“You are not without some judicial authority. As much
as ten months ago I heard Judge Ware[166] express the
opinion that the Union troops would prevail. He then said
he was in favor of coercion,--that he would subjugate the
Rebel States, and, taking them at their word, he would
not acknowledge them at once as States, but would govern
them as conquered provinces, till they were fit to govern
themselves.”
Elizur Wright, the early and constant Abolitionist, wrote from
Boston:--
“Your Resolutions are _the very thing_. Had they been
passed at the extra session, the war would have been over
before now. They, or something to the same effect, must
be passed before spring opens, or we are lost. Victories,
without this _law_ of the _conquest_, cannot save us. Quite
the reverse. I beg you to press the resolutions with any
amount of animosity or violence, and to know that all that
is alive at the North will sustain you.
“There are thousands ready to see the present Government
blotted out in blood and chaos rather than see the old
curse reinstated. On us, not on our children! There has
been fooling enough. Heaven bless you!”
Rev. George C. Beckwith, Secretary of the American Peace
Society, wrote from Boston:--
“I had some difficulty for a time about your _Territorial_
views; but I am coming fully to the conclusion that we must
deal with all rebellion in some such way, before the South
can be brought to any terms. We must have and keep them all
in our grasp, until they prove themselves, by their good
behavior, fit to come again into the Union.”
Charles Husband, an intelligent citizen, whose correspondence
was always valuable, wrote from Taunton, Massachusetts:--
“I have to thank you for a copy of your Resolutions, and
perhaps you will not deem me intrusive, if I wish you a
hearty God-speed in the work you have undertaken,--a work
the successful accomplishment of which is large enough to
fill the measure of the highest ambition,--a work which
will redeem the nation from its low estate, which asserts
the nation’s sovereignty and self-existence, instead of
‘borrowing leave to be,’--which demands for the nation the
paramount allegiance of every inhabitant of its territory,
and sweeps away every institution which interposes itself
between the nation and that allegiance,--which calls the
Government from being the minister of oppression and the
mere dispenser of patronage, to take upon itself the high
purposes and duties for which ‘governments are instituted
among men,’--which transmutes four millions of chattels
into men.
“Allow me to suggest (although it has not, probably,
escaped your notice), that the constitutional requirement,
that every legislative, executive, and judicial officer
in the States shall be sworn to the support of the
Constitution of the United States, leaves the whole of the
Rebel territory without a civil officer whom the Government
can recognize, as every such pretended officer is just as
much a usurper in the eye of the Constitution as Jefferson
Davis himself.”