CHAPTER XIV.

A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF NORTHERN DESPOTISM. -The Record of Mr. Lincoln's Administration.

There are many persons to be found in the North, who admitting the rapid decline since the commencement of the war, of their government to despotism, attempt a consolation by the assertion that a similar lapse of liberty has taken place in the Confederate States. This opinion obtains, to a remarkable extent, even among those who are not unfriendly to the South, and certainly are not disposed to do her injuctice. It must be largely ascribed to the very prevalent ignorance in the North, even among men otherwise well-informed and intelligent, of the internal policy of the Confederate States, and of the true spirit of their peculiar legislation with reference to the war. It is not only the Black Republican party that circulates the idea of an iron-handed tyranny in the Confederate States; but that idea is admitted to a large extent in the minds of those who are disposed to think well of the Southern experiment, but are not proof against the impressions derived from such peremptory laws as require men to take up arms in mass, to devote certain property to the government, and to hold themselves, generally, in subjection to the necessities of the war. These measures wear the appearance of the machinery of despotism to them; simply because they do not understand their true nature; while they add to their ignorance the mistake of viewing them from a stand-point which puts the North and the South in the same circumstances.

It is quite true that the conscription and impressment laws of the Confederacy are apparently harsh measures. Yet there is something to be said of them beyond the justificotion of necessity; and this is, that they are really nothing more than the organized expressions of the popular devation of the South in the war; intended only to give effect and uniformity to it. They are not instances of violent legislation imposed upon the people; they are merely the formulas of willing and patriotic contribution of men and means to a war, in which not only a nation fights for its very existence, but each individual for the prac

tical stake of his own fortune. It is difficult to make Northern men understand this: that, while they have a mortal terrour of the draft and other demands of the war, the people of the South are cheerfully willing to take up arms, and to devote their substance to the Government. It is thus that the conscription and impressment laws, which in the North would be the essence of despotism, are really in the South not edicts of violence, but mere conventionalisms of the war, through which the patriotism of the people acts with effect and regularity.

But beyond these laws, even the appearance of despotism stops in the Southern Confederacy. We have only to compare the established routine there with what we constantly observe in the North, to show how divergent, since the first gun was fired at Fort Sumter, have been the histories of the billigerents on all questions affecting political and civil liberty. There are no Military Governours in the Confederacy; there is no martial law there; there is, properly call no political police there our police establishment being limited to a mere tective force to apprehend, in the communities in which they are placed, spies and emissaries of the enemy. At no time in this war have soldiers ever been inced at a polling place in the Confederacy; at no time have newspapers ever been suppressed; and at no time has a single instance of arbitrary arrest, or imprisonment without distinct charges and the opportunity to reply, occurred within the Confederate jurisdiction. These are facts which carry their own comment on the base reflection, that in this war the South has declined along with the North in its civil administration, and has kept company with it on its road to despotism.

When we speak of the despotism at Washington, we do not design a figure or an exaggeration of rhetoric. We merely name a clearly defined species or human government, as we would any other fact in history. The Presidentia election, just past, has given occasion for a full review of the acts of the Washington authorities. We may sum up that review in some brief paragraph-dividing it into two branches: first, Mr. Lincoln's unconstitutional course on the rights of the States on the slavery question; second, his course on the rights of his own people in all matters of civil liberty-these two classes of outrage being a convenient division of his Administration, viewed both as to its tentions upon the South, and its effects upon the North.

I

As to the Slavery question, it is only necessary to state the record.

1. The convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln President of the

United States in 1860, passed a resolution affirming "the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively.

2. Mr. Lincoln in his inaugural of March, 1861, inserted this resolution at length, and declared that to him it would be "a law," and added, "I now reiterate these sentiments," and "in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace, and security of no section are not to be in anywise endangered by the now incoming administration." In the same State paper he had before said, quoting approvingly from one of his own speeches, "I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it now exists;" and subjoined, "I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

3. In Secretary Seward's famous letter to the minister of the United States, resident at Paris, designed as a diplomatic circular to the European courts, and written "by direction of the President," occurs the following paragraph: "The condition of slavery in the several States will remain just the same, whether it ["the rebellion"] succeeds or fails. The rights of the States, and· the condition of every human being in them, will remain subject to exactly the samé laws and forms of administration, whether the revolution shall succeed or or whether it shall fail. Their constitutions and laws and customs, habits and institutions, in either case, will remain the same. It is hardly necessary to add to this incontestable statement the further fact that the new President, as well as the citizens through whose suffrages he has come into the administration, has always repudiated all designs whatever, and wherever imputed to him and them of disturbing the system of slavery as it is existing under the Constitution and laws, The case, however, would not be fully presented were I to omit to say that any such effort on his part would be unconstitutional, and all his acts in that direction would be prevented by the judicial authorities, even though they were assented to by Congress and the people."

4. In his message to Congress of the 6th of March, 1862, known as his compensation message, after recommending to that body that they should pass a resolution that the United States ought to co-operate with the States by means of pecuniary aid in effecting the gradual abolishment of slavery, Mr. Lincoln expressly disavowed for the Government any authority over the subject, except with State assent. His language was that his proposition "sets up no claim of a right by Federal authority to interfere with slavery within State limits, refer

ing, as it does, the absolute control of the subject in each case to the State and its people immediately interested."

5. The act of Congress of the 6th of August, 1861, emancipated only the slaves of "rebels" employed in the "rebellion," and submitted the decision of such cases exclusively to the courts. Major-General Fremont, on the 30th of that month, he being then in command in Missouri, by proclamation declared free all the slaves within the State. This, as soon as it came to Mr. Lincoln's knowledge, he disapproved, and declared it in a formal order of 11th of September, to be void as far as it transcended the provisions of the act of Congress. And in a letter of Mr. Joseph Holt to President Lincoln, of the 22d of the month, that person being alarmned for the effect of Fremont's order, states that "the act of Congress was believed to embody the conservative policy of your administration." This statement Mr. Lincoln never denied.

6. On the 9th of May, 1862, Major-General Hunter, military commander of the department of the South, embracing Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, by an order of that date, declared all slaves within such States free. On the 19th of the month, even before he was officially advised of the measure, Mr. Lincoln, by proclamation, declared the same, "whether genuine or false," to be "altogether void." In neither of these instances was there the slightest intimation of a change of opinion by Mr. Lincoln, either on the question of policy or of power. As to both, he then entertained the same opinion that he had announced in his inaugural.

7. On the 22d of July, 1862, Mr. Crittenden proposed, in the House of Representatives at Washington, a resolution which, after stating that the war was "forced upon the country by the disunionists" of the Southern States, declared that it "is not waged on our part in any spirit of oppression or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or interferring with the rights or the established institution of these States (the seceded), but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and the rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease." In the House only two votes were cast against it, and in the Senate but one Republican vote, and it was at once and without hesitation approved by the President. No pretence was here suggested that slavery was to be abolished, or that any of the rights of the States in regard to it were to be interferred with.

Yet in the face of all this accumulation of precedents, we find Emancipation proclamations put forward under the claim of executive power-the first on the

22d of September, 1862, and the second on the first day of the succeedingyear. In the last, all slavery in certain States, or parts of States, were declared free; it mattered not whether the territory or the slaves should fall within the military occupation of the United States or not. Such has been the sequel of a hypocrisy which must stand as a deception and outrage unparalleled in history.

But it has been said that the emancipation proclamation was a military measure, and to be justified as such from necessities outside of the Constitution. It is difficult to find patience to reply to such nonsense. The plea is the most absurd stuff that was ever put in the mouth of fool or knave to brazen out against the good sense and conscience of the world his fraud and outrage. Absurd, because we know, and all the world knows, that it was at the dictation and under the influence of a purely political party that the emancipation proclamation was issued by Mr. Lincoln. Absurd, because we know, and have had recent assurance from Mr. Lincoln himself, that he does not intend emancipation of the negro to end with the war, which it would do ipso facto if a mere military measure, but has made the abandonment or extirpation of slavery the preliminary condition for peace, and thus, therefore, a primary object of the

war.

II.

It is this same dogma of "military necessity," applied to the slavery question, that Mr. Lincoln has used to fasten upon the necks of the white citizens of the North a yoke of intolerable despotism. It is only necessary to look upon what is every day passing before our eyes.

We see this despotism in the unreasonable searches and seizures of persons and papers, in direct violation of the Constitution.

We see it in arrests of obnoxious individuals and their imprisonment without warrant or charges preferred, and in some instances cut off from all communication with family, friends, or counsel.

We see it in the suppression of newspapers and wanton arrest of editors. We see it in the assumption by the President of the power to regulate the right of suffrage in the States and establish minority and aristocratic govern-> ments under the pretext of guaranteeing republican governments.

These are not fancy sketches or the exaggerations of a narrative written with passion. We know that such things have occurred in Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and New York; and yet even to question their legality is deemed disloyal, and men who maintain their inherited freedom in