Page images
PDF
EPUB

"All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirmations and negations, guaranties and prohibitions in the Constitution, that controversies never arise concerning them. But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate, nor any document of reasonable length contain, express provisions for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by state authorities? The Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. From questions of this class, spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities.

"If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the gov ernment must cease. There is no alternative for continuing the gov ernment but acquiescence on the one side or the other. If a minority in such a case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent, which, in turn, will ruin and divide them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a minority. For instance, why not any portion of a new confederacy, a year or two hence, arbitrarily secede again, precisely as por tions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this. Is there such perfect identity of interests among the states to compose a new Union as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed secession? Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.

"A majority held in restraint by constitutional check and limitation, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible. So that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism, in some form, is all that is left.

"I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions inust be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to a very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the government; and while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice.

"At the same time the candid citizen must confess that, if the policy

of the government upon the vital question affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, as in ordinary litigation between parties in per sonal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own masters, unless having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

"Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink, to decide cases properly brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes. One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended; and this is the only substantial dispute; and the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured, and it would be worse, in both cases, after the separation of the sections, than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived, without restriction, in one section; while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surren dered at all by the other.

"Physically speaking we can not separate; we can not remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They can not but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I can not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the national Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendment. I fully recognize the full authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the

instrument itself, and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it.

"I will venture to add, that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish either to accept or re fuse. I understand that a proposed amendment to the Constitution (which amendment, however, I have not seen) has passed Congress, to the effect that the federal government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of states, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provison to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

"The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix the terms for the separation of the states. The people themselves, also, can do this if they choose, but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present government as it came to his hands, and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor. Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American people. By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

"My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.

"If there be an object to hurry any of you, in hot haste, to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time: but no good object can be frustrated by it.

"Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either.

"If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there is still no single reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulties.

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.

"You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government; while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it

I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

"The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, wil yet swel the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

The address delivered and the oath administered, the august ceremonies of the occasion were concluded; and, passing back through the Senate Chamber, the President was escorted to the White House, where Mr. Buchanan took leave of him, and where the people were received by him in large numbers. Mr. Lincoln, on being asked whether he felt frightened while delivering his address, in consequence of the threats of assassination, replied that he had frequently experienced greater fear in addressing a dozen western men on the subject of temperance. Of one thing the "fire-eaters" were assured by the address, viz: that if a war was to be inaugurated, they would be obliged to fire the first gun. Mr. Lincoln had pledged himself to take no step of even doubtful propriety. He proposed simply to possess and hold the property of the United States.

And now began the great work of Mr. Lincoln's life. The humble boy, reared in a log cabin, was the great man, occupying the proudest place in the nation, in the most perilous period of that nation's existence. He was in the White House as God's and the people's instrument, to work for both.

His first duty was the formal designation of a cabinet, for undoubtedly his choice of secretaries was essentially settled in his own mind before he left home. The highest position was offered to Mr. Seward, the first statesman in the republican party, and the equal if not the superior of any in the country. Concerning the filling of the office of Secretary of State, it is believed that Mr. Lincoln had no hesitation. Mr. Seward was his first and last choice. With equal promptitude he decided to call Edward Bates of Missouri to the office of Attorney General. Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania was known to be an aspirant for cabinet honors; and, it is believed, would have accepted the post of Secretary of the Treasury with more alacrity than he did that of Secretary of War, to which Mr. Lincoln called him. Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, who shared with Mr. Seward the highest regards of the republican party and the confidence of the country, was appointed to the Treasury. The men thus brought into the government were all prominent candidates for the presidency at Chicago, and on the first ballot received an aggregate of three hundred and twenty-one votes of the four hundred and sixty-five cast. The great majority of the party thus had the expression of their first choice for the presidency honored by Mr. Lincoln in a remarkable degree. Gideon Welles of Connecticut was appointed Secretary of the Navy. Caleb B. Smith of Indiana, an old personal friend of Mr. Lincoln, and for many years a distinguished politician of the West, was offered the Portfolio of the Interior, and accepted it; and Montgomery Blair of Maryland was appointed Postmaster General.

Thus furnished with his secretaries, another most important work opened before him—the clearing the departments of the sympathizers with treason. This was indeed a Herculean task. Treason was everywhere. Every department was infected. The men had been manipulated so long by treasonable hands—had been moulded into such thorough sympathy with the rebellion-and had so imbibed its treacherous spirit, that no measure could be discussed or adopted by the new administration that was not reported to the rebels by some

« PreviousContinue »