to obey the Constitution? Is not antagonism to the Supreme Court's decision also antagonism to the Constitution?

Nothing protects error so well as being found in company with fact. Hence the next utterance of this remarkable address is a most important fact-a fact upon which all issues hang, viz: "All profess to be content in the Union, if all the Constitutional rights can be maintained." This is a universal proposition. Hence it includes the South. It was the declaration heard in every Southern home, in every Southern valley, on every Southern hill-top, and upon every Southern navigable stream throughout all that disturbed section. Since the North also professed the same thing was there not strong ground for reconciliation? Why then was reconciliation denied? Was it the fault of the South? Had she not proposed terms of reconciliation? Had not all of them been rejected by the North? Were not commissioners from the South in Washington at this very time in the interest of peace? Were they not made to hope in vain, only to be denied? Did not the "Peace Conference" originate in the South? Were not all its propositions turned down by the victorious party?

The next utterance in this address is a truism, viz: "But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration." Why this truism? May it not be intended as a background for these questions and answers of his own: "Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by National or State authority?__The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say."

We have heavily italicized these questions and answers that the very italicizing may suggest the just criticism. Both the questions and answers are pregnant with inherent weakness. We hesitate to add words of our own to the criticism of the italics. We hesitate out of respect for a great name-a name revered and honored throughout the civilized world. Nor would we criticize them further but for the fact that other great names, equally as renowned and revered, are involved in the correct answers

to these questions. Not only the honor and integrity of great names are involved but the honor and integrity of a great section of enlightened people are involved also.

What school boy does not know when "the Constitution does not expressly say" it means the States? Who so ignorant as not to know that the Constitution does not authorize the Federa! Government to do anything except what it expressly says it can do? We are not criticizing Mr. Lincoln. He is criticizing himself by his questions and answers. Who has lived up to the age of maturity in this free and enlightened Republic of ours, and has read so little as not to know the Supreme Court, in 1857, had answered in words as plain as it could use, the question: "May Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories?" It is with sincere regret that we are compelled by his own official words to view the great Lincoln in such a light. Shall we judge from this inaugural address that this is his normal state of mind on slavery?

All know, too, that the same Supreme Court at the same time in 1857, answered with equal clearness Mr. Lincoln's third question, viz: "Must Congress protect slavery in the Territor

ies

Were these questions and answers of Mr. Lincoln's due to ignorance? Had he not criticized and derided that decision in his famous Cooper Institute Speech? They were not due to ignorance. Then what? When a full century from the day of their utterance shall have been ushered in as the impartial judge, the true motive of these questions and answer will have been unmasked without mercy or commisseration.

Francis Newton Thorpe, and various other Northern Historian's, realizing the weakness of Mr. Lincoln's position, have attempted to defend him, not by an appeal to the Constitution, but by a so-called "higher law." They forget that no law, however sacred, can justly be called "a higher law" which sanctions the violation of a consecrated oath. It ceases to be "a higher law" the moment it sanctions the violation of a sacred oath. Every officer, high or low, of the United States Government swears fealty to the Constitution, the one binding tie of all the States. How absurd such an appeal!

From the foregoing facts it follows that Lincoln's construction of the silence of the Constitution is altogether wrong. There fore all his conclusions based on these false constructions are wrong. One of them is this: "If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease"-another plain declaration of war without constitutional authority.

In the name of the great South section, true to every word of the Constitution, we repeat that had the plain meaning of the Constitution prevailed as construed by the Supreme Court and by the North and South before the entrance of the Republican Party on the scene, there would have been no secession in 186061 on the part of the South. Has not the South by high Northern authorities been styled "Eighteenth Century reactionists?" What is the meaning of this accusation? Is not the plain meaning this: that the South in the 60's held the views entertained by the able and illustrious statesmen who framed the Constitution and their contemporary statesmen? Was this a crime? If so, was it a crime of such magnitude as to invite the horrors of war? If this was a crime the South of the 60's was guilty with Washington, Madison, Jefferson, and the two Adamses and all that line of great characters whose virtues and statesmanship have enriched the world. What a galaxy of great names gather about the South of the 60's, and say to her, "We share your guilt!"

Who now doubts the South's sincerity in the Sixties? Who? Who doubts her sincere desire for peace? Did she not exhaust every honorable means to secure it? Was it not a Southern State that suggested "the Peace Congress?" Was it not a Southern man that introduced the famous Crittenden resolutions? Was it not Southern representatives who voted for them in Congress? Did not the South declare herself ready to adopt any honorable proposition for peace? What then did Lincoln mean when he said, "In your hands. my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war?" Did it not mean "There is no way for you to avoid civil war except by submission to unconstitutional terms?. Had not a num

ber of Southern States already seceded? Did he not know their manhood and their new allegiance now forbade submission? Therefore he meant war, and the sequel shows he meant

war.

WHO CAUSED THE WAR?

In the last chapter we saw that the thirteen original Colonies declared themselves "States in the same sense that Great Britain is a State." That meant they were sovereignties in the full sense. Therfore the compact they formed was one of sovereign States. We have also given in the same chapter Ney's legal maxim: "Every thing is dissolved by the same means it is constituted." To this we add the same well established legal truth as given by Broom in his legal maxims, p. 407, in these words: "Nothing is so consonant to natural equity as that every contract should be dissolved by the same means that rendered it binding."

The thirteen original States formed a compact among themselves by adopting ordinances ratifying the same Constitution, each in its own way, and at its own time and place. Thus they rendered the common Constitution "binding." In the same way, or "by the same means" the eleven seceding States of the South in 1860-61 "Dissolved" this compact. They therefore acted within their legal rights and the United States Government had no more right to coerce them than she would have to coerce England for dissolving a compact between her and England. If we take the definition of a State as given by the thirteen original States, there is no evading the conclusion. Their definition is the only true one since they Constituted the States. Therefore the conclusion is inevitable.

If then it is inevitably true that the eleven Southern States in 1860-61, had the legal and natural right to dissolve the compact just as they formed it; and at the same time expressed a desire that their dissolution should be peaceful, who caused the war?

They not only "dissolved" the Union "by the same means by which they constituted it," but they also sought by all honorable means to make their dissolution a peaceful one. This honest desire they declared both by words and acts. They immediately sent commissioners to Washington in the interest of