Some Objections considered.--The New States.--Acquired
Territory.--Allegiance, false and true.--Difference between
Nullification and Secession.--Secession a Peaceable Remedy.--No
Appeal to Arms.--Two Conditions noted.
It would be only adding to a superabundance of testimony to quote
further from the authors of the Constitution in support of the
principle, unquestioned in that generation, that the people who
granted--that is to say, of course, the people of the several
States--might resume their grants. It will require but few words to
dispose of some superficial objections that have been made to the
application of this doctrine in a special case.
It is sometimes said that, whatever weight may attach to principles
founded on the sovereignty and independence of the original thirteen
States, they can not apply to the States of more recent
origin--constituting now a majority of the members of the Union--because
these are but the offspring or creatures of the Union, and must of
course be subordinate and dependent.
This objection would scarcely occur to any instructed mind, though it
may possess a certain degree of specious plausibility for the untaught.
It is enough to answer that the entire equality of the States, in every
particular, is a vital condition of their union. Every new member that
has been admitted into the partnership of States came in, as is
expressly declared in the acts for their admission, on a footing of
perfect equality in every respect with the original members. This
equality is as complete as the equality, before the laws, of the son
with the father, immediately on the attainment by the former of his
legal majority, without regard to the prior condition of dependence and
tutelage. The relations of the original States to one another and to the
Union can not be affected by any subsequent accessions of new members,
as the Constitution fixes those relations permanently, and furnishes the
normal standard which is applicable to all. The Boston memorial to
Congress, referred to in a foregoing chapter, as prepared by a committee
with Mr. Webster at its head, says that the new States "are universally
considered as admitted into the Union upon the same footing as the
original States, and as possessing, in respect to the Union, the same
rights of _sovereignty, freedom, and independence_, as the other
States."
But, with regard to States formed of territory acquired by purchase from
France, Spain, and Mexico, it is claimed that, as they were bought by
the United States, they belong to the same, and have no right to
withdraw at will from an association the property which had been
purchased by the other parties.
Happy would it have been if the equal rights of the people of _all_ the
States to the enjoyment of territory acquired by the common treasure
could have been recognized at the proper time! There would then have
been no secession and no war.
As for the sordid claim of ownership of States, on account of the money
spent for the land which they contain--I can understand the ground of a
claim to some interest in the soil, so long as it continues to be public
property, but have yet to learn in what way the United States ever
became purchaser of the _inhabitants_ or of their political rights.
Any question in regard to property has always been admitted to be matter
for fair and equitable settlement, in case of the withdrawal of a State.
The treaty by which the Louisiana territory was ceded to the United
States expressly provided that the inhabitants thereof should be
"admitted, as soon as possible, according to the principles of the
Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages,
and immunities of citizens of the United States."[104] In all other
acquisitions of territory the same stipulation is either expressed or
implied. Indeed, the denial of the right would be inconsistent with the
character of American political institutions.
Another objection made to the right of secession is based upon obscure,
indefinite, and inconsistent ideas with regard to _allegiance_. It
assumes various shapes, and is therefore somewhat difficult to meet,
but, as most frequently presented, may be stated thus: that the citizen
owes a double allegiance, or a divided allegiance--partly to his State,
partly to the United States: that it is not possible for either of these
powers to release him from the allegiance due to the other: that the
State can no more release him from his obligations to the Union than the
United States can absolve him from his duties to his State. This is the
most moderate way in which the objection is put. The extreme
centralizers go further, and claim that allegiance to the Union, or, as
they generally express it, to _the Government_--meaning thereby the
Federal Government--is paramount, and the obligation to the State only
subsidiary--if, indeed, it exists at all.
This latter view, if the more monstrous, is at least the more consistent
of the two, for it does not involve the difficulty of a divided
allegiance, nor the paradoxical position in which the other places the
citizen, in case of a conflict between his State and the other members
of the Union, of being necessarily a rebel against the General
Government or a traitor to the State of which he is a citizen.
As to _true_ allegiance, in the light of the principles which have been
established, there can be no doubt with regard to it. The primary,
paramount allegiance of the citizen is due to the sovereign only. That
sovereign, under our system, is the people--the people of the State to
which he belongs--the people who constituted the State government which
he obeys, and which protects him in the enjoyment of his personal
rights--the people who alone (as far as he is concerned) ordained and
established the Federal Constitution and Federal Government--the people
who have reserved to themselves sovereignty, which involves the power to
revoke all agencies created by them. The obligation to support the State
or Federal Constitution and the obedience due to either State or Federal
Government are alike derived from and dependent on the allegiance due to
this sovereign. If the sovereign abolishes the State government and
ordains and establishes a new one, the obligation of allegiance requires
him to transfer his obedience accordingly. If the sovereign withdraws
from association with its confederates in the Union, the allegiance of
the citizen requires him to follow the sovereign. Any other course is
rebellion or treason--words which, in the cant of the day, have been so
grossly misapplied and perverted as to be made worse than unmeaning. His
relation to the Union arose from the membership of the State of which he
was a citizen, and ceased whenever his State withdrew from it. He can
not owe obedience--much less allegiance--to an association from which
his sovereign has separated, and thereby withdrawn him.
Every officer of both Federal and State governments is required to take
an oath to support the Constitution, a compact the binding force of
which is based upon the sovereignty of the States--a sovereignty
necessarily carrying with it the principles just stated with regard to
allegiance. Every such officer is, therefore, virtually sworn to
maintain and support the sovereignty of all the States.
Military and naval officers take, in addition, an oath to obey the
lawful orders of their superiors. Such an oath has never been understood
to be eternal in its obligations. It is dissolved by the death,
dismissal, or resignation of the officer who takes it; and such
resignation is not a mere optional right, but becomes an imperative duty
when continuance in the service comes to be in conflict with the
ultimate allegiance due to the sovereignty of the State to which he
belongs.
A little consideration of these plain and irrefutable truths would show
how utterly unworthy and false are the vulgar taunts which attribute
"treason" to those who, in the late secession of the Southern States,
were loyal to the only sovereign entitled to their allegiance, and which
still more absurdly prate of the violation of oaths to support "_the
Government_," an oath which nobody ever could have been legally required
to take, and which must have been ignorantly confounded with the
prescribed oath to support the Constitution.
Nullification and secession are often erroneously treated as if they
were one and the same thing. It is true that both ideas spring from the
sovereign right of a State to interpose for the protection of its own
people, but they are altogether unlike as to both their extent and the
character of the means to be employed. The first was a temporary
expedient, intended to restrain action until the question at issue could
be submitted to a convention of the States. It was a remedy which its
supporters sought to apply within the Union; a means to avoid the last
resort--separation. If the application for a convention should fail, or
if the State making it should suffer an adverse decision, the advocates
of that remedy have not revealed what they proposed as the next
step--supposing the infraction of the compact to have been of that
character which, according to Mr. Webster, dissolved it.
Secession, on the other hand, was the assertion of the inalienable right
of a people to change their government, whenever it ceased to fulfill
the purposes for which it was ordained and established. Under our form
of government, and the cardinal principles upon which it was founded, it
should have been a peaceful remedy. The withdrawal of a State from a
league has no revolutionary or insurrectionary characteristic. The
government of the State remains unchanged as to all internal affairs. It
is only its external or confederate relations that are altered. To term
this action of a sovereign a "rebellion," is a gross abuse of language.
So is the flippant phrase which speaks of it as an appeal to the
"arbitrament of the sword." In the late contest, in particular, there
was no appeal by the seceding States to the arbitrament of arms. There
was on their part no invitation nor provocation to war. They stood in an
attitude of self-defense, and were attacked for merely exercising a
right guaranteed by the original terms of the compact. They neither
tendered nor accepted any challenge to the wager of battle. The man who
defends his house against attack can not with any propriety be said to
have submitted the question of his right to it to the arbitrament of
arms.
Two moral obligations or restrictions upon a seceding State certainly
exist: in the first place, not to break up the partnership without good
and sufficient cause; and, in the second, to make an equitable
settlement with former associates, and, as far as may be, to avoid the
infliction of loss or damage upon any of them. Neither of these
obligations was violated or neglected by the Southern States in their
secession.
[Footnote 104: Ray's "Louisiana Digest," vol. i, p. 24.]