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Let us not give our opponents any reason to complain of in this respect. Let us not bring to bear upon them the power of despotism, but the power of a people of a Republican Government, where the people rule."

Mr. SMITH was no doubt honest in the above sentiments, but the utterance of them cost him his seat in the Cabinet, for from that day the radicals gave the President no rest until his exodus was made certain.

making negro soldiers has been longest in operation. Neither are the promises of the dreadful effect of the proclamation upon the people of the North realized Gov. Andrew's 'swarms' do not throng the roads of Massachusetts, and volunteering has been at a stand still. As to the political effect of the proclamation, at the North, nothing can be said. The enthusiasm it has evoked, has all been on the wrong side, and some of the most ardent advocates of emancipation have been so disheartened by this, that they began before the proclamation had been out a month, to talk about letting the We have thus given a pretty full chapter of South go, if we cannot subdue the rebellion the rise, progress and decline of the Adminisbefore May. [That was Greeley.] The pre-tration, in its negro policy, and if that policy text of our malcontents, that the proclamation is powerless, because it does not declare free the slaves in the loyal states, is not even specious; it is merely absurd."

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CALEB B. SMITH PLEDGES THE ADMINISTRA-
TION.

During the time which the Hon. CALEB B. SMITH acted as Mr. LINCOLN's Secretary of the Interior, he addressed the Republicans of Providence, R. I., and from that address we make the following selections, to show what the "Government" pledged its good faith to the people on this subject:

"It is the question of domestic servitude that has rent asunder the temple of liberty. What is there in this question of slavery that should divide the people? [Sure enough.] * * The theory of the Government is, that the states are sovereign within their proper spheres. The Government of the United States has no more right to interfere with the institution of slavery in South Carolina, than it has to interfere with the peculiar institutions of Rhode Island, whose benefits I have enjoyed to-day. * * * It has been my fortune to be selected as one of his [the President's] constitutional advisers. I have had the honor of being connected with this Administration since its commencement, and I tell you to-night, that you cannot find in South Carolina a man more anxious, religiously and scrupulously, to observe all the features of the Constitution, relating to slavery, than Abraham Lincoln.

*

shall have no worse effect than to demonstrate the inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies of hotbed politicians, then we may thank God for the power of a saving grace, that can check the most sinister machinations of fallen man !

MR. MADISON ON EMANCIPATION.

Mr. MADISON, the "father of the Constitution," in a debate on this subject, in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, used the following language. See Elliott's Debates, v. 3,

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"I was struck with surprise when I heard him (Mr. Wythe) express himself alarmed with respect to the emancipation of slaves. Let me ask, if they (the North) should even attempt it, if it would not be a usurpation of power. There is no power to warrant it in that paper, (the Constitution). If there be, I know it not. But, why should it be done? Says the honorable gentleman, 'for the general welfare;-it will infuse strength into our system.' Can any member of this committee suppose that it (emancipation) will increase our strength? Can any one believe that the American congress will come into a measure which will strip them of their property, and discourage and alienate the affections of five-thirteenths of the Union? Why was nothing of this sort arrived at before? I believe such an idea never entered into an American heart,. nor do I believe it ever will enter into the heads of those gentlemen who substitute unsupported suspicions for reasons.”

* * My friends, we make no war upon Southern institutions. We recognize the right This was the harshest language used by Mr. of South Carolina and Georgia to hold slaves, if they desire them. But, my friends, we apMADISON in all the debates of the first Constipeal to you to uphold the great honor of our tutional Convention. The idea of emancipaglorious country, and to leave the people of tion was so absurd to him that he could not that country to settle their domestic matters according to their own choice, and the exigen- conceal his indignation, notwithstanding he cies which the times may present. * * ☀ was at that time making a Constitution for a "It is not the province of the Government of state of war, as well as peace, with the experithe United States to enter into a crusade ence of a long and bloody struggle before him. against the institution of slavery. I would proclaim to the people of the states of this LORD DUNMORE'S PROCLAMATION. Union, the right to manage their institutions in their own way. I know that my fellow citiDuring the Revolution, Lord DUNMORE iszens will recognize that as one fundamental sued a proclamation to excite the negroes principal on which we commenced this contest. I against the Colonists. We refer the reader to

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the Eighth Volume of BANCROFT's History of the United States, where the historian thus sets forth the matter:

"Encouraged by 'this most trifling success,' Dunmore raised the King's flag, and, publishing a proclamation, which he had signed on the 7th, he established martial law, required every person capable of bearing arms, to resort to his standard, under penalty of forfeiture of his life and property, and declared freedom 'to all indentured servants, negroes or others, appertaining to rebels,' if they would join for the reducing the colony to a proper sense of its duty.' The effect of this invitation to convicts and slaves to rise against their masters, was not limited to their ability to serve in the army. 'I hope,' said Dunmore, it will oblige the rebels to disperse to take care of their families and property.' (But it didn't.) The men to whose passions he appealed were either criminals, bound to labor in expiation of their misdeeds, or barbarians, some of them freshly imported from Africa, with tropical passions seething in their veins, and frames rendered strong by abundant food and out-of-door toil; they formed the majority of the population-at tide-water-and were distributed among the plantations, in clusters, around the wives and children of their owners, so that danger lurked in every house. * * * At Dunmore's proclamation, a thrill of indignation ran through Virginia, effacing all differences of party, and rousing one strong, impassioned purpose to drive away the insolent power by which it had been put forth. * *

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"But, in truth, the cry of Dunmore did not rouse among the Africans a passion for freedom, [nor does it to-day.] To them, bondage in Virginia, was not a lower condition of being than their former. They had no regrets for ancient privileges lost; their memories prompted no demand for political changes; no struggling aspiration of their own had invited Dunmore's interposition; no memorial of their grievances had preceded his offer. [And this was precisely the case with Mr. Lincoln's proclamation.]

"What might have been accomplished had he been master of the country, and had used an undisputed possession to embody and train the negroes, cannot be told; but as it was, though he boasted that they flocked to his standard, [just as the abolitionists do now,] none combined to join him from a longing for an improved condition, or even for ill-will to their masters."

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lamation a 'new policy.' and one which converts and perverts the war, waged in defense of the Government and Unoion into a crusade against slavery, I see sure and swift destruction! In Wendell Phillips' avowal, that the abolition motto is 'Death to Slavery or the Union,' endorsed by the Tribune and Independent, I see, unless the treasonable sentiment be rebuked, a divided North, [The very thing we charged as the object,] with two-thirds of the people against this fanaticism."

MR. LINCOLN ON FEDERAL AUTHORITY.

On the 6th of March, 1862, Mr. LINCOLN transmitted to Congress his message, recommending remuneration for slaves by appropriation from Congress, &c., in which he speaks of initiating an emancipation scheme on the free will basis of state action and national pecuniary aid

He says:

"I say initiatory, because, in my judgment, gradual and not sudden emancipatien is better for all. In the mere financial or pecuniary view, any member of Congress, with the census tables and the Treasury reports before him, can readily see for himself how very soon the current of expenditure of the war would purchase, at a fair valuation, all the slaves in any named state. Such a proposition on the part of the General Government sets up no claim or right by Federal authority to interfere with slavery within state limits, referring as it does the absolute control of the subject in each case to the state and its people immediately interested."

ORM.

!

THE CHICAGO PLATFORM. The above when read in connection with the

following plank in the Chicago Platform, does not well comport with the subsequent action of the President and his friends. This is the 4th plank in said platform:

"4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domes▾ tic institutions, according to its own judgment, exclusively, is essential to that balance of power, on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends.''

Here it is laid down as a political axiom that the "maintenance inviolate" of the right of each State to regulate its own domestic concerns in its own way, is essential-that isnecessary to that "balance of power" on which the "perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends.'

Well, as this right is now disputed by the radicals, and ignored by the Administration, we have a right to infer that it is in contemplation to destroy the "perfection and endurance" of our political fabric. In other words, to dis

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POSTMASTER GENERAL BLAIR AS A WITNESS.

Fortunately we were not left to our own opinion or ipse dixit, but will refer the reader to the speech of Post Master General BLAIR, at Rockville, Md., October 3, 1863. His speech seems to have been in reply to the Article in the Atlantic Monthly, by CHARLES SUMNER, which advocated the "State Suicide" doctrine. We do not endorse all that Mr. B. says, but give his reasons in full, that they may be compared with the conduct of the Administration, to which he is officially attached:

SPEECH OF HON. MONTGOMERY BLAIR AT ROCKVILLE, MD., OCT. 3, 1863.

"Fellow Citizens:-I congratulate you on I congratulate you on the hopes just inspired by the circumstances under which we have met to-day. The progress of our armies gives us good reason for believing that peace will soon be restored to our country, and that when it comes it will be an enduring peace, because obtained by preserving the integrity of the government, and because it will be followed by the early suppression from our system of the institution of domestic slavery, which occasioned most of the difficulty in the founding of the government, and has been the only cause which ever seriously endangered its existence. But even whilst we are indulging in these well founded hopes that our country is saved from destruction by rebellion, we are menaced by the ambition of the ultra abolitionists, which is equally despotic in its tendencies, and which, if successful, could not fail to be alike fatal to republican institutions.

"The slaveocrats of the South would found an oligarchy, a sort of feudal power, imposing its yoke over all who tilled the earth over which they reigned as masters. The abolition party, The abolition party, whilst pronouncing phillippics against slavery, seek to make a caste of another color, by amalgamating the black element with the free white labor of our land, and so to expand far beyond the present confines of slavery the evil which makes it obnoxious to republican statesmen, and now, when the strength of the traitors who attempted to embody a power out of the interest of slavery to overthrow the government is seen to fail, they would make the manumission of the slaves the means of infusing their blood into our whole system by blending with it "amalgamation, equality and fraternity." The cultivators of the soil must then become a hybrid race, and our government a hy

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brid government, ending, as all such unnatural combinations have ever done, in degraded, if not in abortive generations, and making serfdom for the inferior caste-the unmixed blood of the conqueror race inevitably asserting a despotism over it. To facilitate this purpose a concerted appeal is now made to the people of the free states through the press to open the way to this daring innovation, beginning in the Southern states, unhappily now brought under the ban by the Calhounite conspirators.

"With this view it is proposed to declare the State governments vacated in that section where they are restored to the Union, and all the loyal men of the South whom the treason of Presidents Pierce and Buchanan, in complicity with southern traitors, has subjugated,

are to come under absolute submission to the representatives of the Northern States in Congress, without vestige of a State right, a State law, or constitution to protect them-nay, not even the franchise of a vote to send a solitary representative to the Legislative body to which their destiny is to be committed. Simultaneously three leading organs-the Chronicle, at Washington, boasting a sort of official sanction; the Missouri Democrat, the ultra abolisher of Fremont graft, at St. Louis, and the Atlantic Monthly, which lends to the parent stock, at Boston, all it can boast of literary strength and elegance-have struck the key-note of revolution, the sheer abolition of State constitutions in the region suffering under the rod of the rebellion.

"The article in the Atlantic Monthly may justly be quoted as the programme of the movement. It presents the issue on which the abolition party has resolved to rest its hope of setting up its domination in this country. The boldness that marks the announcement of its design to assume for Congress absolute power over the states recovered to the Union, without allowing representation for them in the body, argues much for the confidence of those who never attained an ounce of political weight until they threw themselves into the scale of the republican party adjusted at Chicago, wherein state rights, even the most doubtful one asserting exclusive power over the subject of slavery was recognized.

"And now in this discussion (says the new ukase) we are brought to the practical question which is destined to occupy so much of public attention. It proposed to bring the action of Congress to bear directly upon the rebel states. This may be by the establishment of provisional by making the admission or recognition of the states degovernments, under the authority of Congress, or simply pend upon the action of Congress. The essential feature of the proposition is, that Congress shall assume jurisdiction of the rebel states.”

"One would suppose that "the action of Congress" had been already brought to bear "directly on the rebel states," by the armies which Congress has raised and sent against the rebel states; or to use exact language, the states in which the rebels enforce a usurpation over the loyal people.

"But it is not over the states in the hands of rebels that the abolition programme proposes to

assume jurisdiction; but over the states when wrested from the usurpation of rebels, and in condition to be restored to the control of the loyal people. Against these political military bodies now exerting the force of government in that portion of the United States in which the rebellion reigns for the time triumphant, the Union wages war, but it does not wage war upon the loyal people, upon the constitution they recognize or the true constitution-upon the pirit and forms of their government, upon its archives or property. On the contrary, the whole system as part of the Union subsists and is respected by the nation, and only remains in abeyance where the rebels hold sway by force of arms. It is against this rebel organization, against the persons and property, the means and instrumentalities of the rebels, that the United States make war, in defence of the loyal men and loyal. governments.

"The assumption that certain states of the south are extinct-annihilated by the rebellion -and that a Congress composed of representatives from the states in which the rebellion does not exist has the right to consider the sister Republics where the insurrection for the moment prevails as dead bodies, to be disposed of as they please when they get possession, is abhorrent to every principle on which the Union was founded. No member of the Union, nor the government of the whole, can act upon any of the States in the mode prescribed by the constitution. They are all bound to guarantee to each a republican form of government, and that is a government adopted by the people, for it is the essence of republican government that it shall emanate from the people of the State. "The Federal Government derives its power from the same source, and it is on the people and through the people that it must act as a nationality, and not upon the states, blotting them out of existence by a supposition, while their constitutions, laws, archives, property, all survive, and a loyal people to give them activity the moment that constraint is thrown off.

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abolition petitions, about the recognition of Hayti, about Texas, about the Wilmot proviso, about the admission of California, the discussion of the compromise of 1850, the Kansas question-'all this audacity was in the name of state rights.' If we except from this aggravated list charged to 'pestilent state rights,' the incipient treason of the South Carolina ordinance, there was nothing beyond the wholesome discussions incident to parties in free governments, in which state rights made no resistance to national authority. This denunciation of the party influence derived through appeals to state rights during this eventful and prosperous period of our history, proves that it proceeds from a party hostile at heart to free debate, the canvasses, the active employment of the checks and balances of our complicated system of national and state governments which are essential to the vitality of all its parts, and enables all to take a just share of the power which moves the whole machinery. In their view our history is a pestilence from Washington's time to this hour, when it is proposed to annihilate state rights as the remedy. We are told that this is effected first by 'state suicide.'

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Burke might blast the "rebel States," but would he blast Missourri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and all the rest of that The abolition programme assumes, on noble sisterhood of States which, with their the contrary, that because violence has trod- loyal people, have in succession been trodden den down state governments and state rights, under foot by a military force? Have the peothey have ceased to exist; that a loyal people, ple who resisted at the polls, and who still rein whom they still survive and have being, and sist in arms, united with their brethern under to whom the United States stands pledged to the flag of the Union wherever it appears, sacguarantee them forever, must also have per-rificed that corporate existence which identiished, and that a Congress of the other states fies themselves and their States as "living may step in and take absolute authority over component members of our Union?" Is not the whole region, as vacated states, territory, the Union and its constitution identified as and legislate for it-founding this new assump-that corporate existence" with the States tion upon fictions as absurd as those on which rebellion founds itself.

"The abolition programme ascribes all our calamities to 'the pestilent pretension of State rights. The discontent with the treaty be tween the United States and Great Britain, called Jay's treaty, originated in pestilent state rights.' The famous resolutions of Virginia and those of Kentucky usually known as the resolutions of '98, sprung from 'pestilent state rights.' The Missouri controversy about the prohibition of slavery, the first South Carolina outbreak, the contest in Congress about

which makes them all-those trodden down and those standing up-component members of our Union States? How can the Union, which is the guarantee of the government of every republic of which it consists, admit while it lives that any part of it is dead? It does not admit it. It is at war in every State of the Union at this moment, co-operating with the loyal in each entitled to its special sovereignty, to crush the traitors who violate it. As members of the Union, the States assailed by treason may be said to be paralyzed; but they live in all their vital powers, ready for resurrection, in

the persons of their loyal people, the moment | the stone is rolled away. The traitors only will have committed political suicide.

"The man recovered from the bite,
The dog it was that died."

"I allow that "it is a patent and undisputed fact that this gigantic treason was inaugurated with all the forms of law," and that "the states pretended to withdraw bodily in their corporate capacities," which is the ground work of the second proposition of the programme, viz:

"That the states, by their flagrant treason, have forfeited their rights as states, so as to be civilly dead."

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"But the Federal Government is very far from admitting that "the forms of law" employed by the rebels, or the fact that "the states pretended to withdraw bodily" affected in the least the legal status of the states in question. Treason was committed not by any State, but by the individuals who made use of the forms of the state governments and attempted to dismember the National Government.The suggestion that states, guaranteed by the Constitution as under the shield of the Union, can in any way be held responsible for this treason, and subjected to a forfeiture of their rights as a consequence, shows affinity of the abolitionists to the nullifiers. Calhoun's whole scheme was based on the proposition they nɔw adopt, that the states could "withdraw bodily in their corporate capacity."

"The true doctrine, as laid down by the fathers of the constitution, is, that the employment of the forms of the state governments, and the pretense of withdrawing them in their corporate capacity out of the pale of the national authority, does not shift the responsibility from the traitors to the people. Hamilton, in the Federalist, marks the change on this point effected by the adoption of the constitution. He says:

"The great and radical vice in the construction of the existing Confederation is the principle of legislation for states or governments in their corporate collective capacities, and as contra distinguished from the individuals of whom they consist."

"He emphasizes this proposition in the strongest manner, by the use of capitals, in order to condemn the policy of acting on states instead of criminal individuals of whom they consist.

"The aim of the abolitionists is now to accomplish this very thing in defiance of the Constitution. They demand that Congress shall attach the treason in the south, plotted in secret and sprung upon the nation by a body of oath-bound conspirators, to the people of the whole region, and insist that they have forfeited their rights in their corporate and collective capacities for the treason of these individuals. It asserts the power of legislation over the states or governments, instead of applying the law of treason to the guilty individuals to whom alone in the very nature of things it is applicable. No learning is necessary to enable one to see that a state cannot be guilty of treason or

any other crime. Only common sense is wanted to comprehend that guilt cannot be imputed to any but a sentient being, and only common honesty is required to perceive the injustice of disfranchising loyal citizens on account of the offences committed by the disloyal.

"But the manifesto I am considering comes at last to the conclusion that these modes of retiring the states out of the Union are unsatisfactory.

"I discard (says the writer) all theory, whether it be. of state suicide or state forfeiture, or state abolition, on the one side, or state rights, immortal and unimpeachable, on the other side. Such discussions are only endless mazes in which a whole Senate may be lost.'

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‘And, in discarding all theory, I discard also the question of de jure-whether for example, the rebel states, while the rebellion is flagrant, are de jure states of the Union, with all the rights of states. It is enough that, for the time being, and in the absence of a loyal government, they can take no part and perform no function in the Union, so that they cannot be recognized by the national government. The reason is plain. There are in these states no local functionaries bound by constitutional oaths-so that there are, in fact, no constitutional functionaries-and, since the state government is necessarily composed of such functionaries there can be no state gov

ernments.

"This is summary reasoning, but it begins by an assumption that there are no other states but rebel states, cutting out of the question the existence of the states de jure, which have subsisted since the foundation of the government to this hour, and the existence of which the United States are bound to guarantee and maintain, and is at this moment fighting the bloodiest battles known to modern annals to support, against the most excuseless treason and shameless counterfeit authority that ever put on the mask of government. It may be readily conceded that 'rebel states' are not de jure states of the Union, with all the rights of states, and that 'as they can take no part and perform no function in the Union, so they cannot be recognized by the general government.? But does it follow that states are wrenched from the Union because the usurpers hold a disputed tottering power within their territorial limits? States every day recognized as states in the Union, states whose constitutions, laws, archives, loyal citizens, public edifices, lands, and properties of all sorts, are recognized and held sacred, not only in the hearts of loyal patriots of this and every other civilized country, but which the government of the nation recognizes as forming a member of it in every official act, and by every officer at home and abroad, who has occasion to refer to them.

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