terms, and, looking to passing events, it would exercise it. Conceding that the ordinance of secession was unconstitutional, was it not clear that the people of the State had forfeited their rights as citizens of the United States ?1 Slavery having been abolished, the effect of the action of the convention, whether it adopted the language of the ordinance of 1787 simply, or made its adoption a matter of subsequent legislation, was inoperative until Congress should admit the State to representation.

Even the appearance of any wish to dictate terms on which the State would consent to what was already an accomplished fact should be avoided. The true policy between the two governments was one of mutual confidence. Whether or not Mississippi had the right to declare itself an alien to the Government of the United States was for the United States to decide, but that she did it was a fact; so far as individual citizens were concerned, they were lost in the responsibility which the State assumed. The resistance which the southern people made to coercion had been so formidable they compelled the United States to recognize them as belligerents, by the cartel, by the exchange of prisoners, and by the flag of truce. "Resistance," continued a member, "assumed a dignity above treason. It was a revolution, and must be, and was so regarded by the civilized nations of the world."

But there were other reasons why the abolition of slavery should be made without condition. A condition would amount to a bargain with the abolitionists of the North,those opposed to the rights of the South. It would be equivalent to saying to that party: You desire to place the freed-men of the country, the negroes or mulattoes,

1 Journal, 97-98.

2 Id., 102.

8 Id., 108.

upon an assured civil and political equality with the white men; you have secured their freedom, and now ask that they shall be made an equal. We will agree with you to free them on the condition that you will, on your part, agree that our Representatives be admitted into Congress. The slavery question was settled, but there remained a living and unsettled issue,-the future status of the free negro. The great question was, Who should have jurisdiction over him: the Federal Congress or the people of Mississippi? How should the State secure it? Certainly not by encumbering the abolition amendment with useless conditions. Act boldly and manfully as practical men, and without a doubt the State in the end would secure all it desired. Give the freedmen the right of personal security, of personal liberty and of property, but go no further.1

At the South this indeed was the living issue, whose consequences were feared. If the doctrine was true, that Mississippi by secession had forfeited all her rights, then she could claim nothing as part of the federal Union, and so long as she remained in this condition, the Government of the United States might rightfully deal with the suffrage and with other questions. But the people of Mississippi should be exceedingly circumspect lest they admitted this proposition to be true. Who believed the State would ever consent that the Federal Government should regulate the right of suffrage, and by making the negroes the sole voters in the State reduce the whites to the condition of their former slaves?2

But if the convention proclaimed to the world that the State and people, having forfeited all rights, had none,how could they object to the demands of the advocates of

1 Journal, 109-110.

2 Journal, 129.

186 OPERATION OF EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION.

black suffrage, or oppose any of their schemes ?1 The people of the State should do nothing to embarrass their friends at the North, nor the administration at Washington. Was it true that slavery in Mississippi was not merely dead but "killed four times over;" by the proclamation; by acts of Congress; by the might of the sword; by the opinion of the Christian world? President Lincoln had never attempted to declare the institution of slavery abolished in Mississippi, nor to overthrow the fundamental law on which it rested. He was not dealing with the institution and the laws made in support of it, but with individual slaves. Every individual held as a slave in the State on the third of January, 1863, might have been removed by the laws, or ordinances, declaring them free, but slavery as an institution would not have been abolished. The President's proclamation excepted from its operation some parishes in Louisiana, some counties in Virginia, and the whole of West Virginia and Kentucky. "Notwithstanding the Proclamation," said a member, "I have a full legal right to go to Kentucky, there buy slaves as property and bring them here, and hold them as slaves in Mississippi.2 Abolition of the institution of slavery could be made only by a sovereign State."

The Thirteenth Amendment lately proposed in Congress, and already agreed to by a large number of States,3 might be soon engrafted into the Constitution. The first section abolished slavery throughout the Union. The second conferred extra powers upon Congress, but the two sections gave almost unlimited powers, and at a time when, throughout the country, constitutional restrictions were not regarded as they once were. "I fear excessively,"

1 Id., 130.

2 Journal, 133.

By twenty-three, at this time.

THE NORTH AND THE NEGRO.

187 said a member, "that there is hidden away in that last section something that may be destructive to the South. I am not willing to trust men who know nothing of slavery with power to frame a code for the freed-men of Mississippi. I am not willing to trust these men, who have been educated from youth, taught in their schools, from the pulpit, by their public speakers and by their writers, that the white population of the South is a degraded race as compared with our more favored brethren who live in a northern clime; who have been taught also that slavery is odious, that the master is not restrained by feelings of humanity, that it is only interest that guards him in his conduct toward the slave; who, by exciting books, periodicals and speeches, have been led to look upon us as a race of monsters, and by whom the negro, in his ignorance and vice, has assumed a being far superior to what we know him to be." The North painted the good qualities of the negro as its most popular novelist had painted those of the Indian.

But now, exasperated with the South on account of its resistance to Federal authority; hating its people and their peculiar institution, their customs and even their manners, disregarding their rights, who would be willing to trust to the fanatics of the North to form a code that should govern the freedmen of the State of Mississippi? Would it not make residence in the State impossible for a white man?1 Congress would thus have power to fix the political status of the freedmen, to put them on an equality with the whites by giving them the right to vote and to control the State. Might not the time come when it would no longer be a question with the whites of Mississippi whether they could remain in the State? It was possible that, at the coming session of Congress, an amendment to

1 Journal, 137-138.

188

THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO.

the Constitution might be proposed giving to Congress the power to regulate the political condition of the negro. The State was willing to abolish slavery, but it should be allowed to fix the moment when emancipation should take place. Congress had no right to demand more than a free State constitution. Every day public affairs in the South were growing worse. Its people were more directly interested in the negro question than those of the North; though these were disposed to take the settlement of the question into their own hands.1

Meanwhile other Gulf States were taking action. Alabama and South Carolina convened in September;2 North Carolina, Georgia and Florida in October; Texas de

1 Journal, 138-139.

2 Journal of the Proceedings of the Convention of the State of Alabama, held in the city of Montgomery, on Tuesday, September 12-28, 1865; Benjamin Fitzpatrick, President of the convention; William H. Osborne, Secretary of the convention; W. W. Screws, Assistant Secretary of the convention, Montgomery; Gibson & Whitfield, State Printers, 1865; 80 pages.

Journal of the Convention of the People of South Carolina, held in Columbus, South Carolina (September 13-27), 1865, together with the Ordinances, Reports, Resolutions, etc. Published by Order of the Convention, Columbus, South Carolina; J. A. Selby, Printer to the Convention, 1865; 216 pages.

8 Journal of the Convention of the State of North Carolina at its Session of 1865 (October 2-19), 94 pages; 111, Raleigh; Cannon & Holden, Printers to the Convention, 1865: or Executive Documents, Convention and Sessions, 1865; Constitution of North Carolina with Amendments, Ordinances and Resolutions passed by the Convention, Session 1865; Raleigh; Cannon & Holden, Printers to the State, 1865. Message of Provisional Governor Holden to the Convention, 3 pp. Report of Public Treasurer to the Convention, 108-111 pp. Report of Superintendent of Insane Asylum, 12 pp. Report of Superintendent of Deaf and Dumb and Blind Asylum, 8 pp. Constitution of the State of North Carolina with Amendments, 38 pp. Ordinances and Resolutions passed by the Convention, Session 1865; 40 pp. Journal of the Proceedings of the Convention of the People of Georgia, held in Milledgeville,