to buy genuine butter and who find in the new product a most acceptable substitute. The fault lies in singling out oleomargarine as the one article to be taxed and licensed and subjected to the organized system of espionage necessary in the Internal Revenue department. Why do not the advocates of the Oleomargarine act vouchsafe us some reason for omitting bogus cheese? There are dozens of imitated and sophisticated food-products worthy of attention, but cheese is closely allied to butter. There are millions of pounds of skimmed-milk cheese sold annually in the United States as "full cream." Moreover, there is a considerable and growing product of cheese-oil that is sold to the cheese-factories of the dairy districts to supplant cream in their processes of manufacture. Cheese-oil is very similar to "oleo" oil, and is produced from exactly the same material, -beef-suet. Are we not entitled to some explanation from our law-givers on this point? But none is afforded us. It is to the interest of the manufacturer to have his oleomargarine sold for exactly what it is. When he produces a better and more palatable article than ordinary country butter, he does not wish it to be sold to the consumer as butter. He does not want the credit and reputation, to which he is entitled for producing a good standard article at a reasonable price, to be given to the dairyman. Nor, on the other hand, when a slovenly farmer markets a dirty, greasy article in the form of butter, does the oleomargarine maker desire to be burdened with the suspicion that this disagreeable product came from his factory. But is this a proper matter for the attention of Congress? Are the clauses of the constitution relating to the "general welfare" and to "regulation of commerce between the states" to be construed as including these matters of domestic detail? When the bill passed both Houses of Congress it would seem that the President hesitated to sign it. When he finally did so, he sent a special message to Congress expressing some of his misgivings. A Washington paper contained this squib: Owing to the crowded state of our columns, we must decline to comply with the request of "a Jacksonian Democrat," who asks us to repro duce the full text of the President's oleomargarine message. We will, however, give a fair digest of that remarkable state paper, condensing from memory: For many obvious reasons this bill should not become a law. I therefore return it approved to the body in which it originated. Since the bill became a law the oleomargarine manufacturers have not demanded its repeal. With the timidity and cowardice universally characteristic of commerce, they have submitted to what seemed inevitable. Bowing to the doctrine of expediency, they have asked only for a few amendments in the matter of licenses and minor regulations. On the other hand, the more violent advocates of the measure, being quite discontented with its results, were moving to procure more legislation at the short session of the forty-ninth Congress last winter. Bills were then introduced to prohibit the manufacture of oleomargarine absolutely. The price of butter has been much lower since the passage of this law than before. The masses persist in going without butter when they cannot afford it or have no money to buy it and more legislation is demanded. Children are spreading their bread with syrups or "sauce," and the butter trade is no better off than before the law was passed. Butterine and oleomargarine have poisoned nobody, and are being sold for exactly what they are, but appeals are being prepared to influence Congress in favor of more laws. Is it not time for thinking citizens, who are selfishly interested neither in butter nor oleomargarine, to inquire: Whither are we drifting? Has not every individual voter an interest at stake? Are not dangers threatening all of us from the precedent that has been established by the Oleomargarine law? HENRY C. BANNARD. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES THE IN RECONSTRUCTION.1 HE doctrine of state sovereignty perished in the destruction of the Confederate armies. With that dogma our constitutional law ceased to have any concern. Its principle was antecedent to and above the constitution. State rights, on the other hand, were, under the theory of national sovereignty, determined by the constitution itself. Before the war the scope of the powers assigned to the states had been influenced much by the state-sovereignty theory. The pressure of the government's peril during the rebellion, however, had caused a natural reaction, and many of the most widely recognized attributes of state authority had been assumed by the general government. With the assured success of the Federal arms, a distinct definition of the rights of a state under the new situation became a matter of the first importance. The working out of such a definition was the main problem of reconstruction. Inextricably involved in this leading legal question, was an even more troublesome practical difficulty. What was, and what should be, the civil and political status of the Southern blacks? The definition of state rights first presented itself as a vital political issue when Federal authority began to be firmly reestablished in the rebellious communities. In the course of the year 1863 the military situation in Tennessee and Arkansas seemed to justify the President in taking the preliminary steps towards the rehabilitation of those states with civil authority. His message of the 8th of December may be taken as the beginning of the process which only terminated with the withdrawal of the Federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina by President Hayes in 1877. Between the close of 1863 and the end of hostilities no important progress was made towards 1 Cf. the article entitled "The Constitution of the United States in Civil War," POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, June, 1886. a solution of either of the great problems which were now plainly confronting the nation. All phases of the matters were freely discussed, but the President and the legislature were unable to agree upon either the fundamental principles of a theory or the details of a practical measure. The immediate end sought at this time was the restoration to political rights of the people of the regions fully in the possession of the Federal forces. To effect this purpose a clear conception of the exact status of the districts in question was requisite. As to this status there were wide differences of opinion. Without considering at this point the various theories proposed, it will be well to sketch the public acts of the three departments which had had a bearing on the question at issue. Succinctly put, the question was this: Had the rebellious communities any rights as states under the constitution? A review of the executive acts presents the following result: In his inaugural, President Lincoln stated his conviction that the Union could not be broken by any pretended ordinance of secession. This view was reaffirmed in his first message; and his non-intercourse proclamation of August 16, 1861, declared not the states, but the inhabitants of the states mentioned, to be in insurrection against the United States. In all the executive ordinances the illegal proceedings were assumed to be the acts of assemblages of individuals, and not the acts of the corporate states. A most important deduction from this theory was that the loyal element of the Southern people would be exempt from the penalties of the insurrectionary transactions. It was this element, indeed, which Lincoln adopted as the basis of the reconstruction measures which he proposed in 1863. On the day Congress met, December 8, he issued a proclamation, the preamble of which recited the subversion of the state governments by persons in rebellion and hence guilty of treason, and the desire of certain of these persons to reinaugurate loyal governments "within their respective states." An oath was prescribed, the taking of which was to be a satisfactory proof of loyalty, and the President pledged himself to recognize any state government formed under certain conditions by a number of loyal persons equal to one tenth of the voting population in 1860. Mr. Lincoln was thus true to the position assumed at the outbreak of the war. Nor did he recede from this position up to the time of his death. The executive department, in short, was fully committed to the doctrine that the corporate existence of the seceding states was not interrupted by the war.1 If we review the course of the legislature in its bearing on this question, we find up to a certain point a similar result. The act which provided for the definite recognition of the existence of a state of war, that of July 13, 1861, empowered the President to declare intercourse suspended with the inhabitants of certain enumerated districts, and gave no intimation that the states, as such, were concerned. In imposing the direct tax of twenty millions in 1861, the seceding states were assigned their proportionate share, and by a later laws the amounts thus assigned were made a charge upon the land in the respective states. Further, the creation of West Virginia was valid only on condition that the consent of Virginia was obtained; and we find, in the law erecting the new state, that the legislature of Virginia did give its consent. Many other instances might be adduced to illustrate the attitude of Congress toward the question of state existence in the early days of the war. It certainly was one with the President in according to the state a being incapable of destruction by any unconstitutional organizations of its inhabitants. But there came a time when symptoms were manifested of a change of heart in the majority in the legislature. With the brightening prospects of the military situation, the anxiety to secure firmly the settlement of the slavery question led to a closer examination of the consequences that might flow from too strict an adherence to a theory better adapted perhaps to a time of doubt than to a time of certain success. The subject of state status became very prominent through the steps toward restoration announced by the President in his message in December of 1863 and the accompanying amnesty proclamation. 1 See Lincoln's speech just before his death; McPherson, Rebellion, p. 609. |