do so. Our first parents, the great progenitors of the human race, were not without a like temptation when in the garden of Eden. They were led to believe that their condition would be bettered--that their eyes would be opened--and that they would become as G.o.ds. They in an evil hour yielded. Instead of becoming G.o.ds, they only saw their own nakedness.
"I look upon this country, with our inst.i.tutions, as the Eden of the world, the paradise of the Universe. It may be that out of it we may become greater and more prosperous, but I am candid and sincere in telling you that I fear if we rashly evince pa.s.sion, and, without sufficient cause, shall take that step, that instead of becoming greater or more peaceful, prosperous and happy--instead of becoming G.o.ds--we will become demons, and, at no distant day, commence cutting one another"s throats."
Still speaking of our Government, he says:
"Thus far, it is a n.o.ble example, worthy of imitation. The gentleman (Mr. Cobb) the other night said it had proven a failure.
A failure in what? In growth? Look at our expanse in national power. Look at our population and increase in all that makes a people great. A failure? Why, we are the admiration of the civilized world, and present the brightest hopes of mankind.
"Some of our public men have failed in their aspirations; that is true, and from that comes a great part of our troubles.
"No, there is no failure of this Government yet. We have made great advancement under the Const.i.tution, and I cannot but hope that we shall advance higher still. Let us be true to our cause."