CHAPTER VIII.

CAUSES WHICH LED TO THE Rebellion.

THE ADHERENCE OF THE SOUTHERN STATES to the old doctrine of the anti-federalists of state sovereignty-the Missouri Compromise the Nullification Act of South Carolina, prepared by John C. Calhoun, the great apostle of State rights-the annexation of Texas-the Kansas-Nebraska bill, passed 1854, repealing the Missouri Compromise-the division of the Democratic party at the time of the nomination of Democratic candidates for the presidency in 1860-the Democratic opinion rendered March, 1857, by Chief-Justice Taney "that negroes, whether free or slaves, were not citizens of the United States, and that they could not become such by any process known to the Constitution" and could be taken into the territories the same as any other property-the capture of Harper's Ferry by John Brown in 1859, and his capture by Col. Robert E. Lee, then officer in U. S. Army-Brown's execution-the Free Soil party getting possession of Kansas-the election of Abraham Lincoln, the opponent of slavery and of state sovereignty, in November, 1860 the secession of South Carolina from the Union, December 17, 1860, and the subsequent secession of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas, which all withdrew from the general government by February 1st, 1861-the formation of the "Confederate States of America," on the 4th of February, 1861, by six Southern states, at Montgomery, Alabama, and election of Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens as President and Vice-President, and organization of a new government on the 8th of the same month-the failure of the peace conference, representing thirty-one states, at Washington, to effect anything-and the bombardment and capture of Fort Sumter, April 11, 1861, by Gen. P. T. Beauregard, and the forced surrender by Major Andreson of Sumter to the Southern Confederacy-all combined to bring about the fearful catastrophe of the rebellion against the authority of the National Constitution, under which had been conducted the affairs of government since Washington's inauguration, April 30, 1789.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ENTERED INTO POWER UNDER THE ADMINISTRATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN at an era more fraught with peril than when the colonies proclaimed their independence.

A succession of events followed filled with terror, burned into the memories of those then living. That party, with the aid of many patriotic democrats, put down the rebellion, reorganized and reestablished all the seceded states and placed again in splendid running order, with its remodeled constitution, this magnificent government. It must be remembered that in 1787 the Northwestern Territory was ceded to the United States by Virginia, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, were afterward formed out of this territory; that Louisiana was purchased of Napoleon April 30, 1803, for $11,000,000 cash and $3,750,000 assumed debts due from French citizens to Americans, making $14,750,000, for a territory of more than 1,000,000 square miles; and that Alaska, with 580,000 square miles, was purchased March 30, 1867, for $7,200,000, by the United States.

February and March, 1861, an amendment forbidding the constitution to be ever so amended as to authorize congress to interfere with the domestic institutions, including slavery, was passed in both houses by a democratic majority, but never submitted to the states, as the Civil War broke out soon after. At that time the South had a majority of the members of congress. Mr. Lincoln in his message July 4th, 1861, said: "They (the disunionists) invented an ingenious sophism which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is, that any state of the Union may, consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the Union without the consent of the Union or of any other state. The little disguise that the supposed right is to be exercised only for just cause, themselves to be the judges of its justice, is too thin to merit any notice."

He also stated that "The express plighting of faith by each and all of the original thirteen states in the Articles of Confederation two years later that the Union shall be perpetual, is most conclusive. Having neither been states either in substance or name, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of 'State Rights' asserting a claim of power to law fully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the 'Sovereignty' of states; but the word even is not in the national constitution; nor as is believed, in any of the state constitutions. What is 'Sovereignty' in the political sense of the term? Would it be far wrong to define it a political community without a political superior?' Tested by this, no one of our states, except Texas, ever was a sovereignty. These states have their status in the Union and they have no other legal status. If they seceded from this they can only do so against

the law and by revolution. The Union and not themselves separately provided their independence and their liberty."

"By conquest or purchase the Unions gave each of them whatever independence or liberty it has. This relative matter of national power and state rights as a principle, is no other than the principle of generality and locality."

In the summer of 1862, Lincoln proposed a draft of the Proclamation of Emancipation and submitted it to a full cabinet meeting. It was issued September 22, 1862. This could only be warranted and maintained under the constitution on the ground of its being a war measure, taken to prevent the overthrow of the Constitution and the Union.

Abraham Lincoln and other students of the constitution were conscious of the conflicting elements contained in the constitution, but were judicious enough to keep within the strict limits of its provisions (although they did not fully endorse all) so as not to commit any unconstitutional acts; but the secessionists, who were never out of the jurisdiction of the constitution, violated its plain instructions, both in regard to their assumed right to secede, and their determination to enforce the extension of slavery into the territories. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, in the Dred Scott case, undertook to decide that slavery could be extended into the territories. This decision was a political trick to help the South, and was not warranted by the constitution even prior to the Thirteenth Amendment. After the war Andrew Johnson had the audacity to quote this decision when the Fifteenth Amendment was being discussed in Congress.

LINCOLN LOYAL TO CONSTITUTION.

April 28, 1912, President Taft made public a letter from the Hon. Robert T. Lincoln, in which Mr. Lincoln defined his father's views upon the constitution, as follows:

"The government under which my father lived was, as it is now, a republic, or representative democracy, checked by the constitution, which can be changed by the people, but only when acting by methods which compel deliberation and exclude so far as possible the effect of passionate and shortsighted impulse. A government in which the checks of an established constitution are actually or practically omitted-one in which the people act in a mass directly on all questions and not through their chosen representatives, is an unchecked democracy, a form of government so full of danger, as shown by history, that it has ceased to exist except in communities small and concentrated as to space. A

New England town meeting may be good, but such a government in a large city or state would be chaos.

"As I understand it, the essence of Mr. Roosevelt's proposals is that we shall adopt the latter form of government in place of the existing form. This, in simple words, is a proposed revolution, peaceful perhaps, but a revolution. In support of these revolutionary doctrines which, if successful, would abolish the form and spirit of our existing government, and surely, I think, lead to attempted dictatorships, resort is had to what is claimed. to be the words and teachings of President Lincoln."

"President Lincoln wrote many letters, made many public addresses and was the author of many documents. I do not know of the existence in any of them of a word of censure or of complaint of our government or of the methods by which it was carried on. He was sincerely and faithfully obedient to our Constitution. In the single act for which he is most rememberedthe issuance of the emancipation proclamation-he expressly supported it as an act warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity.

"On one public occasion he described the effect of the counting of slaves in congressional and electoral representation. In comment he said:

"Now all this is manifestly unfair; yet I do not mention it to complain of it in so far as it is already settled. It is in the Constitution and I do not for that cause, or any other cause, propose to destroy or alter or disregard the Constitution. I stand to it fairly, fully and firmly.'

"He hated slavery, but his reverence for the Constitution and law was such that he said publicly again and again, that if a member of Congress he would faithfully support a fugitive slave law.

"His attitude toward the Dred Scott decision is urged as in support of the pernicious project for the recall by popular vote of judges and of judicial decisions. He thought it an erroneous decision, but his chief point in reference to it was not its error but that it indicated a scheme, and was part of it, for the nationalization of human slavery. He never suggested a change in our government under which the judges who made it should be recalled, but said that he would resist it politically by voting, if in his power, for an act prohibiting slavery in United States territory, and then endeavor to have the act sustained in a new proceeding by the same court reversing itself.

"Is there to be found here, or anywhere else, support for a project to abolish the essential elements or any elements of our Constitution? Yet he is cited in support of such action.

"He loved the government under which he lived, and when at Gettysburg he prayed-if I may use that word-'that a govern

ment of the people, by the people and for the people may not perish from the earth,' he meant and could only mean that government under which he lived, a representative government of balanced executive, legislative and judicial parts, and not something entirely different-an unchecked democracy.

"These often quoted words of President Lincoln are now deliberately altered and argument founded on their altered form.

"I may be permitted to say that I do not think the public wishes the Gettysburg speech to be rewritten and its words changed by any one, however distinguished, for any purpose, least of all in order to support a proposition that President Lincoln could not possibly have had in mind.”

WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS SUSPENDED.

General G. Cadwalader refused to obey the writ of habeas corpus, it is said, in the case of John Merryman. On the 27th of May, 1861, Merryman was arrested in Maryland on a charge of treason, and confined in Fort McHenry. Chief Justice Taney, sitting alone on the Circuit Court bench, issued a writ of habeas corpus, to which the military officer-though no public notice of an executive order had been given-replied that he was authorized by the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for the public safety. Taney, therefore, ordered the arrest of the officer, on the ground that there was no process short of an act of congress which could justify military detention of a civilian, and that the President had no constitutional authority to suspend the habeas corpus and, of course, none to delegate such suspension.

The marshal was, however, by military force, prevented from serving the writ, and Taney, with a clear understanding of his helplessness, certified his decision to the President, in order that, as he said, that officer might "perform his constitutional duty to enforce the laws, or at least to enforce a process of this kind." The President simply ignored Taney's decision, and throughout the war continued to hold suspected persons under arrest, at first by his own authority, and then under legislation obtained from Congress.-(Life of Samuel B. Chase, by Albert Bushnell Hart, 1899.)

INFLUENCE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

Other writers have called attention to the fact that many nations have been influenced by the success and prosperity of