MARYLAND'S TREASON CIRCUMVENTED. 121 The Legislature's Treason Circum vented. the courage to practice it. | ment, the occupation of May 10th, the Legislature Cockeysville, and the openpassed the following re- ing of the Northern Cenmarkable but characteristic resolves : tral railway, completely cornered not only "Whereas, The war against the Confederate States the "Knights of the Golden Circle"-who is unconstitutional and repugnant to civilization, and had arranged their secret machinery to prewill result in a bloody and shameful overthrow of cipitate both Maryland and Kentucky into our institutions; and while recognizing the obligathe arms of the conspirators-but gave the tions of Maryland to the Union, we sympathize with the South in the struggle for their rights-for the loyal element so much the ascendancy as to sake of humanity we are for peace and reconciliacheckmate the revolution north of the Pototion, and solemnly protest against this war, and will take no part in it. inexpedient." bitterness. and mac. On the 14th of May, Governor Hicks issued his proclamation, calling for four regiments of infantry or riflemen to answer to the President's requisition. The Governor's loyalty was still qualified, for he obtained the "written assurance of the Secretary of War" that the regiments should be detailed to service within the limits of the State, or should only be used for the defense of the Capital. As the "defense of the Capital" might require the Federal troops to push on to Richmond, the Governor's apprehensions in regard to the service of his troops were, Maryland Safe. This was the dregs of the secession cup of The vase was shattered and the would-be revellers in revolution dissolved in nothingness-some to retire to the oblivion Maryland's disloyalty as a of their homes, others to seek glory at the State. Many of her citizens continued to cannon's mouth over in Virginia. The Presi- struggle against their destiny by plotting dent's answer was apparent May 13th, when treason, and by giving "aid and comfort" to Baltimore city itself was permanently occupied by Butler's troops. Butler's proclama- and, after the installation of the military tion, dated from head-quarters on Federal Hill, May 14th, was a document at once well the enemy; but they were isolated cases; process (the suspension of the habeas corpus act), the arrest of Marshal Kane of the Balti calculated to reassure the frightened loyalists more police, and of his coadjutors in conspiracy and to intimidate the traitors who still made against the General Government, ended the that city their head-quarters. That move- struggle even with individuals. CHAPTER VII. VIR EXTRAORDINARY SESSION OF THE CONFEDERATE CONGRESS. DAVIS' MESSAGE. ITS PERVERSIONS AND PURPOSES. THE ACT DECLARING A "STATE OF WAR." SPECIAL LEGISLATION. GINIA ADOPTED INTO THE CONFEDERACY. THE OCCUPATION HER SOIL. ITS PURPOSES. THE CONFEDERATE CURRENCY SYSTEM. OF Extraordinary Session of the Confederate Congress. The Message of Jefferson Davis. in many respects one of the most singular and remarkable documents of the rebellion: Gentlemen of the Congress: THE Confederate Con-, great calamity which was to hurry them all gress reassembled in extra- into one common ruin. It became such men ordinary session, April 30th. to talk of the usurpations of the Lincoln A full attendance was had of the States' del- Government! Incomparable hypocrisy ! egates for the "Congress" was still composed Upon assembling, the of the delegates elected by the several State Congress was informed of Conventions. As these Conventions had the purpose of its re-conbeen elected by the people simply to consider vention, and of the designs of the Confeder the question of secession, leaving it for the peo- ate Administration, in the following message ple to decide upon the act and to prescribe the future course of proceeding, their assumption of supreme power had been a most astounding usurpation; but, what was a usurpation within the State became a tyranny when the Convention appointed delegates to a “Congress of the Seceded States"; and when those delegates assembled, adopted a Constitution for the Confederated States of North America, sat in secret and unlimited session, enacted laws, elected a President and Vice-President, and installed the entire machinery of a Central power, the tyranny became an absolute despotism. After legislat-ples and community of interests with these which ing into active operation this Central power, the Congress adjourned, subject to the call of the President-a call he soon made, as above stated. The self-elected delegates came together, and immediately proceeded to legislate the Confederacy into a state of war, with all its terrible consequences. Civilized society never before witnessed a more unau "It is my pleasing duty to announce to you that the Constitution framed for the establishment of a permanent Government for the Confederate States has been ratified by Conventions in each of those States to which it was referred. To inaugurate the Government in its full proportions and upon its own substantial basis of the popular will, it only remains that elections should be held for the designation of the officers to administer it. "There is every reason to believe that at no distant day, other States, identified in political princi you represent, will join this Confederacy: giving to. its typical constellation increased splendor-to its government of free, equal, and sovereign States a wider sphere of usefulness-and to the friends of constitutional liberty a greater security for its harmonious and perpetual existence. "It was not, however, for the purpose of making this announcement that I have deemed it my duty to convoke you at an earlier day than that fixed by thorized exercise of such power over a people. yourselves for your meeting. The declaration of In all that revolution the people had only had a voice in the primary election of delegates to a transient and unempowered State Convention. Out of that, by the daring and defiance of a few ambitious men, sprang the war made against this Confederacy by Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, in his proclamation issued on the fifteenth day of the present month, rendered it necessary, in my judgment, that you should convene, at the earliest practicable THE MESSAGE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 123 The Message of Jefferson Davis. country. moment, to devise the measures shall be sufficient for the estab- The Message of "The occasion is indeed an extraordinary one. It justifies me in a brief review of the relations here- The Constitution of 1787 having, however, omittofore existing between us and the States which ted the clause already recited from the articles of now unite in warfare against us, and in a succinct Confederation, which provided in explicit terms, statement of the events which have resulted in this that each State retained its sovereignty and indewarfare, to the end that mankind may pass intelli-pendence, some alarm was felt in the States when gent and impartial judgment on its motives and invited to ratify the Constitution, lest this omission objects. "During the war waged against Great Britain by her colonies on this continent, a common danger impelled them to a close alliance, and to the formation of a Confederation, by the terms of which the Colonies, styling themselves States, entered severally into a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.' "In order to guard against any misconstruction of their compact, the several States made explicit declaration, in a distinct article, that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.' "Under this contract of alliance the war of the Revolution was successfully waged, and resulted in the treaty of peace with Great Britain in 1783, by the terms of which the several States were, each by name, recognized to be independent. should be construed into an abandonment of their cherished principle, and they refused to be satisfied until amendments were added to the Constitution, placing beyond any pretense of doubt, the reservation by the States of all their sovereign rights and powers, not expressly delegated to the United States by the Constitution. Strange indeed must it appear to the impartial observer, but it is none the less true, that all these carefully-worded clauses proved unavailing to prevent the rise and growth in the Northern States, of a political school which has persistently claimed that the Government thus formed was not a compact between States, but was in effect a National Government, set up above and over the States. An "The Articles of Confederation contained a clause organization, created by the States to secure the whereby all alterations were prohibited, unless con- blessings of liberty and independence against forfirmed by the Legislatures of every State, after be-eign aggression, has been gradually perverted into ing agreed to by the Congress; and, in obedience a machine for their control in their domestic affairs; to this provision, under the resolution of Congress of the 21st of February, 1787, the several States appointed delegates, who attended a Convention for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and the several Legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress, and confirmed by the States, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union.' the creature has been exalted above its creators; the principals have been made subordinate to the agent appointed by themselves. "The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture, early perceived a tendency in the Northern States to render the common government subservient to their own purposes, by imposing burthens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests. Long and angry controversy grew out of these attempts, often successful to benefit one section of the country at the expense of the other. And the danger of disruption arising from this cause was enhanced by the fact that the Northern population was increasing by immigration and other causes in a greater ratio than the population of the "The ratification of the Conventions of nine States South. By degrees, as the Northern States gained "It was by the delegates chosen by the several States, under the resolution just quoted, that the Constitution of the United States was framed in 1787, and submitted to the several States for ratification, as shown by the seventh article, which is in these words: The Message of preponderance in the national | sulted their own interests by Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as a majority to govern the minority without control; they learned to listen with impatience to the suggestion of any constitutional impediment to the exercise of their will; and so utterly have the principles of the Constitution been corrupted in the Northern mind, that in the inaugural address delivered by President Lincoln in March last, he asserts as an axiom which he plainly deems to be undeniable, that the theory of the Constitution requires that in all cases the majority shall govern; and in another memorable instance, the same Chief Magistrate did not hesitate to liken the relations between a State and the United States to those which exist between a County and the State in which it is situated, and by which it was created. This is the lamentable and fundamental error on which rests the policy that has culminated in his declaration of war against these Confederate States. "In addition to the long-continued and deep-seated resentment felt by the Southern States at the persistent abuse of the powers they had delegated to the Congress for the purpose of enriching the manufacturing and shipping classes of the North at the expense of the South, there has existed for nearly half a century another subject of discord involving interests of such transcendent magnitude as at all times to create the apprehension in the minds of many devoted lovers of the Union that its permanence was impossible. 66 The Message of selling their slaves to the South, "As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African Slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States, was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures were devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves; fanatical organizations, supplied with money by voluntary supscription, were assiduously engaged in exciting amongst the slaves a spirit of discontent and revolt; means were furnished for their escape from their owners, and agents secretly employed to entice them to abscond; the constitutional provision for their relation to their owners was first evaded, then openly announced as a violation of conscientious obligation and religious duty; men were taught that it was a merit to elude, disobey, and violently oppose the execution of the laws enacted to secure the performance of the promise in the constitutional compact; owners of slaves were mobbed and even murdered in open day, solely for applying to a magistrate for the arrest of a fugitive slave; the dog. mas of these voluntary organizations soon obtained control of the Legislatures of many of the Northern States, and laws were passed providing for the punishment by ruinous fines and long-continued imprisonment in jails and penitentiaries of citizens of the Southern States who should dare to ask aid of the officers of the law for the recovery of their property. Emboldened by success, the theatre of agi tation and aggression against the clearly-expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress; Senators and Representatives were sent to the common councils of the When the several States delegated certain powers to the United States Congress, a large portion of the laboring population consisted of African slaves imported into colonies by the mother country. In twelve out of the thirteen States negro slavery existed, and the right of property in slaves was protected by law. This property was recognized in the Constitution, and provision was made against its loss by the escape of the slave. The increase in the number of slaves by further importation from Africa was also secured by a clause forbidding Congress to prohibit the slave-trade anterior to a certain date; and in no clause can there be found any delegation of power to the Congress authorizing it in any manner to legislate to the prejudice, detri-nation, whose chief title to this distinction consisted ment, or discouragement of the owners of that species of property, or excluding it from the protection of the Government. "The climate and soil of the Northern States soon proved unpropitious to the continuance of slave labor, whilst the converse was the case at the South. Under the unrestricted free intercourse between the two sections, the Northern States con in the display of a spirit of ultra fanaticism, and whose business was not to promote the general welfare or insure domestic tranquillity,' but to awaken the bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister States by violent denunciations of their institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated efforts to usurp powers not delegated by the Constitution, for the purpose of THE MESSAGE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. 125 The Message of Jefferson Davis. impairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which held slaves to a condition of inferiority. Finally, a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the Slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain, acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States. "In the meantime, under the mild and genial climate of the Southern States, and the increasing care and attention for the well-being and comfort of the laboring class, dictated alike by interest and humanity, the African slaves had augmented in number from about six hundred thousand, at the date of the adoption of the constitutional compact, to upwards of four million. In moral and social condition they had been elevated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only with bodily comforts, but with careful religious instruction. Under the supervision of a superior race their labor had been so directed as not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of the wilderness into cultivated lands, covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South; the white population of the Southern Slaveholding States had augmented from about one million two hundred and fifty thousand, at the date of the adoption of the Constitution, to more than eight million five hundred thousand in 1860, and the productions of the South in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was, and is, indispensable, had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the whole United States, and become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man. The Message of Jefferson Davis. people to select delegates to Conventions to be held for the purpose of determining for themselves what measures were best adapted to meet so alarming a crisis in their history. "Here it may be proper to observe that from a period as early as 1798 there had existed in all of the States of the Union a party, almost uninterrupt edly in the majority, based upon the creed that each State was, in the last resort, the sole judge as well of its wrongs as of the mode and measure of redress. Indeed, it is obvious, that under the law of nations this principle is an axiom as applied to the relations of independent sovereign States, such as those which had united themselves under the constitutional com. pact. The Democratic party of the United States repeated in its successful canvass in 1856, the declaration made in numerous previous political contests, that it would faithfully abide by and uphold the principles laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, and in the report of Mr. Madison to the Virginia Legislature in 1799; and that it adopts those principles as constituting one of the main foundations of its political creed.' The principles thus emphatically announced embrace that to which I have already adverted, the right of each State to judge of, and redress the wrongs of which it complains. The principles were maintained by overwhelming majorities of the people of all the States of the Union at different elections, especially in the elections of Mr. Jefferson in 1805, Mr. Madison in 1809, and Mr. Pierce in 1852. "In the exercise of a right so ancient, so well established, and so necessary for self-preservation, the people of the Confederate States in their Conventions, determined that the wrongs which they had suffered, and the evils with which they were menaced, required that they should revoke the delegation of powers to the Federal Government, which they had ratified in their several Conventions. They consequently passed ordinances resuming all their rights as sovereign and independent States, and dissolved their connection with the other States of the Union. "Having done this, they proceeded to form a new compact amongst themselves, by new articles of confederation, which have been also ratified by the Convention of the several States, with an approach to unanimity far exceeding that of the Convention which adopted the Constitution of 1787. They have organized their new Government in all its depart ments; the functions of the executive, legislative, and judicial magistrates are performed in accordance with the will of the people, as displayed, not merely in a cheerful acquiescence, but in the enthu siastic support of the Government thus established |