American system.

THE EARLY STRUGGLES OF PARTIES,

In the Declaration of each state, independently of the state govIndependence the provinces declare them- ernments, after the project had been framed. selves "free and independent states," but the men of those days knew that the word "sovereign" was a term of feudal origin. When their connection with a time-honored feudal monarchy was abruptly severed, the word "sovereign" had no meaning for us. A sovereign is one who acknowledges no superior, who possesses the highest authority: without control, who is supreme in power. How could any one state of the United States claim such characteristics at all, least

of all after its inhabitants, in their primary

assemblies, had voted to submit themselves, without limitation of time, to a constitution which was declared supreme? The only intelligible source of power in a country beginning its history de novo after a revolution, in a land never subjected to military or feudal conquest, is the will of the people of the whole land as expressed by a majority. At the present moment, unless the Southern revolution shall prove successful, the United States Government is a fact, an established authority. In the period between 1783 and 1787 we were in chaos. In May of 1787 the Convention met in Philadelphia, and, after some months' deliberation, adopted with unprecedented unanimity the project of the great law, which, so soon as it should be accepted by the people, was to be known as the Constitution of the United States.

THE GOVERNMENT NOT A COMPACT.

There had always been two parties in the country during the brief but pregnant period between the abjuration of British authority and the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. There was a party advocating state rights and local self-government in its largest sense, and a party favoring a more consolidated and national government. The National or Federal party triumphed in the strenuously supported and bitterly opposed adoption of the new government. It was on exactly the same grounds. Its friends and foes both agreed that it had put an end to the system of confederacy. Whether it were an advantageous or a noxious change, all agreed that the thing had been done.

"In all our deliberations," says the letter accompanying and recommending the Constitution to the people, "we kept steadily in view that which appeared to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, safety, perhaps our national existence."―Journal of the Convention, 1 Story, 368.

And an eloquent opponent denounced the project for the very same reason :—

"That this is a consolidated government," said Henry, "is demonstrably clear. The language is we the people' instead of 'we the states.' It must be one great consoliall the states." dated national government of the people of

It was not a compact. Who ever heard of a compact to which there were no parties, or who ever heard of a compact made by a sinAnd the Supreme Court of the United gle party with himself? Yet the name of States, after the government had been esno state is mentioned in the whole docu-tablished, held this language in an impor"Gibbons v. Ogden : ment; the states themselves are only mentioned to receive commands or prohibitions, and the "people of the United States" is the single party by whom alone the instrument is executed.

The Constitution was not drawn up by the states, it was not promulgated in the name of the states, it was not ratified by the states. The states never acceded to it, and possess no power to secede from it. It "was ordained and established" over the states by a power superior to the states-by the people of the whole land in their aggregate capacity, acting through conventions of delegates expressly chosen for the purpose within

tant case,

"It has been said that the states were sovereign, were completely independent, and were connected with each other by a league. This is true. But when these allied sovereignties converted their league into a government, when they converted their Congress of ambassadors into a legislature, empowered to enact laws, the whole character in which the states appear underwent a change."

There was never a disposition in any quarter in the early days of our constitutional history to deny this great fundamental principle of the Republic.

"In the most elaborate expositions of

the Constitution by its friends," says Justice | all former Federal governments, such as the Story, "its character as a permanent form Amphictyonic, Achæan, and Lycian Confedof government, as a fundamental law, as a eracies, and the Germanic, Helvetic, Hansupreme rule, which no state was at liberty seatic and Dutch Republics, is that they were to disregard, to suspend, or to annul, was sovereignties over sovereignties. The first constantly admitted and insisted upon."- effort to relieve the people of the country 1 Story, 325. from this state of national degradation and ruin came from Virginia. The general convention afterwards met at Philadelphia in May, 1787. The plan was submitted to a convention of delegates chosen by the people at large in each state for assent and ratification. Such a measure was laying the

The fears of its opponents, then, were that the new system would lead to a strong, to an over-centralized government. The fears of its friends were that the central power of theory would prove inefficient to cope with the local, or state forces, in prac-polity where alone they ought to be laidtice. The experience of the last thirty years on the broad consent of the people."-1 and the catastrophe of the present year, have Kent, 225. shown which class of fears were the more reasonable.

OPINIONS OF THE FATHERS.

Had the Union thus established in 1787 been a confederacy, it might have been argued, with more or less plausibility, that the states which peaceably acceded to it, might at pleasure peaceably secede from it. It is none the less true that such a proceeding would have stamped the members of the Convention-Washington, Madison, Jay, Hamilton, and their colleagues-with utter incompetence; for nothing can be historically more certain than that their object was to extricate us from the anarchy to which that principle had brought us.

"However gross a heresy it may be," says the Federalist recommending the new Constitution, "to maintain that a party to a compact has a right to revoke that compact, the doctrine has had respectable advocates. The possibility of such a question shows the necessity of laying the foundation of our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people."

Certainly the most venerated expounders of the Constitution-Jay, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, Story, Webster-were of opinion that the intention of the Convention to establish a permanent consolidated government, a single commonwealth, had been completely successful.

"The great and fundamental defect of the confederation of 1781," says Chancellor Kent, "which led to its eventual overthrow, was that, in imitation of all former confederacies, it carried the decrees of the Federal Council to the states in their sovereign capacity. The great and incurable defect of

foundations of the fabric of our national

It is true that the consent of the people was given by the inhabitants voting in each state; but in what other conceivable way could the people of the whole country have voted ? 66 They assembled in the several states," says Story; "but where else could they assemble ? "

SECESSION A RETURN TO CHAOS.

Secession is, in brief, the return to chaos from which we emerged three-quarters of a century since. No logical sequence can be more perfect. If one state has a right to secede to-day, asserting what it calls its sovereignty, another may, and probably will, do the same to-morrow, a third on the next day, and so on, until there are none left to secede from. Granted the premises that each state may peaceably secede from the Union, it follows that a county may peaceably secede from a state, and a town from a county, until there is nothing left but a horde of individuals all seceding from each other. The theory that the people of a whole country in their aggregate capacity are supreme is intelligible; and it has been a fact, also, in America for seventy years. But it is impossible to show, if the people of a state be sovereign, that the people of a county, or of a village, and the individuals of the village, are not equally sovereign, and justified in "resuming their sovereignty" when their interest or their caprice seems to impel them. The process of disintegration brings back the community to barbarism, precisely as its converse has built up commonwealths-whether empires, kingdoms, or republics-out of original barbarism.

Established authority, whatever the theory of its origin, is a fact. It should never

be lightly or capriciously overturned. They ment itself; it supposes dismemberment who venture on the attempt should weigh without violating the principles of Union; it well the responsibility that is upon them. supposes opposition to law without crime; Above all, they must expect to be arraigned it supposes the violation of oaths without responsibility; it supposes the total overthrow of government without revolution."

for their deeds before the tribunal of the civilized world and of future ages-a court of last appeal, the code of which is based on the Divine principles of right and reason, which are dispassionate and eternal. No man, on either side of the Atlantic, with Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins, will dispute the right of a people or of any portion of a people to rise against oppression, to demand redress of grievances, and in case of denial of justice to take up arms to vindicate the sacred principle of liberty. Few Englishmen or Americans will deny that the source of government is the consent of the governed, or that every nation has the right to govern itself according to its will. When the silent consent is changed to fierce remonstrance the revolution is impending.

REBELLION NOT REVOLUTION.

The right of revolution is indisputable.

It is written on the whole record of our race.

THE FOUNDERS OF THE COMMONWEALTH.

The men who had conducted the American people through a long and fearful revolution were the founders of the new commonwealth which permanently superseded the subverted authority of the Crown. They placed the foundations on the unbiassed, untrammelled consent of the people. They were sick of leagues, of petty sovereignties, of governments which could not govern a single individual. The framers of the Constitution, which has now endured three-quarters of a century, and under which the nation has made a material and intellectual progress never surpassed in history, were not such triflers as to be ignorant of the consequences of their own acts. The Constitution which they offered, and which the people adopted as its own, talked not of sovereign states-spoke not the word confederBritish and American history is made up acy. In the very preamble to the instruof rebellion and revolution. Many of the ment are inserted the vital words which show crowned kings were rebels or usurpers. its character. "We, the people of the United Hampden, Pym, and Oliver Cromwell; States, to ensure a more perfect union, and Washington, Adams, and Jefferson-all were to secure the blessings of liberty for ourrebels. It is no word of reproach. But these men all knew the work they had set themselves to do. They never called their rebellion "peaceable secession." They were sustained by the consciousness of right when they overthrew established authority, but they meant to overthrow it. They meant rebellion, civil war, bloodshed, infinite suffering for themselves and their whole generation, for they accounted them welcome substitutes for insulted liberty and violated right. There can be nothing plainer, then, than the American right of revolution. But, then, it should be called revolution. “Secession, as a revolutionary right,” said Daniel Webster in the Senate, nearly thirty years ago, in words that now sound prophetic

selves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution." Sic volo, sic jubeo. It is the language of a sovereign solemnly speaking to the world. It is the promulgation of a great law, the norma agendi of a new commonwealth. It is no compact.

"A compact," says Blackstone, " is a promdirected to us. ise proceeding from us. Law is a command is, We will or will not do this: that of a law The language of a compact is, Thou shalt or shalt not do it."-1 B. 38, 44, 45.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE CONSTITUTION.

And this is, throughout, the language of the Constitution. Congress shall do this; the President shall do that; the states shall not exercise this or that power. Witness, "Is intelligible. As a right to be pro- for example, the important clauses by which claimed in the midst of civil commotions, and the "sovereign" states are shorn of all the asserted at the head of armies, I can understand it. But as a practical right, existing great attributes of sovereignty-no state under the Constitution, and in conformity shall coin money, nor emit bills of credit, with its provisions, it seems to be nothing nor pass ex post facto laws, nor laws impairbut an absurdity, for it supposes resistance ing the obligation of contracts, nor mainto government under authority of govern- tain armies and navies, nor grant letters of

marque, nor make compacts with other states, nor hold intercourse with foreign powers, nor grant titles of nobility; and that most significant phrase, "this Constitution, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land."

Could language be more imperial? Could the claim to state "sovereignty" be more completely disposed of at a word? How can that be sovereign, acknowledging no superior, supreme, which has voluntarily accepted a supreme law from something which it acknowledges as superior?

against the right of secession. How could it do so? The people created a constitution over the whole land, with certain defined, accurately enumerated powers, and among these were all the chief attributes of sovereignty. It was forbidden to a state to coin money, to keep armies and navies, to make compacts with other states, to hold intercourse with foreign nations, to oppose the authority of the Government. To do any one of these things is to secede, for it would be physically impossible to do any one of them without secession. It would have been puerile for the Constitution to say formally to each state, "Thou shalt not secede." The Constitution, being the supreme law, being perpetual, and having expressly forbidden to the states those acts without which secession is an impossibility, would have been wanting in dignity had it used such superfluous phraseology. This Constitution is supreme, whatever laws a state may enact, says the organic law. Was it necessary to add, "and no state shall enact a law of secession"? To add to a great statute, in which the sovereign authority of the land declares its will, a phrase such as "and be it further enacted that the said law shall not be violated," would scarcely seem to strengthen the statute.

The Constitution is perpetual, not provisional or temporary. It is made for all time -"for ourselves and our posterity." It is absolute within its sphere. "This Constitution shall be the supreme law of the land, any thing in the constitution or laws of a state to the contrary notwithstanding." Of what value, then, is a law of a state declaring its connection with the Union dissolved? The Constitution remains supreme, and is bound to assert its supremacy till overpowered by force. The use of force-of armies and navies of whatever strength-in order to compel obedience to the civil and constitutional authority, is not "wicked war," is not civil war, is not war at all. So long as it exists the Government is obliged to put forth its strength when assailed. The President, who has taken an oath before God and man to maintain the Constitution and laws, is perjured if he yields the Constitution and PROVISIONS FOR AMENDMENT. laws to armed rebellion without a struggle. Provisions were made for the amendment He knows nothing of states. Within the of the Constitution from time to time, and it sphere of the United States' Government he was intended that those provisions should deals with individuals only, citizens of the be stringent. A two-thirds vote in both great Republic, in whatever portion of it they Houses of Congress, and a ratification in may happen to live. He has no choice but three-quarters of the whole number of states, to enforce the laws of the Republic wherever are conditions only to be complied with in they may be resisted. When he is overpow- grave emergencies. But the Constitution ered the Government ceases to exist. The made no provision for its own dissolution, Union is gone, and Massachusetts, Rhode and, if it had done so, it would have been Island, and Ohio are as much separated from a proceeding quite without example in hiseach other as they are from Georgia or Lou- tory. A constitution can only be subverted isiana. Anarchy has returned upon us. by revolution, or by foreign conquest of the The dismemberment of the commonwealth is complete. We are again in the chaos of 1785.

WHY THE CONSTITUTION DOES NOT PROVIDE
FOR SECESSION.

But it is sometimes asked why the Constitution did not make a special provision

It was accordingly enacted that new states might be admitted; but no permission was given for a state to sccede.

land. The revolution may be the result of a successful rebellion. A peaceful revolution is also conceivable in the case of the United States. The same power which established the Constitution may justly destroy it. The people of the whole land may meet, by delegates, in a great national convention, as they did in 1787, and declare that the

WHAT IS REBELLION?

Constitution no longer answers the purpose | monwealth thus designated is a unit, "e for which it was ordained; that it no longer pluribus unum." The Union alone is clothed can secure the blessings of liberty for the with imperial attributes; the Union alone is people in present and future generations, and known and recognized in the family of nathat it is therefore forever abolished. When tions; the Union alone holds the purse and that project has been submitted again to the sword, regulates foreign intercourse, imthe people voting in their primary assem- poses taxes on foreign commerce, makes blies, not influenced by fraud or force, the war, and concludes peace. The armies, the revolution is lawfully accomplished and the navies, the militia, belong to the Union alone, Union is no more. and the President is commander-in-chief of all. No state can keep troops or fleets. What man in the civilized world has not Such a proceeding is conceivable, although heard of the United States? What man in attended with innumerable difficulties and England can tell the names of all the indi- . dangers. But these are not so great as vidual states? And yet, with hardly a those of the civil war into which the action superficial examination of our history and of the seceding states has plunged the coun- our Constitution, men talk gably about a try. The division of the national domain confederacy, a compact, a copartnership, and and other property, the navigation and police of the great rivers, the arrangement and fortification of frontiers, the transit of the isthmus, the mouth of the Mississippi, the control of the Gulf of Mexico, these are significant phrases which have an appalling sound; for there is not one of them that does not contain the seeds of war. In any separation, however accomplished, these difficulties must be dealt with, but there would seem less hope of arriving at a peaceful settlement of them now that the action of istence. the seceding states has been so precipitate and lawless. For a single state, one after Englishmen themselves live in a united another, to resume those functions of sover-empire; but if the kingdom of Scotland eignty which it had unconditionally abdicated when its people ratified the Constitution of 1787, to seize forts, arsenals, customhouses, post-offices, mints, and other valuable property of the Union, paid for by the treasure of the Union, was not the exercise of a legal function, but it was rebellion, treason, and plunder.

THE UNION CLOTHED WITH IMPERIAL
ATTRIBUTES.

It is strange that Englishmen should find difficulty in understanding that the United States' Government is a nation among the nations of the earth; a constituted authority, which may be overthrown by violence, as may be the fate of any state, whether kingdom or republic, but which is false to the people if it does not its best to preserve them from the horrors of anarchy, even at the cost of blood. The "United States " happens to be a plural title, but the com

the right of a state to secede at pleasure, not knowing that by admitting such loose phraseology and such imaginary rights, we should violate the first principles of our political organization, should fly in the face of our history, should trample under foot the teachings of Jay, Hamilton, Washington, Marshall, Madison, Dane, Kent, Story, and Webster, and, accepting only the dogmas of Mr. Calhoun as infallible, surrender forever our national laws and our national ex

A PARALLEL.

should secede, should seize all the national property, forts, arsenals, and public treasure on its soil, organize an army, send forth foreign ministers to Louis Napoleon, the Emperor of Austria, and other powers, issue invitations to all the pirates of the world to prey upon English commerce, screening their piracy from punishment by the banner of Scotland, and should announce its intention of planting that flag upon Buckingham Palace, it is probable that a blow or two would be struck to defend the national honor and the national existence, without fear that the civil war would be denounced as wicked and fratricidal. Yet it would be difficult to show that the State of Florida, for example, a Spanish province, purchased for national purposes some forty years ago by the United States' Government for several millions, and fortified and furnished with navy-yards for national uses at a national expense of many more millions, and numbering at this mo