SOUTHERN DOMINATION IN THE GOVERNMENT.

ity, in the manner prescribed by law; and, when made, the decision must be final if the people are the ultimate source of power. A denial of these simple principles renders popular government impossible.*

Now, it is the invasion of that life-principle which underlies the whole structure of popular government, that constitutes the primal item in the catalogue of crimes which make up the terrible guilt of this rebellion. It is an appeal from the ballot-box to the sword; a determination to defeat by war the results of a popular election, fairly conducted in all respects according to the Constitution and laws, as those who have revolted admit; an election in which they, equally with the rest of the nation, freely embarked, and by the results of which they were therefore solemnly bound. This is the charge which stands recorded against them in the face of the whole world.

SOUTHERN DOMINATION IN THE GOVERNMENT.

2. Another item in the character of the rebellion is, that it is waged against a Government whose administration the rebels, through the party with which they had generally acted, had almost uniformly controlled, from the origin of the Government to the time of their revolt, and every branch of which was still in their possession.

This is one of those facts in our history, so well known and so public that it will scarcely be questioned. But an authority so valuable as that of Vice-President Stephens, of the "Confederate" Government, may here be given.

* Says M. DE TOCQUEVILLE, in his Democracy in America: “All authority originates in the will of the majority." "In the United States, the majority governs in the name of the people, as is the case in all the countries in which the people is supreme." "The very essence of democratic government consists in the absolute Sovereignty of the majority." "The moral power of the majority is founded upon yet another principle, which is, that the interests of the many are to be preferred to those of the few."

In a speech at Washington, Georgia, June 8, 1861, he says:—

It has been our pride that out of the seventy-two years of the existence of the Government under the Constitution, it has been for sixty under the control of Southern statesmen. This has secured whatever of prosperity and greatness, growth and development, has marked the country's career during its past history. The Northern masses generally agreed with Southern statesmen in their policy, and sustained them. These were the democracy of that section. Mr. Jefferson said they were allies. Washington's administration lasted eight years. It was Southern, and in the line of Southern policy. Then came the elder Adams. He was from Massachusetts. Opposite ideas shaped his policy. At the end of four years, the people indignantly turned him and his counsellors out of power. Then came Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, each eight years-all Southern men. Here we had thirty-two years of Southern administration to four Northern. Then came the younger Adams from the North. He was the great embodiment of those ideas which now control Lincoln's administration. At the end of four years he was turned out of power, and Jackson, a Southern man, came in for eight years. Then came Van Buren, a Northern man, for four years. Then Harrison, Tyler, and Polk, which added eight years more of Southern control. Next, Taylor and Fillmore. Fillmore was a Northern man, it is true, but his administration was sustained by the South, and so was Pierce's. These may be called Southern administrations; and so was Buchanan's-thus making sixty out of the seventy-two years of the Government's existence under the Constitution. All the important measures which have marked the history of the Government, which have made it what it is, or was before the dismemberment, and made it the admiration of the world, were the fruits of the policy of Southern statesmen.

This statement of Mr. Stephens requires one modification. The policy of Mr. Van Buren's administration was as intensely Southern as that of any one he claims. It was not till several years after his retirement from public life that he gave expression to those views which rendered him odious to his quondam Southern friends. The balance may then be adjusted so as to give to the South, upon the principle Mr. Stephens lays down, sixty-four years of con

FALSE CHARGES BY THE SOUTH.

5

trol of the Government, and to the North eight years; and that, too, while the North had a large majority of the population of the country.

Besides thus wielding the power and shaping the policy of the Government from its origin, the party of which Mr. Stephens here speaks had control of every branch of the Government when the revolt began, and even the Executive was not to be changed for a period of four months. From this state of facts, it seems in a high degree probable, that, had this powerful party remained intact, and had its Southern leaders exercised only a modicum of that sagacity which had characterized them in its better days, it could have secured for the South all that the South had a right to demand under the Constitution, and saved the land. from a deluge of blood. But the instigators of this rebellion wantonly threw away the power which they possessed, to grasp a shadow which their ambition had pictured.

FALSE CHARGES BY THE SOUTH.

3. While this is a rebellion against the Government proper, it was instigated against an incoming Adminis tration on false grounds.

It was charged at the outset throughout the South, that it was to be the policy of Mr. Lincoln's Administration to destroy slavery. This charge was known and proven to be false in every possible way which the case admitted. It was denied in the most formal manner in the platform of the party, adopted in the National Convention by which the present Executive was nominated. It was denied by many of the leading men of the party, in their numerous speeches during the canvass, and by the resolutions of many assemblages of the people; and if there were any contrary declarations they were wholly without authority, in the face of the formal announcement of the

National Convention. And finally, it was denied by the President in his Inaugural Address.* In short, it would seem to be impossible to meet such a charge in any way in which it was not met. And yet, the revolt began immediately upon the result of the Presidential election

*The following is an extract from the Inaugural Address of President Lincoln, in which is embodied the resolution above referred to from the platform of the National Convention: I do not consider it necessary, at present, for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement. Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There never has been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches, when I declare that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.' I believe I have no lawful right to do so; and I have no inclination to do so. Those who nominated and elected me, did so with the full knowledge that I had made this, and made similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And more than this, they placed in the platform, for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the grossest of crimes.' I now reiterate these sentiments; and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause, as cheerfully to one section as to another." The foregoing sentences completely disprove the charge under consideration. The President closed his Address as follows: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellowcountrymen, 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 loath 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 chords of memory, stretching from every battle-fleld and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

AGAINST ALL MEASURES FOR PEACE.

(Nov. 6, 1860) becoming known, and four months before the Administration was to assume power, in those acts of secret and open aggression upon the public authority and property throughout the Southern States, with which the world is so familiar.

The third item, therefore, which characterizes the rebellion, is, that it began with a most barefaced and palpable lie in its right hand, forged by the leaders against the sovereign people of the United States, in the face of the most public and indisputable facts to the contrary, and employed as a rallying cry to deceive the masses at the South and precipitate the States into secession.

It cannot be said, in answer to this, that the event has proved the charge true; that the present policy of the Administration towards slavery shows that it was from the first its design to destroy it. There is no shadow of evidence that the President, or the party that elected him, intended originally to interfere with it in the States, but overwhelming proof to the contrary. But when open war was made in the interest of slavery, to supplant the Government and dismember the Union, the whole case was changed; and as, on the one hand, the rebels did not enter upon the war to prove their prediction true, so, on the other, the Administration were not bound to abstain from touching slavery in order to prove the prediction false.

AGAINST ALL MEASURES FOR PEACE.

4. After the rebellion began, it was persistently adhered to and prosecuted, in spite of the most urgent means to preserve peace, made by the party which had triumphed in the Presidential election, and by many of the patriotic of all parties.

Among other important measures which were taken during the winter and prior to the fourth of March, 1861,