good faith, can modify or change it, as occasions may require. It would be manifestly impertinent to suggest what the Union and Constitution ought to have been, or ought to be, de jure, even if we could be assured, as the Jews were, of a jure divino standard. The government is what it is, and it is nothing else. It is constituted, and we are committed to it, not as mere theorists and politicians to whom nothing but change is certain, but as moral beings bound to one another by oath before GOD. Our form, possibly, is not the best. Hamilton may have been a wiser statesman than Jefferson. It is very likely. But that is nothing to the purpose. Whose ideas or theories, Hamilton's or Jefferson's, were mostly embodied in the Constitution, and afterwards infused into the laws, and made characteristic of our social state? That alone concerns the

object of our inquiry.

Nor is it to our purpose whether the South has acted wisely or unwisely in seceding from the government, on account of alleged grievances. That question is prudential and political, about which parties must and will judge according to their relative positions, taking their own risks, as our fathers judged when they seceded from the mother country. Of such judgments battles are admitted to be the appropriate tests. But right and wrong are referable to a higher standard.

Nor is the question whether the South is right or wrong, by the standard of the Constitution. For the Constitution has not the proper qualifications of a criterion on the subject. It is profoundly silent, and, as it would seem, purposely silent, in regard to it. It provides not for secession, in any case, inasmuch as that would be a palpable absurdity in an instrument contemplating and presuming perpetual harmony. On the other hand, it provides nothing against it, for, after the presumption of perpetual harmony, it would be equally absurd to provide for compelling it by force which presupposes the absence of it; and a

greater absurdity to suppose that love which is spontaneous can be compelled at all. The Constitution is adopted by the people of the several States respectively, as an everlasting bond, in the exercise of a loving and trusting spirit, and for certain common benefits which they could not well secure in separation, or with their previously existing confederation. The instrument unites them lovingly, and there is the end of it. If they afterwards become hateful and vindictive, and consequently separate and contend, morality is somewhere violated. The question, then, between the parties becomes strictly a moral question, to be tested mainly by other and higher standards supreme over all laws and constitutions of men. GOD then enters specially into judgment, and no political or other human considerations can screen the offending party or parties from His inquisition, or, in the long run, avert His judgments. His providence then deals with them according to their respective merits. He leads one, or both, for a longer or shorter time, into captivity, organizes them into separate and distinct communities, or subjects them together to a stronger and harder government. He makes them hewers of wood and drawers of water to a Saul, a Cæsar, a Napoleon; and, since they are no longer capable of self-government, as at the first, compels them to grind in the mill, under a wasting tyranny, or utterly subverts them.

It is in reference to these higher standards that I venture to test the controversy between the North and South, which has resulted in the greatest of all judgments upon guilty States a civil war.

The wrong between the parties consists, morally, in a violation of plighted faith in wantonly breaking the common bond of union-the Constitution - as adopted, ratified, and established by the fathers. In searching for this wrong, we are naturally led to criticise the different interpretations of this common instrument now given by the contending

parties, and their corresponding behavior under it. By their fruits ye shall know them.'

But the Constitution must be taken, if we would truly comprehend our ground, in its natural connection with the Declaration of Independence. That instrument was our fathers' justification for seceding from the mother country, and constituting a new and independent government on their own account. Certain it is, that these instruments which served originally to unite the States, have become an occasion of disunion, by reason of different interpretations, held and acted upon at the North and South, which are obviously definable and measurable by a moral standard. Let us put them to that test.

I. THE DECLARATION.

This remarkable instrument sets forth the elementary idea on which the States, then colonies of Great Britain, withdrew from their allegiance to that power, became formally confederate, and afterwards constituted themselves, for a more perfect union, under a more comprehensive and corrected form of government. This fundamental idea is the asserted natural equality of all men, their inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and to constitute their own governments, of their own free will, as their convictions of expediency or necessity should require. This is the starting-point of our civil history.

The South claims that, whatever may be due to this as a mere idea, a philosophical abstraction, or, hypothetically, in reference to the possibilities of things, or a supposable perfect state of the earth and man- the desire of all nations - it was not, and could not have been, intended by the fathers for practical use and application, in a literal and absolute sense, as things then existed. For, when they left their philosophy and rhetoric, and set themselves to the framing and ordering of an actual system of government, they utterly ignored it, or accommodated it to the practical

exigencies of their social state. The Constitution, the formulary, guide, and law by which, in the more perfect Union which it created, they bound themselves to legislate and live, recognized and declared national inequalities and diversities as existing among themselves, and especially between themselves and other persons resident among them. It particularly excluded the Aborigines and Africans then remaining in the country from civil franchises, as being incapable of participating with them in equal freedom, or of pursuing happiness in the same direction. It especially recognized the servitude of the latter then providentially existing among them, as an institution to be preserved and regulated, agreeably to the usage of all times, through forms of law, by such of the federating States as should not see fit to ordain otherwise; and it required that any persons so held to service in any State, and escaping to other States, should be restored, in good faith, to their masters. This solemn act and ordinance of the fathers practically interpreted and limited their meaning of the previous Declaration. Otherwise, the ordinance and the Declaration are in hopeless contradiction to each other, and those distinguished men are perceived to have been absurdly denying and annulling their own acts. The South accordingly claims to interpret the Declaration, as it was originally interpreted, by the Constitution and the laws, at least so far as reference is had to the Aborigines and Africans among them.

The South justifies this interpretation also by other references; for instance, to history, inasmuch as framers of governments, expounders and administrators of law, have never admitted, in a practical sense, the idea of the Declaration; or if, for a time, they have suffered it to prevail, have been obliged to acknowledge, at length, its practical futility, or its positively destructive influence in society.

It refers also to the highest judicial decisions of this country, as constitu

tionally authoritative upon all the people of the land; for, though the Dred Scott decree be admitted to have been, as some learned men at the North have argued, an obiter dictum, and, of course, technically defective, it declared a profound constitutional, historical, and moral truth, enough for the conscience, if not to answer all the formalities of law. Its ethical and constitutional soundness is independent of the question of its technical propriety, or political conformity.

The South also makes the highest of all reference, namely, to the Scripture, and stands upon that ultimate authority, inasmuch as the idea of human equality and self-government, as a practical matter for the regulation of the family, State, or church, is there nowhere found, but contrary Divine ordinances are proclaimed in regard to all the families, States, nations, and races of the world; adapted to their naturally and certainly existing diversities of moral, physical, and psychological conditions. In particular, at the repeopling of the earth, after the flood, the social inequality of the several then incipient races is judicially proclaimed by the voice of prophecy, which all the subsequent history of providence has verified; for Shem has been the authorized and covenanted master of the scattered pagans; Japheth has dwelt in the tents of Shem; and Canaan has been a servant to them both, and a servant of servants among his own brethren. These and other diverse relations have been formally constituted and announced by GoD; and all attempts to frustrate or change this Divine economy, which is signally founded on the practical necessities of the fallen world, and with reference to the ends of moral government, have proved abortive. They have only reacted to the dishonor of their visionary and intemperate projectors.

Here the South holds. It accepts the Declaration for what it is speculatively or rhetorically worth, just as the whole country accepted it in the beginning,

leaving all questions as to its practical limitations to be settled upon a larger study and experience. Without such limitations, as from time to time providentially ascertained, and in respect to peoples and races not incorporated under the same government with itself, it maintains that the Declaration, in a practical and experimental sense, is: 1. Absurd and impossible.

2. Contrary to the Constitution, which disfranchises the Indians, Africans, and heathen generally, as imbecile and incompetent; contrary to the belief and practice of the people of the States at large till within a recent period; and to the laws constitutionally enacted for their better preservation.

3. Contrary to the published opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States-the authorized expounder of the Constitution.

4. Contrary to the lessons of experience and history.

5. Contrary to the Scripture, which everywhere recognizes inequalities, diversities, authority, subjection, restraint, and discipline, and, in particular, slavery, as a providential necessity for the carrying on of human affairs, in certain conditions of the social state, and for the ultimate vindication of moral government; a part of the Divine system established for the Jews, who were required to enslave the heathen who were round about them for the prevention of a greater evil; and recognized, sustained, and regulated, preceptively, under the New Testament dispensation, for a like reason, and, consequently, wrong only, like other varieties of constituted government, in its abuse.

The revealed will of GOD, who appoints our habitations and ordains the relations of social life, with reference to His own righteous ends, is the ultimate standard of right and wrong as to the relations themselves, and our behavior in them, or atheism is virtually admitted, and all moral distinctions are confounded.

6. As, accordingly, merely visionary and fanatical, and, as things have ever

yet been, and still are, in the sin distracted world, practically futile or destructive. For, to put Jews and Canaanites, whites and blacks, Americans and Esquimaux, Europeans and Sepoys on a social and civil equality, would be ruinous to all. However theoretically sublime or beautiful, upon a merely humanitarian hypothesis, or however logically proved from merely philosophical and speculative data, it would be clearly contrary to all experimental or revealed wisdom, and work out the inevitable corruption and dissolution of the social

state.

In consistency with this interpretation, the South claims to have administered its affairs, in general, in good faith, keeping covenant with the North, under their common bond of union, so far as the principles of the Declaration have a practical embodiment in the Constitution and laws: namely, as to the right of a State to establish its own form of government; the right of several independent States to organize themselves into a Union, upon such terms and conditions as may be stipulated between them, for their better regulation; the right of every particular State so uniting to live, and be free, and pursue its own happiness, as far as that may consist with the life, freedom, and happiness of other coëqual, coördinate, and uniting States; and the right of every State to its share or use of the common property, according to its own customs and enactments, so far as these consist with the common Constitution. It is admitted that individual political persons may have imprudently or wickedly transgressed these limits, which is a necessary evil in all States; but the current of public sentiment and of legislation has been in the channel of the Constitution, and not controlled by the errors or extravagances of ambitious partisans or speculative enthusiasts. The North is foreclosed from denying this claim. Even after the breaking out of the war, it referred what it professed to regard as the offence of the South, not to any pub

lic delinquency, but to a few supposedly designing men whom it would be easy, because of the general remaining virtue, to reduce or restrain. That the North judged not only charitably, but correctly, in regard to the Union-loving spirit of the South, at least till a sectionalizing and coercive policy was maintained, I see no reason to question; and it would seem equally out of question that, afterwards, wherein irregularities existed, through the real or supposed devices of revolutionary individuals, harmony could have been restored by a generous resort to civil and moral rather than to military arbitration, for which no constitutional or moral warrant could be found. From aught that appears outside of partisan journals, or from a dispassionate review of the heated discussions which have taken place on both sides, a magnanimous, comprehensive, and disinterested policy could have saved us. We wanted Christian statesmen.

But it is also probable, and there are the following reasons to believe, that such a happy result was not reached because of adverse opinions and interpretations at the North; which adverse opinions and interpretations had resulted in the election of a chief magistrate upon a merely partisan and sectional platform; the proposed inauguration of a sectional policy declaratively hostile to the institutions of the South; and a persistent refusal to adopt measures of conciliation and compromise assuring the South of their equal rights and immunities under the common Constitution. The North having, agreeably to forms of law, acquired the supposed power of carrying out its own opinions and interpretations, resolved to maintain it, at all the predicted and threatened hazards of a civil war. Of all this I judge the following to be a proximately just account, namely:

Characteristic idiosyncracies exist among all families and States. They are matters of common observation, and are referable, more or less, to scientific causes which may be traced. But the