poses opposition to law without crime; it supposes the violation of oaths without responsibility; it supposes the total overthrow of Government without revolution." Jefferson, the leader of the Democratic or State Rights party in his day, saw in the Constitution of 1787 a necessary corrective of the incoherence previously existing in the political condition of America; and it is doubtful whether he would ever have asserted the legal right of secession. He even contended that the much more lax Constitution of 1781 contained within itself the power of coercing individual States. Writing to Colonel Carrington on the 4th of April, 1787, before the new Constitution had been formed, he observed:-"It has been so often said as to be generally believed that Congress have no power by the Confederation to enforce anything-for instance, contributions of money. It was not necessary to give them that power expressly; they have it by the law of nature. When two parties make a compact, there results to each the power of compelling the other to execute it. Compulsion was never so easy as in our case, when a single frigate would soon levy on the commerce of a single State the deficiency of its contributions.” * This, however, it must be admitted, touches rather on what is understood by Nullification than on Secession. But it proves at least that Jefferson, in spite of his great regard for State Rights, was deeply impressed with the obligatory nature of the Federal compact. In a letter to M. Destutt Tracy, dated January 26th, 1811, he admitted, as a danger resulting from the perfect organisation, civil and military, of the States considered as distinct units (which organisation, however, had his general approval), that "certain States, from local and occasional discontents, might attempt to secede from the Union." This he regarded as a weakness; there is not a word to show that he considered it a right.

On the whole, the argument, when regarded from a practical point of view, apart from the subtleties of Constitutional law, seems to be more in favour of the Federalists than of their opponents. For if any of the parties to a contract are at liberty to break that contract, without reference to the wishes or convenience of the others, and simply because they find it no longer profitable to themselves, it is obvious that such agreements, however advantageous in some respects, would be highly undesirable. It was, indeed, alleged by the Seceding States that the contract was first broken by the Free Soil States; but, in acting on this

* Quoted by Mr. Edward Everett, in an Address delivered at New York, July 4th, 1861.

contention, they made themselves judges in their own cause, and of the truth of the charge there is not the slightest evidence. The Federal Government, up to the close of Mr. Buchanan's rule, had always favoured the interests of the South, except in the matter of taxation, and even in that respect had infringed no Constitutional law. The election of Mr. Lincoln was unimpeachably legal, and it was a mere assumption to say that it would have resulted in any violation of Federal obligations. Whatever quarrel the Southern States may have had with the Northern, as regarded the attempts to defeat the Fugitive Slave Law, was, as we have before pointed out, a quarrel with those States individually, and not with the Federal Government, which had done its utmost to enforce the law. Of moral justification, there was absolutely nothing. The South broke the Union from motives of transparent, and even of avowed, selfishness.

It is a noteworthy fact that Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic party, held opinions, and attempted to carry measures, which should. place him, in the eyes of a modern Southerner, almost on a level with the Abolitionists. That great man, who, whatever his faults, had a profound belief in the principles of freedom and the claims of humanity, was certainly no admirer of negro slavery. He saw the difficulties of getting rid of it; he was opposed to violent and ill-considered changes; but he wished to facilitate its departure by timely arrangements. The original draft of the Declaration of Independence contained a passage in which the slave-trade and slavery were reckoned among the causes of offence given to the colonies by Great Britain. This was struck out by desire of the Southern States; but it shows what were the views of the author of the Declaration, though himself a slave-owner. In 1784, Jefferson proposed that after 1800 there should be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the States into which the Territory of the United States should be thenceforward divided. The resolution was lost by the accidental absence of one member, and in 1787 an Ordinance was passed confining the prohibition of slavery to States that should be formed north-west of the river Ohio. Even this qualified prohibition was afterwards regarded by the South as one of her grievances; for the diffusion of the black shadow over the whole of the Territories, and over all the States to be made out of them, was among the strongest desires of the slave-holding oligarchy. During many years, the wishes of the Free Soil States were almost uniformly set aside in any general arrangement. From 1787 to 1819, nine States

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were admitted to the Union, of which five were Slave, and only four Free; which gave the South a clear majority in the Senate. One of the Slave States was Louisiana, purchased out of the Federal Treasury; so that the South was reinforced partly at the expense of the North. In 1818, Missouri sought admission to the Union as a Slave State, though a large portion lay north-west of the Ohio; and its claim was ultimately admitted when the Missouri Compromise, fixing the line of demarcation between Slave and Free Territory at 36° 30' North latitude, was sanctioned in 1821. In 1836, this slave-holding State of Missouri was increased by the addition of a triangular piece of territory, large enough to be divided into seven counties, which was taken from ground that had previously been free. Still greater was the triumph of the South, still greater the injury to those principles which the North held dear, when Texas, which, as a portion of Mexico, had been free from slavery, was over-run by American adventurers, and converted into a Slave State-a conversion afterwards confirmed by the blood and treasure of the whole Union. Furthermore, when the Oregon Territorial Government was formed in 1848, a resolution was passed to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, although the effect of this was to plant slavery where before there was none. The arrangement was upset, if not by the Compromise of 1850, by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, by which all the Territories were thrown open to slavery, if the people voted for it, but not otherwise.* Finally, the South, making a grievance of that which it had formerly obtained as a privilege, demanded that the freedom of the Territories to determine this matter for themselves should be taken away, and that no Territory should be permitted to exclude slavery, even if it would!

Perhaps the greatest wrong done to the North, however, was the endeavour, often successful, to prevent the very discussion of the question of slavery. Not to speak of mob-violence, Congress itself did its best to stifle the right of free utterance on this subject. When, in the year 1836, petitions against slavery began to be numerous, it was resolved by the House of Representatives, on the motion of Mr. H. L. Pinckney, of South Carolina, to refer to a select committee all anti-slavery memorials then before that body, and all that might afterwards be sent in, with instructions to report against the prayers of the petitioners, and the reasons for such conclusions. The committee

These and other instances of Southern aggression are forcibly brought together in a paper by Mr. J. M. Ludlow in the London Spectator of Sept. 14th, 1861.

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in time made a report, concluding with a series of resolutions, the last of which was thus expressed:

"Resolved, that all petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions, or papers, relating in any way, or to any extent whatever, to the subject of slavery, or the abolition of slavery, shall, without being either printed or referred, be laid upon the table, and that no further action whatever shall be had thereon." The resolutions were carried by a vote of 117 ayes to 68 noes; but a Southern controversialist makes it a serious charge against the North that a majority of the Northern members showed by their speeches and their votes that they considered the right of petition more sacred than the duty of protecting the slave-holder's property !† The matter, however, did not end here; for in December, 1837, Mr. Slade, of Vermont, in spite of what had been previously determined, moved to refer to a select committee two memorials praying the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. He made a vehement speech against negro servitude; and at length Mr. Rhett, of South Carolina-he who afterwards figured in the Secession movement-called upon the entire delegation from the slave-holding States to retire from the hall, and assemble in one of the committee-rooms. Several having accordingly met there, it was agreed to present to the House the following resolution :— "Resolved, that all petitions, memorials, and papers, touching the abolition of slavery, or the buying, selling, or transferring of slaves in any State, District, or Territory of the United States, be laid on the table, without being debated, printed, read, or referred, and that no further action whatever shall be had thereon." This resolution was sanctioned by a vote of 122 to 74; and in January, 1840, the House adopted a rule which prohibited even the reception of Abolition petitions, memorials, and resolutions. The rule was rescinded in December, 1844, on the motion of John Quincy Adams, by a vote of 108 to 80; and several attempts which were afterwards made to restore it came to nothing. The right to petition Congress against slavery was one of the instances of so-called Northern aggression of which the South complained.‡

All this while, the Supreme Court continued to interpret the laws in favour of whatever the South desired, and the Southern States continued to elect pretty nearly all the Presidents. Mr. Alexander Stephens, in his celebrated Union speech in the Georgian convention, delivered in January, 1861, showed that in the choice of Presidents and Vice+ Pollard's First Year of the War, chap. 1.

Ibid. The tone adopted in Mr. Pollard's work is that of the most cruel injury.

Presidents, of Speakers of the House of Representatives, of judges of the Supreme Court, of Attorneys-General, of Foreign Ministers, of officers in the army and navy, and of clerks in the Departments at Washington, the South had enjoyed by far the largest amount of patronage. Yet the whites of the Free States were enormously in excess of those in the Slave States; and this disproportion, already considerable when the Union was formed in 1787, had by 1861 increased to so great an extent that, supposing the affairs of the country to have been determined simply by the respective numbers of white people in each section, the South would have had no standing whatever. Not merely this, but the average intelligence and education of the North were far superior to those of the South. It was simply by the exercise of a certain aptitude and adroitness in the meaner walks of politics that the Slave States contrived for so many years to rule the Free States. Of actual genius in such matters, the South had but little when she entered on the desperate work of Secession. She had no longer a Washington, a Jefferson, a Patrick Henry, a Madison, or a Rutledge; she had not even a Jackson-much less a Calhoun. The race of Southern politicians had indeed dwindled down since the revolutionary epoch and that immediately succeeding it. Secession could count only upon such men as Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Barnwell Rhett, Robert Toombs, C. G. Memminger, and the conspirators of Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet.

It would be difficult to say why Jefferson Davis attained the first position in this combination of Southern malcontents. He was a man of no greater talent than some of the others; and, while giving it his countenance, he had not been one of the leaders of the Secession movement. The initiative came from South Carolina; it was in South Carolina that Secession principles were most earnestly held; and it might have been supposed that a South Carolinian would have been President of the new Confederacy. However, the office fell to Davis, and his subsequent career showed that he had some abilities for the task. This conspicuous, if not eminent, politician was born in Kentucky on the 3rd of June, 1808. While he was yet a boy, his father, who was a planter, removed with his family to Mississippi; but the later civil studies of young Davis were conducted at Transylvania College, Kentucky. He entered the United States Military College at West Point in 1824, and in 1828 became brevet second lieutenant. In 1831 and the following year, he served on the Northwest frontier in the war against the Indians under Black Hawk, and in 1833 was employed as a first

lieutenant of Dragoons against the Comanches and Pawnee Indians. On retiring from the army, in 1835, he settled as a cotton-planter in Mississippi, but was again in the field during the war with Mexico, when he was elected colonel of the 1st Regiment of Mississippi Volunteers, and distinguished himself by gallant conduct at Monterey and Buena Vista. He had previously attracted some notice in Congress as an energetic supporter of Democratic principles and measures, and had assisted in bringing about the election of Mr. Polk for the Presidency. As a reward for these services, Mr. Polk, in 1847, offered him the post of Brigadier-General of Volunteers; but he declined to receive it, on the ground that volunteer commands ought to be vested in the States, and did not come within the prerogatives of the Federal Government. Mr. Davis was always for stretching State rights to the utmost, and on this occasion did so even to the sacrificing of an honour which might have been his. Having been elected to the Sénate, at the conclusion of the Mexican war, he was chosen president of the Military Committee in 1850-an office which he resigned in 1851, that he might stand as a candidate for the Governorship of Mississippi. His efforts in this respect were unsuccessful; but under the Presidency of Mr. Pierce he held the office of Secretary of War. During the Administration of Mr. Buchanan, he remained a private member of the Senate; yet he was gradually drawing to himself a number of followers, who now acknowledged his supremacy.

The Vice-President of the Confederacy, Mr. Alexander H. Stephens, was born in Georgia in 1812, and had for some years represented his State in Congress. He was a man of some mark as a speaker and politician; but his treachery in deserting the Union a few weeks after he had said that there was no excuse for such a course, and that nothing should induce him to follow it, casts an indelible stain upon his reputation. The members of Mr. Jefferson's Cabinet were-Robert Toombs, Secretary of State; Charles G. Memminger, Secretary of the Treasury; L. Pope Walker, Secretary of War; Stephen R. Mallory, Secretary of the Navy; John H. Reagan, PostmasterGeneral; and Judah P. Benjamin, AttorneyGeneral. Mr. William M. Browne was appointed Assistant Secretary of State, and Mr. Philip Clayton Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. Commissioners were despatched to Europe, and Mr. Stephens set himself to work to expound and defend the principles on which the new Government rested. On the 21st of March, he delivered a speech at Savannah, which contained some memo

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rable passages. He observed, with a frankness not always equalled, that the question of slavery was the immediate cause of the late rupture. Jefferson had anticipated that that would be the rock on which the old Union would split. But Mr. Stephens doubted whether Jefferson fully comprehended the great truth upon which the rock stood. He and his contemporaries regarded the enslavement of the African as a wrong, and believed that somehow or other the institution would pass away in time.

That was an idea fundamentally erroneous. The conception of the equality of races was a mistake. "Our new Government," said Mr. Stephens, "is founded upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race-is his natural and normal condition. This, our new Government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of

science. It has been so even amongst us.

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who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics." With extraordinary boldness, Mr. Stephens prophesied that the principle of negro bondage would ultimately be recognised throughout the civilised and enlightened world. and enlightened world. He was certainly not skilled in reading the signs of the times. The whole tendency of civilised nations, since the success of the American struggle for independence taught them to value man as man, has been towards a clearer recognition of the brotherhood of humanity. Bondage of any kind is an anomaly in the nineteenth century. It is shrinking every day before "the better genius of this world's estate;" yet it was ostentatiously made the corner-stone of the Southern Republic. In a few years that cornerstone was pulled out, and the whole fabric came toppling down in hideous and irremediable ruin.

WAR between the new Slave Power and the old Union was so certain to ensue that it was considered imperative on the part of the former to make instant preparations for the worst. The Southern Congress accordingly authorised Mr. Davis to accept 100,000 volunteers for twelve months, and to borrow 15,000,000 dollars at the rate of eight per cent. per annum. Orders were given for the creation of a small naval force for coast defence; a postal system was established; several laws were passed for the due carrying on of the government; and on the 11th of March a permanent Constitution was adopted. It began with the words "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting

in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent Federal Government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity-invoking the favour and guidance of Almighty God-do order and ordain this Constitution for the Confederate States of America." The words in italics show the earnest desire of the framers of the Constitution to place the sovereignty of the States on the most indisputable footing. They also show, by fair inference, that the Secessionists, notwithstanding their assertions to the contrary, felt doubtful whether the preamble to the United States Constitution would really bear this