for the public defence, the Pres | their newly-assumed titles Paoceedings of the ident be, and is hereby, author of Commander-in-Chief, Congress. ized and directed to assume which they had freely sportcontrol of all military operations in every State, hav-ed. ing reference to a connection with questions between the said States, or any of them, and powers foreign to them. "SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That the President is hereby authorized to receive from the several States the arms and munitions of war which have been acquired from the United States, and which are now in the forts, arsenals, and navy yards of the said States, and all other arms and munitions which they may desire to turn over and make chargeable to this Government. SEC. 3. Be it further enacted, That the President be authorized to receive into the service of this Government such forces now in the service of said States as may be tendered, or who may volunteer by consent of their State, in such numbers as he may require, for any time not less than twelve months, unless sooner discharged. “SEC. 4. Be it further enacted, That such forces may be received, with their officers, by companies, battalions, or regiments, and, when so received, shall form a part of the provisional army of the Con federate States, according to the terms of their en listment, and the President shall appoint, by and gen with the advice and consent of Congress, such eral officer or officers, for said forces, as may be necessary for the service. "SEO. 5. Be it further enacted, That said forces, when received into the service of the Government, shall have the same pay and allowances as may be provided by law for volunteers entering the service, or for the army of the Confederate States, and shall be subject to the same rules and government." This act stripped the State Governors of Proceedings of the Congress. It was a short-lived "supremacy" the State enjoyed. The tyranny closing around them like an overgrowth, was as sure to overrun their "palmetto" independence as the moss which trailed over their forests to festoon them with darkness. Under this act, Peter G. Beauregard, soon made Brigadierto Charleston to assume ommand of the forces General by commission of Mr. Davis, was sent there, while General Bragg was placed in command at Pensacola. The Act for the free navigation of the Mississippi, although it conceded the river a common highway, still assumed a jurisdiction which the States drained by the great river would resist to the last. Their rights to that highway was incontestible; to restrict their rights, by giving up the river to a foreign jurisdiction, was to injure the property and commerce of the great North-west to an inhad been placed on the banks of the river, at calculable degree. The fact that a battery Memphis, to challenge all craft, and thus to obstruct navigation, showed to the twelve States, tributary to the stream, what might exist, at any moment, to their great detriment; and the Act for the navigation of the stream only served to call most especial attention to the matter. It soon became one of the things evident, that that highway never would be allowed to pass through the terri tory of a foreign power. E 4 CHAPTER XXXII. RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY IN THE SECEDED STATES. SOUTH CARO- GEORGIA, ALABAMA, AND MISSISSIPPI. THE UNION IN FEELING South Carolina Re pudiates the Confederacy. in vain, and Calhoun taught for naught, if we are again to be plundered, and our commerce crippled, THE Voice of the Cotton States, seemingly, the future Permanent Southern was unanimous for the new order of things. Constitution. For South CaroBut, so many evidences came of a stifled lina is about to be saddled with opinion which repelled the revolution and almost every grievance except Abolition, for which hoped for reaction, that we advert to she long struggled, and just withdrawn from the late the subject briefly. As preliminary, it may United States Government. Surely McDuffie lived be said that even the Secessionists did not harmonize in their views, now that the hour had come to embody them. The element of revolution was not one to be calmed into peace at any voice. To say to South Carolina, "Peace! be still!" was as hopeless for peace as to bid the overcharged steam-chest from foaming. She must have vent, apparently, or an explosion would Evidences of Dis ensue. content. destroyed, by tariffs-even discriminating tariffs. "The three-fifths rule of representation for slaves was one of the many Yankee swindles put upon us in the formation of the old Constitution. It is a radical wrong. It most unfairly dwarfs the power of some of the States in any Federal representation. The proportion of her black to the white popula tion is very much larger than that of any other Slave State. By the old swindle, her fair popula tion of representation was cut down upon all her slaves in proportion as three to five. The black The class of chronic mal-contents, in that State, was large-the class of well-contents small. The philosophy of Calhoun, and the "glittering generalities" of McDuffie, had resulted in a mental disorder, whose only proper expression seemed to find embodiment in the word nullification. This became ap- population, being in a majority in our State, twoparent at an early stage of the proceedings fifths of more than one-half of the people of the of the Confederate Congress, notwithstand-State are entirely unrepresented. And in just the ing the seal of secrecy. A correspondent of the Charleston Mercury at Montgomery, writing under date of February 14th-evidently a member of the Congress uttered this strong and distinctive protest to the too Federal nature of the new Government: degree that the proportion of the black population in South Carolina predominates over the proportion of the blacks to the whites in any other State, is the swindle augmented and aggravated. South Carolina is small enough without again flinging away what legitimate power she possesses. That power is in her slaves-socially, politically, economically. The proposition of the three-fifths rule calls upon her not only to stultify herself, but to dwarf her powers. "Is this all? It is not. She is probably to be called upon to brand herself and her institutions. "The old Constitution of the United States merely grants to the Congress the power to prohibit by law the further introduction of slaves from Africa or else where outside of the United States. Terrorism here is about to make its perpetual prohibition a fundamental provision of the Constitution itself. A stigma South Carolina Repudiates the Confed eracy. is thus broadly stamped upon the whole institution before the whole world, and sealed by ourselves. That Congress should have power to prohibit the trade is a legitimate provision. I should not object to such a provision. It is a matter of trade, business, and general economy. There may or may not be a sufficient supply of African labor now in America. Of this it is for the peoples of the several States to decide, through their representatives in the General Congress. But to brand it by a fundamental article of the Constitution itself, is to cast an infamous slur upon the whole institution-the lives and the properties of every slaveholder in the land. For what have we cast off the North as a rotten incubus, if we are thus to reenact all their swindles, outrages, and insolences upon ourselves? To be plundered and manacled with discriminating tariffsto stultify ourselves with a half-way representation- | have to fight Lincoln instead of Buchanan. And We have, in this, representative South Car- and to indorse all the slanders and insolence of the lation, under the rule of an aristocracy. Northern States? "All this is not encouraging to our hopes. But there remains two methods of retrieving ourselves. The first is, in our Convention. We may have to follow the example of 1788. The second is, by providing in the Constitution, for the present, an easy way of amendment; and South Carolina may insist upon amendments upon these points being made. Doubtless public spirit will advance. Many men here want information. They are ignorant and unpracticed in this matter. There is still room for much hope in the end-with the exercise on our part of much firmness. "It is greatly to be regretted that the debates upon the Constitution will probably not be public. It seems to me that they will be very important as guides in the future, whereby we may be enabled to comprehend its meaning--the proper interpretation of its language. "To change the subject-a nice pickle South Carolina has been placed in with regard to Fort Sumter! Three weeks ago it was feared by many that any assault upon that fort was to be postponed until the 4th of February, and then to be turned over to the action of the Southern Congress. Such has proved the fact. What has been gained? Pres. ident Davis will not be inaugurated until Saturday evening, the 16th of February. This is the earliest period possible. Circumstances will still further delay it. The Monday two weeks following, Lincoln is to be inaugurated at Washington. What op portunity is there between these two dates for Mr. Davis to make preparations for attack- to make his demand upon Mr. Buchanan for its surrender, and to receive an answer before the 4th of March? None whatever. We will have to fight, and we will A Georgia Protest. The Augusta (Georgia) We believe there is no truth in the rumor. The Natchez (Mississippi) Are we to have no showing? Are the people to have no choice? Can a Convention alter constitu A Mississippi Threat. or not they will live under the tions? impose taxes? appoint Constitution-makers? inaugurate Presidents? Are they oligarchs, and are we nothing?' And each citizen had to confess that there was no reply to these questions. We live under an oligarchy that has not yet dared to trust the people with a say as to its consent. Right as the South is upon the great question at issue, its posi-straction, incapable of application, and invented to tion has been compromitted by the events of the last two months. The consent of the governed is an essential element of government. The people of the South-west might have voted for all that has been done, but their consent has not been yet either asked or obtained." The Tuscaloosa (AlabaAn Alabama Protest. ma) Monitor was a nonsubmissionist to the reign of tyranny. Its words were significant of the powerful under-current struggling against the revolutionary assumptions of the Conventions and the Congress. It said: "We hold, first, that the ordinance of secession should have been committed to the people for their ratification or rejection; secondly, that the ordinances passed by the Convention should have awaited the issue of this decision; thirdly, that the people had the right, and it should have been given them, to have chosen the delegates to a Congress which was to have framed for them a government for weal or for woe. And we now demand that the Government formed-its President, Vice-President, and officers-should be submitted to the people for their approval or disapproval. If it is not, we shall, come weal or woe, attempt to fire the people's heart, to educate the people's mind to know their rights and to dare maintain them. We are no submissionists, but right is right and wrong is wrong, and we will not betray our trust. We assert that the people have a right to be heard, and being heard, to be obeyed. And we intend to keep them posted in what we consider to be an infringement of their rights and of their privileges, let the worst come to the worst. If it is treason against the new Confederacy, make the most of it. We know we are right, and, untrammeled and unawed, we will defend the right." Many of such protests would have shaken the power of the revolutionary leaders;— therefore, they were not allowed an utterance. The Jackson (Miss.) MisA Mississippi Threat. sissippian, a strong advocate of secession, became alarmed and indignant at the virtual reign of tyranny inaugurated over the people of the South. It said: delude them. It will not do to say that in voting for separation from the Union they arranged the terms of confederation with other States, or prescribed the plan of future government. That would be a falsification of history which no sane man will venture to be guilty of. There is no way of evading the premises we have assumed; hence the conclusion at which we have arrived is unavoidable, viz.: That the Constitution for the permanent government, before Mississippi becomes a party to the compact, must be submitted directly to a vote of the people of the State. If it is not done, the question of the right of the people to form their own Government may require practical solution before the new order is fully established. They will not hold themselves bound by a Government which they have had no hand in creating." These several protests against the new Confederacy, or against its conduct, cannot be regarded merely as individual expressions, because their grounds of complaint involved general principles, and are such grounds as we know were presented by the unparalleled usurpations practiced by the reigning few over the outwitted many. As to the state of society induced by the unsettled state of affairs, we have evidences to warrant the statement that it was, socially, very baleful. The violence practiced in the months of March, April, and May, upon every person of Union sympathies, was but a "wreaking of thought upon expression"—it was a result of the passion and brutal instincts of the masses; and, though deprecated by the better classes, was unopposed, because such opposition would have proven dangerous even to the most patriotic of Southern States' Rights men. A Southern gentleman, of property and influence, residing at Augusta, Georgia, thus wrote to a friend, during the latter part of February: "Nine-tenths of our youth go constantly armed, and the common use of deadly weapons is quite disregarded. No control can be exercised over a lad after he is fourteen or fifteen years of age. He then be "It is the right of the people to decide whether comes Mr. So-and-so, and acknowledges no A Reign of Violence. master." The spirit which incited the revolution was one of violence, and it is not strange that an excitable people should have proceeded to extremes when every encouragement was offered to passion, and ev-| ery discouragement shown to reason. The wind was sown to breed the whirlwind, for only thus could the few hundreds hope to control the thousands to do their behests. An incredible amount of small arms-of pistols, | rapiers and bowie-knives passed from the North to the South during the months of January, February, and March. So great, indeed, was the demand for these articles, that they appreciated in value, in New York, fully one hundred per cent. The weapons soon made their appearance on the persons of even the youth in the Seceded States, as stated by the letter-writers, and a corresponding demoralization of manners and morals followed. When the hour came for calling out troops, tens of thousands of these mere youths were found ready for the ranks, and as violent in passions as the most ambitious military officer could wish. In these apparently minor ters are written much of the real history of that sad revolution in society and morals, as well as in government. Evidences of a they deserve the horrors of Of the feeling entertained in Tennessee to- "The great majority of the people of Tennessee fully understand their rights and their obligations in this respect; and from a deep conviction of their duty sacredly to observe and sustain the Federal Constitution till it shall be changed by such explicit and authoritative act of the whole people' of the United States, they voted down the proposed Convention, as a dangerous and useless revolutionary body. For this discharge of what they honestly mat-regarded as a sacred duty to themselves and their denounces them as Submissionists. They regard this posterity, The Union and American presumptuously insolent and silly taunt with the same deep scorn with which they did the counsel of the same paper to flee like cowards from the Union before the 4th day of March, for fear Abe Lincoln should catch them. Run, Tennesseeans, run,' is counsel it may suit the purposes of disunionists to give, but such counsel has been, and always will be, treated by the people with the deepest scorn." The press of the Border States was not all subsidized in the interest of secession. The Lynchburg Virginian, in February, said: "The people can only protect their interests by holding their servants to a strict accountability, and not vainly expect, by a partition of the Confederacy, that will give our section to the exclusive domination of the party which promulgated the demoralizing doctrine that 'to the victors belong the spoils,' and will include, and retain among us, those who have outraged all public and private morality-to promote our welfare." The Raleigh (North Carolina) Banner was equally true to the clearly defined rights of the people. It said: "The big heart of the people is still in the Union, and we hope to see it yet assert its supremacy. It is now subjugated temporarily to the will of the politicians. Less than a hundred thousand politicians are endeavors to destroy the liberties and to usurp the right of more than thirty millions of people. If the people permit it, It was highly necessary to invite war and instate bloodshed in order to force under such sentiment as this. The assault on Fort Sumter was only ordered when it was found that the Border States would not join in the scheme of disunion. To compel the United States Government to assume an attitude of offense was the only hope of the Montgomery conspirators. Alas! that the Border States should have compromised their intelligence, should have sacrificed their own independ ence, so far as to have been forced into the Southern Confederacy at the cry of "coercion!" Their bloody fields, their desolated homes, their exhausted finances, tell how fearful was their mistake in permitting pas sion to usurp the throne of reason. |