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the Constitution to be enforced, Mr. Lincoln, in his inaugural, confessed the truth of the statements of his distinguished cabinet officer, by referring to what he called the fugitive slave clause" of the Constitution in these words: The moral sense of the people (of the North) imperfectly supports the law itself," and "fugitive slaves are only partially surrendered;" acknowledging thus the constitution to be broken. With a conscious distrust of getting what he asked for, he appealed to his party to make good the oath, which he admitted they had violated, in the following words: "All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution; to this provision as well as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves, whose cases come within the terms of this clause [quoting from the Constitution] shall be delivered up,' their oaths are unanimous. Now if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law, by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?" In his debate with Douglas he had said: "Why do I yield support to a fugitive slave law? Because I do not understand the Constitution which guarantees that right can be supported without it." He also uses the following bitter and scathing language towards those who would favor hostile legislation against a man's recognized constitutional right to hold his slave, of which there is no stronger illustration than the enactments of the Personal Liberty Bills.' "Can he (a member of a legislature) withhold the legislation, which his neighbor needs for the enjoyment of a right which is fixed in his favor in the Constitution of the United States, which he has sworn to support? Can he withhold it without violating his oath? and more especially can he pass unfriendly legislation to violate his oath? Why, this is a monstrous sort of talk about the Constitution of the United States! There has never been as outlandish or lawless a doctrine from the mouth of any respectable man on earth." Hopeless, therefore, as Mr. Lincoln evidently considered it to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution in the North, he held that every federal and state officer, every member of Congress and of a state legislature, every judicial and executive officer was bound, in swearing to support the Constitution, to support that clause as well as any other; and, therefore, when they sought to evade, or defeat it, by any act either federal or state, they were guilty of perjury. Commenting on the same clause, Mr. Webster, at Capon Springs, Virginia, in

1851, addressing the South, said:

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GENERAL

University of MICHIGAN

"How absurd it is to suppose,

that when different parties enter into a compact for certain purposes, either can disregard any one provision, and expect nevertheless the other to observe the rest? I have not hesitated to say, and I repeat, that if the Northern states refuse wilfully and deliberately to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain cannot be broken on one side, and still bind the other side. I say to you, gentlemen in Virginia, as I said on the shores of lake Erie and in the city of Boston, as I may say again in that city, or elsewhere in the North, that you of the South have as much right to receive your fugitive slaves, as the North has to any of its rights and privileges of navigation and commerce."

In the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania, Justice STORY, of Massachusetts, in delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court, and referring to the restoration of fugitive slaves, said: "The full recognition of this right and title was indispensable to the security of this species of property in all the slave-holding states, and indeed was so vital to the preservation of their domestic interests and institutions, that it cannot be doubted that it constituted a fundamental article, without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed. The clause was, therefore, of the last importance to the safety and security of the Southern states. The clause was accordingly adopted into the Constitution by the unanimous consent of the framers of it; a proof at once of its intrinsic and practical necessity. We have not the slightest hesitation in holding that, under and by virtue of the Constitution, the owner of a slave is clothed with entire authority, in every state in the Union, to seize and recapture his slave, whenever he can do it without any breach of the peace, or any illegal violence. In this sense, and to this extent, this clause of the Constitution may properly be said to execute itself." From the foregoing statement and discussion, the following conclusions are undeniable, viz., That in 1860 the Republican party assumed these two positions: First. That they would, by an act of Congress, exclude the Southerners with their slaves from all the common territories which belonged, or thereafter might belong, to the United States; and this they would do, without a precedent in the history of the Government, in opposition to the

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recorded opinions of Jefferson and Madison, in 1819 and 1820, in their letters to Walsh, Monroe, and Holmes, against its constitutionality; in opposition to the principle of the Missouri compromise; to the compromise of 1850; to the Kansas-Nebraska bill of 1854; and in violation of a most deliberate and able decision of the Supreme Court of the nation, pronouncing such an act unconstitutional, sustaining the opinions of Jefferson and Madison against restriction, and confirming the principles of the compromise of 1850. Second. That they would not permit the enforcement of the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution. It was a dead letter." This they declared, notwithstanding the Supreme Court, in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, decided that it was "vital" to the interests of the South, and a fundamental article," which had been unanimously adopted because of its absolute necessity. Notwithstanding Mr. Lincoln, in his inaugural, from a sense of conscious duty, in defiance of his own party in Congress, advocated the execution of the fugitive slave clause, and told them their oaths "were unanimous " to its fulfillment, and elsewhere declared that any unfriendly legislation against a constitutional right to hold a slave was "monstrous;" and was an outlandish" and "lawless doctrine from the mouth of any respectable man." So strongly was he in favor of an efficient fugitive slave law, that in his speech at Ottawa he publicly said: "I would give them (the Southern people) any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not in its stringency be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one!"

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In disregard of these strong utterances of Mr. Lincoln for the execution of the fugitive slave clause, charging perjury against those who failed to support it; in defiance of the decision of the Supreme Court that it was fundamental" and "vital" to the interests of the South; the Republican party in effect declared, through Mr. Chase and others of equal authority, that all their officers throughout the federal and state governments, although sworn to support the clause, would violate it rather than offend their moral sense in executing it.

Again, the Republican party declared they would prohibit the Southerners from going with their slave property into any common territory of the United States, in opposition to all precedents in the administration of the Government, in violation of the Constitution

as construed by Jefferson and Madison, the highest authorities known to American history, and as expounded by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Union, pronounced on the very question at issue.

These were the positions of the Republican party, on the ground of which the South rebelled and determined to separate.

To have resorted to this dire alternative of dissolving a Union, hallowed by all the blood of the Revolution, and all the blessings it had bestowed, rather than trusted the gallant Democracy of the North, to have restored within the Union, the Constitution as construed by the Fathers, and triumphantly maintained by the nation in '52, '54 and '56 against the positions of the Republican party, which in '60, for the first time, had won by the mere forms of the Constitution its "brief authority," with a popular majority of near a million, and a majority of Congress and of the Supreme Court against them. How great the folly! how unwise the act! how egregious the error! can alone be told by all the blood and treasure shed and lost, by all the disasters, cruelties and crimes of the civil war which followed.

Prior to the war the Democracy of the North under the leadership of such men as Seymour, Douglas, Hendricks and Pendleton, had opposed the course of the Republican party in its flagrant violations of the Constitution and of their oaths to support it. But war modifies the relations of political parties to each other and to those entrusted with the Government and its preservation through the perils and dangers of the conflict. Party strifes and discords which tend to weaken the military arm and force of the Government, should be suspended as far as possible for the time, and all the powers of a united people concentrated in the effort to save the country and achieve a victory over the common foe. In conformity with this high and patriotic duty the Democracy of the North acted throughout the conflict.

In the first year of the war, Congress by an unanimous vote in the Senate, and with but two negative votes in the House, passed a resolution solemnly declaring the only objects and purposes for which the war then existing was to be prosecuted. It was declared to be: "Not for any purpose of conquest, or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing, or interfering with, the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain.

the supremacy of the Constitution, and all laws made in pursuance thereof, and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several states unimpaired." Mr. Lincoln, in December, 1864, stated to Congress, and on the 3d of February, 1865, to the Commissioners of the Confederacy, "the abandonment of armed resistance to the National authority, on the part of the insurgents, as the only indispensable condition of ending the war on the part of the government; " and to make his meaning still more explicit, he added: "In stating a single condition of peace, I mean simply to say, that the war will cease on the part of the government, whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it." The conditions of Lee's surrender to Grant, on the 9th of April, 1865, were in substance: First, That the officers and men under the former were not to take up arms against the government; and, Secondly, that, on surrendering their arms, they were "allowed to return home, and were not to be disturbed by the United States authority so long as they observe the laws in force where they may reside." By virtue of these terms of peace, (the same in substance proposed by Mr. Lincoln to the Confederate Commissioners) and by virtue of the pledge of the government to the people of the Union who supported the war, that it should be prosecuted only to "maintain the Supremacy of the Constitution," and "to preserve the Union,' ‚”“with all the equality and rights of the several states unimpaired," the Southern States, on their submission, were de jure entitled to their equal rights under the Constitution. Before they came, however, practically into the enjoyment of those rights, there were three amendments to the Constitution submitted to them, which were adopted under the forms required by its amendatory clause, and which were in substance as follows:

First, The abolition of slavery was provided for.

Second, It was provided that all persons born in the United States, or naturalized, and subject to its jurisdiction, should be citizens thereof, and of the state where they reside.

Third, That the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied, or abridged by the United States, or by any state, on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. By this provision no right of suffrage is given; that is left to come alone from the states.

Such, in brief, were the three amendments. And in order that

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