reserved to the Governments of the several States. The Chap. I. laws which secure to each man his life, liberty, and property, and regulate his social and family relations— these laws, though their ultimate guarantees might be sought in the aggregate force of the entire commonwealth, were in fact made and enforced by his State alone, and could not, without a breach of the Constitution, be made or enforced, altered or interfered with, by the authorities, legislative or executive, of the Union. His State, therefore, was to him the nearest and most sensible object of those feelings, and source of those benefits, which men commonly experience towards and receive from their country, and which are the real basis of the sentiment of patriotism and the moral duty of allegiance. The law itself under which he lived recognized this relation, for it placed allegiance to his State in its list of duties, and treason against the State in its catalogue of crimes.1 It was evident, then, that should a conflict 1 For example, the subjoined sections of the New York Codes as reported complete by the Commissioners (these Codes however, I believe, are not yet law) :— "Political Code.-§ 3. The sovereignty of the State resides in the people thereof, and all writs and processes are issued in their name." "§ 10. Allegiance is the obligation of fidelity and obedience which every citizen owes to the State." 66 Penal Code.-§ 57. The following acts constitute treason against the people of this State : or, "1. Levying war against the people of this State within the State) "2. A combination of two or more persons by force to usurp the Government of this State, or to overturn the same, evidenced by a forcible attempt made within this State to accomplish such purpose; or, "3. Adhering to the enemies of this State while separately engaged in war with a foreign enemy in the cases prescribed in the Constitution of the United States, and giving to such enemies aid and comfort in this State, or elsewhere." § 60. Every person convicted of treason shall suffer death for the Story (Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, § 1,301 suggests a doubt whether there can under the Constitution be a case of treason against a State, which is not at the same time treason Chap. I. ever arise between the substantial interests, or the real or supposed rights, of a State or any number of States, and the rights and interests of the Union, there might arise also in the breasts of many Americans a conflict of sentiment, and a conflict, real or supposed, of public duties, such as could not possibly occur in any country differently constituted. The chances of such a contingency seemed to multiply as the number of States multiplied, as population increased at a rate which promises to raise it to a hundred millions before the end of the present century, and as the dominion of the Republic spread fast and far, colonising and peopling the shores of the Pacific, covering by degrees the greater part of an immense continent, and embracing new varieties of climate, race, and soil. Are Americans then deficient in national feeling? On the contrary, there is no people in the world in whom it burns more strongly. Indeed, one of the things which we learn from the history of the United States is against the United States, and, therefore, cognizable exclusively by the Federal Courts. Mr. Seward (10th April, 1861) writes to Mr. Adams : "One needs to be conversant with our federative system, as perhaps only American publicists can be, to understand how effectually, in the first instance, such a revolutionary movement must demoralize the General Government. We are not only a nation, but we are States also. All public officers, as well as all citizens, owe not only allegiance to the Union, but allegiance also to the States in which they reside." "The people of each State," said the Supreme Court in The County of Lane v. the State of Oregon," compose a State, having its own Government, and endowed with all the functions essential to a separate and independent existence." "Not only," said Chief Justice Chase in a recent case, can there be no loss of separate and independent autonomy to the States through their union under the Constitution, but it may not unreasonably be said that the preservation of the States, and the maintenance of their Governments, are as much within the care and design of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the National Government. The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States."-Texas v. White, Wallace's Reports in the Supreme Court, vol. vii, p. 560. the rapidity with which this sentiment may rise in the Chap. I. hearts of men towards a newly-adopted country, which they believe to have given them prosperity, whose present and prospective greatness flatters their imaginations, and in whose political institutions they feel not only content but pride. The various influences which tend to produce throughout the States, and among men gathered from all countries, a certain uniformity of manners, habits, and modes of thought; the diffusion of education through schools of one general type; the commanding and levelling force of public opinion in a great democratic community; even the strong party spirit and imperious party organization,-I may add, in ordinary times, even those often-recurring elections to Congress and to the Presidential Chair which periodically agitate the country from end to end,-contribute to this result. The general government of the Union is by these made a matter of interest to every American, and of no languid interest. Every American has a voice, which he is constantly summoned to exert, in determining the hands in which that government shall be lodged; and the whole people are incessantly marshalled under flags which, if they have not always a very definite device, are at any rate not local or sectional. The restless, migratory character of the population, which rarely permits all the members of one family to remain denizens of any State, assists, as Mr. Motley has observed, to interlace the States with each other, and all with the Union. It may be added that the general tendency which exists in Europe towards the consolidation of small communities and the concentration of power, operates with all its force in America; where, if we look to the future, it has both its advantages and its dangers. The progress of mechanical skill and invention, 1 It appears from the Census Returns of 1860, that in the previous ten years one-fourth of the whole free native-born population had migrated from State to State. Chap. I. nowhere more active than here, assists this tendency; for it destroys the barriers raised by distance, promotes intercommunication, quickens the diffusion of thought, brings large areas under easy control, facilitates the transaction of business on a great scale, and opens many upward and converging roads to personal ambition. Nowhere, again, are the advantages of belonging to a great State more keenly realized; perhaps they are nowhere felt with equal keenness; and it is natural that this should be so. Rapid aggrandizement is the strongest of all incentives to national pride, and there are motives, more solid than national pride, which may well lead an American to desire earnestly that the United States should always continue to be the greatest Power on the American Continent. The loosely compacted structure of the Commonwealth has at the same time served to protect it against risks to which it would otherwise have been exposed. The pressure of the common Government has been almost unfelt, and the strain upon its powers of administration has been slight, since these powers are contracted in themselves, though exercised over an immense area. It is not at Washington, not from Washington, that the American people are practically governed. There could be little to provoke that impatient desire for independence which springs from a sense of neglect or oppression so long as each State raised its own taxes, made and administered its own laws. Local interests and passions, which might have kindled into flame if brought into collision in a single representative assembly gathered from places so remote from each other, had their own spheres of activity assigned to them elsewhere. Lastly, the process by which new States are formed as population spreads over vacant territory has in it somewhat of the smoothness and regularity of natural growth, and is well devised to satisfy as early as possible the settler's craving for self-government, whilst keeping unbroken the ties of attachment to the Union. Rarely, therefore, until of late years, have American statesmen suffered themselves to harbour any misgiving as to the permanence and stability of the Union. Nor was this confidence unreasonable. It might well be judged improbable that any serious attempt would be made to sever the tie which bound the States together. It was certain that any such attempt, if made, could proceed from only one cause,-a violent conflict of interest or of sentiment, or both, and that conflict sectional, defined by a geographical line, and arming large portions of the Commonwealth against each other. It appeared certain also that such an attempt, however and wherever it might originate, would be strenuously resisted. This improbable event, however, took place; the conflict actually arose; and, within the lifetime of men born before the ratification of the Constitution, the Union was torn by an extensive revolt, followed by a civil war the greatest and most sanguinary that the world has ever seen. I am about to retrace briefly the causes and the approach of this tremendous calamity; the growth within the United States of a powerful and compact slavery interest; the localisation of it in the South; the rise in the North of interests and sentiments hostile to slavery; and the circumstances under which, on the part of the South, suspicion and estrangement deepened into fear and animosity, and animosity finally broke into war. Slavery and free labour cannot thrive together: each has a tendency to encroach upon and destroy the other, and the issue of the contest is determined by the conditions under which it is carried on. Where, as in newly settled countries, mere labour in its rudest form is very scarce and very profitable, the temptation to procure slaves is strong; beyond the first cost of the slave and his bare subsistence, all the profits of his work are reaped by his owner, who secures at the same time a steady supply, and is relieved from the necessity of bargaining Chap. I. |