of the desperate means employed to mislead the uninformed.

There is, as I have shown, no colour of right to secede in even any of the thirteen original states. Their assertion of such right is not, however, so startling as in the case of the states since admitted. Its assertion by them is audacious in its effrontery. They have,

with the exception of Texas, been formed out of territory every inch of which was owned, and most of which was bought, by the United States; and Texas itself can hardly be deemed an exception. Speaking generally, the mode of forming a state is this-A portion of the territory of the United States is separated from the rest by metes and bounds, is named, and formed into what we call a territory. The United States appoints a governor to this territory, and enacts its laws, or allows the inhabitants of the territory to do so, subject to the supervision of Congress. This condition of things continues, the United States bearing the expenses of the government, protecting the inhabitants from Indian depredations, buying out Indian rights, and in every way promoting its welfare, until it is thought sufficiently populous for self-government, when the United States Congress passes an act, authorizing the people of the territory to meet in convention and frame a constitution for organizing themselves into a state. The people meet by their delegates, form such constitution, and afterwards present it to Congress; and, if approved, the state is admitted on such conditions as Congress chooses to impose. One of these conditions always is, that the lands within the territory, undisposed of, continue to belong to the United States, and that the state will not interfere with the first disposition of them, and will impose thereon no tax, impost, or duty. The new states are, therefore, mere creations of the United States; and, though they are admitted on the footing of the original states, it is by grant from the United States. They never had any power not conferred by Congress; and, therefore, the cant phrase of the seces

sionists, that they are resuming the powers which they had delegated to the general Government, has not even a plausible basis of pretence. They never had any rights as states, except as limited and restricted by the paramount rights of the United States under the constitution. Of the eleven seceding states, six were thus formed out of the territory of the nation; and, as to them, the legal effect of annulling the ordinances constituting them states would be, not to make them independent, but to restore them to the condition of territories of the United States, to be governed by Congress.

The right of secession, if it exists, does so from the moment the state is admitted into the Union. So, one day, a territory containing seventy thousand men, women and children, a hundred and fifty thousand square miles of land, and numerous United States' forts, may be admitted as a state; and, the next, these people may secede, declare themselves separated from the United States, and independent thereof, and carry with them all the land, forts, post routes, and other property of the United States, dismember its territory, block the passage between loyal states, render necessary frontier custom-houses and defences, and destroy the unity and harmony of the system of government. Florida, one of the seceding states, affords a striking illustration of the brigand character of the secession movement. It was owned by Spainlay on our south-eastern frontier-a peninsula, washed on the east by the Atlantic, and on the south and west by the Gulf of Mexico, to which it formed, with its islands, the most important key. As it was strongly desired by the United States, they fought, and treated, and finally obtained its cession, on payment to Spain of two millions of dollars. The coast-line is at least 700 miles. United States have built on its coast forts and lighthouses at great expense. It was in part occupied by numerous and powerful Indian tribes, which were fiercely and persistently hostile to the United States. In various ways Florida has doubtless cost a hundred and fifty

The

millions of dollars over any income derived from it. Draw a circle of five miles around Union Square in New York, and you inclose more than ten times as many white people as there are in the whole of Florida; and yet the inhabitants of Florida, who have no rights as a state except such as were conferred in the manner I have described, pass an ordinance of secession, and assume to take possession of all the land, forts, lighthouses, and property of the United States, and to declaim against the retention of any such property as a usurpation by the United States, to be overcome if necessary by force! The southern politicians and their subservient northern allies were bent some years ago on buying or stealing Cuba. They had control of the government, and would have given to Spain as much as three hundred millions of dollars for Cuba, if Spain would have sold it. Suppose the purchase made, Cuba paid for, and admitted as a state; she could, the next day, if this right of secession exist, have voted herself out of the Union, and set up for herself as an independent nation. need not say that the admission of such a right by the United States would be to admit that it is a mere sham of a government—a mere show and shadow of a nation, dealing with the world under false pretences; making treaties which there may be no people to keep; and borrowing money which there may be none to make payment of. For, if one state may secede, all may do so severally.

I

The question, then, "Why not let the seceding states go?" may, it seems to me, be very conclusively answered. This government, in suppressing the revolt, is not only reclaiming its stolen property, suppressing insurrection, putting down rebellion, and punishing treason, but is asserting its right and power to be.

I concede that a regularly constituted government may be so oppressively administered as to justify revolt; but it is not necessary to discuss the action of the seceding states in that aspect, as

no pretence worthy a moment's consideration has been urged as a justification of revolution. The utmost effort of the more reputable of the secessionists has been to make a plausible excuse for exercising the assumed right of secession. The fact is, the slaveholding states have had control of the United States' Government for nearly the whole period of its existence. The making of the laws, the negotiation of treaties, the placing and conduct of officials, have been chiefly controlled by them. To a great extent the laws have been judicially expounded under a bias towards proslavery opinions and interests. Slaveholders, or their nominees, have almost exclusively held the office of president. They have had a greatly preponderating influence in the government, and have shaped its action for the most part as they pleased. They have been overruled only when bent on committing some unusual outrage on the rights or conscience of northern men. Indeed, their great outcry, in firing the southern mind, was not in respect to any act done, but as to apprehensions of wrong from the successful president-though he was in every way pledged to guard the rights of the South, and he has never attempted, threatened, or, so far as can be judged, intended or desired to violate any of those rights.

Aside from the bad ambition of the leading southern politicians, the real cause of revolt is the manifest weakening of the power of the slaveholders to subordinate the legislation and administration of the country to the promotion of slavery, and the growing power and coming preponderance of the free North, and its supposed purpose to use that power, so far as it constitutionally may, to restrict slavery within its present enormous territorial limits, and save from its blighting influences the territories now free.

During the revolution, and while the government was forming, there was a common belief throughout the land, north and south, that slavery is wrong. The intellect of the nation was aroused and enlightened, and its conscience touched.

All agreed that slavery ought in some way to be brought to an end. With the invention of the cotton-gin came the means of turning slave labour to greatly increased profit; the love of gain and of power stifled the sentiments of justice; and the purpose was formed to maintain slavery at all hazards. But it could not be maintained by excuses. It was especially hard to admit slaveholding to be wrong, yet insist on its extension; so a new doctrine was started, of which Mr. Calhoun was the great advocate that it was the right and duty of the white man, that it was just and kind to the black man, to hold the negro in bondage. This gave to the slaveholder a weapon in place of a shield, and he was able consistently to become aggressive. The dogma of the righteousness of slavery lies at the basis of the late revolt. Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederate States, said, in a speech at the seat of the new government, intended to be an exposition of the superiority of the Constitution of the Confederate States, "The prevailing ideas enter"tained by Mr. Jefferson and most of "the leading statesmen at the time of "the formation of the old constitution "were, that the enslavement of the "African was in violation of the law of "nature that it was wrong in principle, "socially, morally, and politically. . . . "Those ideas, however, were fundamen"tally wrong. They rested on the "assumption of the equality of races. "This was an error. It was a sandy "foundation for a government to be "built upon; and, when the 'storm came "and the wind blew, it fell.' Our new 66 government is founded upon exactly "the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal "to the white man-that slavery, sub"ordination to the superior race, is his "natural and normal condition. This 66 our new government is the first in the history of the world based upon this "great physical, philosophical, and moral "truth."

...

For at least thirty-five years the proud, plucky, but pestilent state of South

Carolina has been educating the Southern mind in this doctrine, and preparing it to adopt any means necessary to make it the ruling principle of the Government. If the Free States could be coaxed or bullied into its support, the Union might stand; if not, it was to be broken. In or out of the Union, the slaveholding dogma of the righteousness of slavery, and the duty of Government to uphold and promote it, must rule.

Leaving out its moral aspects, there is something very fascinating, doubtless, in what may have been the aim of the more ambitious and imaginative of some of the Southern leaders-a vast confederacy of slaveholding states; a grand commonwealth of English-descended lords of the soil, firmly established on the islands and archipelagoes of the Gulf of Mexico and the Carribean Sea-owning, too, all the continent which sweeps the surrounding shores, and extending along the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, as far as cotton, sugar, coffee, and other tropical products could be grown-with a vast slave population, to be increased as occasion might require, from Africa, working for their lords, absolutely and for ever subject to their will;—the master race the brain and guide, the abject race the muscle, of this new Arcadia!

The doctrine of nullification, insisted on in President Jackson's time, as a state right, contained in it the seeds of the modern doctrine of secession.

The

right to declare any law of the United States inoperative within the state involves the right of declaring all its laws inoperative. During Jackson's Presidency, South Carolina put itself in hostility to the United States, claiming to nullify within its borders an act of Congress; but Jackson was not a man to be trifled with, and he quickly suppressed the attempt to prevent the execution of the laws. In the usual hyperbolical style of Western vehemence, he threatened that, if it proceeded, he would hang the leader Calhoun higher than Haman. All knew that he was a man who would so far execute his threat as to hang him high enough to render it necessary to bury

him; and so nullification, with a little bluster, shrank out of sight. But it was ever afterwards hatching, and has now brought forth its fearful progeny. Unfortunately, secession came forth during the presidency of Mr. Buchanan-a man destitute of moral courage, and of feeble moral principles. It grew into vast proportions under his eyes, and became of a sudden a great power in the land. A conspiracy was, as is now evident, formed-including governors of states, senators, representatives, army and navy officers, Cabinet ministers, and many of their chief clerks, a great proportion of whom were under oath to support the Constitution of the United States, were receiving its pay, and bound by every consideration of honour and honesty to be loyal the object of which was to destroy the Government they had sworn to support. Floyd, the secretary of war, so weakened the garrisons, and so distributed the forces, that the forts, forces, arms, ammunition, and other property of the United States, should be capable of easy seizure. From senators, representatives, and officials, still forming component parts of the United States' Government, the orders to make such seizures went forth from the city of Washington. The orders were executed, and the nation for a time paralyzed. It is now clear that the split in the democratic party, and the consequent election of Lincoln, was part of the plan. They were ready for the revolt, except that they lacked the excuse; and for that Lincoln's election was necessary. They aided to the utmost of their power to secure that election by distributing the residue of the votes among three candidates.

Want of indignation at such conduct. would show want of virtue. The desire to disappoint and punish such treachery and disloyalty is the first impulse of every honest and honourable man. The very force and activity of this impulse is, it must be admitted, apt to mislead the judgment, and draw the attention from what is, after all, the true question. Is it not best to let the slaveholding states go? However often I put the

question to myself-and its recurrence doubtless implies some want of reliance on my conclusions-I come to the answer that it is not. In attempting to vindicate their rights, and thwart traitors, the North is in the line of duty. In case of doubt, that should turn the scale; but some things are clear enough, which would render such acquiescence unwise. The advantages intended to be secured by the formation and extension of the United States' Government would be in a great measure lost. The unity of its territory would be destroyed. It would not own a foot of territory on the Gulf of Mexico. The mouths of the great Mississippi, the inlet and outlet to a large number of free states and territories, would be held by a foreign nation. The capital would be within gunshot of the Confederate States. There would be a vexed and irritable frontier of more than a thousand miles. The establishment of a strong military government would be a necessity to a slaveholding confederacy, and accord with its temper. Such confederacy would be aggressive. It would seek to possess the islands of the gulf, and all the continent adjacent to it. It would at first covertly, and, as soon as strong enough, openly, promote the slave trade. This state of things would render powerful military and naval establishments necessary to the North. We should have frequent quarrels, and probably not unfrequent wars with our southern neighbours ; but we should, at any rate, be kept continually on guard at enormous expense. It is, it seems to me, no less wise than just to put down this revolt.

But can we do it? It is doubtless an arduous undertaking; but I think we can do it with no greater cost of life and limb than that by which Lombardy was added to Sardinia. We have the long-established Government, with its organization, its prestige, and its relations with foreign powers. We hold almost all the naval power and resources of the country, and command ofthe entire coast. We are much more numerous than the Southerners, have vastly more accumulated wealth,

and productive power, as to all the results of mechanical skill, including munitions of war, many times greater. Northern men are as brave as Southern men, and more industrious, skilful, and persevering. The moral forces are on the side of the North. War, it is true, is a hazardous venture; so much often depends on the skill and genius of a single man. Then, again, the secessionists are fighting for enormous stakestheir lives, their property, their repution, their hopes of the future. If they succeed, they become the rulers of the new Confederation, the founders of a new empire. Their names become historically great in the records of the new commonwealth. If they fail, they become powerless and infamous. They are likely to fight desperately. Still I think that the United States' Government will subdue them. It is greatly the superior power.

Further and this enters largely into the question of both the desirableness and practicability of putting down the revolt-there are in the Southern states a great many persons opposed to it, and who would be glad to see it put down. The conspiracy was wide-spread and was long maturing. The conspirators organized and got control of the State organizations, and of the forces which operate most potently on public opinion and popular impulse. Yet the majority of the seceding states were carried out of the Union against strong opposition, and, for the most part, without giving the people the opportunity of directly approving or disapproving. A few men aming at one object, banded together, well organized and well armed, and prepared to concentrate and act at any given point on the order of a central will, can subdue and awe large unorganized masses, and produce seeming acquiescence, or even seeming unanimity, where great secret dissatisfaction exists. It is clear that the favourers of secession are very numerous; but I doubt if they are even now a majority of all the white inhabitants of the slaveholding states. Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky side with the North,

though the state-organizations of the last two states were in the hands of traitors, who did all they could to carry those states over to the Southern Confederacy. In the face of great danger, and a system of terrorism, Western Virginia and Eastern Tennessee remain loyal. There is, in fact, a tract of hill and mountain, lying medially between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, and stretching through the Southern states, from the Ohio southwards into Northern Georgia and Northern Alabama, inhabited by a hardy, independent race of men, the great bulk of whom are loyal, and will welcome the Government troops as deliverers. This highland tract, when fully occupied, will be like a wedge, splitting the confederates in two. In this connexion it is not to be overlooked that, while at the North the capitalists freely lend to the Government all the money it asks, at the South there is evident reluctance to lend the Confederate Government anything; and that, while the men of the free states rush to enrol themselves for the war in numbers beyond the wants of the Government, there is clear evidence that much coercion is used to man

the southern army. Let the United States' Government disperse the rebel army, arrest the original conspirators, and retake its forts, and the masses will, in my opinion, for the most part gladly declare their allegiance to this Government, which will be immensely strengthened by the dangers it will have over

come.

I have not yet touched upon one subject which has held a conspicuous place in the controversy-that is, the treatment of fugitive slaves. The framers of the constitution intended it to be a charter of freedom. They looked forward to the time when slavery would not exist. But it did in fact exist at that time in many states. If there should be no provision respecting it, a slave escaping from any state would, pursuant to the case of Somersett, by that act become free. This would have led the slave states to encircle their borders by cordons of armed men. To prevent