Volume I Part 5 (2/2)
Such were the views of an undoubted patriot who had partic.i.p.ated in the formation of the Union, and who had long been confidentially a.s.sociated with Was.h.i.+ngton in the administration of its Government, looking at the subject from a Northern standpoint, within fifteen years after the organization of that Government under the Const.i.tution. Whether his reasons for advocating a dissolution of the Union were valid and sufficient, or not, is another question which it is not necessary to discuss. His authority is cited only as showing the opinion prevailing in the North at that day with regard to the right of secession from the Union, if deemed advisable by the ultimate and irreversible judgment of the people of a sovereign State.
In 1811, on the bill for the admission of Louisiana as a State of the Union, the Hon. Josiah Quincy, a member of Congress from Ma.s.sachusetts, said
”If this bill pa.s.ses, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of this Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation; and as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation-amicably if they can, violently if they must.”
Mr. Poindexter, delegate from what was then the Mississippi Territory, took exception to these expressions of Mr. Quincy, [pg 74] and called him to order. The Speaker (Mr. Varnum, of Ma.s.sachusetts) sustained Mr. Poindexter, and decided that the suggestion of a dissolution of the Union was out of order. An appeal was taken from this decision, and it was reversed. Mr. Quincy proceeded to vindicate the propriety of his position in a speech of some length, in the course of which he said:
”Is there a principle of public law better settled or more conformable to the plainest suggestions of reason than that the violation of a contract by one of the parties may be considered as exempting the other from its obligations? Suppose, in private life, thirteen form a partners.h.i.+p, and ten of them undertake to admit a new partner without the concurrence of the other three; would it not be at their option to abandon the partners.h.i.+p after so palpable an infringement of their rights? How much more in the political partners.h.i.+p, where the admission of new a.s.sociates, without previous authority, is so pregnant with obvious dangers and evils!”
It is to be remembered that these men-Cabot, Pickering. Quincy, and others-whose opinions and expressions have been cited, were not Democrats, misled by extreme theories of State rights, but leaders and expositors of the highest type of ”Federalism, and of a strong central Government.” This fact gives their support of the right of secession the greater significance.
The celebrated Hartford Convention a.s.sembled in December, 1814. It consisted of delegates chosen by the Legislatures of Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, with an irregular or imperfect representation from the other two New England States, New Hamps.h.i.+re and Vermont,26 convened for the purpose of considering the grievances complained of by those States in connection with the war with Great Britain. They sat with closed doors, and the character of their deliberations and discussions has not been authentically disclosed. It was generally understood, however, that the chief subject of their considerations was the question of the withdrawal of the States they represented from the Union. The decision, as announced in their published report, was adverse to the expediency of such a measure [pg 75] at that time, and under the then existing conditions; but they proceeded to indicate the circ.u.mstances in which a dissolution of the Union might become expedient, and the mode in which it should be effected; and their theoretical plan of separation corresponds very nearly with that actually adopted by the Southern States nearly fifty years afterward. They say:
”If the Union be destined to dissolution by reason of the multiplied abuses of bad administration, it should, if possible, be the work of peaceable times and deliberate consent. Some new form of confederacy should be subst.i.tuted among those States which shall intend to maintain a federal relation to each other. Events may prove that the causes of our calamities are deep and permanent. They may be found to proceed, not merely from the blindness of prejudice, pride of opinion, violence of party spirit, or the confusion of the times; but they may be traced to implacable combinations of individuals or of States to monopolize power and office, and to trample without remorse upon the rights and interests of commercial sections of the Union. Whenever it shall appear that the causes are radical and permanent, a separation by equitable arrangement will be preferable to an alliance by constraint among nominal friends, but real enemies.”
The omission of the single word ”commercial,” which does not affect the principle involved, is the only modification necessary to adapt this extract exactly to the condition of the Southern States in 1860-'61.
The obloquy which has attached to the members of the Hartford Convention has resulted partly from a want of exact knowledge of their proceedings, partly from the secrecy by which they were veiled, but mainly because it was a recognized effort to paralyze the arm of the Federal Government while engaged in a war arising from outrages committed upon American seamen on the decks of American s.h.i.+ps. The indignation felt was no doubt aggravated by the fact that those s.h.i.+ps belonged in a great extent to the people who were now plotting against the war-measures of the Government, and indirectly, if not directly, giving aid and comfort to the public enemy. Time, which has mollified pa.s.sion, and revealed many things not then known, [pg 76] has largely modified the first judgment pa.s.sed on the proceedings and purposes of the Hartford Convention; and, but for the circ.u.mstances of existing war which surrounded it, they might have been viewed as political opinions merely, and have received justification instead of censure.
Again, in 1844-'45 the measures taken for the annexation of Texas evoked remonstrances, accompanied by threats of a dissolution of the Union from the Northeastern States. The Legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1844, adopted a resolution, declaring, in behalf of that State, that ”the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts, faithful to the compact between the people of the United States, according to the plain meaning and intent in which it was understood by them, is sincerely anxious for its preservation; but that it is determined, as it doubts not the other States are, to submit to undelegated powers in no body of men on earth”; and that ”the project of the annexation of Texas, unless arrested on the threshold, may tend to drive these States into a dissolution of the Union.”
Early in the next year (February 11, 1845), the same Legislature adopted and communicated to Congress a series of resolutions on the same subject, in one of which it was declared that, ”as the powers of legislation granted in the Const.i.tution of the United States to Congress do not embrace a case of the admission of a foreign state or foreign territory, by legislation, into the Union, such an act of admission would have no binding force whatever on the people of Ma.s.sachusetts”-language which must have meant that the admission of Texas would be a justifiable ground for secession, unless it was intended to announce the purpose of nullification.
It is evident, therefore, that the people of the South, in the crisis which confronted them in 1860, had no lack either of precept or of precedent for their instruction and guidance in the teaching and the example of our brethren of the North and East. The only practical difference was, that the North threatened and the South acted.
Footnote 22: (return) George Cabot, who had been United States Senator from Ma.s.sachusetts for several years during the Administration of Was.h.i.+ngton.-(See ”Life of Cabot,” by Lodge, p. 334.)
Footnote 23: (return) See ”Life of Cabot,” p. 491; letter of Pickering to Higginson.
Footnote 24: (return) Pickering to Cabot, ”Life of Cabot,” pp. 338-340.
Footnote 25: (return) Letter to Theodore Lyman, ”Life of Cabot,” pp. 445, 446.
Footnote 26: (return) Maine was not then a State.
[pg 77]
CHAPTER X.
False Statements of the Grounds for Separation.-Slavery not the Cause, but an Incident.-The Southern People not ”Propagandists” of Slavery.-Early Accord among the States with regard to African Servitude.-Statement of the Supreme Court.-Guarantees of the Const.i.tution.-Disregard of Oaths.-Fugitives from Service and the ”Personal Liberty Laws.”-Equality in the Territories the Paramount Question.-The Dred Scott Case.-Disregard of the Decision of the Supreme Court.-Culmination of Wrongs.-Despair of their Redress.-Triumph of Sectionalism.
At the period to which this review of events has advanced, one State had already withdrawn from the Union. Seven or eight others were preparing to follow her example, and others yet were anxiously and doubtfully contemplating the probably impending necessity of taking the same action. The efforts of Southern men in Congress, aided by the cooperation of the Northern friends of the Const.i.tution, had failed, by the stubborn refusal of a haughty majority, controlled by ”radical” purposes, to yield anything to the spirit of peace and conciliation. This period, coinciding, as it happens, with the close of a calendar year, affords a convenient point to pause for a brief recapitulation of the causes which had led the Southern States into the att.i.tude they then held, and for a more full exposition of the const.i.tutional questions involved.
The reader of many of the treatises on these events, which have been put forth as historical, if dependent upon such alone for information, might naturally enough be led to the conclusion that the controversies which arose between the States, and the war in which they culminated, were caused by efforts on the one side to extend and perpetuate human slavery, and on the other to resist it and establish human liberty. The Southern States and Southern people have been sedulously represented as ”propagandists” of slavery, and the Northern as the defenders and champions of universal freedom, and this view has been so arrogantly a.s.sumed, so dogmatically a.s.serted, and so persistently reiterated, that its authors have, in many cases, perhaps, succeeded [pg 78] in bringing themselves to believe it, as well as in impressing it widely upon the world.
The attentive reader of the preceding chapters-especially if he has compared their statements with contemporaneous records and other original sources of information-will already have found evidence enough to enable him to discern the falsehood of these representations, and to perceive that, to whatever extent the question of slavery may have served as an occasion, it was far from being the cause of the conflict.
I have not attempted, and shall not permit myself to be drawn into any discussion of the merits or demerits of slavery as an ethical or even as a political question. It would be foreign to my purpose, irrelevant to my subject, and would only serve-as it has invariably served, in the hands of its agitators-to ”darken counsel” and divert attention from the genuine issues involved.
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