that, under our constitution and laws, we had | enjoyed a prosperity and made a progress, not merely in the utilitarian, but in the intellectual and refined arts of life, without an example in the world.

I said nothing of the unhappy sectional controversy that was raging the country, not because I was insensible to its dangerous character, but because nothing was said about it in the speech to which I undertook to reply. The general truth of my description of the prosperity of the country, and the genial and fostering influence of our Constitution and Laws, was as generally admitted at the South as at the North. No longer ago than the 14th of last November, Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, now Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, and a gentleman of first rate intelligence, in a public speech at Milledgeville, declared it as his "settled conviction," that the present Government of the United States, though not without its defects, 66 comes nearer the objects of all good government than any other on the face of the earth." He pronounced it "a model republic, the best that the history of the world gives us any account of;" and he asked in triumph, Where will you go, following the sun in his circuit round the globe, to find a government that better protects the liberties of the people, and secures to them the blessings which we enjoy ? "*

66

that President has given the most distinct assurances that he contemplated no encroachments on the constitutional rights of the South, as, indeed, lacking a majority of both houses, it is impossible that he should make any such encroachments, had he ever so ardently desired it. Such is the Government in its relations with the South; such the circumstances under which she thinks herself justified in revolting against it.

"rev

I say "revolting against it," although Mr. Jefferson Davis, in his inaugural address, declares it an abuse of language to call it a olution." I cannot go into that argument at this late hour, nor would it be appropriate to the occasion to do so; but I believe it to be as demonstrable as any proposition of Euclid, that this doctrine of "secession," that is, the constitutional right of a State to sever at will her connection with the Union, is, if possible, still more unfounded, still more fallacious, than that of its ill-omened and now universally discred ited predecessor, "Nullification," which was crushed, never to rise again, thirty years ago, by the iron mace of Webster, in the Senate of the United States.

I will only say at present, that this monstrous pretended right of "secession," though called a "reserved right," is notoriously nowhere expressly reserved in the Constitution, although every one feels that nothing but an express This, you will observe again, was the lan- reservation, in the plainest terms, would be a guage of a very leading Southern statesman, sufficient ground for claiming such a stupendous the second officer of the new Confederacy, no power. What is maintained by the politicians longer ago than last November; and, in truth, of the secession school is, that the right may be the South had and has greater cause than any inferred from one of the amendments to the other part of the Union, to be satisfied with the Constitution, by which it is provided that "the Government under which she lives and on powers not delegated to the United States by which she is making war. Respected abroad the Constitution, or prohibited to the States, as an integral portion of one of the greatest are reserved to the States respectively, or the powers of the earth, mainly in virtue of the people." It is to maintain a subtile and sophisnavy of the Union, of which the strength re-tical, and utterly unwarrantable inference from sides at the North, the South, almost exclusively agricultural in her pursuits, derives from her climate a profitable monopoly of four great staple products-one of them the most important single article in the commerce of the world; But I am willing to stake the great issue on while, in consequence, chiefly of the political this amendment. The Constitution does exsympathy with each other which pervades the pressly delegate to the United States all the slaveholding States, she has ever enjoyed a mo- powers of a sovereign State, with respect to nopoly scarcely less complete of the Govern-international and interstate affairs; the whole ment of the country.

At this moment, and though numbering but a third part of the free population of the Union, if she had not most unjustifiably withdrawn her members of Congress, she would have had in her interest a majority in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, and in the Judiciary. For fifty-six out of the seventy-two years, the Presidents of the United States have been either Southern men or Northern men in whom the South has confided. For the first time, last November, a President was chosen who received no electoral votes from the South, but

* Sce Speech of A, H. Stephens, Nov. 14, 1861, seq.

this amendment, that the South is now striving to break up the Government, and if resisted in that unhallowed attempt, to drench the country in blood.

war power; the whole admiralty power; the whole commercial power; the whole financial power; the power to regulate and dispose of the public territory; the power over the Indians, over the post-office and post-roads; over the army, the navy, the dockyards, the arsenals. All these powers and many others are expressly delegated to the United States, and as expressly prohibited to the individual States. The Constitution of the United States (to which the people of South Carolina assented on the 2d of May, 1788, as much as they ever assented to their State constitution) distinctly provides that no State shall keep troops or ships of war, or issue letters of marque and reprisal, or enter

into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; and | years as the friend of the South. For mainyet in the face of this express delegation of taining what I deemed her constitutional rights, powers to the United States, and their express I have suffered no small portion of obloquy, prohibition to the States, the seceding States and sacrificed the favor of a large portion of have undertaken to exercise them all; have the community in which I was born, and entered into a "confederation," raised an army, which, from my youth up, I have endeavored to issued letters of marque and reprisal, and serve laboriously, dutifully, and affectionately. plunged into a war against the government, I was willing, while this ill-starred movement which every magistrate and officer among them was confined to the States of the extreme was under oath to support, and all in virtue of South, and they abstained from further aggreshaving first uttered the magic words, "we se- sion, that they should go in peace. cede." The history of the world does not furnish another such monstrous usurpation!

within our command. The same guns com- | in the Sixth regiment has been poisoned by mand with grape and canister the ford below the iron works, while the extended pickets of Colonel Lyons fully protect the rear.

The General has been thus particular in describing his position, so that each portion of the force might know how to conduct in case of an attack which it only requires vigilance to foil. The General takes this opportunity publicly as he has done privately to thank Lieutenants Fox and Shilley, of the Eighth regiment, for their coolness, promptitude, and zeal in arresting one Spencer, who was uttering in the presence of the troops at the Relay House the atrocious sentiment that- -"We [meaning himself and brother rebels] acted rightly toward the Massachusetts troops three weeks ago Friday." And saying "that the murderous mob who killed our friends there were right in their action; and that the same men were preparing to give us a warm reception on our return." For these treasonable speeches substantially admitted by him in his written examination, Spencer has been arrested and sent to Annapolis, where he will be properly dealt with.

Two incidents of the gravest character marked the progress of yesterday. Charles Leonard, private of Company G, Eighth Regiment, of New York, was accidentally killed instantaneously by the discharge of a musket, from which he was drawing the charge. He was buried with all the honors, amidst the gloom and sorrow of every United States soldier at this post, and the tender sympathies of many of the loyal inhabitants in our neighborhood.

means of strychnine administered in the food brought into the camp by one of these peddlers. I am happy to be informed that the man is now out of danger. This act, of course, will render it necessary for me to cut off all purchases from unauthorized persons.

Are our few insane enemies among the loyal men of Maryland, prepared to wage war upon us in this manner? Do they know the terrible lesson of warfare they are teaching us? Can it be that they realize the fact that we can put an agent with a word into every household armed with this terrible weapon? In view of the terrible consequences of this mode of warfare, if adopted by us from their teaching, with every sentiment of devotional prayer, may we not exclaim, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

Certain it is that any other such attempt, reasonably authenticated as to the person committing it, will be followed by the swiftest, surest, and most condign punishment.

Colonels Lyons, Jones, and Major Cooke are charged with the execution of this order so far as relates to their several commands, and they will promulgate the same by causing it to be read distinctly at the head of each compan at morning roll call.

By order of B. F. Butler, Brig.-Gen. Commanding.

EDWARD G. PARKER, Lieut. Col., Aide-de-
Camp.
-N. Y. Herald, May 10.

Doc. 1461.

CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR.

A LETTER TO THE LONDON TIMES
BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY,

referred at last to the dread arbitrament of
THE de facto question in America has been

civil war.

Time and events must determine

It is fitting that we pause here, even in the discharge of our present solemn duties, to drop a tear upon the grave of a fellow-soldier, a friend and brother. A pure patriot, he gave up home for his country; a heroic, conscientious soldier, he died in the act of discharging his duty; and, although he was not stricken by the hand of death amid the clangor of arms, and in the heat of contest, yet his death was no less glorious because he met it in the quiet performance of his military duty. As a citizen he took up arms at his country's call; as a private soldier he sought only to fight in her ranks, and he met his death in support of that flag which we all revere and love. The first offer ing of New York of the life of one of her sons upon the country's altar, his blood mingling on the soil of Maryland with that of the Massachusetts men murdered at Baltimore, will form a new bond of union between us and all loyal States; so that, without need of further incen-Yet the trial by the ordeal of battle has hardly tive to our duty, we are spurred on by the example of the life and death of Leonard.

The other matter to which the General desires to call the attention of the troops is this: Wishing to establish the most friendly relations between you and this neighborhood, the General invited all venders of supplies to visit our camp and replenish our somewhat scanty commissariat. But to his disgust and horror he finds well-authenticated evidence that a private

whether the "great Republic" is to disappear from the roll of nations, or whether it is destined to survive the storm which has gathered in England to prejudge the case; a disposition over its head. There is, perhaps, a readiness not to exult in our downfall, but to accept the fact; for nations, as well as individuals, may often be addressed in the pathetic language of the poet,

"Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos; Tempora cum fuerint nubila, nullus erit."'

commenced, and it would be presumptuous to affect to penetrate the veil of even the immediate future. But the question de jure is a different one. The right and the wrong belong to the past, are hidden by no veil, and may easily be read by all who are not wilfully blind. Yet it is often asked why have the Americans taken up arms? Why has the United States Government plunged into what is sometimes called "this wicked war"? Especially it is

revolution, civil war is the inevitable result. It is the result foretold by sagacious statesmen almost a generation ago, in the days of the tariff "nullification." "To begin with nullification," said Daniel Webster in 1833,"with the avowed intention, nevertheless, not to proceed to secesssion, dismemberment, and general revolution, is as if one were to take the plunge of Niagara, and cry out that he would stop half way down." And now the plunge of secession has been taken, and we are all struggling in the vortex of general revolution.

thought amazing in England that the President | expanded into armed and fierce rebellion and should have recently called for a great army of volunteers and regulars, and that the inhabitants of the Free States should have sprung forward as one man at his call, like men suddenly relieved from a spell. It would have been amazing had the call been longer delayed. The national flag, insulted and defied for many months, had at last been lowered, after the most astonishing kind of siege recorded in history, to an armed and organized rebellion; and a prominent personage in the Government of the Southern Confederacy is reported to have proclaimed amid the exultations of victory that before the 1st of May the same cherished emblem of our nationality should be struck from the capitol at Washington. An advance of the "Confederate troops upon that city; the flight or captivity of the President and his Cabinet; the seizure of the national archives, the national title deeds, and the whole national machinery of foreign intercourse and internal administration, by the Confederates; and the proclamation from the American palladium itself of the Montgomery Constitution in place of the one devised by Washington, Madison," The said States hereby enter into a firm Hamilton, and Jay-a constitution in which slavery should be the universal law of the land, the corner-stone of the political edifice-were events which seemed for a few days of intense anxiety almost probable.

Had this really been the result, without a blow struck in defence of the national Government and the old Constitution, it is certain that the contumely poured forth upon the Free States by their domestic enemies, and by the world at large, would have been as richly deserved as it would have been amply bestowed. At present such a catastrophe seems to have been averted. But the levy in mass of such a vast number of armed men in the Free States, in swift response to the call of the President, shows how deep and pervading is the attachment to the Constitution and to the flag of Union in the hearts of the 19,000,000 who inhabit those States. It is confidently believed, too, that the sentiment is not wholly extinguished in the 9,000,000 white men who dwell in the Slave States, and that, on the contrary, there exists a large party throughout that country who believe that the Union furnishes a better protection for life, property, law, civilization, and liberty, than even the indefinite extension of African slavery can do.

At any rate, the loyalty of the Free States has proved more intense and passionate than it had ever been supposed to be before. It is recognized throughout their whole people that the Constitution of 1787 had made us a nation. The efforts of a certain class of politicians for a long period had been to reduce our Commonwealth to a Confederacy. So long as their efforts had been confined to argument, it was considered sufficient to answer the argument; but, now that secession, instead of remaining a topic of vehement and subtle discussion, has

The body politic, known for 70 years as the United States of America, is not a Confederacy, not a compact of sovereign States, not a copartnership; it is a Commonwealth, of which the Constitution drawn up at Philadelphia by the Convention of 1787, over which Washington presided, is the organic, fundamental law. We had already had enough of a confederacy. The thirteen rebel provinces, afterwards the thirteen original independent States of America, had been united to each other during the revolutionary war by articles of confederacy.

league of friendship with each other." Such was the language of 1781, and the league or treaty thus drawn up was ratified, not by the people of the States, but by the State Governments, the legislative and executive bodies namely, in their corporate capacity.

The continental Congress, which was the central administrative board during this epoch, was a diet of envoys from sovereign States. It had no power to act on individuals. It could not command the States. It could move only by requisitions and recommendations. Its functions were essentially diplomatic, like those of the States-General of the old Dutch Republic, like those of the modern Germanic Confederation.

We were a league of petty sovereignties. When the war had ceased, when our independence had been acknowledged in 1783, we sank rapidly into a condition of utter impotence, imbecility, anarchy. We had achieved our independence, but we had not constructed a nation. We were not a body politic. No laws could be enforced, no insurrections suppressed, no debts collected. Neither property nor life was secure. Great Britain had made a treaty of peace with us, but she scornfully declined a treaty of commerce and amity; not because we had been rebels, but because we were not a state-because we were a mere dissolving league of jarring provinces, incapable of guaranteeing the stipulations of any commercial treaty. We were unable even to fulfil the conditions of the treaty of peace and enforce the stipulated collection of debts due to British subjects; and Great Britain refused in consequence to give up the military posts which she held within our frontiers. For 12 years after the acknowledgment of our independence we were mortified by the spectacle of foreign soldiers occupying a long

The Constitution was not drawn up by the States, it was not promulgated in the name of the States, it was not ratified by the States. The States never acceded to it, and possess no power to secede from it. It "was ordained and established" over the States by a power superior to the States-by the people of the whole land in their aggregate capacity, acting through conventions of delegates expressly chosen for the purpose within each State, independently of the State Governments, after the project had been framed.

end to the system of confederacy. Whether it were an advantageous or a noxious change, all agreed that the thing had been done.

chain of fortresses south of the great lakes and | themselves are only mentioned to receive comupon our own soil. We were a confederacy. mands or prohibitions, and the "people of the We were sovereign States. And these were United States" is the single party by whom the fruits of such a confederacy and of such alone the instrument is executed. sovereignty. It was, until the immediate present, the darkest hour of our history. But there were patriotic and sagacious men in those days, and their efforts at last rescued us from the condition of a confederacy. The "Constitution of the United States was an organic law, enacted by the sovereign people of that whole territory which is commonly called in geographies and histories the United States of America. It was empowered to act directly, by its own legislative, judicial, and executive machinery, upon every individual in the country. It could seize his property, it could take his life, There had always been two parties in the for causes of which itself was the judge. The country during the brief but pregnant period States were distinctly prohibited from oppos- between the abjuration of British authority and ing its decrees or from exercising any of the the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. There great functions of sovereignty. The Union was a party advocating State rights and local alone was supreme, "any thing in the constitu- self-government in its largest sense, and a party tion and laws of the States to the contrary not- favoring a more consolidated and national govwithstanding." Of what significance, then, was ernment. The National or Federal party trithe title of "sovereign" States, arrogated in umphed in the adoption of the new governlater days by communities which had volun-ment. It was strenuously supported and bittarily abdicated the most vital attributes of terly opposed on exactly the same grounds. Its sovereignty? But, indeed, the words "sov-friends and foes both agreed that it had put an ereign" and "sovereignty" are purely inapplicable to the American system. In the Declaration of Independence the provinces declare themselves "free and independent States," but the men of those days knew that the word "sov-companying and recommending the Constituereign was a term of feudal origin. When their connection with a time-honored feudal monarchy was abruptly severed, the word "sovereign" had no meaning for us. A sovereign is one who acknowledges no superior, who possesses the highest authority without control, who is supreme in power. How could any one State of the United States claim such characteristics at all, least of all after its inabitants, "That this is a consolidated Government in their primary assemblies, had voted to sub- (said Henry), is demonstrably clear. The lanmit themselves, without limitation of time, to guage is we, the people,' instead of we, the a constitution which was declared supreme? States.' It must be one great, consolidated The only intelligible source of power in a coun-national Government of the people of all the try beginning its history de novo after a revolu- States." tion, in a land never subjected to military or feudal conquest, is the will of the people of the whole land as expressed by a majority. At the present moment, unless the Southern revolution shall prove successful, the United States "It has been said that the States were sovGovernment is a fact, an established authority. ereign, were completely independent, and were In the period between 1783 and 1787 we were connected with each other by a league. This in chaos. In May of 1787 the convention met is true. But when these allied sovereignties in Philadelphia, and, after some months' delib-converted their league into a Government, eration, adopted, with unprecedented unanimity, the project of the great law, which, so soon as it should be accepted by the people, was to be known as the Constitution of the United States.

It was not a compact. Who ever heard of a compact to which there were no parties? or who ever heard of a compact made by a single party with himself? Yet the name of no State is mentioned in the whole document; the States

"In all our deliberations (says the letter ac

tion to the people) we kept steadily in view that which appeared to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, safety, perhaps our national existence."-Journal of the Convention, 1 Story, 368.

And an eloquent opponent denounced the project for this very same reason

เ

6

And the Supreme Court of the United States, after the Government had been established, held this language in an important case, "Gibbons v. Ogden:

when they converted their Congress of Ambassadors into a Legislature, empowered to enact laws, the whole character in which the States appear underwent a change."

There was never a disposition in any quarter, in the early days of our constitutional history,. to deny this great fundamental principle of the Republic.

"In the most elaborate expositions of the Constitution by its friends (says Justice Story),