It was simply as to the Rightfulness of the act in itself, on the part of the people of a State, without reference to the source of the Right. My comments on this question in the Book, page 518, are as follows. I give them in full also that it may be clearly seen that no injustice was done to him:

"What better argument could I make to show the rightfulness of Secession, if the Southern States, of their own good will and pleasure, chose to resort to it, even for no other cause than Mr. Lincoln's election, than is herein set forth in his own pointed, strong, and unmistakable language? It is true, he waives all questions of Compact between the States. He goes deeper into fundamental principles, and plants the right upon the eternal truths announced in the Declaration of Independence. That is bringing up principles, which I have not discussed, not because I do not endorse them as sound and correct, to the word and letter, but because it was not necessary for my purpose. Upon these immutable principles, the justifiableness of Georgia in her Secession Ordinance of the 19th of January, 1861, will stand clearly established for all time to come. For if, with less than one hundred thousand population, she was such a people in 1776 as had the unquestionable right to alter and change their form of Government as they pleased, how much more were they such a people, with more than ten times the number, in 1861? The same principle applies to all the States which quit the old and joined the new Confederation. Mr. Greeley here speaks of the Union as a Confederation, and not a Nation. This was, perhaps, the unconscious utterance of a great truth when the true spirit was moving him.

"The State of Georgia did not take this step, however, in withdrawing from the Confederation, without the most thorough discussion. It is true it was not a dispassionate discussion. Men seldom, if ever, enter into such discussions with perfect calmness, or even that degree of calmness with which all such subjects ought to be considered. But the subject was fully canvassed before the people. Both sides were strongly presented. In the very earnest remonstrance against this measure made by me, on the 14th of November, 1860, to which you have alluded, was an appeal equally earnest for just such a vote as he suggests in order that the action of the State on the subject might be 'the echo of an unmistakable popular fiat.' On the same occasion I did say, in substance, just what he had so aptly said before, that the people of Georgia, in their Sovereign capacity, had the right to secede if they chose to do so, and that in this event of their so determining to do, upon a mature consideration of the question, that I should bow in submission to the majesty of their will so expressed!

"This, when so said by me, is what it seems was the dead fly in the

ointment' of that speech, so sadly marring its general perfume.' This was 'the distinct avowal of the right of the State to overrule my personal convictions and plunge me,' as he says, 'into treason to the Nation.'

"Was not the same 'dead fly in the ointment' of his article of the 9th of November, only five days before? And if going with my State, in what he declared she had a perfect right to do, plunged me into treason to the Nation, is he not clearly an accessory before the fact, by a rule of construction not more strained than that laid down in the trial of State cases by many judges not quite so notoriously infamous as Jeffreys ? By a rule not more strained than that which would make out treason in the act itself! But I do not admit the rule in its application either to the accessory or the principal."

So much for the allegation that I was utterly mistaken !

Now, let me turn upon Mr. Greeley and ask, how it is with him in the premises? Was he not "utterly mistaken" when he said so vauntingly for himself, in the article now under review, that "Horace Greeley never at any moment of his life imagined that a single State or a dozen of States could rightly dissolve the Union!"'

Did he not expressly say, on the 9th of November, 1860, through the columns of the Tribune, that "if the Cotton States shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless, and we do not see how one party can have a right to do what another party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist the asserted right of any State to remain in the Union, and nullify or defy the laws thereof; to withdraw from the Union is quite another matter!"

But, besides what I quoted him as saying, did he not, on the 17th day of December, 1860, three days before the Secession of South Carolina, in the Tribune, assert:

"If it" (the Declaration of Independence) "justified the Secession from the British Empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the Secession of five millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not some one attempt to show wherein and why ?"

Again: Did he not in the Tribune, on the 23d day of February, 1861, five days after the inauguration of President Davis at Montgomery, use this language :

"We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the great printiple embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of American Independence, that Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, is sound and just; and that if the Slave States, the Cotton States, or the Gulf States only, choose to form an Independent Nation, THEY HAVE A CLEAR MORAL RIGHT TO DO SO."

These quotations from the Tribune I see set forth by exPresident Buchanan, in his work entitled, "Buchanan's Administration," page 97. I take it for granted they are correct. Then how, in the face of all these proofs, can the Tribune now say, that "Horace Greeley never, at any moment of his life, imagined, that a single State, or a dozen States, could rightfully dissolve the Union."

Is not this a full, and explicit acknowledgment of the right of a State to withdraw or secede? Did the Southern States ever attempt to dissolve the Union in any other way than by peaceably seceding or withdrawing from it? Mr. Greeley knows, and the world knows, that they did not.

One other remark upon this editorial now under consideration. In it Mr. Greeley says:

"According to Mr. Stephens' conception, a majority of the people of Delaware, consisting of less than 100,000 persons, might lawfully dissolve the Union, but the whole population of New York, south of the highlands at least 1,500,000 in number-could do nothing of the kind. Mr. Stephens' may possibly be the true doctrine, but it certainly never was ours, nor of any Republican, so far as we know. The right, we affirm, is not based on the Federal Constitution, but is before and above any and all Constitutions."

Just so, let it be said to Mr. Greeley, with the doctrine advanced by me in the Book referred to! It is not based on the Federal Constitution, but upon the authority that made that Compact. It is based upon principles existing "before and above any and all Constitutions." It is based upon the Para mount Authority (call it Popular Sovereignty or State Sover eignty, or by any other name) by which all organized States or Peoples can rightfully make or unmake State or Federal Constitutions at their pleasure; subject only to the great moral law, which regulates and governs the actions and conduct of Nations!

My conception, however, involves no such nonsense as that exhibited in his statement of it, touching the relative populations of the whole State of Delaware, and a portion only (being a large minority, however,) of the population of the State of New York. Populations in this respect must be looked to, and considered, in their organized character. The doctrine advo cated by me with all its corollaries rests upon the fact that Delaware, however small her population, is a perfectly organized State-is a Sovereign State-and as such is an integral Member of our Federal Republic, and that New York with her ever so many more people is no more. The doctrine is that ours is indeed a Federal Republic-constituted, not of one people in mass, as a single Republic is, but composed of a number of separate Republics.

In this Federal Republic, the little Republic of Delaware by the Constitution of the United States, which sets forth the terms of the Compact between these several Republics composing the Union, has just as much political power in the enactment of all Federal laws, as the great Republic of New York has, without any regard to their relative, respective populations. In the Congress of States, which is provided for by the Constitution to take charge of all Federal matters entrusted to its control, Delaware, to-day, with her little over one hundred thousand popula tion, stands perfectly equal in political power to New York with her nearly forty times that number! Congress under our system means the same now it ever meant. It means the Meeting or Assemblage of the States composing the Union by their accredited Representatives in Grand Council. In this Grand Council or Congress of States, Delaware has as much political power as New York. It is true in one House of this Congress, her one member has but little showing against the thirty odd members of New York. But her equality of power is maintained in the other. Here this perfect equality of political power between all the States is as distinctly retained under the second Articles of Union as it was under the first. No law can be passed by the Congress, if a majority of the States, through their "Ambassadors" in the Senate, object.

It is on this principle, that the six New England States with

a fraction over three millions of population, under the census of 1860, have in the last resort in the Council Chambers of the Congress, six times as much power in determining all questions before them, as the State of New York, though New York alone has a population of over half a million more than all these other States together! It is upon this principle that these six States have as much power in the administration of the Government as the six States of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois had with their aggregate population of thirteen and a half millions in 1860!

These are facts which neither Mr. Greeley nor anybody else can successfully controvert.

Ours, therefore, being a Federal Government, is and must be, as all other Federal Governments are, "a Government of States, and for States," with limited powers directed to specific objects; and not a Government in any sense or view for the masses of the people of the respective States in their internal and municipal affairs. This great Sovereign Power of local Self-government, for which Independence was declared and achieved, resides with the people of the respective States.

A ready and sufficient answer to Mr. Greeley's distorted "conception" about the political power of the comparative populations of Delaware and New York, may be given to him from his own doctrines. It is this: If a majority of the people of Delaware, after due deliberation and full consideration, have the same right, whether by virtue of State Sovereignty or Popular Sovereignty, to withdraw from the Union which they had to declare their Independence of Great Britain, which he admits they have, it does not therefore follow that less than half the population of the State of New York can, with equal right, carry that State out. against the will of the majority, though the minority in New York wishing to do so be five hundred or five thousand times greater in number than the majority in Delaware! He may, therefore, not be alarmed at any of the legitimate consequences of his own doctrines!

What he says about Secession having been carried in the Southern States by a violent, subversive, bullying, terrorizing, minority, overawing, and stifling a majority of the people of