Happy in the peaceful pursuits of a planter, busily engaged in cares for servants, in the improvement of my land, in building, in rearing livestock, and the like occupations, the time passed pleasantly away until my retirement was interrupted by an invitation to take a place in the cabinet of Pierce, who had been elected to the presidency of the United States in November, 1852. Although warmly attached to Pierce personally, and entertaining the highest estimate of his character and political principles, private and personal reasons led me to decline the offer. This was followed by an invitation to attend the ceremony of his inauguration, which took place on March 4, 1853. While in Washington on this visit, I was induced by public considerations to reconsider my determination and accept the office of Secretary of War. The public records of that period will best show how the duties of that office were performed.

While in the Senate, I had advocated the construction of a railway to connect the valley of the Mississippi with the Pacific coast; when an appropriation was made to determine the most eligible route for that purpose, the Secretary of War was charged with its application. We had then but little of that minute and accurate knowledge of the interior of the continent which was requisite for a determination of the problem. Several different parties were therefore organized to examine the various routes supposed to be practicable within the northern and southern limits of the United States. The arguments which I had used as a Senator were the military necessity for such means of transportation, and the need of safe and rapid communication with the Pacific slope, to secure its continuance as a part of the Union.

In the organization and equipment of these parties, and in the selection of their officers, care was taken to provide for securing full and accurate information upon every point involved in the determination of the route. The only discrimination made was in the more prompt and thorough equipment of the parties for the extreme northern line, and this was only because that was supposed to be the most difficult of execution of all the surveys.

In like manner, my advocacy while in the Senate of an extension of the Capitol, by the construction of a new Senate Chamber and Hall of Representatives, may have caused the appropriation for that object to be put under my charge as Secretary of War.

During my administration of the War Department, material changes were made in the models of arms. Iron gun carriages were introduced, and experiments were made which led to the casting of heavy guns hollow, instead of boring them after casting. Inquiries were made with regard to gunpowder which subsequently led to the use of a coarser grain for artillery.

During the same period the army was increased by the addition of two regiments of infantry and two of cavalry. The officers of these regiments were chosen partly by selection from those already in service in the regular army and partly by appointment from civil life. In making the selections from the Army I was continually indebted to the assistance of that pure-minded and accurately informed officer, Colonel Samuel Cooper, the Adjutant General, of whom it may be proper here to say that, although his life had been spent in the army, and he, of course, had the likes and dislikes inseparable from men who are brought into close contact and occasional rivalry, I never found in his official recommendations any indication of partiality or prejudice toward any one.

When the first list was made out, to be submitted to the President, a difficulty was found to exist which had not occurred either to Colonel Cooper or myself. This was that the officers selected purely on their military record did not constitute a roster conforming to that distribution among the different states, which, for political considerations, it was thought desirable to observe—that is to say, the number of such officers of Southern birth was found to be disproportionately great. Under instructions from the President, the list was therefore revised and modified in accordance with this new element of geographical distribution. This, as I am happy to remember, was the only occasion in which the current of my official action while Secretary of War was disturbed in any way by sectional or political considerations.

Under former administrations of the War Office it had not been customary to make removals or appointments upon political grounds, except in the case of clerkships. To this usage I not only adhered, but extended it to include the clerkships also. The chief clerk, who had been removed by my predecessor, had peculiar qualifications for the place; although known to me only officially, he was restored to the position. It will probably be conceded by all who are well informed on the subject that his restoration was a benefit to the public service

Soon after my entrance upon duty as Secretary of War, General Jesup, the Quartermaster General, presented to me a list of names from which to make selection of a clerk for his department. Observing that he had attached certain figures to these names, I asked whether the figures were intended to indicate the relative qualifications, or preference in his estimation, of the several applicants; and, upon his answer in the affirmative, without further question, authorized him to appoint No. 1 of his list. A day or two afterward, certain Democratic members of Congress called on me and politely inquired whether it was true that I had appointed a Whig to a position in the War Office. Certainly not, I answered. We thought you were not aware of it, they said, and proceeded to inform me that Mr.—, the recent appointee to the clerkship just mentioned, was a Whig. After listening patiently to this statement, I answered that it was they who were deceived, not I. I had appointed a clerk. He had been appointed neither as a Whig nor as a Democrat, but merely as the fittest candidate for the place in the estimation of the chief of the bureau to which it belonged. I further gave them to understand that the same principle of selecion would be followed in similar cases, so far as my authority extended. After some further discussion of the question, the visitors withdrew, dissatisfied with the result of the interview.

The Quartermaster General, on hearing of this conversation, hastened to inform me that it was all a mistake — that the appointee to the office had been confounded with his father, who was a well-known Whig, but that he (the son) was a Democrat. I assured the General that this was altogether immaterial, adding that it was a very pretty quarrel as it stood, and that I had no desire to effect a settlement of it on any inferior issue. Thenceforth, however, I was but little troubled with any pressure for political appointments in the department.

The reader desirous for further information relative to the administration of the War Department during this period may find it in the various official reports and estimates of works of defense prosecuted or recommended, arsenals of construction and depots of arms maintained or suggested, and foundries employed, during the presidency of Pierce, 1853-57.

Having been again elected by the legislature of Mississippi as Senator to the United States, I passed from the cabinet of Pierce, on the last day of his term (March 4, 1857) to take my seat in the Senate.

The administration of Franklin Pierce presents the only instance in our history of the continuance of a cabinet for four years without a single change in its personnel. When it is remembered that there was much dissimilarity if not incongruity of character among the members of that cabinet, some idea may be formed of the power over men possessed and exercised by Pierce. Chivalrous, generous, amiable, true to his friends, and to his faith, frank and bold in the declaration of his opinions, he never deceived any one. And if treachery had ever come near him, it would have stood abashed in the presence of his truth, his manliness, and his confiding simplicity.

The organization of the territory of Kansas was the first question that gave rise to exciting debate after my return to the Senate. The celebrated Kansas-Nebraska bill had become a law during the administration of Pierce. As this occupies a large space in the political history of the period, it is proper to state some facts connected with it which were not public, but were known to me and to others yet living.

The declaration, often repeated in 1850, that climate and the will of the people concerned should determine their institutions when they should form a constitution, and as a state be admitted into the Union, and that no legislation by Congress should be permitted to interfere with the free exercise of that will when so expressed, was but the announcement of the fact so firmly established in the Constitution, that sovereignty resided alone in the states, and that Congress had only delegated powers. It has been sometimes contended that because the Congress of the Confederation, by the Ordinance of 1787, prohibited involuntary servitude in all the Northwestern Territory, the framers of the Constitution must have recognized such power to exist in the Congress of the United States. Hence the deduction that the prohibitory clause of what is known as the Missouri Compromise was justified by the precedent of the Ordinance of 1787. To make the action of the Congress of the Confederation a precedent for the Congress of the United States is to overlook the great distinction between the two.

The Congress of the Confederation represented the states in their sovereignty; as such representatives, it had legislative, executive, and, in some degree, judicial power confided to it. Virtually, it was an assemblage of the states. In certain cases a majority of nine states were required to decide a question, but there is no express limitation, or restriction, such as is to be found in the ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The general government of the Union is composed of three departments, of which the Congress is the legislative branch, and which is checked by the revisory power of the judiciary, and the veto of the executive, and, above all, is expressly limited in legislation to powers expressly delegated by the states. If, then, it be admitted, which is certainly questionable, that the Congress of the Confederation had power to exclude slave property northwest of the Ohio River, that power must have been derived from its character as representing the states in their sovereignty, for no indication of such a power is to be found in the Articles of Confederation.

If it be assumed that the absence of a prohibition was equivalent to the admission of the power in the Congress of the Confederation, the assumption would avail nothing in the Congress under the Constitution, where power is expressly limited to what has been delegated. More briefly, it may be stated that the Congress of the Confederation could, like the legislature of a state, do what had not been prohibited; but the Congress of the United States could only do what had been expressly permitted. It is submitted whether this last position is not conclusive against the possession of power by the United States Congress to legislate slavery into or exclude it from territories belonging to the United States.

This subject, which had for more than a quarter of a century been one of angry discussion and sectional strife, was revived, and found occasion for renewed discussion in the organization of territorial governments for Kansas and Nebraska. The Committees on Territories of the two houses agreed to report a bill in accordance with that recognized principle, provided they could first be assured that it would receive favorable consideration from the President. This agreement was made on Saturday, and the ensuing Monday was the day (and the only day for two weeks) on which, according to the order of business established by the rules of the House of Representatives, the bill could be introduced by the committee of that house.

On Sunday morning, January 22, 1854, gentlemen of each committee called at my house; Douglas, chairman of the Senate committee, fully explained the proposed bill, and stated their purpose to be, through my aid, to obtain an interview on that day with the President, to ascertain whether the bill would meet his approbation. The President was known to be rigidly opposed to the reception of visits on Sunday for the discussion of any political subject, but in this case it was urged as necessary, in order to enable the committee to make their report the next day. I went with them to the executive mansion, and, leaving them in the reception room, sought the President in his private apartments and explained to him the occasion of the visit. He thereupon met the gentlemen, patiently listened to the reading of the bill and their explanations of it, decided that it rested upon sound constitutional principles, and recognized in it only a return to that rule which had been infringed by the compromise of 1820, and the restoration of which had been foreshadowed by the legislation of 1850. This bill was not, therefore, as has been improperly asserted, a measure inspired by Mr. Pierce or any of his cabinet. Nor was it the first step taken toward the repeal of the conditions or obligations expressed or implied by the establishment, in 1820, of the politico-sectional line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes. That compact had been virtually abrogated, in 1850, by the refusal of the representatives of the North to apply it to the territory then recently acquired from Mexico. In May, 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska bill was passed; its purpose was declared in the bill itself to be to carry into practical operation the propositions and principles established by the compromise measures of 1850. The Missouri Compromise, therefore, was not repealed by that bill—its virtual repeal by the legislation of 1850 was recognized as an existing fact, and it was declared to be inoperative and void.

It was added that the true intent and meaning of the act was not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.

From the terms of this bill, as well as from the arguments that were used in its behalf, it is evident that its purpose was to leave the territories equally open to the people of all the states, with every species of property recognized by any of them; to permit climate and soil to determine the current of immigration, and to secure to the people themselves the right to form their own institutions according to their own will, as soon as they should acquire the right of self-government; that is to say, as soon as their numbers should entitle them to organize themselves into a state, prepared to take its place as an equal, sovereign member of the federal Union. The claim, afterward advanced by Douglas and others, that this declaration was intended to assert the right of the first settlers of a territory, in its inchoate, rudimental, dependent, and transitional condition, to determine the character of its institutions, constituted the doctrine popularly known as squatter sovereignty. Its assertion led to the dissensions which ultimately resulted in a rupture of the Democratic party.

Sectional rivalry, the deadly foe of the domestic tranquillity and the general welfare, which the compact of union was formed to insure, now interfered, with gigantic efforts to prevent that free migration which had been promised, and to hinder the decision by climate and the interests of the inhabitants of the institutions to be established by these embryo states. Societies were formed in the North to supply money and send emigrants into the new territories; a famous preacher, addressing a body of those emigrants, charged them to carry with them to Kansas the Bible and Sharpe's rifles. The latter were of course to be leveled against the bosoms of their Southern brethren who might migrate to the same territory, but the use to be made of the Bible in the same fraternal enterprise was left unexplained by the reverend gentleman.

The war-cry employed to train the Northern mind for the deeds contemplated by the agitators was No extension of slavery! Was this sentiment real or feigned? The number of slaves (as has already been clearly shown) would not have been increased by their transportation to new territory. It could not be augmented by further importation, for the law of the land made that piracy. Southern men were the leading authors of that enactment, and the public opinion of their descendants, stronger than the law, fully sustained it. The climate of Kansas and Nebraska was altogether unsuited to the negro, and the soil was not adapted to those productions for which negro labor could be profitably employed. If, then, any negroes held to service or labor, as provided in the compact of union, had been transported to those territories, they would have been such as were bound by personal attachment mutually existing between master and servant, which would have rendered it impossible for the former to consider the latter as property convertible into money. As white laborers, adapted to the climate and its products, flowed into the country, negro labor would have inevitably become a tax to those who held it, and their emancipation would have followed that condition, as it has in all the Northern states, old or new—Wisconsin furnishing the last example.

Extracts from a speech of Davis of Mississippi in the Senate of the United States, May 17, 1860: There is a relation belonging to this species of property, unlike that of the apprentice or the hired man, which awakens whatever there is of kindness or of nobility of soul in the heart of him who owns it; this can only be alienated, obscured, or destroyed, by collecting this species of property into such masses that the owner is not personally acquainted with the individuals who compose it. In the relation, however, which can exist in the Northwestern Territories, the mere domestic connection of one, two, or at most half a dozen servants in a family, associating with the children as they grow up, attending upon age as it declines, there can be nothing against which either philanthropy or humanity can make an appeal. Not even the emancipationist could raise his voice; for this is the highroad and the open gate to the condition in which the masters would, from interest, in a few years, desire the emancipation of every one who may thus be taken to the northwestern frontier.

The strife in Kansas and the agitation of the territorial question in Congress and throughout the country continued during nearly the whole of Buchanan's administration, finally culminating in a disruption of the Union. Meantime the changes or modifications which had occurred or were occurring in the great political parties were such as may require a word of explanation to the reader not already familiar with their history.

The names adopted by political parties in the United States have not always been strictly significant of their principles. The old Federal party inclined to nationalism or consolidation, rather than federalization of the states. On the other hand, the party originally known as Republican, and afterward as Democratic, can scarcely claim to have been distinctively or exclusively such in the primary sense of these terms, inasmuch as no party has ever avowed opposition to the general principles of government by the people. The fundamental idea of the Democratic party was that of the sovereignty of the states and the federal, or confederate, character of the Union. Other elements have entered into its organization at different periods, but this has been the vital, cardinal, and abiding principle on which its existence has been perpetuated. The Whig, which succeeded the old Federal party, though by no means identical with it, was in the main favorable to a strong central government, therein antagonizing the transatlantic traditions connected with its name. The Know-nothing, or American party, which sprang into existence on the decadence of the Whig organization, based upon opposition to the alleged overgrowth of the political influence of naturalized foreigners and of the Roman Catholic Church, had but a brief duration, and after the presidential election of 1856 declined as rapidly as it had risen.

At the period to which this narrative has advanced, the Free-soil, which had now assumed the title of Republican party, had grown to a magnitude which threatened speedily to obtain entire control of the government. Based, as has been shown, upon sectional rivalry and opposition to the growth of the Southern equally with the Northern states of the Union, it had absorbed within itself not only the abolitionists, who were avowedly agitating for the destruction of the system of negro servitude, but other diverse and heterogeneous elements of opposition to the Democratic party. In the presidential election of 1856, their candidates (Fremont and Dayton) had received 114 of a total of 296 electoral votes, representing a popular vote of 1,341,264 in a total of 4,053,967. The elections of the ensuing year (1857) exhibited a diminution of the so-called Republican strength, and the Thirty-fifth Congress, which convened in December of that year, was decidedly Democratic in both branches. In the course of the next two years, however, the Kansas agitation and another cause, to be presently noticed, had so swollen the ranks of the so-called Republicans that, in the House of Representatives of the Thirty-sixth Congress, which met in December, 1859, neither party had a decided majority, the balance of power being held by a few members still adhering to the virtually extinct Whig and American (or Know-Nothing) organizations, and a still smaller number whose position was doubtful or irregular. More than eight weeks were spent in the election of a Speaker, and a so-called Republican (Pennington of New Jersey) was finally elected by a majority of one vote. The Senate continued to be decidedly Democratic, though with an increase of the so-called Republican minority.

The cause above alluded to, as contributing to the rapid growth of the Republican party after the elections of the year 1857, was the dissension among the Democrats, occasioned by the introduction of the doctrine called by its inventors and advocates popular sovereignty, or nonin-tervention, but more generally and more accurately known as squatter sovereignty. Its character has already been concisely stated in the preceding chapter. Its origin is generally attributed to General Cass, who is supposed to have suggested it in some general expressions of his celebrated Nicholson letter, written in December, 1847. On May 16 and 17, 1860, it became necessary for me, in a debate in the Senate, to review that letter of Cass. From my remarks then made, the following extract is taken:

The Senator [Douglas] might have remembered, if he had chosen to recollect so unimportant a thing, that I once had to explain to him, ten years ago, the fact that I repudiated the doctrine of that letter at the time it was published, and that the Democracy of Mississippi had well-nigh crucified me for the construction which I placed upon it. There were men mean enough to suspect that the construction I gave to the Nicholson letter was prompted by the confidence and affection I felt for General Taylor. At a subsequent period, however, Mr. Cass thoroughly reviewed it. He uttered (for him) very harsh language against all who had doubted the true construction of his letter, and he construed it just as I had done during the canvass of 1848. It remains only to add that I supported Mr. Cass, not because of the doctrine of the Nicholson letter, but in despite of it; because I believed a Democratic President, with a Democratic Cabinet and Democratic counselors in the two houses of Congress, and he as honest a man as I believed Mr. Cass to be, would be a safer reliance than his opponent, who personally possessed my confidence as much as any man living, but who was of, and must draw his advisers from, a party the tenets of which I believed to be opposed to the interests of the country, as they were to all my political convictions.

I little thought at that time that my advocacy of Mr. Cass upon such grounds as these, or his support by the State of which I am a citizen, would at any future day be quoted as an endorsement of the opinions contained in the Nicholson letter, as those opinions were afterward defined. But it is not only upon this letter, but equally upon the resolutions of the Convention as constructive of that letter, that the Senator rested his argument. [I will here say to the Senator that, if at any time I do him the least injustice, speaking as I do from such notes as I could take while he progressed, I will thank him to correct me.]

But this letter entered into the canvass; there was a doubt about its construction: there were men who asserted that they had positive authority for saying that it meant that the people of a Territory could only exclude slavery when the Territory should form a Constitution and be admitted as a State. This doubt continued to hang over the construction, and it was that doubt alone which secured Mr. Cass the vote of Mississippi. If the true construction had been certainly known, he would have had no chance to get it.

Whatever meaning that generally discreet and conservative statesman, Cass, may have intended to convey, it is not at all probable that he foresaw the extent to which the suggestions would be carried and the consequences that would result from it.

In the organization of a government for California in 1850, the theory was more distinctly advanced, but it was not until after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, in 1854, that it was fully developed under the plastic and constructive genius of the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. The leading part which that distinguished Senator had borne in the authorship and advocacy of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which affirmed the right of the people of the territories to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, had aroused against him a violent storm of denunciation in the state which he represented and in other Northern states. He met it very manfully in some respects, and defended his action resolutely, but in so doing was led to make such concessions of principle and to attach such an interpretation to the bill as would have rendered it practically nugatory—a thing to keep the promise of peace to the ear and break it to the hope.

The Constitution expressly confers upon Congress the power to admit new states into the Union, and also to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States. Under these grants of power, the uniform practice of the government had been for Congress to lay off and divide the common territory by convenient boundaries for the formation of future states; to provide executive, legislative, and judicial departments of government for such territories during their temporary and provisional period of pupilage; to delegate to these governments such authority as might be expedient—subject always to the supervision and controlling government of the Congress; and finally, at the proper time, and on the attainment by the territory of sufficient strength and population for self-government, to receive it into the Union on a footing of entire equality with the original states—sovereign and self-governing. All this is no more inconsistent with the true principles of popular sovereignty, properly understood, than the temporary subjection of a minor to parental control is inconsistent with the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, or the exceptional discipline of a man-of-war or a military post with the principles of republican freedom.

The usual process of transition from a territorial condition to that of a state was, in the first place, by an act of Congress authorizing the inhabitants to elect representatives for a convention to form a state constitution, which was then submitted to Congress for approval and ratification. On such ratification the supervisory control of Congress was withdrawn and the new state authorized to assume its sovereignty, and the inhabitants of the territory became citizens of a state. In the cases of Tennessee in 1796, and Arkansas and Michigan in 1836, the failure of the inhabitants to obtain an enabling act of Congress before organizing themselves very nearly caused the rejection of their applications for admission as states, though they were eventually granted on the ground that the subsequent approval and consent of Congress could heal the prior irregularity. The entire control of Congress over the whole subject of territorial government had never been questioned in earlier times. Necessarily conjoined with the power of this protectorate was, of course, the duty of exercising it for the safety of the persons and property of all citizens of the United States permanently or temporarily resident in any part of the domain belonging to the states in common.

Logically carried out, the new theory of popular sovereignty would apply to the first adventurous pioneers settling in the wilderness before the organization of any territorial government by Congress, as well as afterward. If sovereignty is inherent in a thousand or five thousand persons, there can be no valid ground for denying its existence in a dozen, as soon as they pass beyond the limits of the state governments. The advocates of this novel doctrine, however, if rightly understood, generally disavowed any claim to its application prior to the organization of a territorial government.

The territory legislatures, to which Congress delegated a portion of its power and duty to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the Territory, were the mere agents of Congress, exercising an authority subject to Congressional supervision and control — an authority conferred only for the sake of convenience, and liable at any time to be revoked and annulled. Yet it is proposed to recognize in these provisional, subordinate, and temporary legislative bodies a power not possessed by Congress itself. This is to claim that the creature is endowed with an authority not possessed by the creator, or that the stream has risen to an elevation above that of its source.

Furthermore, in contending for a power in the territorial legislatures permanently to determine the fundamental, social, and political institutions of the territory, and thereby virtually to prescribe those of the future state, the advocates of popular sovereignty were investing those dependent and subsidiary bodies with powers far above any exercised by the legislatures of the fully organized and sovereign states. The authority of the state legislatures is limited, both by the federal Constitution and by the respective state Constitutions from which it is derived. This latter limitation did not and could not exist in the territories.

Strange as it may seem, a theory founded on fallacies so flimsy and leading to conclusions so paradoxical was advanced by eminent and experienced politicians, and accepted by many persons, both in the North and in the South--not so much, perhaps, from intelligent conviction as under the delusive hope that it would afford a satisfactory settlement of the irrepressible conflict which had been declared. The terms popular sovereignty and non-intervention were plausible, specious, and captivating to the public ear. Too many lost sight of the elementary truth that political sovereignty does not reside in unorganized or partially organized masses of individuals, but in the people of regularly and permanently constituted states. As to the noninter-vention proposed, it meant merely the abnegation by Congress of its duty to protect the inhabitants of the territories subject to its control.

The raid into Virginia under John Brown—already notorious as a fanatical partisan leader in the Kansas troubles—occurred in October, 1859, a few weeks before the meeting of the Thirty-sixth Congress. Insignificant in itself and in its immediate results, it afforded a startling revelation of the extent to which sectional hatred and political fanaticism had blinded the conscience of a class of persons in certain states of the Union, forming a party steadily growing stronger in numbers, as well as in activity. Sympathy with its purposes or methods was earnestly disclaimed by the representatives of all parties in Congress; it was charged, on the other hand, that it was only the natural outgrowth of doctrines and sentiments which for some years had been freely avowed on the floors of both houses. A committee of the Senate made a long and laborious investigation of the facts, with no very important or satisfactory results. In their final report, June 15, 1860, accompanying the evidence obtained and submitted, this Committee said:

It [the incursion] was simply the act of lawless ruffians, under the sanction of no public or political authority, distinguishable only from ordinary felonies by the ulterior ends in contemplation by them, and by the fact that the money to maintain the expedition, and the large armament they brought with them, had been contributed and furnished by the citizens of other States of the Union under circumstances that must continue to jeopard the safety and peace of the Southern States, and against which Congress has no power to legislate.

If the several States [adds the Committee], whether from motives of policy or a desire to preserve the peace of the Union, if not from fraternal feeling, do not hold it incumbent on them, after the experience of the country, to guard in future by appropriate legislation against occurrences similar to the one here inquired into, the Committee can find no guarantee elsewhere for the security of peace between the States of the Union.

On February 2, 1860, the author submitted in the Senate of the United States a series of resolutions, afterward slightly modified to read as follows:

1. Resolved, That, in the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the States, adopting the same, acted severally as free and independent sovereignties, delegating a portion of their powers to be exercised by the Federal Government for the increased security of each against dangers, domestic as well as foreign; and that any intermeddling by any one or more States, or by a combination of their citizens, with the domestic institutions of the others, on any pretext whatever, political, moral, or religious, with the view to their disturbance or subversion, is in violation of the Constitution, insulting to the States so interfered with, endangers their domestic peace and tranquility—objects for which the Constitution was formed—and, by necessary consequence, tends to weaken and destroy the Union itself.

2. Resolved, That negro slavery, as it exists in fifteen States of this Union, composes an important portion of their domestic institutions, inherited from our ancestors, and existing at the adoption of the Constitution, by which it is recognized as constituting an important element in the apportionment of powers among the States, and that no change of opinion or feeling on the part of the non-slaveholding States of the Union in relation to this institution can justify them or their citizens in open covert attacks thereon, with a view to its overthrow; and that all such attacks are in manifest violation of the mutual and solemn pledge to protect and defend each other, given by the States respectively, on entering into the constitutional compact which formed the Union, and are a manifest breach of faith and a violation of the most solemn obligations.

3. Resolved, That the Union of these States rests on the equality of rights and privileges among its members, and that it is especially the duty of the Senate, which represents the States in their sovereign capacity, to resist all attempts to discriminate either in relation to persons or property in the Territories, which are the common possessions of the United States, so as to give advantages to the citizens of one State which are not equally assured to those of every other State.

4. Resolved, That neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature, whether by direct legislation or legislation of an indirect and unfriendly character, possesses power to annul or impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy the same while the territorial condition remains.

5. Resolved, That if experience should at any time prove that the judiciary and executive authority do not possess means to insure adequate protection to constitutional rights in a Territory, and if the Territorial government shall fail or refuse to provide the necessary remedies for that purpose, it will be the duty of Congress to supply such deficiency.

The words, within the limits of its constitutional powers, were subsequently added to this resolution, on the suggestion of Toombs of Georgia, with the approval of the mover.

6. Resolved, That the inhabitants of a Territory of the United States, when they rightfully form a Constitution to be admitted as a State into the Union, may then, for the first time, like the people of a State when forming a new Constitution, decide for themselves whether slavery, as a domestic institution, shall be maintained or prohibited within their jurisdiction; and they shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their Constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.

7. Resolved, That the provision of the Constitution for the rendition of fugitives from service or labor, without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed, and that the laws of 1793 and 1850, which were enacted to secure its execution, and the main features of which, being similar, bear the impress of nearly seventy years of sanction by the highest judicial authority, should be honestly and faithfully observed and maintained by all who enjoy the benefits of our compact of union; and that all acts of individuals or of State Legislatures to defeat the purpose or nullify the requirements of that provision, and the laws made in pursuance of it, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect.

The speech of the author, delivered on the 7th of May ensuing, in exposition of these resolutions, will be found in Appendix F.

When, at the close of the war of the Revolution, each of the thirteen colonies that had been engaged in that contest was severally acknowledged by the mother country, Great Britain, to be a free and independent state, the confederation of those states embraced an area so extensive, with climate and products so various, that rivalries and conflicts of interest soon began to be manifested. It required all the power of wisdom and patriotism, animated by the affection engendered by common sufferings and dangers, to keep these rivalries under restraint, and to effect those compromises which it was fondly hoped would insure the harmony and mutual good offices of each for the benefit of all. It was in this spirit of patriotism and confidence in the continuance of such abiding good will as would for all time preclude hostile aggression, that Virginia ceded, for the use of the confederated states, all that vast extent of territory lying north of the Ohio River, out of which have since been formed five states and part of a sixth. The addition of these states has accrued entirely to the preponderance of the Northern section over that from which the donation proceeded, and to the disturbance of that equilibrium which existed at the close of the war of the Revolution.

It may not be out of place here to refer to the fact that the grievances which led to that war were directly inflicted upon the Northern colonies. Those of the South had no material cause of complaint; actuated by sympathy for their Northern brethren, however, and a devotion to the principles of civil liberty and community independence, which they had inherited from their Anglo-Saxon ancestry, and which were set forth in the Declaration of Independence, they made common cause with their neighbors, and may, at least, claim to have done their full share in the war that ensued.

By the exclusion of the South, in 1820, from all that part of the Louisiana purchase lying north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, and not included in the state of Missouri; by the extension of that line of exclusion to embrace the territory acquired from Texas; and by the appropriation of all the territory obtained from Mexico under the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, both north and south of that line, it may be stated with approximate accuracy that the North had monopolized to herself more than three-fourths of all that had been added to the domain of the United States since the Declaration of Independence. This inequality, which began, as has been shown, in the more generous than wise confidence of the South, was employed to obtain for the North the lion's share of what was afterward added at the cost of the public treasure and the blood of patriots. I do not care to estimate the relative proportion contributed by each of the two sections.

Nor was this the only cause that operated to disappoint the reasonable hopes and to blight the fair prospects under which the original compact was formed. The effects of discriminating duties upon imports have been referred to in a former chapter—favoring the manufacturing region, which was the North; burdening the exporting region, which was the South; and so imposing upon the latter a double tax; one, by the increased price of articles of consumption, which, so far as they were of home production, went into the pockets of the manufacturer; the other, by the diminished value of articles of export, which was so much withheld from the pockets of the agriculturist. In like manner the power of the majority section was employed to appropriate to itself an unequal share of the public disbursements. These combined causes—the possession of more territory, more money, and a wider field for the employment of special labor—all served to attract immigration; with increasing population, the greed grew by what it fed on.

This became distinctly manifest when the so-called Republican convention assembled in Chicago on May 16, 1860, to nominate a candidate for the presidency. It was a purely sectional body. There were a few delegates present, representing an insignificant minority in the border states, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri; but not one from any state south of the celebrated political line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes. It had been the invariable usage with nominating conventions of all parties to select candidates for the presidency and vice presidency, one from the North and the other from the South, but this assemblage nominated Lincoln of Illinois for the first office, and for the second, Hamlin of Maine—both Northerners. Lincoln, its nominee for the presidency, had publicly announced that the Union could not permanently endure, half slave and half free. The resolutions adopted contained some carefully worded declarations, well adapted to deceive the credulous who were opposed to hostile aggressions upon the rights of the states. In order to accomplish this purpose, they were compelled to create a fictitious issue, in denouncing what they described as the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all of the Territories of the United States—a dogma which had never been held or declared by anybody, and which had no existence outside of their own assertion. There was enough in connection with the nomination to assure the most fanatical foes of the Constitution that their ideas would be the rule and guide of the party.

Meantime, the Democratic party had held a convention, composed as usual of delegates from all the states. They met in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 23d, but an unfortunate disagreement with regard to the declaration of principles to be set forth rendered a nomination impracticable. Both divisions of the convention adjourned, and met again in Baltimore in June. Then, having finally failed to come to an agreement, they separated and made their respective nominations apart. Douglas of Illinois was nominated by the friends of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, with Fitzpatrick of Alabama for the vice presidency. Both these gentlemen at that time were Senators from their respective states. Fitzpatrick promptly declined the nomination, and his place was filled with the name of Herschel V. Johnson, a distinguished citizen of Georgia.

The convention representing the conservative, or state-rights, wing of the Democratic party (the president of which was the Hon. Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts) on the first ballot unanimously made choice of John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, then Vice-President of the United States, for the first office, and with like unanimity selected General Joseph Lane, then a Senator from Oregon, for the second. The resolutions of each of these two conventions denounced the action and policy of the Abolition party, as subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their tendency.

Another convention was held in Baltimore about the same period

May 19, 1860.

In November, 1860, after the result of the presidential election was known, the governor of Mississippi, having issued his proclamation convoking a special session of the legislature to consider the propriety of calling a convention, invited the Senators and Representatives of the state in Congress, to meet him for consultation as to the character of the message he should send to the legislature when assembled.

While holding, in common with my political associates, that the right of a state to secede was unquestionable, I differed from most of them as to the probability of our being permitted peaceably to exercise the right. The knowledge acquired by the administration of the War Department for four years, and by the chairmanship of the Military Committee of the Senate at two different periods, still longer in combined duration, had shown me the entire lack of preparation for war in the South. The foundries and armories were in the Northern states, and there were stored all the new and improved weapons of war. In the arsenals of the Southern states were to be found only arms of the old and rejected models. The South had no manufactories of powder, and no navy to protect our harbors, no merchant ships for foreign commerce. It was evident to me, therefore, that, if we should be involved in war, the odds against us would be far greater than what was due merely to our inferiority in population. Believing that secession would be the precursor of war between the states, I was consequently slower and more reluctant than others, who entertained a different opinion, to resort to that remedy.

While engaged in the consultation with the governor just referred to, a telegraphic message was handed to me from two members of Buchanan's cabinet, urging me to proceed immediately to Washington. This dispatch was laid before the governor and the members of Congress from the state who were in conference with him, and it was decided that I should comply with the summons. I was afterward informed that my associates considered me too slow, and they were probably correct in the belief that I was behind the general opinion of the people of the state as to the propriety of prompt secession.

The following extract from a letter of the Hon. O. R. Singleton, then a Representative of Mississippi in the United States Congress, in regard to the subject treated, is herewih annexed: Canton, Mississippi, July 14, 1877.

In 1860, about the time the ordinance of secession was passed by the South Carolina Convention, and while Mississippi, Alabama, and other Southern States were making active preparations to follow her example, a conference of the Mississippi delegation in Congress, Senators and Representatives, was asked for by Governor J. J. Pettus, for consultation as to the course Mississippi ought to take in the premises.

The meeting took place in the fall of 1860, at Jackson, the capital, the whole delegation being present, with perhaps the exception of one Representative.

The main question for consideration was: Shall Mississippi, as soon as her Convention can meet, pass an ordinance of secession, thus placing herself by the side of South Carolina, regardless of the action of other States; or shall she endeavor to hold South Carolina in check, and delay action herself, until other States can get ready, through their conventions, to unite with them, and then, on a given day and at a given hour, by concert of action, all the States willing to do so, secede in a body?

Upon the one side, it was argued that South Carolina could not be induced to delay action a single moment beyond the meeting of her Convention, and that our fate should be hers, and to delay action would be to have her crushed by the Federal Government; whereas, by the earliest action possible, we might be able to avert this calamity. On the other side, it was contended that delay might bring the Federal Government to consider the emergency of the case, and perhaps a compromise could be effected; but, if not, then the proposed concert of action would at least give dignity to the movement, and present an undivided Southern front.

The debate lasted many hours, and Mr. Davis, with perhaps one other gentleman in that conference, opposed immediate and separate State action, declaring himself opposed to secession as long as the hope of a peaceable remedy remained. He did not believe we ought to precipitate the issue, as he felt certain from his knowledge of the people, North and South, that, once there was a clash of arms, the contest would be one of the most sanguinary the world had ever witnessed.

A majority of the meeting decided that no delay should be interposed to separate State action, Mr. Davis being on the other side; but, after the vote was taken and the question decided, Mr. Davis declared he would stand by whatever action the Convention representing the sovereignty of the State of Mississippi might think proper to take.

After the conference was ended, several of its members were dissatisfied with the course of Mr. Davis, believing that he was entirely opposed to secession, and was seeking to delay action upon the part of Mississippi, with the hope that it might be entirely averted.

In some unimportant respects my memory may be at fault, and possibly some of the inferences drawn may be incorrect; but every material statement made, I am sure, is true, and if need be, can be, easily substantiated by other persons.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

On arrival at Washington I found, as had been anticipated, that my presence there was desired on account of the influence which it was supposed I might exercise with the President (Buchanan) in relation to his forthcoming message to Congress. On paying my respects to the President, he told me that he had finished the rough draft of his message, but that it was still open to revision and amendment, and that he would like to read it to me. He did so, and very kindly accepted all the modifications which I suggested. The message was, however, afterward somewhat changed, and with great deference to the wisdom and statesmanship of its author, I must say that, in my judgment, the last alterations were unfortunate—so much so that, when it was read in the Senate, I was reluctantly constrained to criticise it. Compared, however, with documents of the same class which have since been addressed to the Congress of the United States, the reader of presidential messages must regret that it was not accepted by Buchanan's successors as a model, and that his views of the Constitution had not been adopted as a guide in the subsequent action of the federal government.

The popular movement in the South was tending steadily and rapidly toward the secession of those known as planting states; yet, when Congress assembled on December 3, 1860, the representatives of the people of all those states took their seats in the House, and they were all represented in the Senate, except South Carolina, whose Senators had tendered their resignation to the government immediately on the announcement of the result of the presidential election. Hopes were still cherished that the Northern leaders would appreciate the impending peril, would cease to treat the warnings, so often given, as idle threats, would refrain from the bravado, so often and so unwisely indulged, of ability to whip the South in thirty, sixty, or ninety days, and would address themselves to the more manly purpose of devising means to allay the indignation, and quiet the apprehensions, whether well founded or not, of their Southern brethren. But the debates of that session manifest, on the contrary, the arrogance of a triumphant party, and the determination to reap to the uttermost the full harvest of a party victory.

Crittenden of Kentucky, the oldest and one of the most honored members of the Senate,

Crittenden had been a life-long Whig. His first entrance into the Senate was in 1817, and he was a member of that body at various periods during the ensuing forty-four years. He was Attorney General in the Whig cabinets of both General Harrison and Fillmore, and supported the Bell and Everett ticket in 1860.

The convention of South Carolina had already (on December 20, 1860) unanimously adopted an ordinance revoking her delegated powers and withdrawing from the Union. Her representatives, on the following day, retired from their seats in Congress. The people of the other planting states had been only waiting in the lingering hope that some action might be taken by Congress to avert the necessity for action similar to that of South Carolina. In view of the failure of all overtures for conciliation during the first month of the session, they were now making their final preparations for secession. This was generally admitted to be an unquestionable right appertaining to their sovereignty as states, and the only peaceable remedy that remained for the evils already felt and the dangers apprehended.

In the prior history of the country, repeated instances are found of the assertion of this right, and of a purpose entertained at various times to put it in execution. Notably is this true of Massachusetts and other New England states. The acquisition of Louisiana in 1803 had created much dissatisfaction in those states for the reason, expressed by an eminent citizen of Massachusetts,

George Cabot, who had been United States Senator from Massachusetts for several years during the administration of Washington. See Life of Cabot, by Lodge, p. 334.

At the period to which this review of events has advanced, one state had already withdrawn from the Union. Seven or eight others were preparing to follow her example, and others yet were anxiously and doubtfully contemplating the probably impending necessity of taking the same action. The efforts of Southern men in Congress, aided by the cooperation of the Northern friends of the Constitution, had failed, by the stubborn refusal of a haughty majority, controlled by radical purposes, to yield anything to the spirit of peace and conciliation. This period, coinciding, as it happens, with the close of a calendar year, affords a convenient point to pause for a brief recapitulation of the causes which had led the Southern states into the attitude they then held, and for a more full exposition of the constitutional questions involved.

The reader of many of the treatises on these events, which have been put forth as historical, if dependent upon such alone for information, might naturally enough be led to the conclusion that the controversies which arose between the states, and the war in which they culminated, were caused by efforts on the one side to extend and perpetuate human slavery, and on the other to resist it and establish human liberty. The Southern states and Southern people have been sedulously represented as propagandists of slavery, and the Northern as the defenders and champions of universal freedom, and this view has been so arrogantly assumed, so dogmatically asserted, and so persistently reiterated, that its authors have, in many cases, perhaps, succeeded in bringing themselves to believe it, as well as in impressing it widely upon the world.

The attentive reader of the preceding chapters—especially if he has compared their statements with contemporaneous records and other original sources of information—will already have found evidence enough to enable him to discern the falsehood of these representations, and to perceive that, to whatever extent the question of slavery may have served as an occasion, it was far from being the cause of the conflict.

I have not attempted, and shall not permit myself to be drawn into any discussion of the merits or demerits of slavery as an ethical or even as a political question. It would be foreign to my purpose, irrelevant to my subject, and would only serve—as it has invariably served in the hands of its agitators— to darken counsel and divert attention from the genuine issues involved.

As a mere historical fact, we have seen that African servitude among us—confessedly the mildest and most humane of all institutions to which the name slavery has ever been applied—existed in all the original states, and that it was recognized and protected in the fourth article of the Constitution. Subsequently, for climatic, industrial, and economical—not moral or sentimental—reasons, it was abolished in the Northern, while it continued to exist in the Southern states. Men differed in their views as to the abstract question of its right or wrong, but for two generations after the Revolution there was no geographical line of demarkation for such differences. The African slave trade was carried on almost exclusively by New England merchants and Northern ships. Jefferson—a Southern man, the founder of the Democratic party, and the vindicator of state rights—was in theory a consistent enemy to every form of slavery. The Southern states took the lead in prohibiting the slave trade, and, as we have seen, one of them (Georgia) was the first state to incorporate such a prohibition in her organic Constitution. Eleven years after the agitation on the Missouri question, when the subject first took a sectional shape, the abolition of slavery was proposed and earnestly debated in the Virginia legislature, and its advocates were so near the accomplishment of their purpose, that a declaration in its favor was defeated by only a small majority, and that on the ground of expediency. At a still later period, abolitionist lecturers and teachers were mobbed, assaulted, and threatened with tar and feathers in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and other states. One of them (Lovejoy) was actually killed by a mob in Illinois as late as 1837.

These facts prove incontestably that the sectional hostility which exhibited itself in 1820, on the application of Missouri for admission into the Union, which again broke out on the proposition for the annexation of Texas in 1844, and which reappeared after the Mexican war, never again to be suppressed until its fell results had been fully accomplished, was not the consequence of any difference on the abstract question of slavery. It was the offspring of sectional rivalry and political ambition. It would have manifested itself just as certainly if slavery had existed in all the states, or if there had not been a negro in America. No such pretension was made in 1803 or 1811, when the Louisiana purchase, and afterward the admission into the Union of the state of that name, elicited threats of disunion from the representatives of New England. The complaint was not of slavery, but of the acquisition of more weight at the other extremity of the Union. It was not slavery that threatened a rupture in 1832, but the unjust and unequal operation of a protective tariff.

It happened, however, on all these occasions, that the line of demarkation of sectional interests coincided exactly or very nearly with that dividing the states in which negro servitude existed from those in which it had been abolished. It corresponded with the prediction of Mr. Pickering, in 1803, that, in the separation certainly to come, the white and black population would mark the boundary—a prediction made without any reference to slavery as a source of dissension.

Of course the diversity of institutions contributed, in some minor degree, to the conflict of interests. There is an action and reaction of cause and consequence which limits and modifies any general statement of a political truth. I am stating general principles—not defining modifications and exceptions with the precision of a mathematical proposition or a bill in chancery. The truth remains intact and incontrovertible, that the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident. In the later controversies that arose, however, its effect in operating as a lever upon the passions, prejudices, or sympathies of mankind was so potent that it has been spread like a thick cloud over the whole horizon of historic truth.

As for the institution of negro servitude, it was a matter entirely subject to the control of the states. No power was ever given to the general government to interfere with it, but an obligation was imposed to protect it. Its existence and validity were distinctly recognized by the Constitution in at least three places:

First, in that part of the second section of the first article which prescribes that representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective members, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and, excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons. Other persons than free persons and those bound to service for a term of years must, of course, have meant those permanently bound to service.

Secondly, it was recognized by the ninth section of the same article, which provided that the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight. This was a provision inserted for the protection of the interests of the slave-trading New England states, forbidding any prohibition of the trade by Congress for twenty years, and thus virtually giving sanction to the legitimacy of the demand which that trade was prosecuted to supply, and which was its only object.

Again, and in the third place, it was specially recognized, and an obligation imposed upon every state, not only to refrain from interfering with it in any other state, but in certain cases to aid in its enforcement, by that clause, or paragraph, of the second section of the fourth article which provides as follows:

No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

The President and Vice-President of the United States, every Senator and Representative in Congress, the members of every state legislature, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, were required to take an oath (or affirmation) to support the Constitution containing these provisions. It is easy to understand how those who considered them in conflict with the higher law of religion or morality might refuse to take such an oath or hold such an office—as the members of some religious sects refuse to take any oath at all or to bear arms in the service of their country—but it is impossible to reconcile with the obligations of honor or honesty the conduct of those who, having taken such an oath, made use of the powers and opportunities of the offices held under its sanctions to nullify its obligations and neutralize its guarantees. The halls of Congress afforded the vantage ground from which assaults were made upon these guarantees. The legislatures of various Northern states enacted laws to hinder the execution of the provisions made for the rendition of fugitives from service; state officials lent their aid to the work of thwarting them; city mobs assailed the officers engaged in the duty of enforcing them.

With regard to the provision of the Constitution above quoted, for the restoration of fugitives from service or labor, my own view was, and is, that it was not a proper subject for legislation by the federal Congress, but that its enforcement should have been left to the respective states, which, as parties to the compact of union, should have been held accountable for its fulfillment. Such was actually the case in the early and better days of the republic. No fugitive slave law existed, or was required, for two years after the organization of the federal government, and when one was then passed, it was merely as an incidental appendage to an act regulating the mode of rendition of fugitives from justice—not from service or labor. There was but little necessity in those times, nor long after, for an act of Congress to authorize the recovery of fugitive slaves. The laws of the free States and, still more, the force of public opinion were the owners' best safeguards. Public opinion was against the abduction of slaves; and, if any one was seduced from his owner, it was done furtively and secretly, without show or force, and as any other moral offense would be committed. State laws favored the owner, and to a greater extent than the act of Congress did or could. In Pennsylvania there was an act (it was passed in 1780, and only repealed in 1847) discriminating between the traveler and sojourner and the permanent resident, allowing the former to remain six months in the State before his slaves would become subject to the emancipation laws; and in the case of a Federal officer, allowing as much more time as his duties required him to remain. New York had the same act, only varying in time, which was nine months. While these two acts were in force, and supported by public opinion, the traveler and sojourner was safe with his slaves in those States, and the same in the other free States. There was no trouble about fugitive slaves in those times.—Note to Benton's Abridgment of Debates, Vol. I, p. 417.

In 1850 a more elaborate law was enacted as part of the celebrated compromise of that year. But the very fact that the federal government had taken the matter into its own hands, and provided for its execution by its own officers, afforded a sort of pretext to those states which had now become hostile to this provision of the Constitution, not only to stand aloof, but in some cases to adopt measures (generally known as personal liberty laws) directly in conflict with the execution of the provisions of the Constitution.

The preamble to the Constitution declared the object of its founders to be to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Now, however (in 1860), the people of a portion of the states had assumed an attitude of avowed hostility, not only to the provisions of the Constitution itself, but to the domestic tranquillity of the people of other states. Long before the formation of the Constitution, one of the charges preferred in the Declaration of Independence against the government of Great Britain, as justifying the separation of the colonies from that country, was that of having excited domestic insurrections among us. Now, the mails were burdened with incendiary publications, secret emissaries had been sent, and in one case an armed invasion of one of the states had taken place for the very purpose of exciting domestic insurrection.

It was not the passage of the personal liberty laws, it was not the circulation of incendiary documents, it was not the raid of John Brown, it was not the operation of unjust and unequal tariff laws, nor all combined, that constituted the intolerable grievance, but it was the systematic and persistent struggle to deprive the Southern states of equality in the Union—generally to discriminate in legislation against the interests of their people; culminating in their exclusion from the territories, the common property of the states, as well as by the infraction of their compact to promote domestic tranquillity.

The question with regard to the territories has been discussed in the foregoing chapters, and the argument need not be repeated. There was, however, one feature of it which has not been specially noticed, although it occupied a large share of public attention at the time, and constituted an important element in the case. This was the action of the federal judiciary thereon, and the manner in which it was received.

In 1854 a case (the well-known Dred Scott case) came before the Supreme Court of the United States, involving the whole question of the status of the African race and the rights of citizens of the Southern states to migrate to the territories, temporarily or permanently, with their slave property, on a footing of equality with the citizens of other states with their property of any sort. This question, as we have seen, had already been the subject of long and energetic discussion, without any satisfactory conclusion. All parties, however, had united in declaring that a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States—the highest judicial tribunal in the land—would be accepted as final. After long and patient consideration of the case, in 1857, the decision of the Court was pronounced in an elaborate and exhaustive opinion, delivered by Chief Justice Taney—a man eminent as a lawyer, great as a statesman, and stainless in his moral reputation—seven of the nine judges who composed the Court concurring in it. The salient points established by this decision were:

1. That persons of the African race were not, and could not be, acknowledged as part of the people, or citizens, under the Constitution of the United States;

2. That Congress had no right to exclude citizens of the South from taking their negro servants, as any other property, into any part of the common territory, and that they were entitled to claim its protection therein;

3. Finally, as a consequence of the principle just above stated, that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 insofar as it prohibited the existence of African servitude north of a designated line, was unconstitutional and void.

The Supreme Court of the United States in stating (through Chief Justice Taney) their decision in the Dred Scott case, in 1857 say: In that portion of the United States where the labor of the negro race was found to be unsuited to the climate and unprofitable to the master, but few slaves were held at the time of the Declaration of Independence; and, when the Constitution was adopted, it had entirely worn out in one of them, and measures had been taken for its gradual abolition in several others. But this change had not been produced by any change of opinion in relation to this race, but because it was discovered from experience that slave-labor was unsuited to the climate and productions of these States; for some of these States, when it had ceased, or nearly ceased, to exist, were actively engaged in the slave-trade; procuring cargoes on the coast of Africa, and transporting them for sale to those parts of the Union where their labor was found to be profitable and suited to the climate and productions. And this traffic was openly carried on, and fortunes accumulated by it, without reproach from the people of the States where they resided.

This statement, it must be remembered, does not proceed from any partisan source, but is extracted from a judicial opinion pronounced by the highest court in the country. In illustration of the truthfulness of the latter part of it may be mentioned the fact that a citizen of Rhode Island (James D'Wolf), long and largely concerned in the slave trade, was sent from that state to the Senate of the United States as late as the year 1821. In 1825 he resigned his seat in the Senate and removed to Havana, where he lived for many years, actively engaged in the same pursuit, as president of a slave-trading company. The story is told of him that, on being informed that the trade was to be declared piracy, he smiled and said, So much the better for us—the Yankees will be the only people not scared off by such a declaration.

Instead of accepting the decision of this then august tribunal—the ultimate authority in the interpretation of constitutional questions—as conclusive of a controversy that had so long disturbed the peace and was threatening the perpetuity of the Union, it was flouted, denounced, and utterly disregarded by the Northern agitators, and served only to stimulate the intensity of their sectional hostility.

What resource for justice—what assurance of tranquillity—what guarantee of safety—now remained for the South? Still forbearing, still hoping, still striving for peace and union, we waited until a sectional President, nominated by a sectional convention, elected by a sectional vote—and that the vote of a minority of the people—was about to be inducted into office, under the warning of his own distinct announcement that the Union could not permanently endure half slave and half free, meaning thereby that it could not continue to exist in the condition in which it was formed and its Constitution adopted. The leader of his party, who was to be the chief of his cabinet, was the man who had first proclaimed an irrepressible conflict between the North and the South, and who had declared that abolitionism, having triumphed in the territories, would proceed to the invasion of the states. Even then the Southern people did not finally despair until the temper of the triumphant party had been tested in Congress and found adverse to any terms of reconciliation consistent with the honor and safety of all parties.

No alternative remained except to seek the security out of the Union which they had vainly tried to obtain within it. The hope of our people may be stated in a sentence. It was to escape from injury and strife in the Union, to find prosperity and peace out of it. The mode and principles of their action will next be presented.