Vol. II--OCTOBER, 1862.--No. IV.
'THE CONSTITUTION AS IT IS--THE UNION AS IT WAS.'
This has been a pet phrase, in certain quarters, ever since the
rebellion broke out. The men who use it are doubtless well aware of the
prodigious power of such cries adroitly raised. The history of their
influence over the unreflecting masses in all ages would be one of the
most curious chapters in the history of human nature.
The phrase has a grand air. Its words are brave words to conjure with.
It is susceptible of a good and loyal sense. It may mean, restore the
supremacy of the Constitution and the integrity of the Union by crushing
this atrocious rebellion to utter extinction by force of arms. It may
mean that all the revolted States are to be brought back into the Union
and under the authority of the Constitution by military subjugation. It
_may_ mean this, though it is certainly not a short or strong way of
expressing the only thing which patriotic men have now to think of, to
wish done, and to help do; and I do not believe any man of strong, clear
head or right loyal heart would take this way of expressing it. Still,
it may mean this; but if it does not mean this, it means nothing
pertinent to exigency, nothing patriotic, nothing loyal.
But is this what they mean who trade with it now? No--nothing of the
sort. They use it to distract and perplex the public mind; to draw it
off from the one paramount obligation which the times impose upon the
nation--the obligation of saving the national existence by the military
extinction of the rebellion, regardless of all other ends and aims. They
trade upon the popular reverence for the Constitution--that sense of its
sacredness which lies so deep in the heart of the North. They do it to
mislead the honest masses, whose hearts are mainly right, but whose
heads--some of them, but, thank God! not many now--are not so clear to
see the miserable fallacy of its application. They make it a text and
pretext for inveighing against the government, and so weakening its hold
on the popular confidence and support; for raising seditious outcries
against any restriction of the license to talk and print treason--what
they call tyrannical oppression of the freedom of speech and of the
press. They know perfectly well that not a thousandth part of the
toleration which traitorous talking and printing enjoy at the
North--through the extraordinary and amazing leniency of the
Government--is for one moment granted to Union sympathizers by rebel
authorities in the South. They never have a word to say against the way
in which loyalty to the Union is there crushed down by imprisonment,
banishment, confiscation, and hanging. They have never a word to say
against the brutal and fiendish atrocities of cruelty perpetrated there
upon all who are even suspected of Union sentiments. They reserve all
their indignation for the moderate repression which our Administration
has seen fit, in some cases, to apply to traitorous utterances. They
have even risen to the sublime impudence of denouncing it as a monstrous
outrage on the constitutional rights of Northern traitors, that our
Government has declined, in a few instances, to allow the United States
mail to be the agent for transporting and circulating treasonable
newspapers. I have quite lately been edified with the tone of lofty,
indignant scorn with which one of these papers--published in the city of
New-York--cries shame on the Government for refusing to be its carrier;
though no man knows better than the editor that a publication at the
South as much in sympathy with the Union as his is with the rebellion,
would not only not get carried in the rebel mails, but, before
twenty-four hours, would be suppressed, and its editor in prison, or
more probably hung, by the direction or with the approbation of the
rebel authorities; and in such a case, our New-York editor would not
have space for a line to chronicle the fact, or for a word to denounce
it to Northern indignation. But for our Government to decline carrying
his treasonable sheet--that is monstrous! Behold him, a confessor in the
sacred cause of freedom of speech and of the press! _He_ will not
succumb to unconstitutional tyranny! He will continue to print in spite
of Government, and to send his treason through the land by the express
companies, until the millennial day of the restoration of 'the
Constitution _as it is_, the Union _as it was_!'
The men who utter this phrase talk, too, about the constitutional rights
of the rebels--just as if those who are waging war for the overthrow of
the Constitution had any rights under it! Such talk is an outrage on
common-sense and decency. What constitutional rights have rebels in arms
to any thing, but to be fairly tried for treason, to the forfeiture of
their lives, if they escape merited death on the battle-field?
These out-criers for the Constitution and the Union strive also to
confuse the public mind with constitutional questions as to the end or
purpose of the war. What has the Constitution to do with that? What
constitutional object is there for the nation or the Government to have
now in view? This, and this only: the extinction of the rebellion by
force of arms. Conventions, negotiations, concessions to rebels in
arms--even if they were in arms for rights under the Constitution--would
be utterly unconstitutional; much more are they so when the rebels are
in arms not to vindicate constitutional rights, but for the overthrow of
the Constitution, the destruction of the Government, and the
dismemberment of the nation. They must lay down their arms in
unconditional submission before they can be constitutionally treated
with. Any other doctrine would be subversive of the Constitution, of the
principles that lie at its basis, of the principles of all government,
all national existence, and all social order.
The Government may be driven, by the victorious pressure of rebel arms,
to the overwhelming necessity of treating with them. Necessity has no
laws. But until then, to talk of treating with armed rebels is as
treasonable as it is absurd. Until then, there is no other object
allowed by the Constitution, no other obligation imposed by it on the
Government, but the military subjugation of the rebellion. The
Constitution gives the Government this power, and no other--puts upon it
this duty, and no other.
And as to constitutional modes of conducting the war: are the men who
raise questions, and suggest scruples, so stupid as not to know that, so
far as the rebels are concerned, such a way of talking is the sheerest
of all possible absurdities? The war power is a power conferred by the
Constitution; but it is a power which, in face of an enemy, is above all
other constitutional powers. In granting the war power to Government,
the Constitution grants to it, without qualification or limitation, all
the powers necessary and proper to carry on war; this, of course, even
if there were no plain delegation of them. But there is; and the only
laws which limit the constitutional powers of Government in the conduct
of the war, are the laws of war. These laws lie outside of the
Constitution, in the consent and recognition of civilized nations. They
are now the supreme laws. All this, for the sufficient reason that the
constitutional grant of the war power under any other limitation than
the laws of war, would be idle and nugatory; and this for the sufficient
reason that the salvation of the republic is that to which every thing
else must be sacrificed. The constitutional guaranties of State and
personal rights were framed for a condition of union, order, peace--not
for one of secession, rebellion, and war. In such a time, they must all
give way to the supreme necessity of saving the national existence.
Constitution or no Constitution, the nation must not be destroyed. Who
but a fool would question the right of a man to strike a dagger to the
heart of the assassin whose grasp was on his throat, because there is a
law against the private use of deadly weapons? The clutch of a
parricidal rebellion is grappling at the national existence, and what
shall we think of those men who would stay the arm of Government from
stabbing at its vitals by interposing constitutional scruples? Even if
the Constitution did stand in the way, who but a fool or a traitor would
hesitate to go around it or over it to save the national existence?
_Salus reipublicæ suprema lex._ Was the nation made for the
Constitution, or the Constitution for the nation? If both can not stand
together, which shall go down? Will you stick to the Constitution, and
let the nation be destroyed? Any thing more insanely preposterous than
such a putting of the wrong thing foremost, such a preference of the
means to the end, is hard to be imagined.
But the Constitution does not stand in the way. Neither in letter nor in
spirit does it interpose a feather's resistance to the most summary and
effectual extinction of the rebellion. On the contrary, it justifies the
use of all the means sanctioned by the laws of war. It justifies, and,
if need be, demands, the receiving, employing, and arming of all the
loyal inhabitants of the South held in slavery under local laws, whether
by rebel or by loyal masters. What the former might think or say, need
not be asked or cared for; and the latter can not, in loyalty, object to
the taking of their slaves for the defence of the nation, if military
reasons make it needful or wise to do it. _If employed, these slaves
must be freed_, and their masters must receive compensation at the hands
of Government. To this, if their loyalty be any thing but an empty name,
they will consent. If the extinction of slavery should be the ultimate
result, what then? Is slavery so sacred and beneficent, that a
triumphant rebellion and a dismembered country are to be preferred to
its extinction? The loyal people of the North--the great body of the
nation--are getting tired of that conditional Unionism, that Border
State loyalty, which makes a paramount regard to the interests of
slavery the price of adhering to the national cause. Conditional
Unionism--what sort of Unionism is that? Loyalty with a price--what is
such loyalty worth? The very terms imply threats, and involve the
assertion of the very principle of secession itself. To treat with it,
to concede to it, is to admit the principle. It has already cost the
country too dearly to be longer endured. Six hundred millions of dollars
and a hundred thousand lives vainly sacrificed to the foolish policy,
are enough. It helps the cause of rebellion, it paralyzes the arm of
Government. The people have become sternly impatient of it. The sooner
President Lincoln, in his quality of Commander-in-Chief, understands
this, and makes the Border State Unionists understand that every thing
must give way to the necessity of putting an end to the rebellion
forthwith by the employment of all the means which God and nature have
put in our power, the better it will be for him, the better for the
nation, and the better for the Border States themselves, if they are
wise. I think that when firmly told there must be an end to this
conditional Unionism, this loyalty with a price, those States will have
the wisdom to see on which side their real interests lie. But, at all
events, the question should be settled. Better they should go over to
the rebels at once, than prevent the extinction of the rebellion through
their conditional Unionism.
But it is with Northern out-criers for the Constitution and the Union
that the present inquiry is chiefly concerned. These men want the Union
'as it was.' What _was_ it? What was it, in the _only_ thing that is in
their thoughts and wishes when they raise the cry? It was a Union
controlled by the South through alliance with a Northern party styling
itself Democratic. It was the whole power of the Federal Government
wielded for the aggrandizement of slavery, its extension and perpetual
maintenance as an element of political domination. This is what the
Union _was_. This is what these Democrats want again--in order that they
may again enjoy such a share (never an equal one) in the honors and
emoluments of office as their oligarchic masters may allow them. This is
all they think of or desire when they cry for the Union as it was--a
chance for loaves and fishes again at the hands of those who for thirty
years have used them and despised them. They want to be used and
despised again. Hence, though they talk about putting an end to the
rebellion, they want it put an end to only in such a way as shall secure
the restoration of the slave power to its old position, and of
themselves to their old relations with it. This would set them up in
their business again. They are out of business now.
Hence, while Governor Stanly, in North-Carolina, is telling the people
there that the rebellion must be crushed though it involve the
destruction 'of every Southern institution,' and that the maintenance of
the supremacy of the National Government and the integrity of the
national domain is worth more than all the lives and all the property of
rebels of whatever sort; and while Andrew Johnson is declaring the same
thing in Tennessee, these Northern traitors are speaking tenderly of the
rebellion as an 'irregular opposition'--excited and almost justified by
Northern aggressions on Southern rights--which ought to be so met on our
part as not to preclude the South from a return to its ancient
domination. They insist that the struggle shall be conducted with the
least possible 'irritation' of rebel feelings and with a sacred regard
to their slave rights. They bewail the enormities perpetrated by
Congress and the President against the rebels, the abolition of slavery
in the District of Columbia, the receiving and feeding of fugitive
slaves, the employment of negroes as Government teamsters, the repeal in
the Senate of the law prohibiting free negroes to carry the mail, the
legalizing of the testimony of blacks, the attempt 'to create an
Abolition party in the Border States' by the offer of compensation to
the owners in such States as may adopt the policy of emancipation, and
lastly, the Confiscation Act, which takes away the property of rebels
and sets free their slaves. These things they denounce in the bitterest
terms--some of them as 'wounding to the sensibilities of the South,' and
some of them as atrocious outrages on the rights of the rebels,
calculated to drive them to such 'desperation' that they will never
consent, on any entreaty of their Northern friends, to accept their old
position of political control in the 'Union as it was.'
Some of these men talk, indeed, of putting down the rebellion by the
strong arm; but they talk a great deal more of putting down
Abolitionism--which with them means not only hostility to slavery, but
even the disposition to acquiesce in the military necessity of its
extinction. They sometimes go to the length of talking of 'hanging the
secessionists;' but then, you will observe, they always talk of hanging
the 'Abolitionists' along with them. They want them to dangle at the
other end of the same rope. It is easy, however, to perceive that the
hanging of the secessionists is not the emphatic thing--with many not
even the real thing, but only an ebullition of vexation at them for
having spoiled the old Democratic trade--a figurative hanging--often,
indeed, only a rhetorical tub thrown out prudentially to the popular
whale, who might not be quite content to hear them talk of hanging only
on one side: but the hanging of the Abolitionists, there is no mistaking
their feelings about that; there is a hearty smack of malignant relish
on their lips when they speak of it.
These men are as foolish as they are traitorous in their cry for the
Union as it was. The Union 'as it was' is a thing that never can be
again. They say the South wants nothing but guarantee for the security
of its constitutional slave rights--if that had been given they would
never have taken up arms; give them that and they will lay them down.
Nothing more false. Just before the secession of South-Carolina, Pryor
telegraphed from Washington: 'We can get the Crittenden Compromise, but
we don't want it.' 'No matter what compromise the North offers,' said
Mason, 'the South must find a way to defeat it.' These are facts
undeniable and undenied. They demonstrate the falsehood and folly of the
men who talk of bringing the rebels back into the Union by concessions.
The South did not want guarantees; it wanted separation. It determined
to set up an independent slave empire, and no concession you can make
will lead them to abandon their determination. Undo the recent
legislation of Congress, reëstablish slavery in the District of
Columbia, and repeal the prohibition of slavery in the Territories, and
you make the Union 'as it was,' so far as the North is concerned; but
will that bring back the South? No. Go still further, and make the Union
_more_ than 'it was' for them; yield them the principle of the Lemmon
Case, and so allow them to call the roll of their slaves under the
shadow of Bunker Hill, and to convert New-York Battery into a slave-mart
for the convenience of slave-breeding Virginia and the slave-buying Gulf
States; and will these concessions lead the rebels to lay down their
arms and return into the Union? No. They will never lay down their arms
until they are conquered by overwhelming military force. They will never
be in the Union until subjugated. And I think the rebellion will never
be extinguished without extinguishing slavery. Then, and not before,
will the conditions begin to exist of lasting peace and true union
between the South and the North. Then, and not before, will there be
genuine prosperity, a true social order, and a decent civilization in
the South.
And since 'the Union _as it was_' is a thing that never can be again, it
is not worth while to concern ourselves overmuch about 'the Constitution
as _it is_,' so far as those who raise the outcry for it have any
determinate meaning in their cry. For here, too, the reëstablishment of
the political power of slavery is the only point in their view.
The Constitution--in its great substance, in its essential principles,
in the general frame of government it establishes, in its organization
of powers, in its main provisions, and in most of its details--is an
instrument which probably few wise and patriotic Americans would care to
see altered, and none would wish to see subverted. But the constitutions
of all governments, written or unwritten, (and each sort has its special
advantages and disadvantages,) are more or less subject to change--must
change and should change--with the progress of society. The
Constitution of the United States provides for its own amendment by the
people by whom and for whom it was framed. Many amendments have already
been made; more are likely in time to be found needful. And no one but a
fool will swear blindly by 'the Constitution as it is,' if he is thereby
to be precluded from voting for such improvements as time and
circumstances may make important and desirable.
But these traitorous traders in the phrase have (as before said) but one
single point in view. In the whole compass of the Constitution their
devotion embraces nothing in their vows for its unchangeable sacredness
except its recognition of slavery, its provisions for the rendition of
fugitive slaves, and for counting five Southern chattels as three white
citizens in the basis for Federal representation. These are provisions
that must not be changed. This is what they mean, and all they mean,
when they shout for 'the Constitution as it is.' So sacred is the
Constitution in this one sole respect, that they have rung every change
of protest--from solemn remonstrance to frantic howls of wrath--against
the recent law for taking from rebels the slaves that dig trenches and
grow food for them while they are fighting for the overthrow of the
Constitution. And the only vision of a Constitution '_as it is_' which
looms up to their views and wishes in the future--'the Mecca of their
hearts' fond dream'--is the overthrow of this legislation, and the
reinstatement of slaveholders in their old rights fortified and extended
by Supreme Court decisions carrying slavery and their slave laws into
all the Territories, with the right of transit and sale for slaves in
all the free States.
But most wise men believe that in the end of the war there is not likely
to be much slavery to need constitutional protection. And since our
nation at its very birth solemnly proclaimed the doctrine that of right
'all men are born free and equal' as before the law, and have an equal
right 'to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' perhaps these
Democrats may be willing to let these provisions in behalf of slavery be
dropped out of the Constitution when they shall have become no longer
any thing but a dead letter--with no power of political victory and
reward in them. As a living contradiction to the Declaration of
Independence they have been the source of all our woes. It is not
necessary to blame the framers of our Constitution for introducing them.
They did it for the best, as they thought. They themselves hoped and
believed the necessity for such provisions would long before this time
cease to exist. They little dreamed what mighty mischiefs, what long
contentions, what bitterness, what crimes, what bloody horrors they were
entailing on their descendants. They little dreamed what a terrible
_Nemesis_ would so soon avenge the expedient and temporary introduction
(as they thought) of a contradiction to the principles of liberty into
the organic law of a free nation whose first foundations they themselves
had laid in the solemn proclamation of man's inalienable rights.
Is it too much to hope that, by and by, when there shall (as God grant)
no longer be any slavery to need protection, these Democrats will be
willing that this contradiction should be removed, by making a slight
alteration in 'the Constitution _as it is_'? Let us trust they will. It
is true the Democratic party for twenty years has had but one single
principle. Its whole life, activity, object, and occupation has centred
and turned on the one sole point of upholding slavery, echoing its
doctrines, asserting its rights, obeying its behests, extending its
area, and aggrandizing its power; and so thoroughly imbued with the
spirit of their Southern masters became the members of the party, that
in ten years past I have found but few men calling themselves Democrats
and acting with the party who were not in mind and heart, in principle
and feeling, pro-slavery men! Pro-slavery Democrats! Four-cornered
triangles! Square circles! So the sense of contradiction always struck
me. Yet for most of them I could not feel any thing of that intense
scorn with which John Randolph of Roanoke more than thirty years ago
branded the Northern 'doughface' in Congress, when pointing his skinny
finger at his sneaking victim, he exclaimed: 'Mr. Speaker, I envy
neither the head nor the heart of the Northern man who rises here to
defend slavery on principle.' I remembered the prodigiously demoralizing
effect of slavery on the moral sense and sentiments. I remembered that
the present generation of Democrats have been subjected to the influence
of Southern masters who long ago out-grew and renounced the sentiments
prevalent in the early days of John Randolph: and I have been charitable
in most cases (not in all) to their inability to see the contradiction
between the ideas of _Democracy_ and _Pro-Slaveryism_. Let us hope for
better things in time to come. With their bondage, their love of bondage
will go. It has been passing from the hearts of the great, honest masses
of them ever since _Saint Sumter's Day_.