=The Right to Withdraw=
The causes which led to the secession of the Southern States have never
been given, and when they are compared with those which led to the
American Revolution as given by the First Continental Congress, the latter
sink into comparative insignificance. A large portion of the wrongs
complained of in the Declaration of Independence were acts committed after
the commencement of the collisions between the British troops and the
Colonists, and if these were compared with those committed by the Federal
troops in the beginning of the war, in Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, to
say nothing of the long list of outrages perpetrated during its progress,
the indictment against King George contained in the eloquent language of
the Declaration of Independence, would be a very tame affair in comparison
with that which could be preferred against the Government at Washington.
The third article of the Confederation had specified the object for which
it had been formed, and that it was "A firm league of friendship" for
the common defence, the security of the liberties and the mutual and
general welfare, and that the states bound themselves to assist each
other against all force offered to or attacks made upon them or any of
them "on account of religion, sovereignty, trade or any other pretense
whatever." The preamble to the Constitution recites that it was made "to
form a more perfect union." More perfect how? To the subversion of the
liberties and sovereignty of the states? Had the conduct of the Northern
States been that of the members of "a firm league and friendship?" And
when they had so flagrantly violated and neglected the plain stipulations
of the Constitution, did not the Southern States have the same right to
withdraw from the connection with them, that the colonies had to withdraw
from the connection with Great Britain, because the government which had
been instituted for "the common defence and general welfare" had become
"destructive of those ends?"
Who was to judge of whether there was a necessity for severing the
connection, the oppressor or the oppressed? If the former, then the
decision would have been against the colonies. If colonies, the mere
offshoots from the mother country, could undertake to judge the
sufficiency of the grievances and the mode and measure of redress, could
not sovereign states which had framed the government of which they
complained, do the same thing? In seceding from the Union, the Cotton
States had acted as states, and not as factious individuals resisting
the laws or authority of the government. The right of no one had been
violated, and it was not proposed to violate the rights of any individuals
or states, but merely to dissolve a compact, the terms of which had been
violated. To undertake to coerce those states by military force was
subversive of the whole spirit and purpose of the Constitution, and made
the government the master, instead of the agent, of the powers which had
created it. This doctrine of coercion had never been asserted by any
respectable statesman since the foundation of the government, and was at
war with all of its principles and aims. When therefore the other states
were called upon to engage in this war of coercion against the Cotton
States, it was not only their right but their duty to resist. By the very
terms of the Constitution, it was made the duty of the Federal Government
to protect the states against invasion. Did that government have the right
to invade the state it was bound to protect? It was not authorized even
to protect the states against domestic violence except upon invitation
of the legislature or of the executive, when the legislature was not in
session. Was it authorized to create that domestic violence? The power
of coercion involved the anomalous consequence of reducing the states to
conquered provinces when exercised, and this involved the self-destruction
of the government itself.
In regard to this question of the right of the states to withdraw, and
the power of coercion, it is not inappropriate to call attention to the
following views expressed by Mr. Horace Greeley, one of the ablest writers
and firmest supporters of the Republican or abolition party. In an article
published in the _New York Tribune_ a few days after the election of
Lincoln in 1860, and reproduced in his work styled "The American Conflict"
he says:
"That was a base and hypocritic row that was once raised at Southern
dictation about the ears of John Quincy Adams, because he presented a
petition for the dissolution of the Union. The petitioner had a right to
make the request; it was the member's duty to present it. And now if the
Cotton States consider the value of the Union debatable, we maintain their
perfect right to discuss it. Nay! we hold, with Mr. Jefferson, to the
inalienable right of communities to alter or abolish forms of government
that have become injurious or oppressive, and if the Cotton States shall
decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist upon
letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one
but it exists nevertheless, and we do not see how one party can have a
right to do what another party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist
the asserted right of any state to coercion in the Union, and nullify and
defy the laws thereof; to withdraw from the Union is quite another matter.
And whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately
resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures to keep it in.
We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to
another by bayonets.
"But while we uphold the practical liberty, if not the abstract right of
secession, we must insist that the step be taken, if ever it shall be,
with the deliberation and gravity becoming so momentous an issue.
"Let ample time be given for reflection, let the subject be fully
canvassed before the people, and let a popular vote be taken in every case
before secession is decreed. Let the people be told just why they are
asked to break up the Confederation; let them reflect, deliberate, then
vote; and let the act of secession be the echo of an unmistakable popular
fiat. A judgment thus rendered, a demand for separation so backed, would
either be acquiesced in without effusion of blood, or those who rushed
upon carnage to defy or defeat it, would place themselves clearly in the
wrong."
It would be hard to conceive language more forcible for defining the
right of the states to withdraw and the wrong and criminality of the
attempt to coerce them when they had exercised that right, than this of
Mr. Greeley's. It derives additional force as coming from him, when it
is recollected that he had ever been inimical to the institutions of the
South, and it announced principles which had been previously asserted
in all questions of the Union, and underlay the whole superstructure of
a government which itself was founded on the right of revolution. It is
difficult to realize the fact that the man who uttered language like
that quoted, subsequently became one of the most strenuous advocates of
the war of coercion, which was waged on the Southern states. Mr. Greeley
cannot avoid the effect of his statement of the principles asserted in
his article, by contending that the act of separation was not "the echo
of an unmistakeable popular fiat," and that the Southern people were
precipitated into secession without due deliberation.
When the right to discuss, deliberate and decide, exists, those possessing
it, must necessarily be the sole judges of how it is to be exercised.
The Southern states did deliberate and did decide that they could no
longer remain in the Union with safety, and therefore they determined to
withdraw from it. If the Southern people had been hurried into secession
by their leaders, they are the parties to complain and to hold the guilty
ones responsible. They have not done so, and what right had Mr. Greeley
and his party to become their champions against their wishes? He and his
party are estopped from denying that the Southern people, did with almost
entire unanimity, adopt secession and willingly gave their support to the
cause of separation; for since their country was overrun by a superior
military force, their state governments overthrown; military despotisms
established over them; and in the effort to reconstruct the Union, the
great mass of the people disfranchised, and the right of suffrage given
to the freed slaves, because it was alleged that the Southern people were
still rebellious, and so wedded to the idea of secession, notwithstanding
the bitter experience of the war, that they could not be trusted with the
right to vote and hold office. All of this was done with Mr. Greeley's
full knowledge and sanction.
It has been shown how long, how earnestly, and how anxiously the question
was discussed in Virginia, and that secession was resorted to by that
state only when a war of coercion had been proclaimed, and she had been
required to furnish troops to carry it on. The state of Virginia believed,
with Mr. Greeley, that it would be a grievous wrong to "rush upon carnage
to defy and defeat" the right of the Cotton States to withdraw from the
Union; and she determined to do what he had declared his purpose of doing:
that is "resist all coercive measures." The ordinance of secession
was submitted to the popular vote at an election held more than one
month after its adoption by the convention, and it was ratified by an
overwhelming majority, thus showing beyond dispute that it was "the echo
of an unmistakable popular fiat." Did not "those who rushed upon carnage
to defy and defeat" "a judgment thus rendered, a separation so backed,"
"place themselves clearly in the wrong?"
Yet Virginia was the first of the seceding states invaded by the Federal
army; her towns and plains were devastated by a long and cruel war; her
people plundered, imprisoned and murdered; her territory severed, and a
new state erected within her limits, in violation of the Constitution
of the United States. Subsequently a military despotism was thrust upon
them, and the freed slaves were vested with the right of suffrage and the
capacity to hold office, while such wide measures of disfranchisement were
adopted that enough men competent to fill the petty offices of state,
even with those whose fears and cupidity led them to apostatize and the
influx of adventurers could not be found in all the limits of that old
commonwealth which has been designated "the mother of states and of
statesmen."
In the case of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, the people were overrun by
Federal troops owing to the peculiar nature of their situation, and they
were deprived of the opportunity of freely discussing and deliberating
upon the questions involved, though the legislature of Missouri did pass
an ordinance of secession. Did not those people, under such circumstances,
have the right individually to resist so flagrant an outrage upon their
rights and liberties? They were not only deprived of the liberty of
peaceably assembling to discuss their grievances, but it was sought to
deprive them of the right "to keep and bear arms," as expressly guaranteed
by the second amendment to the Constitution, in order that they might
have the means always of defending their liberties and rights, and the
only resource they had was to unite as individuals in the defence of the
common cause, and of their own violated homes and liberties.
It has been said that the Confederate states began the war by firing upon
Fort Sumter. If those states had the right to withdraw from the Union and
the United States had no right to resist or coerce them then the attempt
to maintain a garrisoned fort in one of the most important harbors of the
Confederacy, was an act of war. This had, nevertheless, been patiently
borne with, for nearly three months after the secession of South Carolina,
in whose principal harbor the Fort was situated, and it was only when
the Government of the United States had given notice of its intention
to supply Fort Sumter "peaceably, if possible, otherwise by force,"
and the vessels for that purpose had appeared off the harbor, that the
attack began. The commissioners sent to Washington to effect a peaceable
settlement of all questions had then been denied an audience, and informed
that the authorities at Washington would hold no intercourse with them.
The war was thus inevitable, and the Federal authorities were quietly
preparing for it, in order to entrap the border states. The threat to
supply Fort Sumter indicated a purpose of war; was then the Confederate
Government to wait until the measures of the Government at Washington
had been so completely taken that the former would find itself helpless
in the hands of its enemy? The port of Charleston was necessary to it
as an inlet for obtaining supplies and arms for its defence, was it
then to allow the port, which could block the entrance to that harbor,
to be placed in a condition to render the blockade complete, the harbor
worthless and Charleston untenable?
There can be no question of the right of the Confederate Government to
force a surrender of the fort, which had been refused, and that it was
fully warranted in pursuing the course it did. I must confess that, at
the time, I deeply deplored and condemned the attack on Fort Sumter, on
the score of policy, because I regarded the threat of the Washington
Government as designed to provoke a commencement of the conflict by the
firing of the first shot, and not intended really to be carried into
effect. It is now manifest that war had already been resolved upon, and
the firing of the first gun on Fort Sumter was not its commencement. The
war was begun by the attempt to hold the forts in the Confederate harbors.
It has been alleged that the Southern States had previously controlled
the policy of the government, and that they seceded because they had now
lost that power. There had never been a president elected from any of
the Cotton States, which established the Confederate Government except
from Louisiana, of which state General Taylor was a nominal resident, but
really a native of Virginia, and an officer in the army, and he lived
but a little over a year after his inauguration. These Cotton States had
furnished comparatively few cabinet ministers, and they had in the main
been opposed to the policy pursued by the government in regard to the
most important branches of legislation, such as internal improvements,
the public lands, tariff, etc. Their leading interest, the culture of
cotton, had received no fostering care whatever from the government, and
South Carolina had been complaining for more than thirty years that her
interest had been sacrificed to Northern cupidity by high tariff and at
one time she had taken steps to nullify the laws on that subject. In no
sense could the state which initiated secession, be said to be actuated by
disappointment at the loss of Federal power.
It is true that they had lost the power to protect themselves in the
Union, as the Constitution had been so flagrantly violated and were now
threatened with submission--and for this they seceded.
The state of Virginia had given four of the Southern presidents to the
Union, and Tennessee the other two. Washington had been the unanimous
choice of all of the states; Jefferson, Madison and Munroe had been
national men in their policy and had received the support of a large
majority of the Northern vote; Munroe being accepted without opposition
at his last election and receiving all of the votes, North and South, but
one northern electoral vote. Munroe was the last Virginian elected or
nominated as President. It is true Tyler had succeeded to the office by
the death of Harrison, but he had not received the vote of Virginia even
as vice-president.
Virginia had voted against Clay, Harrison, Taylor and Scott, all natives
of the state, when they were candidates for the presidency, and she had
cast her vote three times against Mr. Clay, and in the cases of Harrison,
Taylor and Scott, her vote had been cast for Northern men against them.
All of the presidents she had given had been re-elected, because there was
nothing sectional or local in their policy, while no Northern president
had been re-elected, though three out of the six had been candidates
again. In the election of 1860, the state of Virginia cast its vote for
Bell and Everett, by a plurality vote over Breckenridge and Lane, and
Douglas and Johnson, showing that in this election she was not liable to
the charge of sectionalism, even if that charge could be brought against
the supporters of Breckenridge and Lane, which is by no means admitted.
No interest of Virginia had at any time been fostered by the action of
the government, in any stage of its history, and the government had not
even taken steps to obtain from foreign countries a diminution of the
enormous duties placed on her leading staple, tobacco, but her statesmen,
when in office, had pursued a policy looking to the general welfare and
prosperity. If she had furnished many statesmen to the common councils,
it was because of the general confidence in their patriotism, and freedom
from all selfish ambition and narrow-minded notions of policy.
Her history from the beginning of the controversy with Great Britain had
been one of sacrifices for the benefit of all of the states. She had
promptly sent troops to Massachusetts on the commencement of the war of
the Revolution in that state, all of its battlefields were red with the
blood of her sons; and that war had been terminated on her own soil. With
a territory larger than that of all of the other states at the conclusion
of peace, she had surrendered an empire beyond the Ohio river, for the
sake of Union and for the common benefit; and subsequently, she had
consented to the erection of the state of Kentucky within her remaining
territory.
As the acknowledgement of the independence of the states had left her, she
would have been amply able to take care of herself, and erect a powerful
government of her own, yet she had contracted her power and narrowed her
limits for what she considered the common good.[A]
[Footnote A: Note--The following extract is from the "History of
the American Civil War" by Professor Draper, a Northern Union man,
which shows the nature of Virginia's sacrifices: "At the time of the
Declaration of Independence, Virginia was the most powerful of the
colonies; she occupied a central position and had in Norfolk one of
the best harbors on the Atlantic. She had a vast western territory,
an imposing commerce, and in the production and export of tobacco
not only a source of wealth, but from the mercantile connections
it gave her in Europe, a means of refinement. It was through this
circumstance that so many of her young men were educated abroad. When
the epoch of separation from the mother country had come, and the
question of Confederation arose, she might have asserted her colonial
supremacy; she might have been the central power. Many of her ablest
men subsequently thought that in her voluntary equalization with the
feeblest colonies, the spontaneous surrender of her vast domain, the
self-abnegation with which she sacrificed all her privileges on the
altar of the Union, she had made a fatal mistake. In her action there
was something very noble."]
The Union had not advanced her pecuniary or material interests, yet, in
all of its trials, she had been its firmest supporter and her blood had
been freely shed in all of its wars and upon all of its battlefields. It
was only where that Union was to be perverted from its original designs
and made the means of humiliating and degrading the Southern states,
herself included, that Virginia resolved upon severing the connection.
On the other hand, New England had made no sacrifices for the Union, and
had received only benefits from it. To that section the Union had been a
"paying operation" in every way: its fisheries, commerce and factories
had been fostered and protected by high bounties and duties until its
comparatively sterile soil bloomed as a garden, while its surplus
population found homes in the fertile region surrendered by Virginia.
Descendants of the Puritans did not undertake to become "philanthropists"
until the slave trade with the South ceased to be profitable.
Notwithstanding the benefits received by the New England states from the
Union, the first proposition for its dissolution came from those states
when the country was engaged in a foreign war--the war of 1812 with Great
Britain--because that war was caused by a temporary suspension of their
commerce. Most of these states refused to permit their militia to be
marched beyond their limits for the common defence and the question of a
separate peace with the public enemy was mooted, notwithstanding the fact
that the war had been undertaken in defence of commercial rights in which
New England was principally interested. Such was the spirit manifested in
that section that the British government in declaring a blockade for the
coast of the United States, for some time exempted the New England coast
from that blockade and did not invade those states.
Upon the passage of an act for a general embargo in 1814, so as to put
a stop to the contraband trade from New England, the Massachusetts
legislature was flooded with petitions for redress and protection against
the act of the Federal government in enforcing the embargo, and a
committee to which the petitions were referred, made a report in which the
following views, among others, were expressed:
"The sovereignty reserved to the states, was reserved to protect the
citizens from acts of violence by the United States, as well as for
the purposes of domestic regulation. We spurn the idea that the free,
sovereign and independent State of Massachusetts is reduced to a mere
municipal corporation, without the power to protect its people or to
defend them from oppression from whatever quarter it comes. Whenever the
national compact is violated and the citizens of this state are oppressed
by cruel and unauthorized enactments, this legislature is bound to
interpose its power and to wrest from the oppressor its victim."
To show the spirit animating the people of Massachusetts in the assertion
of these doctrines--however true they might be in principle--when the news
was received of the abdication of Buonaparte and the restoration of the
Bourbons in 1814--thus leaving the British government at liberty to employ
all of its forces against the United States, the people of Massachusetts
as well as of all New England hailed the news with joy and exultation,
"as the harbinger of peace and the renewal of commerce;" and the event
was celebrated at Boston by a religious ceremony and a sermon from the
celebrated Dr. Channing.
In the fall of 1814, the legislature of Massachusetts invited a convention
of the New England states, which assembled in Hartford in December of
that year and adopted a series of resolutions in which it was declared,
among other things, that, "In cases of deliberate, dangerous and palpable
violations of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a state and
the liberties of a people, it was not only the right but the duty also
of that state, to interpose its authority for their protection, when
emergencies occur, either beyond the reach of the judicial tribunal or too
pressing to admit of delay incident to their forms; states which have no
common umpire must be their own judges and execute their own decisions."
The danger to the Union from these steps on the part of Massachusetts and
the other New England states, in a time of public war, was put to an end
by the unexpected arrival of the news of a treaty of peace; this perhaps
prevented the former state from proceeding to assert her sovereignty and
making a separate peace with Great Britain.
In fact in 1809, during the existence of the troubles growing out of
the embargo passed before the close of Mr. Jefferson's administration,
John Quincy Adams had communicated to the government at Washington that
the object of the dominant party in Massachusetts was, and had been for
several years, the establishment of a separate confederacy, as he knew
from unequivocal evidence; and that in case of a civil war, the aid of
Great Britain to affect that purpose would be assuredly resorted to, as it
would be indispensably necessary to the design.
There was strong reason to suspect that during the war some secret
arrangement existed with the enemy, by which New England withheld from
the country the support of her troops and her soil was kept free from
invasion. In all the measures then resorted to in order to embarrass the
government, Massachusetts took the lead, yet when a war of invasion and
subjugation against the Southern states was waged, Massachusetts found no
constitutional difficulties, had no scruples about sending her troops into
the South.
The idea that any of the Southern states resorted to secession because of
the loss of the power and patronage of the government is not founded on
fact, as neither had ever been used for their special benefit even when
in the hands of Southern men, but it was the Northern states whose trade
and factories had grown up under the fostering care of the government
throughout its whole history, while the schools of the Northwest had been
richly endowed from the public lands and the gigantic system of railroads
in the same quarter had been built up mainly from grants of this common
property.
It has been further alleged that it was the slave power which attempted to
break up the government, because of its defeat, and that that power had
hitherto controlled the government in its interest. In the first place, it
is as well to state that as far as the executive branch of the government
was concerned, there had been nothing of which to complain on the part of
the Southern people. The great difficulty had been with the legislative
department, which always manifested a disposition, more or less, to be
aggressive on the subject of slavery, and the Southern people looked to
the executive to interpose its conservative influence. The preponderance
of Northern men in Congress, already increased by the admission of Oregon
and Minnesota, and soon further to be increased by the admission of
Kansas, had become so great, that the only hope of the South was in the
executive, and when that branch of the government was also sectionalized,
there was no safety for the weaker section. The people of the South had
never asked the government to protect slavery; they had merely asked that
it should be let alone, and left where the Constitution left it.
In entering the Union, they had stipulated for a government for certain
general purposes, and not one to regulate their domestic affairs; and they
claimed that the government should be confined to the purposes for which
it was instituted. That government had in no way acted so as to strengthen
slavery, and it had not been able to comply with the express stipulation
for the return of fugitive slaves. Slavery had been excluded from an
immense territory by the action of the government, but it had not been
carried to one foot of territory by that action. All of the new states
east of the Mississippi, except Florida, had been formed out of territory
originally belonging to the slave states, and they had been admitted into
the Union under that provision of the Constitution which declared that
such states should be admitted upon the same footing in every respect with
the original states and to add to this obligation not to interfere with
their domestic institutions, the states ceding the territory had expressly
stipulated that there should be no interference with slavery.
Louisiana came in by treaty as slave territory, and with a stipulation for
the protection of the people in their property. Out of that territory,
three slave states had been formed, and they were the last there was any
prospect of forming; while the free states of Iowa, Oregon and Minnesota
had already been admitted from the same territory with the prospect of the
speedy admission of Kansas and Nebraska and the not remote prospect of
an indefinite number of other free states from the same territory. Texas
had come in as a state from the condition of an independent republic and
the measures leading to her admission had resulted in the acquisition
and admission of California as a free state with a prospect of more
free states from the territory acquired. So that in every case of the
introduction of new slave territory into the Union, there had been largely
more than equivalent in territory for the formation of free states except
in the case of the slave territory of Florida; and when that was acquired
the vastly larger and more important slave territory of Texas had been
surrendered. It is not a fact, then, in any sense of the term, that the
government had been used for the protection and growth of the slave power.
That power, if it might be called such, was relatively stronger the day
the Constitution was formed than it was ever afterwards.