1860.]

STATE ALLEGIANCE.

31

the more sanguine expected to achieve independence by victories so rapid and overwhelming as to enable them to dictate their own terms to the North, the chief of which should be a treaty equivalent to the Fugitive-Slave Law.

That secession was no remedy, was realized by large numbers of the more thoughtful people of the South. This was acknowledged in Georgia especially, where the argument, "We can make better terms out of the Union than in it," had to be used the assumption being that the separation would be only temporary. Alexander H. Stephens, looked upon by many as the ablest man in that State, made a powerful speech against secession, at the request of members of the Legislature, November 14, 1860, when the result of the presidential election was known. Amid frequent interruptions by Robert Toombs, who was trying to hurry the State into secession, he set forth the arguments against it with admirable clearness; but he gave a fatal blow to the efficacy of his plea when he said: "Should Georgia determine to get out of the Union, whatever the result may be, I shall bow to the will of her people. Their cause. is my cause, and their destiny is my destiny; and I trust this will be the ultimate course of all." This was giving notice to the hot-headed secessionists that if by one means or another they could drag the State out of the Union, they should have him with it, and all his influence; and he knew they were afraid to submit the question to a convention chosen by the people, for Mr. Toombs had

32

THE ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY.

[1860.

just said so. If the prominent men of the South. who disapproved of secession, instead of surrendering on the plea that they must go with their States, had declared they would not go under any circumstances, possibly the costly experiment would never have been tried. But perhaps this would have required superhuman courage.

Virginia also was reluctant to go, and voted against secession till a peculiarly powerful engine was brought to bear. No slave State wanted to be a border State; they knew too well what the result would be, though the advocates of secession appeared to have a vague idea that “taking the South out of the Union" would result in lifting the land and carrying it to some remote quarter of the globe. Kentucky refused to leave the Union, and Maryland, after a struggle, was kept in it.

One other consideration ought to have occurred to the statesmen of the South, if not to her people. With the advance of civilization, the whole tendency of mankind has been, not toward division and segregation, but toward union and centralization, wherever geographical conditions have indicated it. Where once was the Heptarchy is now the United Kingdom of Great Britain; France and Spain each gravitated into a similar consolidation; and early in the present century Sweden and Norway became one kingdom. In 1848 the leagued Swiss Cantons set up a central government, making themselves one republic, and the union between Austria and Hungary was perfected. When our war of secession was breaking

1860.]

THE QUESTION OF JUSTIFICATION.

33

out, the principalities of Italy had just become one kingdom, which in naval power is now among the first in the world; and since that time we have seen Germany united, the Canadian provinces organized as a Federal Dominion, the States of Central America form a league, and Japan adopt a centralized government. Our own Constitution

was substituted for the old Articles of Confederation because our fathers found it desirable "to form a more perfect union."

Three things are necessary for the complete moral justification of war: a righteous cause, a reasonable prospect of military success, and a certainty that such success will secure a remedy for the wrong complained of. The righteousness of the Confederate cause depended upon the righteousness of human bondage; for the purpose of the war on the part of the secessionists was to perpetuate and extend that system. This was so clearly and authoritatively set forth by Mr. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, and others, as well as indicated unmistakably by the whole course and character of events, that no argument is needed to prove it, though some writers have set up the theory that it was merely an abstract doctrine for which a million men were placed under arms and the entire wealth of the South was squandered. There can be little doubt that, at the outset, the war on the part of the secessionists. had, or seemed to have, the justification of probable success; and there can be as little doubt that it lacked the justification of remedy. The official

34

STATE SOVEREIGNTY.

[1860.

justification for the attempt at secession was presented in the doctrine of State sovereignty-that every State in the Union retained its sovereignty, and was at liberty to withdraw whenever it chose to do so. John C. Calhoun was rather the developer than the originator of this theory. When the Federal Constitution was adopted, it met with strong opposition, through State jealousy and the reluctance of many to give up the supremacy of the local governments. There is a class of minds that never admit an unwelcome fact, and Jacobitism may even become a matter of heredity. In the early days of the Republic there were men in New England, as well as at the South, who clung to the sectional and State idea; which perhaps only proves that a great government, like all else valuable, must be a thing of growth. There was this difference, however, that in the North there was no serious obstacle to the gradual adoption of the republican idea; but in the South the institution of slavery created classes and a sort of aristocracy, and the time came when the State-sovereignty idea was revived and emphasized, because it was useful, if not necessary, to the perpetuation of that condition of things. Calhoun taught it constantly, and his people believed it sincerely. Nobody denied that certain rights were reserved to the States; but Unionists held that the powers expressly delegated to the Federal Government included everything that was essential to sovereignty, and that any interpretation of the Constitution which made it self-destructive was evidently

[1860.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

35

absurd that there could be no such thing as a Constitutional right to destroy the Constitution. There seemed to be in the popular mind of the South a confounding of State rights and State sovereignty, just as there had been in the popular mind of the North more or less confounding of the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution.

In the Presidential canvass of 1860 the Democratic Convention was sundered in two by the slavery question, the great political wedge that had split every thing it entered. The extreme Southern wing of the party, which wanted that institution carried into all the Territories by act of Congress, nominated John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky. The Northern wing, which relied upon the principle of popular sovereignty, nominated Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois. The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, on a platform declaring that Congress should forbid slavery in the Territories. The remnant of the American party nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, and adopted a platform that confined itself to such generalities as "the Constitution, the Union, and enforcement of the laws."

As soon as it became known that Mr. Lincoln was elected, South Carolina called a convention to consider the question of secession, and on the 20th of December, 1860, that convention passed unanimously an ordinance declaring that the union. between South Carolina and the other States was thereby dissolved. Commissioners were sent from