Against this power I have heard no argument which can be called an
argument. There are objections founded chiefly in the baneful pretension
of State Rights; but these objections are animated by prejudice rather
than reason. Assuming the impeccability of the States, and openly
declaring that states, like kings, can do no wrong, while, like kings,
they wear the "round and top of sovereignty," politicians treat them
with most mistaken forbearance and tenderness, as if these Rebel
corporations could be dandled into loyalty. At every suggestion of rigor
State Rights are invoked, and we are vehemently told not to destroy the
States, when all that Congress proposes is simply to recognize the
actual condition of the States and to undertake their temporary
government, by providing for the condition of political syncope into
which they have fallen, and, during this interval, to substitute its own
constitutional powers for the unconstitutional powers of the Rebellion.
Of course, therefore, Congress will blot no star from the flag, nor will
it obliterate any State liabilities. But it will seek, according to its
duty, in the best way, to maintain the great and real sovereignty of the
Union, by upholding the flag unsullied, and by enforcing everywhere
within its jurisdiction the supreme law of the Constitution.
At the close of an argument already too long drawn out, I shall not stop
to array the considerations of reason and expediency in behalf of this
jurisdiction; nor shall I dwell on the inevitable influence that it must
exercise over Slavery, which is the motive of the Rebellion. To my mind
nothing can be clearer, as a proposition of constitutional law, than
that everywhere within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National
Government Slavery is impossible. The argument is as brief as it is
unanswerable. Slavery is so odious that it can exist only by virtue of
positive law, plain and unequivocal; but no such words can be found in
the Constitution. Therefore Slavery is impossible within the exclusive
jurisdiction of the National Government. For many years I have had this
conviction, and have constantly maintained it. I am glad to believe that
it is implied, if not expressed, in the Chicago Platform. Mr. Chase,
among our public men, is known to accept it sincerely. Thus Slavery in
the Territories is unconstitutional; but if the Rebel territory falls
under the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government, then
Slavery will be impossible there. In a legal and constitutional sense,
it will die at once. The air will be too pure for a slave. I cannot
doubt that this great triumph has been already won. The moment that the
States fell, Slavery fell also; so that, even without any Proclamation
of the President, Slavery had ceased to have a legal and constitutional
existence in every Rebel State.
But even if we hesitate to accept this important conclusion, which
treats Slavery within Rebel States as already dead in law and
Constitution, it cannot be doubted, that, by the extension of the
Congressional jurisdiction over the Rebel States, many difficulties will
be removed. Holding every acre of soil and every inhabitant of these
states within its jurisdiction, Congress can easily do, by proper
legislation, whatever may be needful within Rebel limits in order to
assure freedom and to save society. The soil may be divided among
patriot soldiers, poor-whites, and freedmen. But above all things, the
inhabitants may be saved from harm. Those citizens in the Rebel States,
who, throughout the darkness of the Rebellion, have kept there faith,
will be protected, and the freedmen will be rescued from the hands that
threaten to cast them back into Slavery.
But this jurisdiction, which is so completely practical, is grandly
conservative also. Had it been early recognized that Slavery depends
exclusively upon the local government, and that it falls with that
government, who can doubt that every Rebel movement would have been
checked? Tennessee and Virginia would never have stirred; Maryland and
Kentucky would never have thought of stirring. There would have been no
talk of neutrality between the Constitution and the Rebellion, and every
Border State would have been fixed in its loyalty. Let it be established
in advance, as an inseparable incident to every Act of Secession, that
it is not only impotent against the Constitution of the United States,
but that, on its occurrence, both soil and inhabitants will lapse
beneath the jurisdiction of Congress, and no State will ever again
pretend to secede. The word "territory," according to an old and quaint
etymology, is said to come from _terreo_, to terrify, because it was a
bulwark against the enemy. A scholiast tells us, "_Territorium est
quicquid hostis terrendi causâ constitutum_," "A territory is something
constituted in order to terrify the enemy." But I know of no way in
which our Rebel enemy would have been more terrified than by being told
that his course would inevitably precipitate him into a territorial
condition. Let this principle be adopted now, and it will contribute
essentially to that consolidation of the Union which was so near the
heart of Washington.
The necessity of this principle is apparent as a restraint upon the
lawless vindictiveness and inhumanity of the Rebel States, whether
against Union men or against freedmen. Union men in Virginia already
tremble at the thought of being delivered over to a State government
wielded by original Rebels pretending to be patriots. But the freedmen,
who have only recently gained their birthright, are justified in a
keener anxiety, lest it should be lost as soon as won. Mr. Saulsbury, a
Senator from Delaware, with most instructive frankness, has announced,
in public debate, what the restored State governments will do. Assuming
that the local governments will be preserved, he predicts that in 1870
there will be more slaves in the United States than there were in 1860,
and then unfolds the reason as follows,--all of which will be found in
the "Congressional Globe"[29]:--
"By your acts you attempt to free the slaves. You will not have them
among you. You leave them where they are. Then what is to be the
result?--I presume that local State governments will be preserved. If
they are, if the people have a right to make their own laws, and to
govern themselves, they will not only reënslave every person that you
attempt to set free, but they will reënslave the whole race."
Nor has the horrid menace of reënslavement proceeded from the Senator
from Delaware alone. It has been uttered even by Mr. Willey, the mild
Senator from Virginia, speaking in the name of State Rights. Newspapers
have taken up and repeated the revolting strain. That is to say, no
matter what may be done for Emancipation, whether by Proclamation of the
President, or by Congress even, the State, on resuming its place in the
Union, will, in the exercise of its sovereign power, reënslave every
colored person within its jurisdiction; and this is the menace from
Delaware, and even from regenerated Western Virginia! I am obliged to
Senators for their frankness. If I needed any additional motive for the
urgency with which I assert the power of Congress, I should find it in
the pretensions thus savagely proclaimed. In the name of Heaven, let us
spare no effort to save the country from this shame, and an oppressed
people from this additional outrage!
"Once free, always free." This is a rule of law, and an instinct of
humanity. It is a self-evident axiom, which only tyrants and
slave-traders have denied. The brutal pretension thus flamingly
advanced, to reënslave those who have been set free, puts us all on our
guard. There must be no chance or loop-hole for such an intolerable,
Heaven-defying iniquity. Alas! there have been crimes in human history;
but I know of none blacker than this. There have been acts of baseness;
but I know of none more utterly vile. Against the possibility of such a
sacrifice we must take a bond which cannot be set aside,--and this can
be found only in the powers of Congress.
Congress has already done much. Besides its noble Act of Emancipation,
it has provided that every person guilty of treason, or of inciting or
assisting the Rebellion, "shall be disqualified to hold any office under
the United States." And by another act, it has provided that every
person elected or appointed to any office of honor or profit under the
Government of the United States shall, before entering upon its duties,
_take an oath_ "that he has not voluntarily borne arms against the
United States, or given aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to
persons engaged in armed hostility thereto, or sought or accepted or
attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever under any
authority, or pretended authority, in hostility to the United
States."[30] This oath will be a bar against the return to _National
office_ of any who have taken part with the Rebels. It shuts out in
advance the whole criminal gang. But these same persons, rejected by the
National Government, are left free to hold office in the States. And
here is another motive to further action by Congress. The oath, is well
as far as it goes; more must be done in the same spirit.
But enough. The case is clear. Behold the Rebel States in arms against
that paternal government to which, as the supreme condition of their
constitutional existence, they owe duty and love; and behold all
legitimate powers, executive, legislative, and judicial, in these
States, abandoned and vacated. _It only remains that Congress should
enter and assume the proper jurisdiction._ If we are not ready to
exclaim with Burke, speaking of Revolutionary France, "It is but an
empty space on the political map," we may at least adopt the response
hurled back by Mirabeau, that this empty space is a volcano red with
flames and overflowing with lava-floods. But whether we deal with it as
"empty space" or as "volcano," the jurisdiction, civil and military,
centres in Congress, to be employed for the happiness, welfare, and
renown of the American people,--changing Slavery into Freedom, and
present chaos into a Cosmos of perpetual beauty and power.
* * * * *