every other provision of it may be nullified, and every magistrate and officer in Carolina, whether of the State or Union, absolved from the oath which they have taken to support it?

But this is not all. This secession ordinance purports to "repeal" the ordinance of 23d May, 1788, by which the Constitution of the United States was ratified by the people of South Carolina. It was intended, of course, by calling the act of ratification an ordinance to infer a right of repealing it by another ordinance. It is important, therefore, to observe that the act of ratification is not, and was not at the time called, an ordinance, and contains nothing which by possibility can be repealed. It is in the following terms:

"The Convention [of the people of South Carolina], having maturely considered the Constitution, or form of government, reported to Congress by the convention of delegates from the United States of America, and submitted to them, by a resolution of the Legislature of this State passed the 17th and 18th days of February last, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to the people of the said United States and their posterity, do, in the name and in behalf of the people of this State, hereby assent to and ratify the same."

Here it is evident that there is nothing in the instrument which, in the nature of things, can be repealed; it is an authorized solemn assertion of the People of South Carolina, that they assent to, and ratify a form of government, which is declared in terms to be paramount to all State laws and constitutions. This is a great historical fact, the most important that can ever occur in the history of a people. The fact that the People of South Carolina, on the 23d of May, 1788, assented to and ratified the Constitution of the United States, in order, among other objects, to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and "their posterity," can no more be repealed in 1861, than any other historical fact that occurred in Charleston in that year and on that day. It would be just as rational, at the present day, to attempt by ordinance to repeal any other event, as that the sun rose or that the tide ebbed and flowed on that day, as to repeal by ordinance the assent of Carolina to the Constitution.

Again: it is well known that various amendments to the Constitution were desired and proposed in different States. The first of the amendments proposed by South Carolina was as follows:

"Whereas it is essential to the preservation of the rights reserved to the several States and the freedom of the People under the operation of the General Government, that the right of prescribing the manner, times, and places of holding the elections of the Federal Legislature should be forever inseparably annexed to the sovereignty of the States; this Convention doth declare that the same ought to remain to all posterity, a perpetual and fundamental right in the local, exclusive of the interference of the general Government, except in cases where the Legislature of the States shall refuse or neglect to perform or fulfil the same, according to the tenor of the said Constitution."

Here you perceive that South Carolina herself in 1788 desired a provision to be made and annexed inseparably to her sovereignty, that she should forever have the power of prescribing the time, place, and manner of holding the elections of

IS SECESSION A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT, OR IS IT REVOLUTION?

9

members of Congress;-but even in making this express reservation, to operate for all posterity, she was willing to provide that, if the State Legislatures refuse or neglect to perform the duty, (which is precisely the case of the Seceding States at the present day,) then the General Government was, by this South Carolina amendment, expressly authorized to do it. South Carolina in 1788, by a sort of prophetic foresight, looked forward to the possibility that the States might "refuse or neglect " to cooperate in carrying on the Government, and admitted, in that case, that the General Government must go on, in spite of their delinquency.

I have dwelt on these points at some length, to show how futile is the attempt, by giving the name of "ordinance" to the act, by which South Carolina adopted the Constitution, and entered the Union, to gain a power to leave it by a subse quent ordinance of repeal.*

IS SECESSION A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT, OR IS IT REVOLUTION?

Whether the present unnatural civil war is waged by the South, in virtue of a supposed constitutional right to leave the Union at pleasure; or whether it is an exercise of the great and ultimate right of revolution, the existence of which no one denies, seems to be left in uncertainty by the leaders of the movement. Mr. Jefferson Davis, the President of the new confederacy, in his inaugural speech delivered on the 18th of February, declares that it is "an abuse of language” to call it “a revolution." Mr. Vice-President Stephens, on the contrary, in a speech at Savannah, on the 21st of March, pronounces it “ one of the greatest revolutions in the annals of the world." The question is of great magnitude as one of constitutional and public law; as one of morality it is of very little consequence whether the country is drenched in blood, in the exercise of a right claimed under the Constitution, or the right inherent in every community to revolt against an oppressive government. Unless the oppression is so extreme as to justify revolution, it would not justify the evil of breaking up a government, under an abstract constitutional right to do so.

NEITHER A GRANTED NOR A RESERVED RIGHT.

This assumed right of Secession_rests upon the doctrine that the Union is a compact between Independent States, from which any one of them may withdraw at pleasure in virtue of its sovereignty. This imaginary right has been the subject of discussion for more than thirty years, having been originally suggested, though not at first much dwelt upon, in connection with the kindred claim of a right, on the part of an individual State, to "nullify " an Act of Congress. It would, of course, be impossible within the limits of the hour to review these elaborate discussions. I will only remark, on this occasion, that none of the premises from which this remarkable conclusion is drawn, are recognized in the Constitution, and that the right of Secession, though claimed to be a "reserved" right, is not expressly reserved in it. That instrument does not purport to be a "compact," but a Constitution of Government. It appears, in its first sentence, not to have been entered into by the States, but to have been ordained and established by the People of the United States, for " themselves and their posterity." The States are not named in it; nearly all the characteristic powers of sovereignty are expressly granted to the

*See Appendix A.

General Government and expressly prohibited to the States, and so far from reserving a right of secession to the latter, on any ground or under any pretence, it ordains and establishes in terms the Constitution of the United States as the Supreme Law of the land, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

It would seem that this is as clear and positive as language can make it. But it is argued, that, though the right of secession is not reserved in terms, it must be considered as implied in the general reservation to the States and to the People of all the powers not granted to Congress nor prohibited to the States. This extraor dinary assumption, more distinctly stated, is that, in direct defiance of the express grant to Congress and the express prohibition to the States of nearly all the powers of an independent government, there is, by implication, a right reserved to the States to assume and exercise all these powers thus vested in the Union and prohibited to themselves, simply in virtue of going through the ceremony of passing a law called an Ordinance of Secession. A general reservation to the States of powers not prohibited to them, nor granted to Congress is an implied reservation to the States of a right to exercise these very powers thus expressly delegated to Congress and thus expressly prohibited to the States!

The Constitution directs that the Congress of the United States shall have power to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, and that the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall make treaties with foreign powers. These express grants of power to the Government of the United States are followed by prohibitions as express to the several States:

"No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation, grant letters of marque or reprisal: no State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay."

These and numerous other express grants of power to the General Government, and express prohibitions to the States, are further enforced by the comprehensive provision, already recited, that the Constitution and Laws of the United States are paramount to the laws and Constitution of the separate States.

And this Constitution, with these express grants and express prohibitions, and with this express subordination of the States to the General Government, has been adopted by the People of all the States; and all their judges and other officers, and all their citizens holding office under the government of the United States or the individual States, are solemnly sworn to support it.

In the face of all this, in defiance of all this, in violation of all this, in contempt of all this, the seceding States claim the right to exercise every power expressly delegated to Congress and expressly prohibited to the States by that Constitution, which every one of their prominent men, civil and military, is under oath to support. They have entered into a confederation, raised an army, attempted to provide a navy, issued letters of marque and reprisal, waged war, and that war,— Merciful Heaven forgive them,—not with a foreign enemy, not with the wild tribes which still desolate the unprotected frontier; (they, it is said, are swelling, armed with tomahawk and scalping-knife, the Confederate forces ;) but with their own

BEFORE THE REVOLUTION THE COLONIES WERE A PEOPLE.

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countrymen, and the mildest and most beneficent government on the face of the earth!

BEFORE THE REVOLUTION THE COLONIES WERE A PEOPLE.

But we are told all this is done in virtue of the Sovereignty of the States; as if, because a State is Sovereign, its people were incompetent to establish a government for themselves and their posterity. Certainly the States are clothed with Sovereignty for local purposes; but it is doubtful whether they ever possessed it in any other sense; and if they had, it is certain that they ceded it to the General Government, in adopting the Constitution. Before their independence of England was asserted, they constituted a provincial people, (Burke calls it "a glorious Empire,") subject to the British crown, organized for certain purposes under separate colonial charters, but, on some great occasions of political interest and public safety, acting as one. Thus they acted when, on the approach of the great Seven Years' War, which exerted such an important influence on the fate of British America, they sent their delegates to Albany to concert a plan of union. In the discussions of that plan which was reported by Franklin, the citizens of the colonies were evidently considered as a People. When the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 roused the spirit of resistance throughout America, the Unity of her People assumed a still more practical form. "Union," says one of our great American historians,* "was the hope of Otis. Union that 'should knit and work into the very blood and bones of the original system every region as fast as settled."" In this hope he argued against writs of assistance, and in this hope he brought about the call of the Convention at New York in 1765. At that Convention, the noble South Carolinian Christopher Gadsden, with prophetic foreboding of the disintegrating heresies of the present day, cautioned his associates against too great dependence on their colonial charters. "I wish," said he, "that the charters may not ensnare us at last, by drawing different Colonies to act differently in this great cause. Whenever that is the case all is over with the whole. There ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on the Continent, but all of us Americans."

While the patriots in America counselled, and wrote, and spoke as a people, they were recognized as such in England. "Believe me," cried Colonel Barré in the House of Commons, "I this day told you so, the same spirit of Freedom which actuated that People at first will accompany them still. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has, but a People jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them, should they be violated."

When ten years later the great struggle long foreboded came on, it was felt, on both sides of the Atlantic, to be an attempt to reduce a free People beyond the sea to unconditional dependence on a parliament in which they were not represented. "What foundation have we," was the language of Chatham on the 27th Jan. 1775, "for our claims over America? What is our right to persist in such cruel and vindictive measures against that loyal, respectable People? How have this respectable people behaved under all their grievances? Repeal, therefore, I say. But bare repeal will not satisfy this enlightened and spirited People." Lord Camden, in the same debate, exclaimed, "You have no right to tax America; the natural rights of man, and the immutable laws of Nature, are with that People." Burke,

* Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. v., p. 292.

† Ibid., p. 335.

two months later, made his great speech for conciliation with America. "I do not know," he exclaimed, "the method of drawing up an indictment against a WHOLE PEOPLE." In a letter written two years after the commencement of the war, he traces the growth of the colonies from their feeble beginnings to the magnitude which they had attained when the revolution broke out, and in which his glowing imagination saw future grandeur and power beyond the reality. "At the first designation of these colonial assemblies," says he, "they were probably not intended for any thing more (nor perhaps did they think themselves much higher) than the municipal corporations within this island, to which some at present love to compare them. But nothing in progression can rest on its original plan; we may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant. Therefore, as the Colonies prospered and increased to A NUMEROUS AND MIGHTY PEOPLE, spreading over a very great tract of the globe, it was natural that they should attribute to assemblies so respectable in the formed Constitution, some part of the dignity of the great nations which they represented."

The meeting of the first Continental Congress of 1774 was the spontaneous impulse of the People. All their resolves and addresses proceed on the assumption that they represented a People. Their first appeal to the Royal authority was their letter to General Gage, remonstrating against the fortifications of Boston. "We entreat your Excellency to consider," they say, "what a tendency this conduct must have to irritate and force a free People, hitherto well disposed to peaceable measures, into hostilities." Their final act, at the close of the Session, their address to the King, one of the most eloquent and pathetic of State papers, appeals to him "in the name of all your Majesty's faithful People in America."

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE RECOGNIZES A PEOPLE.

But this all-important principle in our political system is placed beyond doubt, by an authority which makes all further argument or illustration superfluous. That the citizens of the British Colonies, however divided for local purposes into different governments, when they ceased to be subject to the English crown, became ipso facto one People for all the high concerns of national existence, is a fact embodied in the Declaration of Independence itself. That august Manifesto, the Magna Charta, which introduced us into the family of nations, was issued to the world, so its first sentence sets forth-because "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires" such solemn announcement of motives and causes to be made, "when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another." Mr. Jefferson Davis, in his message of the 29th of April, deems it important to remark, that, by the treaty of peace with Great Britain," the several States were each by name recognized to be independent." It would be more accurate to say that the United States each by name were so recognized. Such enumeration was necessary, in order to fix beyond doubt, which of the Anglo-American colonies, twenty-five or six in number, were included in the recognition.* But it is surely a far more significant circumstance, that the separate States are not named in the Declaration

* Burke's account of "the English settlements in America," begins with Jamaica, and proceeds through the West India Islands. There were also English settlements on the Continent, Canada-and Nova Scotia,-which it was necessary to exclude from the Treaty, by an enumeration of the included Colonies.