graphical ligaments as close, strong, and vital as the spinal cord in the human frame. The original thirteen States, furthermore, constituted no portion

must hold it subject to the instrument or compact of partnership. In like manner, the State of South Carolina, e. g., upon entering into the Union, lost her status as a separate and independent sovereignty, because she solemnly bound herself to abide by the “constitutional compact" which she had voluntarily adopted, subject to revision and amendment by a majority of two thirds of Congress, and three fourths of the State legislatures. By adopting the Constitution, her condition and obligations became like those of a giver of a note or bond. The giving of the bond is optional; but having been given, its terms and promises must be kept.

Furthermore, the fact that a State must be admitted into the Union by a vote, proves that it cannot leave it but by a vote. It would be as absurd to allow Ohio to go out of the Union at will, and by its own isolated action, as it would have been for it to enter the Union in such a manner. The evils of allowing a person to enter a mercantile partnership, without any action by a majority of the partners, would be no greater than those that would result from allowing him to leave it without any such action. Secession from the Union by independent State action, would justify accession to it by the same method. If mere self-will and self-interest, without any regard to the will and interests of the constituted majority, may rule in the former instance, why not in the latter? Says Mr. Madison: "It surely does not follow from the fact that the States, or rather the people embodied in them, have, as parties to the constitutional compact, no tribunal above them, that in controverted meanings of the compact, a minority of the parties can rightfully decide against the majority; still less that a single party can at will withdraw itself altogether from its compact with the rest."

It was

of that European State-System of which Great Britain was an important member. Their career and their destiny would not sensibly affect the balance of power in the Old World, for they were out of all relations to it. But the States of Virginia and Louisiana, by their geography, are as intimately identified with the American Union, are as inextricably involved in it, as the counties of Middlesex and Yorkshire are with the three kingdoms that constitute Great Britain. one thing for thirteen distant colonies to declare their independence of the British empire, and a very different thing for an English county to do this. A new nation might spring into being three thousand miles from the island of Great Britain, without danger either to the British constitution, or to the system of European States, and, as it turned out, with great benefit to them both; but a new and alien government, constituted out of an organic and integral part of the very island itself, would have been the annihilation of the English power and the English realm.

But again, the alleged parallelism between the two instances fails in another most important particular. The thirteen colonies were not equal members of a democratic republic, but inferior de

pendencies upon a monarchy flushed with power, and fenced with the descending orders of nobility. They revolted from the mother country simply and solely because they had no representation upon the floor of the British Parliament. It was not the tax upon tea; it was not the stamp act; it was not any very great aversion to a monarchical form of government, as such, that fired the heart of our Revolutionary fathers. The statement of Webster is strictly true: "They went to war against a preamble. They fought seven years against a declaration." In the phraseology of the most beautiful and magnificent period that ever dropped from those charmed lips: "On a question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they raised their flag against a power, to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her glory, is not to be compared ; a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." It was simply the refusal to place the people of the colonies upon the same footing with the people of the mother country,-giving

them the same constitutional rights and privileges, no more and no less,-that led our forefathers to throw off their allegiance, and establish an independent government. Had this reasonable demand been conceded, the brightest of its jewels might not have dropped from the English crown, and to this day we might have been Englishmen, under a hereditary monarchy, and as proud of the rich and glorious history of England as we now are of our own brilliant and striking career. The wise men of that time, the Burkes and the Chathams, knew this, and saw this; but the wisdom of these statesmen was overborne by the folly of those politicians who happened (as it has happened since) to be in the ascendant at a critical instant. The people of the seceding States can make no such complaint as this. They were not colonies and dependencies of a monarchical Empire. They were members of a democratic Union. They had an equal, and in one particular, a superior, representation in the national Congress, with those States whom they now charge with being their tyrants and their invaders, and whom they would compare with that aristocratic and arbitrary parliament that denied to Massachusetts and South Carolina any participation in the common deliberations and decisions of the British realm,

In these two facts, then, namely: that the Confederate States are as geographically connected with the American Union as an English county is with the island of Great Britain, and that they have a common representation and vote in the national councils, we find the proof that this war has no analogy with that by which our fathers gained their independence, but is simply a domestic rebellion upon one side, and the exertion of constitutional power upon the other. America are engaged in suppressing the treason of a portion of the population, and defeating their attempt to overthrow the common Government. There is no intention of depriving any loyal State, or any loyal citizen, of a single iota of his constitutional rights. It is a war to maintain a common Constitution and preserve a democratic government.*

The United States of

* The declarations of the President and Congress of the United States, prove this assertion. The Inaugural Address of President Lincoln contained the following passage:

"Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property, and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but