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II.

ALLEGIANCE in its proper sense, can be exacted only by the supreme power, which, in this land, is the Government created by the Constitution of the United States. This allegiance may not be put on and off, to suit the convenience and whims of the individual, as he may assume or cast off State citizenship. Once due, it is always due, unless the national Government consent to its renunciation. The nativeborn citizen owes it, from the cradle to the grave; the naturalized foreigner, from the moment he acquires citizenship till his death. No such obligation exists towards a State. A State's power over any citizen begins only with his entrance upon her territory, and ends with his departure from it. Will it be said that he who was once a citizen of Florida, but removed thence to Missouri, where he has since resided, may now be called back by Florida to fight her battles, because of his former citizenship there? No sane man will hold such a doctrine; and yet if Florida may not do that, there is no allegiance to a State, except in the sense of obedience to its laws and authorities while in it. But the United States have an undoubted and indestructible right to call forth their citizens from every spot of their domain, to defend and uphold in battle the honor and power of the nation; for no citizen can find a place where the title of allegiance does not bind him to the Constitution and flag of his country.

The citizen owes allegiance in return for protection by his government, and that protection is his lawful right, wherever in the world he may be. It was the certainty and swiftness of Rome's vindication of the rights of her citizens, that gave such power everywhere to the simple words, "I am a Roman citizen; and this hour, among all civilized nations, to be known as an American citizen, is a passport and protection. Why? Because the United States are known throughout the world, as able and ready to protect their citizens. But on another continent than this, what would it avail to be known as a citizen of any State of the Union? Who, in a foreign land, would, in extremity, proclaim himself a citizen of one of the States, when his State has no power to protect him or to avenge his wrongs, except through the Government of the Union? And yet men prate of a first allegiance to their State!

In sober verity, there is in this whole dogma of State allegiance an absurdity so glaring, a perversion of the true principles of constitutional law so flagrant, a delusion so

pitiful and yet so monstrous, that it is a world's wonder that men of sense could any where be found to inculcate or even countenance a doctrine, that any school boy might refute, and which a jurist or a statesman would regard as worthy only of ridicule and contempt.-Charles D. Drake, 1861.

THE RIGHT OF REVOLUTION.

Ir it be asked, may not a people throw off their allegiance, and make for themselves a new government? the answer is, of course, they may. The right of revolution is inherent in every people; but it is ultima ratio-the last resort, and is not a remedy which any people may, without awful crime, needlessly appeal to. If it be not in vain to hold up the words and example of our Revolutionary fathers, let us learn from them when to take the sword; lest, taking it rashly and without cause, we perish by the sword.

Read their Declaration of Independence, and ponder these words:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under ABSOLUTE DESPOTISM, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having, in direct object, THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN ABSOLUTE TYRANNY OVER THESE STATES. To prove this let facts

be submitted to a candid world."

Now, my friends, upon the principles of that Declaration, and in such an exigency as it portrays, I could be a revolu tionist; he who would resort to revolution on any other principles is an anarchist, a social Ishmaelite, whose hand is against every man; and every man's hand ought to be against him. And yet, one of the latent elements of mischief at the present time in this State, is the wide-spread assumption among intelligent men, of the right of forcible revolution,

whenever the impulse, well or ill directed, may seize any portion of the people.

Against a doctrine so destructive of every form of sound and stable government, I appeal to the wisdom, the conscience, and the hopes of the people. I protest against it, as the unpardonable sin against human liberty, throwing wide open the flood-gates of beastly license, and sweeping away in indiscriminate destruction all that we have ever loved or valued, and all that could make us, or our children after us, good or great, or even decent in the eyes of mankind. Charles D. Drake, 1861.

PUBLIC OPINION THE ARBITER OF GRIEVANCES.

As, in a republic, the source of power is the people, the very first principle of every such government is, that PUBLIC. OPINION, not revolutionary violence, shall be invoked to rectify errors and redress grievances. Our whole system rests upon the popular will, and if that be perverted, the remedy is in restoring it to rectitude, not in destroying the system. Every State becomes a part of the Union under a solemn pledge-not, to be sure, written down, but none the less binding because implied-to look to that Constitution, and those laws and tribunals for the redress of every wrong, and the support of every right. Conflicts of interest and opinion are inevitable; but every part of the nation agrees that the will of the majority, constitutionally expressed, shall govern; for an appeal to the people is ever open, and the majority of to-day may-as it has done a thousand times-dwindle into a minority to-morrow. The assertion, therefore, of a right of armed revolution against the decision of the majority, is a violation so fearful of the vital principle of a republic, and a blow so deadly at the peace of the nation, the integrity of the Constitution, and the perpetuity of popular governments, as almost to crush the heart of the patriot under an infinite weight of dismay and despair.

When, therefore, within fifteen days after the vote of the electoral colleges were cast for Mr. Lincoln, and two months and a-half before he could be inaugurated, and while he was yet as powerless as a child for harm, even though he had been as full of evil intent as Satan himself, the State of South Carolina raised the war-cry of rebellion, and announced her rejection of the authority of the Constitution, and her separation from the Union, an offence was registered in heaven's

chancery, before which all preceding outbreaks of popular wickedness fall into immeasurable insignificance. And when, from time to time, ten other States followed her lead, and raised the standard of revolt against a Government so mild, so paternal, so beneficent, that their people hardly knew where there was such a Government, except by its blessings, the world could only gaze in blank amazement at a sacrilege, which threatened to extinguish the great beacon light of human freedom forever, and to consign America to boundless and hopeless ruin.

And the world asks--what justification is pleaded for this incredible outrage against the nation, and, indeed, against the human race? And the world will have the question answered. It is in vain to reply that it is not worth while to inquire who is in the wrong-it is worth while. When a son kills his father, all men inquire the cause; and they inquire on until they know it; for every individual is concerned to understand the motive for such a deed. And so, when a stupendous rebellion arrays itself against the Government, which the world knows to be the least exacting and the least burdensome of all the governments existing on the earth, mankind demands, WHY? and mankind will be answered. Charles D. Drake, 1861.

FALSE PRETENCES FOR SECESSION.

THE great count in the indictment is the election of a president by the votes of one section of the Union; and this is true. But how came he to be elected? This question instantly forces itself upon the mind. For thirty years the anti-slavery agitation had been in progress, without getting control of the Government; and only four years before, the Republican party had been defeated in a tremendous struggle; how did it secure a triumph in 1860? It is as certain to be recorded in history, as that the history of that year shall ever be written, that the action of the South itself was one of the immediate and prominent causes-if not the great cause of that triumph. No fact is more undeniable, than that the Democratic party was the only one to which the country could look for numerical strength to avert that result; except that other fact, known to you all, that the cotton 'States broke up that party, and thereby rendered the defeat of Mr. Lincoln impossible. At the very moment when the anti-slavery agitation seemed to be approaching victory, and

when it was the stern duty of every man in the opposing ranks to forget all minor differences, and stand like a rock against its further progress, those States deliberately abandoned their former position, proclaimed principles which they had previously denied with emphasis, seceded from the party, and themselves opened the way for the result upon which they intended to base their subsequent secession from the Union. Secession was the great object they had aimed at for nearly a third of a century. The evidence of a deep-laid and long-cherished conspiracy among them to destroy the Union is abundant and conclusive. The " proper moment" to "precipitate the cotton States into a revolution," of which Mr. Yancey wrote, in 1858-the proper moment to "pull a temple down that has been built three quarters of a century, and clear the rubbish away and reconstruct another," as was proclaimed by a member of the South Carolina convention— the proper moment to let slip the dogs of war among children of the same fathers and people of the same nation—the proper moment, in a word, to consummate the treason which had been festering and growing for thirty years-was seen to have arrived; and the plotters were not slow to seize it. They had already proclaimed that the election of a President by the Republican party would be a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union, and they set themselves to the work of making that election certain, by their own disruption of the only party that had the numbers to prevent it. And they succeeded to a miracle. Never was game of duplicity and treachery better played. They betrayed their previously professed principles, their party, and their country, all at once; and at the moment of consummating the crowning act of their sacrilege, they turn to the world, with an air of injured innocence, and appeal to mankind to justify a rebellion based on the success of their own most devilish machinations.

But were it otherwise-had they done all that men could do to prevent the election of a sectional President, and such had, nevertheless, been elected, on the principles alleged by South Carolina in her declaration, or even on worse-it was still an ascertained and indisputable fact, before her secession, that in both houses of the present Congress there would be a majority against him, if all the States_should stand firm, and retain their representation there. In that case, Mr. Lincoln would have been this day, and certainly for two years to come, the possessor of a barren power, except as to official patronage, and utterly impotent to impress a single principle of his party on the Government, or to touch

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