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PURPOSE OF WAR REVEALED.

5

adopt the ideas of dreamers and fanatics, the ladder on which they would mount to power is one on which they can not return, and up which it would be a fatal delusion to follow.

The reality of armed resistance on our part the North was slow to comprehend. The division of sentiment at the South on the question of the expediency of immediate secession, was mistaken for the existence of a submission party, whereas the division was confined to expediency, and wholly disappeared when our territory was invaded. Then was revealed to them the necessity of defending their homes and liberties against the ruthless assault on both, and then extraordinary unanimity prevailed. Then, as Hamilton and Madison had stated, war against the States had effected the deprecated dissolution of the Union.

Adjustment by negotiation the United States Government had rejected, and had chosen to attempt our subjugation. This course, adopted without provocation, was pursued with a ferocity that disregarded all the laws of civilized warfare, and must permanently remain a stain upon the escutcheon of a Government once bright among the nations. The vast provision made by the United States in the material of war, the money appropriated, and the men enrolled, furnished a sufficient refutation to the pretense that they were only engaged in dispersing rioters, and suppressing unlawful combinations too strong for the usual course of judicial proceedings.

Further, they virtually recognized the separate existence of the Confederate States by an interdictive embargo, and blockade of all commerce between them and the United States, not only by sea but by land; not only with those who bore arms, but with the entire population of the Confederate States. They waged an indiscriminate war upon all: private houses in isolated retreats were bombarded and burned; grain-crops in the field were consumed by the torch; and, when the torch was not applied, careful labor was bestowed to render complete the destruction of every article of use or ornament remaining in private dwellings after their female inhabitants had fled from the insults of brutal soldiers; a petty war was made on the sick, including women and children, by carefully devised measures to prevent them from obtaining the necessary medicines. medicines. Were

these the appropriate means by which to execute the laws, and in suppressing rioters to secure tranquillity and preserve a voluntary union? Was this a government resting on the consent of the governed?

At this session of the Confederate Congress additional forces were provided to repel invasion, by authorizing the President to accept the services of any number of volunteers not exceeding four hundred thousand men. Authority was also given for suitable financial measures hereafter stated, and the levy of a tax. An act of sequestration was also adopted as a countervailing measure against the operations of the confiscation law enacted by the Congress of the United States on August 6, 1861.

This act of the United States Congress, with its complement passed in the ensuing year, will be considered further on in these pages. One of the most indicative of the sections, however, provided that, whenever any person, claimed to be held to labor or service under the laws of any State, shall be permitted, by the person to whom such labor or service is claimed to be due, to take up arms against the United States, or to work, or to be employed in or upon any fort, intrenchment, etc., or in any military or naval service whatever against the Government of the United States, the person to whom such labor is claimed to be due shall forfeit his claim, and, to any attempt to enforce it, a statement of the facts shall be a sufficient answer. The President of the United States, in his message of December 3, 1861, stated that numbers of persons held to service had been liberated and were dependent on the United States, and must be provided for in some way. He recommended that steps be taken for colonizing them at some places in a climate congenial to them.

As the President and the Congress of the United States had declared this to be a war for the preservation of the Constitution, it may not be out of place to see what course they now undertook to pursue under the pretext of preserving the Constitution of the United States. It had been conceded in all time that the Congress of the United States had no power to legislate on slavery in the States, and that this was a subject for

1862]

"DUE PROCESS OF LAW."

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State legislation. It was one of the powers not granted in the Constitution, but "reserved to the States respectively." * All the powers of the Federal Government were delegated to it by the States, and all which were reserved were withheld from the Federal Government, as well in time of war as in peace. The conditions of peace or war made no change in the powers granted in the Constitution. The attempt, therefore, by Congress, to exercise a power of confiscation, one not granted to it, was a mere usurpation. The argument of forfeiture for treason does not reach the case, because there could be no forfeiture until after conviction, and the Constitution says, "No attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted." The confiscation act of 1861 undertook to convict and sentence without a trial, and entirely to deprive the owner of slaves of his property by giving final freedom to the slaves. Still further to show how regardless the United States Government was of the limitations imposed upon it by the compact of Union, the reader is referred to the fifth article of the first amendment, being one of those cases in which the people of the several States, in an abundance of caution, threw additional protection around rights which the framers of the Constitution thought already sufficiently guarded. The last two clauses of the article read thus: No person "shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

Here was a political indictment and conviction by the Congress and President, with total forfeitures inflicted in palpable violation of each and of all the cited clauses of the Constitution.

One can scarcely anticipate such effrontery as would argue that "due process of law" meant an act of Congress, that judicial power could thus be conferred upon the President, and private property be confiscated for party success, without violating the Constitution which the actors had sworn to support. The unconstitutionality of the measure was so palpable that, * Constitution of the United States, Article X. + Ibid., Article III, section 3.

when the bill was under consideration, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, a member of Congress from Pennsylvania, said: "I thought the time had come when the laws of war were to govern our action; when constitutions, if they stood in the way of the laws of war in dealing with the enemy, had no right to intervene. Who pleads the Constitution against our proposed action?"* This subject is further considered in subsequent chapters on the measures of emancipation adopted by the United States Government.

It is to be remembered in this connection that pillage and the wanton destruction of private property are not permitted by the laws of war among civilized nations. When prosecuting the war with Mexico, we respected private property of the enemy; and when in 1781 Great Britain, attempting to reduce her revolted American colonies, took possession of the country round and about Point Comfort (Fortress Monroe), the homes quietly occupied by the rebellious people were spared by the armies of the self-asserting ruler of the land. At a later date, war existed between Great Britain and the independent States of the Union, during which Great Britain got possession of various points within the States. At the Treaty of Ghent, 1815, by which peace was restored to the two countries, it was stipulated in the first article that all captured places should be restored "without causing any destruction, or carrying away any of the artillery or other public property originally captured in the said forts or places, and which shall remain therein upon the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty; or any slaves or other private property." Persistent efforts were made to avoid the return of deported slaves, and it was attempted to put them in the category of artillery which had been removed before the exchange of ratification. Mr. John Quincy Adams, first as United States Minister to England, and subsequently as United States Secretary of State, conducted with great vigor and earnestness a long correspondence to maintain the true construction of the treaty as recognizing and guarding the right of private property in slaves. In his letter to Viscount Castlereagh, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, after explainCongress of the United States, July, 1861.

*

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THE WRONG DONE IN DEPORTING SLAVES.

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ing the distinction between "artillery or other public property and "slaves or other private property," as used in the treaty, and why it might be impracticable, if they had been removed, to return the former, but that the reasons did not apply to the latter, for, he proceeds to say, "Private property, not having been subject to legitimate capture with the places, was not liable to the reason of limitation." In the same letter, Mr. Adams writes: "Merchant-vessels and effects captured on the high-seas are, by the laws of war between civilized nations, lawful prize, and by the capture become the property of the captors. . . . But, as by the same usages of civilized nations, private property is not the subject of lawful capture in war upon the land, it is perfectly clear that, in every stipulation, private property shall be respected; or that, upon the restoration of places taken during the war, it shall not be carried away." (See "American State Papers," vol. iv, pp. 122, 123.) Sectional hostility and party zeal had not then so far undermined the feeling of fraternity which generated the Union as to make a public officer construe the Constitution as it might favor or injure one section or another, and Great Britain was, from a sense of right, compelled to recognize the wrong done in deporting slaves, the private property of American citizens.

On the 4th of December, 1861, the President of the United States issued an order to the commander-in-chief relative to slaves as above mentioned, in which he said, "Their arrest as fugitives from service or labor should be immediately followed by the military arrest of the parties making the seizure." Had Congress and the President made new laws of war?

Although the Government of the United States did not boldly proclaim the immediate emancipation of all slaves, the tendency of all its actions was directly to that end. To use a favorite expression of its leaders, the Northern people were not at that time "educated up to the point." A revolt from too sudden a revelation of its entire policy was apprehended. Even as late as July 7, 1862, General McClellan wrote to the authorities at Washington from the vicinity of Richmond, "A declaration of radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly dis