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MISSISSIPPI NEVER OUT OF THE UNION.

179

Had not President Lincoln, at all times, held that the State was in the Union and refused to receive or to treat with Confederate commissioners, on the sole ground that secession was a nullity? Was not his whole policy one toward States in the Union, though in rebellion against the authority of the general government? Had not Mississippi, in her sovereign convention of 1851, declared that the State had no right to secede from the United States? The present convention would declare secession a nullity. Its members could not vote her any further in, nor vote her out. Her civil rights and authority were superseded, for the present, by military power and force, in order, it was said, to purge her people of their treason, and to fit and prepare them for loyal subjects; and none of the multiplied questions about the negroes were settled. Those who had subscribed to the amnesty oath, as the late election proved, constituted a majority, and the power of the State. They had taken the oath in good faith, with a determination to cast no obstacle in the way of harmony and the restoration of all civil rights. By the action of her people in taking the amnesty oath, the State stood redeemed, and was entitled to an equal station with any State in the Union.2 Every lawyer, who remem

1 Journal of the Convention of the State of Mississippi and the act calling the same, with the Constitution of the United States and Washington's Farewell Address, published by order of the Convention, Jackson; Thomas Palmer, Convention Printer, 1851, 79. "Resolved, That in the opinion of this Convention, the assertion of secession from the Union on the part of a State or States, is utterly unsanctioned by the Federal Constitution, which was framed to establish and not to destroy the union of the States, and that no secession can, in fact, take place without the subversion of the Union established, and which will not virtually amount in its effect and consequences to a civil revolution," 47-48.

2 Journal, 81-82.

180

LIMITED POWER OF CONGRESS.

bered his Blackstone, knew that there are four great relations in life; those of husband and wife; parent and child; guardian and ward; and master and servant.

The Federal Government had no more power to interfere between master and servant, until the relation was legally and constitutionally dissolved, than between husband and wife, or parent and child. The relation was a private one, regulated by the State. If not, then these fundamental relations in society might be invaded and hopelessly destroyed at any time, at the pleasure of the federal government. Its military arm was in subordination to the civil authority, and this in turn to the Constitution and the laws. When the British government, in 1776, offered freedom to the slaves of New England and the South, provided they would join the British army and fight the rebels of that day,—our fathers,—and burn their homes, there was universal indignation from New Hampshire to Georgia, and yet the present case was parallel.1 There was nothing in the constitution of the State creating or perpetuating slavery; the institution was no longer approved. There could be no conflict with the general government in the matter, and this would leave the people of the State at liberty to revise the final action of the federal government in the Supreme Court.2 But this version of a story, which is yet in the telling, was not accepted by the members.

Mississippi had been vanquished and was without

power

1 Journal, 84. Perhaps it is not fully appreciated even yet what the people of the South understood when they said that the war was, on their part, "for Southern independence." The parallelism which was drawn between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, in the declaration of rights issued by South Carolina, of which an account has already been given (see Vol. II.) runs all through the Southern discussions and the literature of the period.

2 Journal, 85.

to choose her own course, and the powers at Washington made but one course possible: the adoption of a free constitution. If the State would resume its former position, with all its rights and privileges unimpaired, it must conform to that dictation; if it refused, it must suffer long and lingering years of misery in the stern, inexorable control of military rule; it must submit to be garrisoned by negro troops. The object for which the convention had met must not be forgotten. Whatever the sacrifice, let the State pursue almost any course that would restore civil rule, secure representation in Congress and banish every vestige of military power.1 The right of secession never did exist in the Federal Constitution, and ought never to have been exercised, but why thresh again the stale straw of the right of secession. If the State refused to follow its opportunity and the suggestions of the President, it would discourage the great conservative party of the North and West, which was coming up in aid of its radicals, and place in their hands a weapon with which they were successfully carrying out their future doctrine of negro equality and negro suffrage. So sure as the State failed to obtain representation in Congress, so sure would the radicals pass and rivet upon its people the disgusting doctrine of negro suffrage, which would indeed render this country no longer an abiding place for white men.2 From that party in the North called the "Copperheads," and even from the ranks of black Republicans, there were springing up many conservative patriots armed for the coming struggle.3

1 Journal, 88.

2 Journal, 89.

s Id., 90. The doctrines of the "Copperheads," in their purity, may be read in the books and pamphlets sent forth from the "Democratic Publication House, Von Evrie, Horton and Co., 162 Nassau St., N. Y.," 1861-1867.

182

THE SOUTH AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE.

Governor Sharkey had not communicated to the convention the President's suggestion on negro suffrage. The President, it was repeatedly said in the convention, was committed emphatically against the doctrine of negro suffrage; every member of his Cabinet, save one, was thought to be with him on that great question. If the South could get back speedily into the Union, said a member, all the revolted States with their Representatives united with the President and those members of his Cabinet friendly to his doctrine and leagued with the great conservative party of the North, would at once form a great party irresistible in its power, and sufficiently efficacious and strong to control the next Presidential election to defeat the radicals, and to place some conservative northern man in the chair. It would not advantage a southern man to gain it, and the South should be well satisfied with a northern man of conservative sentiments willing to accord the revolted States their political rights and privileges. But if the State began making conditions, the northern radicals would say: Look at the people who have been in rebellion against the constituted power of the government; they have not even yet subdued their rebellious spirit, and are talking about having their rights guaranteed as a condition precedent. They are talking about the right of compensation for slaves and manifesting a spirit which cannot be trusted. Their Representatives cannot be admitted to Congress while that spirit exists; keep the bayonet over them, and let the tramp of soldiers be heard by day and by night; maintain a garrison in every town and village, and hold them until that spirit is quelled.2 If the convention adopted such a proposition it would prove a death blow to the State.

1 Id., 90.

2 Journal, 90.

As to compensation for slaves, two reasons ought to satisfy everybody. The people, who for half a century were the implacable enemies of the institution, and who finally destroyed it, would never consent, if in power "to give up one picayune of the public treasury to compensate a single individual;" and secondly, if others were willing, they were so bankrupt that the "attempt would hopelessly involve the General Government in pecuniary embarrassment." Every condition that weighed down the amendment by which the State hoped to recover its place in the Union, would be construed by Congress as evidence of the spirit of rebellion. Therefore nothing should be done to clog its admission to Congress. Let the institution of slavery and the question of compensation go; let everything go until the men of the South had relieved themselves and their posterity from the present position, and obtained some little guarantee at least that the children whom they were rearing up would have a land to live in, and the privileges of free men.3

2

The ordinance of secession, said another member, was either constitutionally operative and obligatory upon the citizens of the State, or unconstitutional, null and void. If the former, the State had ceased to be an integral part of the Union, and as the ordinance was still unrepealed, Mississippi continued to sustain to the United States the relation of a foreign power. On this hypothesis, the convention was now endeavoring to effect a readmission of the State into the Federal Government. Did it not belong to the convention, then, to dictate the terms, or was it the right of the United States to prescribe them? Right or wrong, the General Government had power to prescribe the

1 Id., 92.

2 Journal, 94.

* Id., 95.

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