CALHOUN, JACKSON, AND NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.
In 1811, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, a young man not of the age
of thirty years, took his seat as a member of the national House of
Representatives, and at once became a leader in public affairs. He was
one of the Committee on Foreign Relations. On the 12th of December he
said what was the road the nation should tread “to make it great and to
produce in this country not the form but the real spirit of union.”[91]
In March, 1815, he voted for a high tariff and said: “He believed the
policy of the country required protection to our manufacturing
establishments.”[92] He also reported the bill to incorporate a United
States Bank, and supported it in a speech on its constitutionality.[93]
Webster, on the contrary, opposed the tariff bills, not however on the
ground of their unconstitutionality. In December, 1816, Calhoun moved
“that a committee be appointed to inquire into the expediency of setting
apart a permanent fund for internal improvement”; on December 23d, he
reported a bill setting aside the bonus paid by the United States Bank,
$1,500,000 and future dividends from bank stock, “as a fund for
constructing roads and canals.”[94] In his speech supporting it he said:
“that the extent of our republic exposes us to the greatest of all
calamities, next to the loss of liberty, and even to that in its
consequences, _disunion_.” “Probably not more than twenty-five or thirty
members, in the total number of one hundred and seventy, regarded the
constitutional difficulty as fatal to the bill.”[95] Madison, however,
consistent and persistent in his strict construction of the
Constitution, vetoed it.
[91] H. Adams, vol. vi., p. 143.
[92] H. Adams, vol. ix., p. 115. _Annals of Congress_, 1815-1816, p.
1272.
[93] H. Adams, vol. ix., p. 116.
[94] H. Adams, vol. ix., p. 148.
[95] See H. Adams, vol. ix., pp. 149 to 153, for debate and Calhoun’s
views.
In 1819 and 1820 came the admission of Missouri and the struggle over
the extension or restriction of slavery. The Southern statesmen feared
that the South was losing its relative importance in the Union. Even
those of Virginia, who had formerly been opposed to slavery, now took
the opposite view, and the Legislature of that State passed resolutions
for the admission of Missouri with slavery. The increase in the
production of cotton had made the raising of slaves profitable. The
controversy was settled by the bill called the Missouri Compromise,
admitting Missouri with slavery, and excluding slavery from all the
rest of the country west of that State and north of 36° 30′, the
southern boundary of Missouri. This was the first important controversy
dividing the States geographically. It was the division that Mason,
Madison, and others foresaw in the convention that made the
Constitution; not a combination of the great States against the small,
but geographical, between the South and the North, the planting and
commercial States, and, underlying this and more potent, the institution
of slavery repugnant to the North and existing only in the South.
It was this difference of interest between the two sections that brought
Calhoun to a change of opinion on the great industrial, commercial, and
moral questions that had arisen. His convictions followed what he wished
to believe: not an unusual temperament. From a protectionist he became
the zealous advocate of extreme free trade, from a nationalist to the
belief that the Union was nothing but a league any State could break at
its will, from holding slavery to be a moral evil to the support of it
as a divine institution. In 1837, after the nullification controversy,
when he introduced resolutions in the Senate as to slavery, he said:
“This question has produced one happy effect, at least it has
compelled us of the South to look into the nature and character
of this great institution (slavery), and to correct many false
impressions that even we had entertained in relation to it.
Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and
political evil. That folly and delusion are gone. We see it now
in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable
basis for free institutions in the world. It is impossible with
us that the conflict take place between labor and capital.”
He went so far as to say a mysterious Providence had brought together
two races from different portions of the globe and placed them together
in equal numbers in the southern portion of the Union. To which Clay
forcibly replied, “to call a generation of slave-hunting pirates (who
brought the negroes to this country) a mysterious Providence, was an
insult to the Supreme Being.”[96]
[96] Oliver Dyer’s _Great Senators_, pp. 183, 184.
Calhoun and many of the leaders and politicians of the cotton-raising
States saw that they were losing their relative importance in population
and wealth; they believed that, with free trade bringing to them
everything they consumed at a lower price, their products and profits
would be increased. South Carolina with Calhoun as the master spirit was
the leader in this matter; the existing protective tariff bearing hardly
on the plantation States was in their opinion the great hindrance to
their prosperity. It was not difficult for them to come to the
conclusion it was a tyrannical and palpable violation of the
Constitution. Seeing that they could not bring the majority in Congress
to their belief, the South Carolinian politicians revived and developed
the doctrine of the Kentucky resolutions of the sovereignty of each
State, and of its right as a sovereign to judge of the constitutionality
of an act of the United States. A convention of the people of the State
was called, and under the claimed right of sovereignty the convention,
on the 24th of November, 1832, passed an ordinance in which it was
declared the tariff laws of the United States were null and void, and
that no duties imposed by the United States should be collected after
the first of February, A. D. 1833. The convention further declared that
they would resist any acts of the United States to collect its duties or
to coerce the State into paying them, and that such acts of the United
States would absolve the people of the State from any political
connection with the people of the other States, and that the State would
organize as a sovereign independent government.
Thus South Carolina, more than forty years after the adoption of the
Constitution, was the first State that assumed to act as a distinct
sovereign power. To such a degree did the confidence of the State in its
own prowess and a spirit of rash defiance of the United States exist,
that upon Governor Haynes’ return to Charleston from the State Capital,
the horses were taken from his carriage and the citizens dragged him in
triumph through the streets.
Few leaders have had more warm admirers than Calhoun. Oliver Dyer in his
_Great Senators_, tells us he was tall and gaunt, his complexion dark
and Indian-like. Eyes large, black, piercing, scintillant; his iron-gray
hair hung down in thick masses. He was remarkable for the exceeding
courtesy of his demeanor and for the sweetness and bell-like resonance
of his voice. His private life, what could not be said of most of his
contemporaries, was unimpeachable.
His followers are fond of praising his “inexorable logic.” They probably
called it so because he did not hesitate to carry out his reasoning to
the extremest extravagance of conclusions. In his speech in 1833, in
reply to Webster, he admitted that this sovereignty of each State, there
being four and twenty of them, did give each State a separate right to
judge of a law of Congress, “four and twenty vetoes.” He instanced with
approval the government of Rome, where the plebeians and patricians
could check and overrule each other through the tribunes and the Senate.
He knew “nowhere, no case in history where the power of arresting of
government was too strong, except in Poland, where every freeman
possessed a veto.” But even there he speaks of it with favor, as the
source of “the highest and most lofty attachment to liberty.” He
overlooked that Rome’s plebeian veto produced a Sulla and a Cæsar and
ended in an absolute despotism over an abject people, and that the
government of Poland, unstable as water, vanished from the face of the
earth. He spoke of this country as sunken into avarice, intrigue, and
electioneering, from which only an opposition like Carolina’s could
arouse it. Afterwards, in 1850, he said: “What was once a constitutional
federal republic is now converted, in reality, into one as absolute as
that of the autocrat of Russia, and as despotic in its tendency as any
absolute government that ever existed.” And yet many people of the South
believed or brought themselves to believe this, and most of their
writers now arguing for State sovereignty profess the same opinion.
Following up Calhoun’s “inexorable logic,” that each State has a right
to pass its judgment on any act and law made by the United States, and
to decide whether it is invalid and null, if it be of opinion that it
exceeds the delegated authority, every citizen of South Carolina or of
any other State has a right to judge whether any law of that State be
invalid or null, as exceeding its delegated authority. For the State of
South Carolina under its Constitution, like the United States under its
Constitution, has only a limited delegated authority, and the
sovereignty, according to all the political writers, remains in its
people or voting citizens. Why cannot a voting citizen, or one of the
people of the State, maintain that, possessing the sovereign right of
all power, and being one of the parties who made the compact of the
State constitution, he can judge as to whether he has delegated the
power to make a certain law; and if he thinks he has not, why cannot he
defy the court and the State that undertakes to execute it? This would
at once put the State in the happy condition of Poland, and almost allow
the freedom claimed by a Chicago anarchist. The answer is evident, the
citizens owe an obedience to the laws that they establish over
themselves. They have, for the benefit of all, given to the judiciary
the right to judge of the extent of the delegated power. That the
doctrine of State sovereignty was unknown at the time South Carolina
promulgated it, is proved by Jackson’s proclamation. In it he speaks of
the hardness and inequality of the excise law in Pennsylvania, the
embargo and non-intercourse law in the Eastern States, the carriage tax
in Virginia. All these laws and the war of 1812 in the commercial States
were, he says, deemed unconstitutional, but yet they were submitted to,
and this remedy of nullification and secession was not suggested. “The
discovery of this important feature in our Constitution was reserved to
the present day. To the statesmen of South Carolina belongs the
invention.”[97] Indeed it was a question in South Carolina itself who
first discovered this doctrine of nullification. Dr. Thomas Cooper,
Jefferson’s old friend, was agreed upon as the author of its revival,
and was toasted as the father of nullification at Columbia, the capital
of South Carolina, at a Fourth of July dinner[98] in 1833. If the
Kentucky resolutions and the doctrine of nullification had not been
dead, and buried in oblivion, it is impossible that Chief-Justice
Marshall should have announced in the case of McCulloch against the
State of Maryland that there was a universal assent to the proposition
that the government of the Union, though limited in its powers, was
supreme in its sphere; that General Jackson, in a proclamation to the
whole country, could have declared its discovery was made by the
statesmen of South Carolina of that day; and that the nullifiers of
South Carolina should have toasted Cooper as its author.
[97] 4 Elliot, 584.
[98] Niles’ _Register_, p. 335, July 20, 1833. Cooper was President of
the University of South Carolina. The University of Virginia would not
have him as professor on account of his Unitarian belief, though
Jefferson wished it. Is it possible that he was the original author of
the Kentucky Resolutions, and furnished them to Jefferson? Jefferson’s
correspondence, as far as we have examined, shows no belief in that
doctrine.
We have found nowhere any claim of a right of secession, not even the
use of the word, until the threat of South Carolina’s nullification. Any
separation before was considered as a disruption of the Union. Jefferson
spoke of it as scission. While some hold that Jackson “with his iron
heel crushed out secession,” numerous attempts have been made, even
recently, to prove that Jackson was not opposed to nullification, that
in reality the proclamation was not his but was Edward Livingston’s.
Parton, Jefferson’s biographer, tells us, when a pamphlet containing
the proceedings of South Carolina reached Jackson, he went to his office
and began to dash off page after page of the proclamation. To this was
added many more of notes and memoranda which he had been accumulating.
The papers were given to Mr. Livingston to draw up in proper form. In
three or four days Livingston gave to Jackson a draft of the
proclamation for examination. Jackson said that Livingston had not
correctly understood his notes and suggested alterations, and had them
made.[99]
[99] Parton’s _Life of Jackson_, vol. iii., p. 466.
The proclamation, whoever wrote it, is a clear, strong statement of the
nature of our Union and its nationality; an abler production than Edward
Livingston’s speech, when as Senator he spoke on this matter in 1830. If
Jackson did not write a line of it he was not totally wanting in
knowledge and comprehension, and must have understood the most important
question that had arisen in his administration or in any administration
since the inception of the government.
Jackson, as well as Calhoun, was of the Protestant Scotch-Irish race,
that famous strain of blood that settled around Belfast and has made its
mark in this country. Those who knew him well said that he had the
craftiness of his canny Scotch ancestors, which he often concealed under
apparently unpremeditated and ungovernable bursts of temper. No one
before who had been a duellist and had killed his opponent, and had
been a participator in street brawls and encounters, had become
President. He was a warm friend and a bitter enemy, and against Calhoun
he had a lasting grievance. His declaration, “I take the
responsibility,” was characteristic of the man and admired by his
adherents. No one of a will so indomitable ever came to the presidency.
A mere boy of fourteen he fought in the revolutionary war. He studied
law in North Carolina and at the age of twenty-two years he commenced
his professional life in Tennessee, and acquired at once a large
practice throughout the State, that brought him into public notice. He
was the district attorney of the territory, and a member of the
convention that made the constitution of that State, and as its first
representative in Congress opposed Washington’s administration, and was
one of the twelve members who would not join in the vote of thanks to
him when he retired from the presidency. He was elected Senator in 1797
and opposed the administration of John Adams, but soon resigned the
senatorship and became a judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee and
held that office for six years. He was of the party of strict
constructionists. As President he vetoed bills for the aid of the
Maysville and Lexington Road, a re-charter of the Second Bank of the
United States, and several bills for internal improvements for harbors
and rivers.
However much Livingston may have improved the style of the proclamation,
or contributed to its argument, there can be no doubt that the reasoning
and principles were Jackson’s. The public seems to have forgotten that
he was a lawyer of large experience in his younger days, and an active
politician all his lifetime. The proclamation was on a subject of which
he had full knowledge and had formed decided opinions. When he came to a
conclusion he cared not what any other man thought.
It has been a disputed matter whether the General Government actually
prevailed in its controversy with South Carolina. Though the State
prepared munitions of war, increased its militia, passed laws to punish
persons executing those of the United States, and declared its secession
from the Union if the United States laws were attempted to be enforced,
neither the State nor its citizens did actually commit any overt act of
resistance. They claimed, however, that Clay’s compromise bill,
gradually reducing duties, which became law March 2d, was a surrender to
them.
On the other hand it is asserted that the bill was not at all what South
Carolina had demanded. It is undisputed that the United States
Government passed a force bill based on the ground that it could compel
the exercise of its authority over the citizens of a State disputing it,
and that no resistance was made to the collection of the import duties
after February 1st, when the State declared its ordinance should be
enforced, the reduction of the tariff being subsequently passed.[100]
[100] Alex. Johnston, in Winsor’s _History of America_, vol. vii., p.
286, says that Jackson collected the duties at Charleston by naval and
military force, and that the day before February 1st a meeting of
“leading nullifiers” agreed to avoid all collision with the Federal
Government.
It was in South Carolina alone that the right of nullification was
sanctioned by a majority of its citizens. There were in the debates in
Congress on that matter members from other States who maintained that
doctrine, but Southern writers have apparently purposely omitted, and
Von Holst, Greeley, and Benton, historians of that time, have overlooked
the resolutions of the other Southern States condemning the doctrines of
South Carolina, which are the more significant as those States agreed
with her in opposing and denouncing the tariff.
Virginia’s position, though less decided than that of the other States,
did not please Calhoun; in reply to her Senator, Mr. Rives, who had
opposed the South Carolinian doctrine, he spoke of her as “a once”
patriotic State. Virginia’s resolutions were, that the doctrines of
State sovereignty and State rights as set forth in her resolutions of
1798, and sustained by the report thereon of 1799, were a true
interpretation of the Constitution, but she did not consider them as
sanctioning the proceedings of South Carolina in her said ordinances,
nor as countenancing all the principles assumed by the President in his
proclamation. Virginia sent Mr. Leigh as a commissioner to South
Carolina, but without result.
Mississippi, Jefferson Davis’ State, declared “that, in the language of
the father of his country, we will indignantly frown upon the first
dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the
rest, or to enfeeble the ties which link together its various parts.”
Nullification was condemned in the strongest terms, and it was declared
they would support the President in maintaining the Union.
In the next year, Robert J. Walker canvassed the State for a seat in the
Senate with Poindexter, his opponent; the issue was a question of
nullification, and Walker, after a contest of three years, prevailed and
became Senator at the election, January 8, 1836. General Jackson wrote a
letter in his favor.[101]
[101] Article by R. J. Walker on “Nullification and Secession,”
February, 1863, p. 179, _Continental Monthly Magazine_.
Alabama declared nullification “is unsound in theory and dangerous in
practice”; North Carolina, that it “is revolutionary in its character,
and subversive of the Constitution, and leads to disunion”; Georgia,
“that we abhor the doctrine of nullification as neither a peaceful nor a
constitutional remedy,” and further declare, while they deplore the rash
and revolutionary measures of South Carolina, they warn their citizens
against adopting her mischievous policy.[102]
[102] State papers on nullification, collected and published in 1834
by order of the General Court of Massachusetts. The volume contains
the remonstrances of many State Legislatures besides those quoted. It
has also the ordinance of the South Carolina convention at the
adjournment, held March 19, 1833, in which the convention declared the
State’s nullification of the force bill of Congress of March 2d then
enforced: this declaration was mere _brutum fulmen_.
These were the opinions of the Southern States in 1833. So that at that
time, as a matter of history, South Carolina alone claimed the right of
nullification and secession.
We have before said it has been customary for the Legislatures of States
to pass resolutions declaring acts and laws of the United States--that
they are opposed to--unconstitutional, and therefore null and void; but
that these State resolutions do not make them so; that they are merely
the opinions of the Legislatures that pass them; that the decision,
whether laws of the United States or acts of its government are null and
void, rests solely with the judiciary of the United States.
On examination we find, from the inception of Washington’s
administration until the inauguration of Lincoln, that, without
exception, the authority and supremacy of the laws and government of the
United States have been maintained and enforced by its courts over every
State, and every State government and judiciary, and every individual
therein:--Over Pennsylvania, as we have before set forth in the Gideon
Olmstead case, when the representatives of the State officer who had
disbursed prize money under the decision of the State Court were
compelled to repay it to the United States.[103] Over Kentucky itself,
in 1812, when the court maintained that a Kentucky State court had no
jurisdiction to enjoin a judgment of a court of the United States.[104]
Over Kentucky and Virginia, in a serious controversy about the validity
of the grants of those States.[105] Over Maryland, when the State
undertook to tax the branch of the United States Bank established in her
territory, on the ground that no State could tax the instrument employed
by the government in the exercise of its powers.[106] In this case
Chief-Justice Marshall declared: “If any one proposition would command
the universal assent of mankind, we might expect it to be this, that the
government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within
its sphere.” Even further, the United States Court interfered and took
from the State court of Virginia jurisdiction of the prosecution by that
great State of _one of its own citizens_ for illegally selling tickets
in a lottery, because the lottery had been authorized in the District of
Columbia and brought in question the validity of a United States
law.[107] Over Massachusetts, in declaring the embargo legal. Over New
York, when it declared illegal the State’s grants to Fulton, the
inventor of the steamboat, of the exclusive right of navigation of the
Hudson. Over Ohio, when the State insisted on taxing the branch of the
Bank of the United States, the court issuing its mandamus and compelling
the State’s Treasurer to obey its decree.[108] Over South Carolina, in
1829, not long before her threatened nullification, when the court
annulled the taxation by the city of Charleston of the bonds of the
United States, because it was an interference with the power of the
General Government to borrow money.[109] The disputes of States about
their boundaries often came before the Supreme Court and were settled,
the States appearing as parties. Indeed, such interference and control
were so frequent and so implicitly submitted to that Chief-Justice
Marshall said: “Though it had been the unpleasant duty of the United
States courts to reverse the judgments of many State courts in cases in
which the strongest State feelings were engaged, the State judges have
yielded without hesitation to their authority, while perhaps
disapproving the judgment of reversal.”[110]
[103] United States _vs._ Peters, 5 Cranch, 115.
[104] McKim _vs._ Voorhies, 7 Cranch, 279.
[105] Green _vs._ Biddle, 8 Wheaton, 1.
[106] McCulloch _vs._ Maryland, 4 Wheaton, 316.
[107] Cohens _vs._ Virginia, 6 Wheaton, 264.
[108] Bank of U. S. _vs._ Osborn, 9 Wheaton, 738.
[109] Weston _vs._ Charleston, 2 Peters, 449.
[110] Cohens _vs._ Virginia.
These decisions of the United States Supreme Court were made by judges
appointed by all the political parties that had been in power, by those
in favor of a strict as well as a liberal construction of the
Constitution. Taney, a very eminent jurist, and his associates, judges
appointed by the political party predominant in the States that
attempted to disrupt the Union, held that the Constitution and the laws
of the government were paramount, and announced and maintained their
supremacy to the beginning of the rebellion over every State court and
State law and constitution.[111]
[111] See 22 Howard, 227; Sinnott _vs._ Davenport, 21 Howard, 506;
Ableman _vs._ Booth, 5 Howard, 134; Rowan _vs._ Runnells. In these two
last cases Taney and the Court put aside the decrees of the Supreme
Courts of Wisconsin and Mississippi, because they were in conflict
with the powers given to the United States; in the latter case,
overruling and even reversing the decision of the Supreme Court of
Mississippi as to when its constitution took effect.
The action of the State of Georgia in 1832, in a controversy between
that State and the United States Supreme Court, has been cited in
support of the theory that Georgia maintained the doctrine of State
supremacy. In that case the matter never came to an actual conflict. Why
the United States decision was not promptly enforced is a matter that it
is not here worth while to enter into.[112] It is sufficient to quote
the resolutions of the Legislature of the State in 1833, that she
abhorred the doctrine of nullification and deplored the revolutionary
measures of South Carolina and warned her citizens against adopting
that mischievous policy, to show that the State, in her opposition to
the christianizing of Cherokee Indians, did not question the supremacy
of the United States Government.
[112] General Jackson’s sympathy was with Georgia in this matter, and
he is reported as saying: “John Marshall has made the decision, now
let him execute it.” The missionary that Georgia had imprisoned was,
however, released by the State.
It is often asserted by historical writers that the Supreme Court of the
United States, under the guidance of Marshall, has built up, magnified,
and extended the powers of the government. Undoubtedly the court has
great power in deciding whether the laws of a State or the acts of a
State officer are illegal, when the question is whether they infringe on
the rights of the general government; it, however, cannot make laws and
acts extending the national powers. Its authority is, for the most part,
that of restraint over the acts of the executive and United State
officers, and of annulling, as it often has, the laws of Congress
adjudged to be beyond its powers. It is Congress that made the Alien and
Sedition laws, United States banks, tariffs and embargoes; it was the
President and Congress who freed the negroes. Even in the war of
secession, the judiciary declared the President’s disregard of the
habeas corpus in Milligan’s case illegal.[113]
[113] _Ex parte_ Milligan, 4, Wallace, 2.
The idea which has found favor that Judge Story yielded his early
convictions as to the nationality of the government to the influence of
Marshall, is founded on the erroneous theory that the doctrine of the
Kentucky resolutions were, after their promulgation, held and believed
in by Story and the republicans. Anyone who was personally acquainted
with Story, or was taught by him in the law school at Cambridge, or
heard the opinions of the eminent counsel who tried cases before him,
knows that no judge of a more uncompromising confidence in his own
conclusions and decisions ever sat on the bench. The great fault of this
most learned of our judges was the quickness of his apprehension and of
his arriving at a conclusion in the beginning of a case he was hearing,
and the tenacity with which he held and enforced it, sometimes even to
the detriment of justice itself. Story, though generally agreeing with
the Chief Justice, at times gave dissenting opinions on constitutional
questions.
The government, from the time of South Carolina’s earlier nullification
ordinances to that of the civil war, excepting for very short periods,
was in the hands of the South. Under it, and in the interest of the
slave States, Polk made war with Mexico, an act of Congress declaring
that it existed. Texas with its immense territory of over two hundred
thousand square miles was annexed in Tyler’s administration, Calhoun
becoming Secretary of State for that purpose. Laws interfering with the
constitutional rights of Northern citizens of the black and mixed race,
and for the protection of slavery, were passed and enforced by the
Southern States.
There can be no doubt that the belief had been growing in those States,
that they would be better off out of the Union than in it. The
opposition to slavery was increasing at the North; no works were so
widely read there as those setting forth its iniquities. The South,
then, as in the time of the making of the Constitution, was an
agricultural country, depending for its prosperity on a cheap, forced
labor, and the exportation of its cotton and other products. It was
strong in men, and no longer required the protection of the Eastern
States, as in the days of the National Convention. In 1854, by the laws
enacted by Congress, the whole territory of the United States was thrown
open to the introduction of slavery, giving to the Southern States the
right to carry into it their “peculiar property,” and taking away their
great grievance. Then also came the decision of the United States
Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, that all laws excluding slavery
from the territories were unconstitutional, and asserting that the
inhabitants of those territories could not interfere with that right.
The only matter the South could complain of was the hostility of the
Northern States to slavery, and that some of them would not comply with
the laws for the rendition of their slaves, and had passed State laws
and committed acts interfering with their legal and constitutional
right of seizing them on Northern territory. There was no pretence that
there was any tyrannical usurpation of undelegated authority by the
United States, such as the Virginia resolutions referred to. Prof. Bazil
L. Gildersleeve, a confederate soldier, in the _Atlantic Monthly
Magazine_, says in a paper called “The Creed of the old South,” that the
cause of secession was, that “the extreme Southern States considered
their rights menaced by the issue of the presidential election.”[114]
[114] _Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1892.
Upon the choice of Lincoln, and while Buchanan was President,
preparations were made by the South for a disruption of the Union.
Reuben Davis, a distinguished lawyer and a member of Congress from
Mississippi, in his autobiography, informs us that he spent much time
with Floyd, the Secretary of War, who had been for twelve months sending
arms to Southern arsenals and had put the forts in condition to be
captured. He estimated that one half of the munitions of war was in the
South.[115] South Carolina again took the initiative and seceded on the
ground that as a sovereign State she had the right to withdraw from the
compact she had entered into; and for the second time in our history did
a State, and the same State, assert its sovereign right against the
supreme authority of the United States. The other plantation States
quickly followed South Carolina; generally there was no elaborate
statement by them of their grievances, nor did they explain why the
doctrines they abhorred less than thirty years before, they now asserted
and so courageously fought for. Virginia joined the Southern Confederacy
without passing any formal act of secession. Her convention, called for
the purpose of considering the matter, voted not to secede. In an
address delivered in October, 1887, at Richmond, on the dedication of a
statue to Lee, the orator, a descendant of the great Chief-Justice
Marshall, undertakes to explain and defend Virginia’s course in joining
the South. He does not claim the right of secession and apparently
agrees with Lee, and puts in italics what Lee wrote on the 23d of
January, 1861, that “_Secession is nothing but revolution_.” He states
also that secession was unjustifiable, because the opponents of Lincoln
had the majority in the National House of Representatives and Senate;
but that the method of Lincoln of composing the troubles of the country
brought Virginia into the contest. Following, as Southern writers and
speakers do, the extravagant denunciations of Calhoun, he says: “Instead
of maintaining the honor, the integrity of our National Union, it
destroyed that Union in all but a territorial sense, as effectually as
secession, by substituting conquered provinces for free States, and
repeating in America the shameful history of Russia and Poland.” As our
Poland when he spoke had an executive of its own choice and a majority
of the House of Representatives, it was its own fault, if its
inhabitants were in that abject condition. Is it not absurd to talk in
this way, when no secessionist has been hung for treason, and a silver
crown a short time since, at a public meeting, was prepared by some
admirer for the dethroned autocrat of our Poland? At any rate we have no
sedition law now, and freedom of speech against the government passes
without comment. An unsuccessful revolution is rebellion, generally
punished in other countries by death. It has not been so in our Russia.
Jefferson Davis was indicted for treason; his trial never took place, as
President Johnson issued a general amnesty proclamation.
[115] _Reuben Davis’ Recollections_, p. 395.
Undoubtedly the confidence of the South in its assumed superiority in
courage and fighting qualities had great influence in inducing its
attempted secession. Jefferson Davis in his history gives instances of
advantages gained at the outset by the Southern soldiers through their
skill in the use of firearms. He did not tell us, and it seems to have
escaped notice generally, that the Southern States had also the great
benefit of the military academies they had established, which furnished
at once trained officers for their troops. Their renowned general,
Stonewall Jackson, was a professor in that of Virginia, and went from
the academy to the Confederate army.[116]
[116] See article by John S. Wise in the _Century Magazine_, Jan.,
1890. The Virginia Military Academy was established by the State in
1839. Col. Smith, a graduate of West Point, was at the head. It was
continued during the civil war under the charge of disabled officers.
In 1860 a professor in this school informed the writer that there were
similar academies in all the Southern States. Apparently they have
been discontinued in most of them, South Carolina, however, yet
maintaining hers.
The seceding States in forming their new compact, in article after
article followed the Constitution they rejected, prefacing it with the
declaration, “We, the people of the Confederate States, each State
acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a
more permanent Federal Government,” instead of “We, the people of the
United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, for ourselves and
our posterity.” They took particular care, however, by their new
“Compact,” to provide for the perpetuity of slavery in their
Confederacy,--and, looking to conquests, in any new territory that might
be acquired.
Instead of slavery being perpetuated, the whole system was annihilated
under and within the Constitution. The amendment abolishing it forever
was passed in the manner required in the Constitution by all the States
that had refused an obedience to the United States laws. No longer is
the declaration of independence that all men are born free and equal,
in the language of Calhoun, “a glittering generality.”
The seceding States were not without their internal trouble, and the
authority of the Confederate Government was questioned by Georgia.
We all know how patiently and assiduously Lincoln tried to keep the
Southern States in the Union and how ineffectually; and when he found
that his effort was of no avail, with how firm a hand he wielded the
powers of the Executive. In Merriam’s case, he maintained his suspension
of the habeas corpus, although Chief-Justice Taney held it was illegal.
His decreeing freedom to the slaves of those in rebellion, as a war
measure, was an act of imperial power seldom surpassed. Our whole
history, as well as the epoch of the civil war, has proved how unfounded
was Hamilton’s fear that the government was not strong enough.
How wonderfully well the founders of our Constitution did their work, is
shown by the fact that so few amendments have been made, while the
constitutions of the different States have been changed again and again.
The ten articles declaring certain rights to be in the people were
adopted in 1791, then in 1798 the article taking away from the United
States the jurisdiction of suits of individuals against a State;
afterwards in 1804 two articles changing the manner of electing the
President and Vice-President. The theory of the founders of the
Constitution, that it would be best to leave to men of prominence as
electors to confer and choose those most fit for President and
Vice-President, has failed. The electors chosen by the people are
pledged to vote for candidates nominated at party conventions. After
these few amendments, none were passed until those as to slavery,
following the civil war.
A strict construction of the powers granted by the Constitution is a
“State’s rights” that those who believe in the supremacy of the National
Union can well favor. It is beyond human wisdom to enact laws of which
there can be no question; the decisions of the Supreme Court show how
hard it is to make a law whose constitutionality is not disputed.
Government would have been impossible, if the power had been in each
State to decide for itself as to the validity of every law passed and
every act of the General Government, and to secede at its will whenever
it chose. Yet this is the government that the South claimed our
forefathers established.
In forming the Confederacy of the Revolution, it was declared in its
articles that it was indissoluble; the same declaration is in the
Constitution when the States “formed a more perfect Union” than that of
the Confederacy “for ourselves and our posterity,” and were merged into
one Nation. This Constitution and the laws of the United States are
declared there, “as the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every
State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of
any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Supreme over what, if not
over the States that should adopt it? Historically that supremacy has
been maintained and enforced by the United States Courts and Executive
and Legislature.
In resisting the supremacy of this Constitution no State, dismembered
Virginia perhaps excepted, has suffered more than South Carolina. It is
truly pathetic in passing through the streets of Charleston, the home of
the great planters and politicians that shaped the destinies of the
State, to hear the names of the foreign bankers and merchants that have
taken the place and the homes of the old leaders or who have built more
pretentious abodes, to see the buildings with walls cracked and fissured
by the earthquake mended by contributions cheerfully given by Northern
friends, to read the newspapers lamenting the loss of their trade to
Savannah and calling on the United States for larger appropriations to
deepen the channels of their harbor. Then to look upon their statues of
those distinguished at different periods: the mutilated one of the great
Earl of Chatham, the friend of American freedom in Colony times; those
of the heroes of the Revolution and the war of 1812; and in the square
opposite the barracks of her Military Academy, the great glittering
bronze of Calhoun,[117] who brought so much misery to them all. But as
we go Westward, where the sandy soil of the plains yields to the clay of
the foothills, and find the streams turning the wheels of the factory,
and hear the whirl of the spindle tended by white operatives, and see
the plough, generally followed by a white man, turning over the soil
amidst the stumps of trees in fields newly reclaimed; and come at last
to Spartanburg and read the inscription there on the monument recently
raised to those who fell at Cowpens, by the old thirteen States and
Tennessee, bringing to memory the days of Greene and Morgan, we cannot
but believe instead of four and forty sovereign States, we shall, in
Webster’s words, have for all time, “one Nation, one Union, one
Destiny.”
[117] This was written four years ago: Charleston now shows few signs
of the earthquake, and Calhoun’s statue has mellowed into a pleasing
bronze color.
INDEX.
A
Adams, Charles Francis, Minister to England, 3
Adams, Henry, opinion concerning Virginia’s estimation of validity of
United States laws, 100;
controverted, 113-115
Adams, John, influence of Alien and Sedition laws on re-election, 112
Alien and Sedition laws of 1798, 88;
Jefferson’s opposition to, 88;
influence in defeating federal party, 112
Amendments to Constitution, how made, 40;
first ten articles, 78, 79
B
British opinion of right of secession, 2-3
Bryce, James, on right of Southern States, 3;
theory of his book, 3, _note_
C
Calhoun, John C., United States a confederacy, not a nation, 24;
his youthful prominence in Congress, 34;
his early opinions of the Constitution, 134, 135;
change of opinion, 137, 138;
personal appearance, 138, 139;
his reasoning on right of nullification, 140;
his argument considered, 140, 141
Chase, Salmon P., decision on secession, 34, 35
Clay, Henry, tariff compromise, 23
Clinton, George, his opinion as stated by Mr. Lodge, 5;
his written declaration that the United States Government is
perpetual, 77, 78
Compact, may be for national, indissoluble government, 28, 29;
a voluntary union of independent nations must be by compact, 28;
Southern views of, 30
Confederacy of the Southern States, constitution and compact as to
slavery, 158
Confederacy of the United States, its failure, 31, 32;
dependent upon the States, 48
Constitution of United States, adoption by Continental Congress,
States, and _people_, 32;
perpetuity declared in preamble, 33, 34;
supremacy, 35, 36, 49;
oath of every State officer and judge to support, 36;
supremacy in all sovereign powers, 37, 38;
prohibitions to States, 38, 39, 47;
power to coerce States in articles punishing treason, 41, 42, 43;
can take all powers from States by amendments, 45, 46;
made States suable, 44;
powers given by Constitution to States, 46;
naturalization, 47;
takes from States powers of resistance, 47, 48;
its excellence proved by few amendments, 159, 160;
its adoption opposed on account of its nationality and of excessive
powers given, 69-73;
no claim of right of secession or nullification suggested in the
conventions adopting the Constitution, 73
Convention that made the Constitution, its members and mode of voting,
51-53;
proposition of the delegation of Virginia for a National Government
debated and passed, 51-53;
New Jersey plan amending confederacy, 54, 56;
resolves for a National Government again taken up and passed, 56-62;
representation in Senate, 58-60;
a compromise of representation not a compromise of powers granted,
60, 61;
resolutions calling the proposed government national referred to
Committee to Report a Constitution, 61, 62;
report of committee and articles again considered separately, 62-64;
change in preamble by Committee of Style and Arrangement, 64;
opinions of members, 65, 66;
its nationality and great powers, 70-72
Cooper, Thomas, pronounced in 1833, in South Carolina, author of
nullification, 141, 142
D
Davis, Jefferson, indicted for treason and not tried, 157;
asserted advantage of Southern soldiers, 157
E
Embargo, 129, 130
F
Federal, the party, meaning of the term, 37
Franklin, Benjamin, services as member of the convention, 68
G
Georgia, suit of Chisholm against, 82-84;
claim of sovereignty, 83;
decision of Supreme Court, 83, 84;
controversy as to Cherokee Indians, 151;
vigorous resolutions in 1833 against South Carolina’s nullification
doctrines, 147
Gerry, Elbridge, objection to conferring power of amending
Constitution as fatal to the States, 45, 46;
refused to sign the Constitution, 68
H
Hamilton, Alexander, proposed plan for a strong government not favored
in the convention, 54, 55;
his speech as to democracy, 55;
promised support of Constitution, 68;
correspondence with Madison, 72;
successful support of the adoption of the Constitution by New York,
72;
states in the _Federalist_ the supremacy of the judicial power of
the United States, 129
Hartford convention, called by Massachusetts, discontent of the State,
131;
resolutions passed did not assert State sovereignty, but proposed
amendments to Constitution, 131, 132
Hayne, Robert Y., denunciation of the Eastern States, 8;
his doctrine, 9;
approval of, by citizens of Charleston, 138
Henry, Patrick, Lodge’s assertion as to his opinion, 5;
strenuous objection to adoption of the Constitution as national, 70,
71;
opposition to the Virginia resolutions, 113;
his declaration that Virginia was to the United States as a county
to Virginia, 113, 114
I
Iredell, James, dissenting opinion in Chisholm against Georgia was not
by reason of sovereignty of Georgia, 83
Ireland, bill of 1886 for home rule, 40
J
Jackson, Andrew, his proclamation against nullification, 21, 22;
his popularity and arbitrary exercise of power, 23;
his character and early life, 143;
experience in politics and law, 144;
proclamation of his own work, 142, 143, 145;
threat to hang Calhoun, 22;
collected duties after South Carolina declared they should not be
levied, 145, _note_, 146
Jay, John, wrote, “the convention and people agreed a National
Government was necessary,” 71, 72;
his opinion in Chisholm _vs._ Georgia as to sovereignty of United
States, 80, 81
Jefferson, Thomas, reputed author of Kentucky resolutions, 88;
approval of coercing States, 93;
became president immediately after passage of Kentucky resolutions,
116;
his inaugural address national, 116-118;
approved of bills in favor of a national road, 118;
approval of the use of the army and navy against Pennsylvania in the
Gideon Olmstead case, 118-121;
approval of annexation of Louisiana, 123;
opinion as to nullification and secession, 125;
opposition to Alien and Sedition laws, 126, 127;
national views, the embargo, 129, 130;
prescribed _Federalist_ as text-book in University of Virginia, 128,
129
Judiciary of the United States, made supreme by the Constitution, 37;
power to decide on laws of Congress, 49, 50;
supremacy of the Government uniformly sustained by it, 148-151
K
Kentucky resolutions, 90;
not much noticed as coming from a new State, 89;
merely the opinion of the legislature that passed them, 89;
their doctrine considered, 90-93;
they deny that the United States Government could punish any crime
except when the power is specifically given, 93, 94;
they protest against laws of Congress, do not treat them as invalid,
94, 95;
not sanctioned by other State legislatures, their purport escaped
notice, 101;
State let them drop, 101, 102;
no assertion of their doctrine until 1830, 133
L
Lansing, John, with Yates a delegate from New York, left the
convention July 3d when a National Government was agreed on, 66;
his motion for conditional acceptance of the Constitution rejected
by New York convention, 72, 73
Lee, Robert E., opinion that secession was revolution, that the United
States Government was national and perpetual, 4, 156
Lieber, Francis, on Webster’s oratory, 13
Lincoln, Abraham, acts in Merriam’s case, declaration of freedom to
slaves, 46, 159
Livingston, Edward, Jackson’s proclamation, 142, 143
Lodge, Henry Cabot, on secession and Webster’s argument, 5, 6;
on Josiah Quincy and Hartford convention, 132
M
Madison, James, protective duties, 26;
as to compact, 29;
suggestions as to convention to form government, 51;
letter to Hamilton on adoption of Constitution, 72;
wrongly accused of support of nullification, 96;
author of Virginia resolutions of 1798 and explanation of 1799, 102;
a strict constructionist, 82;
signed re-charter of the United States Bank, 133;
_see_ Virginia resolutions
Marshall, John, Chief-Justice, declaration concerning supremacy of
United States, 142;
that State courts had invariably yielded, 150
Martin, Luther, definition of extent of judicial power of United
States, 20;
objection to punishing treason, 43
Mason, George, insisted on National Government, 57;
refused to sign Constitution, reasons, 69
Massachusetts, acceptance of Constitution and use of word compact, 75;
submission to embargo, 30
Military academies in Southern States, 158
Missouri Compromise, 135, 136
Morley, John, on British opinion, 2, 3
Morris, Gouverneur, report of draft of Constitution, 64;
on the importance of the Mississippi, 123
N
New England, discontent with embargo and submission, 130
New York, consideration of the acceptance of the Constitution, 72, 73;
unanimous assertion of its convention that the adoption was for
perpetuity, 77, 78
Nullification, claim that validity of laws of general government are
at the caprice of each State, 25, 26;
no suggestion of such right in conventions, 75;
no claim of such right save in Kentucky resolutions until 1830, 133;
so stated by Jackson, Marshall, and the nullifiers of South
Carolina, 141, 142
P
Pennsylvania, resistance to excise law, 84, 85;
resistance to United States in Gideon Olmstead case, 118-122;
proposition to Virginia for amendment of Constitution as to
questions between States and United States, 122, 123
Pinckney, Charles C., declaration in convention of South Carolina that
the States never had sovereignty, 74;
satisfaction with Constitution, 67
Pinckney, Charles, declaration as to nationality of the Constitution,
74
Q
Quincy, Josiah, his declaration a threat of rebellion, not a claim of
right of secession, 124, 125;
non-concurrence of Massachusetts, 124, 130, 131;
not made delegate to Hartford convention, 132
R
Randolph, Edmund, introduced national resolutions in convention, 51;
did not sign Constitution, 69;
supported it in Virginia convention, 71
Resolutions of State legislatures are mere opinions, 89;
even when declaring laws of United States null and void, 148
S
Secession, general belief in right of, by Southern and English
writers, 1-4;
belief of some Northern writers, 5, 6;
impracticability of claim, 25;
declaration of perpetuity in preamble of Constitution, 33, 34;
historically no claim of such right until 1830, 142
Senate, equality of States in, merely a compromise of representation,
60, 61
Slavery abolished by power given in Constitution, 46, 158
South Carolina, declaration concerning tariff, warlike preparations,
138;
original adoption of the Constitution, 73, 74;
nationality asserted in convention, 74;
only State asserting right of nullification in 1833, 146;
resolutions of other Southern States opposing her opinions, 146-148;
collection of duties after State ordinance, 145, 146, and _note_;
submission to judgment overruling taxation of United States Bank,
150;
first State to secede, 155;
statue of Calhoun and monument at Spartanburg, 161, 162
Southern States, satisfaction with Constitution at first, 67;
opposition to secession in 1833, 146;
resolves of legislatures, 146-148;
change of views, 154;
control of the government before the Civil War, 153;
laws of United States and decision of Supreme Court establishing
right to introduce slaves into territories, 154;
preparations for secession, 155;
confidence of success, 157
State governments, powers derived from Constitutions, 27;
subordinate and local, 39, 40;
limited under the Constitution of United States, 46;
original sovereignty questioned, 79-81;
admitted by Webster, 80;
denied in convention of South Carolina, 74;
resolutions of legislatures mere opinions, 148
Stephens, Alexander H., on secession, 1, 2
Story, Joseph, Judge of Supreme Court, doctrine of supremacy of United
States, tenacity in his belief, 152, 153
Supreme Court of United States, its powers principally those of
restraint, 152;
_see_ Judiciary of the United States
T
Taney, Roger B., Chief-Justice, maintained authority of United States,
151 and _note_
Tariffs, for revenue and protection, second act, first Congress, 26;
no question of power then, 81, 82
Taylor, John, views concerning the government, 114, 115
Treason, crime according to the Constitution, 41;
right of government to punish, implies its citizens owe allegiance,
41;
a confederacy does not punish it, 41;
the old confederacy, 41;
consideration of the clauses of punishment of, 41, 42
U
United States Government, limited to powers granted by the
Constitution, 27;
was a nation or a confederacy made? 28, 29;
the compact was for a nation, 30;
perpetuity declared in preamble, 34;
its supremacy expressly declared and nature of powers granted, 35,
36;
great powers over States, 38, 44;
can be extended by amendment, 45, 46;
_see_ Judiciary of the United States
V
Virginia, acceptance of Constitution, 76;
its powers derived from the people of the United States, 76;
approval by legislature of the supremacy of the United States
judiciary, 122, 123;
did not secede, reasons for joining the South, 156
Virginia resolutions, statement of, 98, 99;
did not declare a State could interpose, 99;
a denunciation of assumption of undelegated powers by United States,
99;
opposed by other States, 100, 101;
explanation of their meaning, 102-111;
State means people of the State, 103, 104;
of rights of States in case of usurpations, 105;
right to redress usurpations, 105, 106;
admission of authority of judiciary, 106;
allegation that assumption of undelegated powers would end in
monarchy, 108;
attack on Alien and Sedition laws, 109, 111, 112;
assertion that resolutions are mere opinions, 109, 110;
patriotism of the State, 111;
remedial methods suggested, 112
W
Walker, Robert J., as to Jefferson’s views of nullification, 125;
successful canvass of Mississippi, 147
Washington, George, services in convention, 67, 68;
suppression of insurrection by military force, 84;
letter on disbanding the army, 86;
letter submitting Constitution to each State as to consolidation of
Union, 86;
farewell address, on unity of government, 86;
action on the Virginia resolutions, 113
Webster, Daniel, personal appearance, 1;
reply to Hayne’s attack on the East, 11, 12;
the coalition and Banquo’s ghost, 10, 11;
eulogium of South Carolina, 13;
declaration that the government was made by the people, for the
people, 16;
supremacy and nationality of government, 16-21
Wilson, James, services in the general and State conventions, 70
Wolseley, Lord, as to Lee and secession, 4
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation has been standardised--in particular, missing periods
and quotation marks have been supplied where obviously required.
All other original errors and inconsistencies have been retained,
except as follows:
Page iv: added missing ,
(and not “We, the States,”)
Page 3: changed 1 to i.
(of chapter iv., vol. i., page 29)
Page 10: changed filled to filed
(they had ‘filed their mind,’ that their)
Page 18: changed it to is
(political system which is established)
Page 18: changed . to ?
(sovereign powers a _government_?)
Page 55: changed Elliott to Elliot
(See his plan, 5 Elliot, 205.)
Page 83: added missing ,
(reasoned opinions. Iredell, a member)
Page 93: changed Elliott to Elliot
(Kentucky resolutions, 4 Elliot, 540.)
Page 101: added missing ,
(United States laws, though asserted)
Page 114: changed John to Moses
(pp. 393, 394. Moses Coit Tyler’s)
Page 122: changed Pinkney’s to Pinckney’s
(Virginia in Mr. Pinckney’s argument)
Page 128: changed collonaded to colonnaded
(the pleasing colonnaded buildings)
Page 163: changed 213 to 2-3
(right of secession, 2-3)
Page 166: added missing word ‘of’
(proclamation of his own work,)