of their rulers. Nay, more, they have done the infinite mischief of making these high crimes precedents for the future; of justifying pleas of necessity for arbitrary acts- the very things constitutions were established to prevent; of introducing and vindicating unlimited discretion and regal prerogatives in the federal agency; and, finally, of showing the states that, if aggrieved, their only alternatives are submission or war! Such were not the ideas of the fathers!

As to the right of secession, it will hereafter be shown, by authorities that no one will venture to gainsay, that it is (not constitutional but) inherent and inalienable: that it is absolutely essential to, and pro tanto identical with, freedom; and that it was taken for granted, or expressly stated by the fathers, as indispensable to preserve statehood and liberty. It is, indeed, a right as absolute and indestructible as the state itself. Without it sovereignty cannot exist, and there can be no self-preservation of the original and only constituents of our "republic of republics." 1

1 Every American ought to read "Is Davis a Traitor?" by Professor Bledsoe. Most conclusively does it vindicate the right of secession; and it forms the best criticism ever written of the constitutional expositions of Story and Webster. With great deference, however, I object to his implication that secession is a constitutional right. So with the assumption of Mr. A. H. Stephens and others, in 1868, at the White Sulphur Springs, that the right of secession can be abandoned. Self-preservation is the first law of nature-most especially to commonwealths; and God designs a state to secede, if her "defence" and "welfare," which He has charged her with preserving and promoting, require it.

A

CHAPTER V.

REBELLION OR NOT?

SSUMING it to be a principle or rule established by the war,

that if one of our sovereign states secedes from the union without first exhausting all the means of justice the constitution affords, she is to be forced back into the union, to govern herself therein; let us look introductorily, at another intensely interesting and vital question, which recent events have forced upon the American people, and which the perverters have made every possible effort to dodge, and prevent investigation and decision upon.

Were the Confederates Rebels and Traitors? It is anxiously asked by all thoughtful and conscientious men, who seek for constitutional truth and know its value: What law, divine, international or civil, consigned Davis, Lee, and the other confederates to death (for all alike are guilty or not guilty), when states, as political bodies, or vehicles, carried them - without their volition- from the union, and constrained them to obedience and military service; and when this obedience ran on all fours with the noblest impulses of the human heart, and with the first, best, and most imperative law of natureself preservation for every member or citizen of such state, who obeyed her, was defending his home, his family and kindred, his friends, his neighbors and fellow-citizens, and the commonwealth which involved and protected them all-in short, everything for which a man wishes to live. In truth, vindicating the action of Davis and Lee is vindicating American institutional liberty, or the right of the American commonwealths to exist, and to exercise free will in selfgovernment, whenever and however they please.

A state is the citizens thereof. She is a complete political body, formed, as Massachusetts, in her organic law, declares, by "a social compact, in which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good." Collectively, therefore, the citizens govern, while individually they obey, each citizen having two capacities the one as a voter or governor, and the other as a subject. It

is obvious, then, that each citizen must obey the body, she having, by immediate grant in the social compact, actual possession of him, and full power to coerce and punish him. So that while, on the one hand, the citizens must absolutely obey all her political determinations, on the other, it must be right, and not treasonable, for them to disobey any counter authority. She must be solely and always the supreme power.

This commonwealth of citizens, in her organic law, endows fit members with suffrage, thus, by virtue of original, absolute and inherent right, ordaining the actual and efficient governing power, which is a delegative trust. Thus we see that the commonwealth is the real government, while the body of electors is its original agency of government, by and through which, existence and authority are given to all constitutions, so-called governments, and officials, state or federal. This exhibits our representative republicanism, or self-government.

The citizen votes for the safety and welfare of the state, under her authority; and, when votes fail, he fights for the same object, under the same authority, against all foes, whether external or internal. Voting and fighting are correlatives, and both are done in obedience to the instinct of self-preservation - the first law of nature-the same instinct that prompted men to form the societies called states, and these to form the federation called "the United States." The only possible original and ultimate judgment and will to decide when the occasion for fighting or voting arises, and to direct the mode and means, are those of the state. And as the federal agents are not only citizens and subjects of the state, but are chosen for her, by her electors, to do her will, it is obviously in the nature of rebellion and treason, for them to oppose her will by force. If they do so, her voters must become her soldiers, to fight such perfidious agents; and defending her is defending themselves, and vindicating their own collective will, as well as preserving republican liberty, or the right of the people to organize themselves, and govern themselves. The Southern patriots acted in conformity with these principles, and hence were not rebels and traitors.

The Federal Compact vindicates them. In a striking manner does the federal compact support these views, for it shows that the only parties to, and the only actors under it, are the states; and that these are the only sources of elective power- all the officials being citizens of states, elected or appointed by and for them. Indeed, these officials belong to states as much as ever slaves did to their owners; and their power or discretion is only that of their masters, and is strictly confined to the delegations in the compact. And the said compact acknowledges and declares that every citizen is a citizen of

a state, or, in other words, that he is "bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh;" owes allegiance to her alone; and is compellable to obey the federal agency solely by virtue of her command. Article IV., § 2, shows all citizens to be citizens of states; and Article II., § 1, shows that the President must be chosen by the states, while the delegations of states that compose Congress are elected and empowered solely by them. So that, in collegio, these officials, and the citizens and subjects of the states which they appoint to federal offices, constitute "the government of [i. e. belonging to] the United States," or, in other words, the agency of self-government of the states which are united. The simple phrases of the constitution, "the united states," and "the states in this union," should end controversy, as the states were pre-existent, and associated themselves to form the union. It is obvious, then, that the ultimate authority for the citizens to obey is the state, and not the government.

The treason-clause itself supports this view. It declares that "treason against The United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." The objects of this treason, then, are (not "the government," "the nation," or "the people," but) the states, or, to use Madison's phrase, "the people as composing thirteen sovereignties," each of these sovereignties having its own subjects, which owe allegiance to it, and are liable to the penalties of treason for violating that allegiance. And "the government" itself, created as it is by, and subject to, the supreme law of the said states, may, by such "levying war against them," commit treason against "them." Nay, more, it might with "their" army and navy become "their enemies," and subjugate "them" one after another to its central despotism, as it has already done to ten of "them," and as it may, on new pretexts, do to the rest. For a citizen to fight against his state is treason, while his fighting against the government," by command of his state, is patriotic duty! Strong Corroborations. The guilty perverters, and those who are to profit by centralization, hate these truths; but it will be seen that the constitution, the records of the country, and the contemporaneous exposition of the fathers, are univocal in support of them. It is well here to give a slight foretaste. Madison wrote in Article 46 of the Federalist: "The federal and state governments are, in fact, but different agents and trustees of the people. . . . The ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone." In the Virginia Convention he explained that "the people" meant "the people, as composing thirteen sovereignties." In Article 40 of the Federalist he said: "The states are regarded as distinct and independent sovereignties. . . by the constitution

proposed." Nay, more, every idea herein expressed is to be found in the federal history, and the present constitutions, of New York and Massachusetts, as will hereafter be fully shown. These constitutions describe the citizen as a "member" and "citizen" of the state-the latter calling him a "subject of this state;" and they declare sovereignty," eo nomine, to be in the states respectively, and no "powers" to be out of them except entrusted ones; and their history is full of proofs that the federal government has no shadow of right to exist and hold jurisdiction within their borders, except by and under their sovereign will.

As the confederates acted in precise accordance with these principles, it is absurd to call them rebels or traitors. They, as individuals, obeyed themselves as states. This is self-government. It is republican freedom. Our states, then, which were the first dwelling-places of Liberty, are her last retreats, her final citadels, in her contests with power!

Coercion of States is War against them. By all the fathers, as will be hereafter shown, coercion of states by the government, was considered to be war. Those waging this, no matter what they are called, must be "enemies ;" and if the citizens and subjects of the states attacked, wage this war, or give "aid and comfort" to others who do so, they commit treason. Not only was no provision made for the federal authorities to coerce the states (their only coercive authority affecting citizens, and being enforced by courts), but when the thoughtless proposition was made, in the federal convention, to give the general government this coercive power, it was unanimously rejected, Madison and Hamilton stigmatizing it as "visionary and fallacious," and "the maddest project ever devised." They also declared that it was war, and was entirely incompatible with the plan of union, which was a voluntary association of states, the sole purpose of which was "the security of the rights and the advancement of the interests" of the associates. If the people, as states, possess original and absolute power, while the federal government has purely derivative, and necessarily subordinate authority, coercion of states by the said government is not only unconstitutional, but, as the fathers declared, it is war against them, and is, in its very nature, treasonable. And the citizens "levying" the "war," or giving aid and comfort to the enemy, if they are citizens of the state which is the object of the "war," directly violate their allegiance, and commit treason. The Nation is States Governments are Creatures. There is no doubt that all the architects of American constitutional liberty, and all the master workmen who built the temple, all the presidents who left any record down to 1860, with, perhaps a single exception,