USA > Georgia > The Confederate records of the State of Georgia, Vol 2 pt 2 > Part 11
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28
615
STATE PAPERS OF GOVERNOR JOS. E. BROWN
judicial tribunals only, and to prevent the courts from inquiring into such arrests, or granting relief against such illegal usurpations of power, which are in direct palpable violation of the Constitution.
The Act enumerates more than twenty different causes of arrest, most of which are cognizable and tryable only in the judicial tribunals established by the Constitution ; and for which no warrants can legally issue for the ar- rest of persons in civil life by any power except the ju- diciary ; and then only upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, particularly describing the persons to be seized; such as "treason" "treasonable efforts or combinations to subvert the Government of the Confeder- ate States," "conspiracies to overthrow the Govern- ment," or "conspiracies to resist the lawful authority of the Confederate States," giving the enemy "aid and comfort," "attempts to incite servile insurrection," "the burning of bridges," "railroad" or "telegraph lines," "harboring deserters," and "other offences against the laws of the Confederate States," etc., etc., And as if to place the usurpation of power beyond doubt or cavil, the act expressly declares that the "suspension shall apply only to persons, arrested or detained by the President, the Secretary of War, or the General officer commanding the Trans Mississippi Military Department, by authority and under control of the President," in the cases enum- erated in the Act, most of which are exclusively of judi- cial cognizance, and in which cases the President has not the shadow of Constitutional authority to issue warrants or order arrests, but is actually prohibited by the Consti- tution from doing so.
616
CONFEDERATE RECORDS
This then is not an Act to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, in the manner authorized by im- plication by the Constitution ; but it is an Act to authorize the President to make illegal and unconstitutional ar- rests, in cases which the Constitution gives to the judic- iary, and denies to the Executive; and to prohibit all judicial interference for the relief of the citizen, when tyrannized over by illegal arrest, under letters de cachet issued by Executive authority.
Instead of the legality of the arrest being examined in the judicial tribunals appointed by the Constitution, it is to be examined in the Confederate Star Chamber; that is, by officers appointed by the President. Why say the "President shall cause proper officers to investigate" the legality of the arrests ordered by him? Why not permit the' Judges, whose Constitutional right and duty it is to do it?
We are witnessing with too much indifference assump- tions of power by the Confederate Government which in ordinary times would arouse the whole country to indig- nant rebuke and stern resistance. History teaches us that submission to one encroachment upon Constitutional liberty is always followed by another; and we should not forget that important rights, yielded to those in power, without rebuke or protest, are never recovered by the people without revolution.
. If this Act is acquiesced in, the President, the Secre- tary of War, and the commander of the Trans Mississippi department under the control of the President, each has the power conferred by Congress, to imprison whomso- ever he chooses; and it is only necessary to allege that
-
617
STATE PAPERS OF GOVERNOR JOS. E. BROWN
it is done on account of "treasonable efforts" or of "con- spiracies to resist the lawful authority of the Confeder- ate States," or for "giving aid and comfort to the enemy," or other of the causes of arrest enumerated in the statute, and have a subaltern to file his affidavit ac- cordingly, after the arrest if the writ of habeas corpus is sued out, and no court dare inquire into the cause of the imprisonment. The Statute makes the President, and not the courts, the judge of the sufficiency of the cause for his own acts. Either of you, or any other citizen of Geor- gia may at any moment (as Mr. Vallandingham was in Ohio) be dragged from your homes at midnight by armed force, and imprisoned at the will of the President, upon the pretext that you have been guilty of some offence of the character above named, and no court known to our judiciary can inquire into the wrong or grant relief.
When such bold strides towards military despotism and absolute authority are taken by those in whom we have confided, and who have been placed in high official position to guard and protect Constitutional and personal liberty, it is the duty of every patriotic citizen to sound the alarm, and of the State Legislatures to say in thunder tones to those who assume to govern us by absolute power, that there is a point beyond which freemen will not per- mit encroachments to go.
The Legislatures of the respective States are looked to as the guardians of the rights of those whom they rep- resent, and it is their duty to meet such dangerous enact- ments upon the liberties of the people promptly, and express their unqualified condemnation; and to instruct their Senators and request their Representatives to re- peal this most monstrous Act, or resign a trust which by
618
CONFEDERATE RECORDS
permitting it to remain on the statute books they abuse, to the injury of those who have honored them with their confidence in this trying period of our history. I ear- nestly recommend that the Legislature of this State take prompt action upon this subject, and stamp the Aet with the seal of their indignant rebuke.
Can the President no longer trust the judiciary with the exercise of the legitimate powers conferred upon it by the Constitution and laws? In what instance have the grave and dignified Judges proved disloyal or untrue to our cause ? When have they embarrassed the Govern- ment by turning loose traitors, skulkers or spies? Have they not in every instance given the Government the benefit of their doubts in sustaining its action, though they might thereby seem to encroach upon the rights of the States, and for a time deny substantial justice to the people? Then why this implied censure upon them?
What justification exists now for this most monstrous deed, which did not exist during the first or second year of the war, unless it be found in the fact that those in power have found the people ready to submit to every encroachment, rather than make an issue with the Gov- ernment, while we are at war with the enemy; and have on that account been emboldened to take the step which is intended to make the President as absolute in his power of arrest and imprisonment as the Czar of all the Russias? What reception would the members of Con- gress from the different States have met in 1861, and they returned to their constituents and informed them that they had suspended the habeas corpus and given the President the power to imprison the people of these States with no restraint upon his sovereign will? Why
619
STATE PAPERS OF GOVERNOR JOS. E. BROWN
is liberty less sacred now than it was in 1861? And what will we have gained when we have achieved our independ- ence of the Northern States, if in our efforts to do so, we have permitted our form of government to be sub- verted, and have lost Constitutional liberty at home?
The hope of the country now rests in the new Con- gress soon to assemble. They must maintain our liber- ties against encroachment and wipe this and all such stains from the statute books, or the Sun of Liberty will soon set in darkness and blood.
Let the constituted authorities of each State send up to their Representatives, when they assemble in Con- gress, an unqualified demand for prompt redress; or a return of the commissions which they hold from their respective States.
THE CAUSES OF THE WAR, HOW CONDUCTED, AND WHO RESPONSIBLE.
Cruel, bloody, desolating war is still waged against us by our relentless enemies, who, disregarding the laws of nations and the rules of civilized warfare, whenever either interferes with their fanatical objects or their in- terest, have in numerous instances been guilty of worse than savage cruelty.
They have done all in their power to burn our cities when unable by their skill and valor to occupy them; and to turn innocent women and children who may have es- caped death by the shells thrown among them without previous notice, into the streets destitute of homes, food and clothing.
620
CONFEDERATE RECORDS
They have devastated our country wherever their un- hallowed feet have trod our soil, burning and destroying factories, mills, agricultural implements, and other valu- able property.
They have cruelly treated our sons while in captivity, and in violation of a cartel agreed upon, have refused to exchange them with us for their own soldiers, unless we would consent, against the laws of nations, to ex- change our slaves as belligerents, when induced or forced by them to take up arms against us.
They have done all in their power to incite our slaves to insurrection and murder, and when unable to seduce them from their loyalty, have, when they occupied our country, compelled them to engage in war against us.
They have robbed us of our negro women and chil- dren who were comfortable, contented and happy with their owners, and under pretext of extraordinary phi- lanthropy, have in the name of liberty congregated thou- sands of them together in places where they could have neither the comforts nor the necessaries of life, there neglected and despised, to die of pestilence and hunger.
In numerous instances their brutal soldiers have vio- lated the persons of our innocent and helpless women; and have desecrated the graves of our ancestors, and polluted and defiled the altars which we have dedicated to the worship of the Living God.
In addition to these and other enormities, hundreds of thousands of valuable lives both North and South have been sacrificed, causing the shriek of the mother, the
621
STATE PAPERS OF GOVERNOR JOS. E. BROWN
wail of the widow, and the cry of the orphan, to ascend to Heaven, from almost every hearthstone in all the broad land once known as the United States.
Such is but a faint picture of the devastations, cruelty, and bloodshed, which have marked this struggle.
War in its most mitigated form, when conducted ac- cording to the rules established by the most enlightened and civilized nations, is a terrible scourge, and can not exist without the most enormous guilt resting upon the heads of those who have, without just cause, brought it upon the innocent and helpless people who are its unfor- tunate victims. Guilt may rest in unequal degrees in a struggle like this upon both parties, but both can not be innocent. Where then rests this crushing load of guilt?
While I trust I shall be able to show that it rests not upon the people nor rulers of the South, I do not claim that it rested at the commencement of the struggle upon the whole people of the North.
There was a large and intelligent and patriotic por- tion of the people of the Northern States, led by such men as Pierce, Douglas, Vallandingham, Bright, Voor- hies, Pugh, Seymour, Wood, and many other honored names, who did all in their power to rebuke and stay the wicked reckless fanaticism which precipitated the two sec- tions into this terrible conflict. With such men as these in power, we might have lived together in the Union per- petnally.
In addition to the strength of the Democratic party in the North, there were a large number of persons whose education had brought them into sympathy with the so-
622
CONFEDERATE RECORDS
called Republican, or in other words the old federal con- solidation party, who would never have followed the wicked leaders of that party who used the slavery ques- tion as an hobby upon which to ride into power, and who today stand before heaven and earth guilty of shedding the blood of hundreds of thousands, and destroying the brightest hopes of posterity, had they known the true objects of their leaders, and the results which must follow the triumph of their policy at the ballot box.
The moral guilt of this war rested then in its incip- ieney neither upon the people of the South, nor upon the Democratic party of the North, or upon that part of the Republican party who were deluded and deceived. But it rested upon the heads of the wicked leaders of the Re- publican party, who had refused to be bound by the com- pacts of the Constitution made by our common ancestry. These men, when in power in the respective States of the North, arrayed themselves in open hostility against an important provision of the Constitution, for the security of clearly expressed and unquestionable rights of the people of the Southern States.
Many of the more fanatical of them denounced the Constitution because of its protection of the property of the slaveholder, as a "covenant with death and a league with Hell," and refusing to be bound by it, declared that a "higher law" was the rule of their conduct, and ap- pealed to the Bible as that "higher law." But when the precepts of God in favor of slavery were found in both the Old and the New Testament, they repudiated the Bible and its Divine Author, and declared for an anti- Slavery Bible and an anti-Slavery God.
623
STATE PAPERS OF GOVERNOR JOS. E. BROWN
The abolition party having, when in power in their respective States, set at naught that part of the Constitu- tion which guarantees protection to the rights and prop- erty of the Southern people, and having by fraud and misrepresentation obtained possession of the federal government, the Southern people in self-defence were compelled to leave the Union in which their rights were no longer respected. Having destroyed the Union by their wicked acts and their bad faith, these leaders rallied a majority of the people of the North to their support with a promise to restore it again by force. Monstrous paradox! that a Union which was formed by a compact between sovereign States, being eminently a creature of consent, is to be upheld by force. But monstrous as it is, the war springs ostensibly from this source-this is its origin. its soul and its life, so far as a shadow of pre- text for it can be found. In their mad effort to restore by force a Union which they have destroyed, and to save themselves from the just vengeance which awaited them for their crimes, the abolition leaders in power have lighted up the continent with a blaze of war, which has destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of prop- erty, and hundreds of thousands of valuable lives, and loaded posterity with a debt which must cause wretched- ness and poverty for generations to come. And all for what? That fanaticism might triumph over Constitu- tional liberty, as achieved by the great men of 1776, and that ambitious men might have place and power. In their efforts to destroy our liberties, the people of the North if successful would inevitably lose their own, by overturning as they are now attempting to do, the great principles of Republicanism upon which Constitutional
624
CONFEDERATE RECORDS
liberty rests. The Government in the hands of the aboli- tion administration is now a despotism as absolute as that of Russia.
Unoffending citizens are seized in their beds at night by armed force and dragged to dungeons and incarcerated at the will of the tyrant, because they have dared to speak for Constitutional liberty and to protest against military despotism.
The Habeas Corpus, that great bulwark of liberty, without which no people can be secure in their lives, per- sons or property, which cost the English several bloody wars, and which was finally wrung from the crown by the sturdy Barons and the people at the point of the bayonet ; which has ever been the boast of every American patriot, and which I pray God may never, under the pretext of military necessity be yielded to encroachments by the peo- ple of the South, has been trampled under foot by the Government at Washington, which imprisons at its pleas- ure whomsoever it will.
The freedom of the ballot box has also been destroyed, and the elections have been carried by the overaweing in- fluence of military force.
Under pretext of keeping men enough in the field to subdue the South, President Lincoln takes care to keep enough to hold the North in subjection also-to imprison or exile those who attempt to sustain their ancient rights, liberties and usages, and to drive from the ballot box those who are not subservient to his will, or enough of them to enable his party to carry the elections. Can an intelligent Northern conservative man contemplate this
625
STATE PAPERS OF GOVERNOR JOS. E. BROWN
state of things without exclaiming, whither are we drift- ing? What will we gain by the subjugation of the South, if in our attempt to do it we must lose our own liberties, and visit upon ourselves and our posterity the chains of military despotism ?
How long a people once free will submit to the des- potism of such a government the future must develop. One thing is certain, while those who now rule remain in power in Washington the people of the Sovereign States of America can never adjust their difficulties. But war, bloodshed, devastation, and increased indebtedness, must be the inevitable result. There must be a change of ad- ministration, and more moderate councils prevail in the Northern States before we can ever have peace. While subjugation, abolition and confiscation are the terms of- fered by the Federal Government, the Southern people will resist as long as the patriotic voice of woman can stimulate a guerilla band, or a single armed soldier to deeds of daring in defence of liberty and home.
I have said the South is not the guilty party in this dreadful carnage, and I think it not inappropriate that the reasons should be oft repeated at the bar of an intelli- gent public opinion, that our own people and the world should have "line upon line" and "precept upon pre- cept," "here a little and there a little," "in season and out of season," as some may suppose, to show the true nature of this contest-the principles involved-the ob- jects of the war on our side, as well as that of the enemy, that all right-minded men everywhere may see and un- derstand, that this contest is not of our seeking, and that we have had no wish or desire to injure those who war against us, except so far as has been necessary for the
626
CONFEDERATE RECORDS
protection and preservation of ourselves. Our sole object from the beginning has been to defend, maintain and preserve our ancient usages, customs, liberties, and insti- tutions, as achieved and established by our ancestors in the Revolution of 1776.
That Revolution was undertaken to establish two great rights-State Sovereignty and self-government. Upon these the Declaration of Independence was predicated, and they were the Corner Stone upon which the Constitu- tion rested. The denial of these two great principles cost to Great Britain her American Colonies which had so long been her pride. And the denial of them by the Gov- ernment at Washington if persisted in, must cost the people of the United States the liberties of themselves and their posterity. These are the pillars upon which the Temple of Constitutional Liberty stands, and if the Northern people in their mad effort to destroy the sov- ereignty of the Southern States and take from our peo- ple the rights of self-government, should be able, with the strength of an ancient Sampson, to lay hold upon the pil- lars and overturn the edifice, they must necessarily be crushed beneath its ruins, as the destruction of State Sovereignty and the right of self-government in the Southern States by the agency of the Federal Govern- ment necessarily involves the like destruction in the Northern States, as no people can maintain these rights for themselves who will shed the blood of their neighbors to destroy them in others. It is impossible for half of the States of a Confederacy, if they assist the central gov- ernment to destroy the rights and liberties of the other half, to maintain their own rights and liberties against the central power after it has crushed their Co-States.
627
STATE PAPERS OF GOVERNOR JOS. E. BROWN
The two great truths announced by Mr. Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and concurred in by all the great men in the Revolution were, 1st, "That Gov- ernments derive their just powers from the consent of the Governed." 2nd, "That these United Colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and independent States."
We are not to understand by the first great truth that each individual member of the aggregate mass com- posing the State must give his consent before he can be justly governed; or that the consent of each, or a par- ticular class of individuals in a State is necessary. By the "governed" is evidently here meant communities and bodies of men capable of organizing and maintain- ing government. The "consent of the governed," re- fers to the aggregate will of the community or State in its organized form, and expressed through its legitimate and properly constituted organs.
In elaborating this great truth Mr. Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence says, that governments are instituted among men to secure certain "inalienable rights"-that "among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;" that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to insti- tute a new government laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
According to this great fundamental principle the Sovereign States of America, North and South, can only be governed by their own consent, and whenever the gov-
628
CONFEDERATE RECORDS
ernment to which they have given their consent becomes destructive of the great ends for which it was formed, they have a perfect right to abolish it, by withdraw- ing their consent from it, as the Colonies did from the British Government, and to form a new Government, with its foundations laid on such principles, and its powers organized in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." Upon the application to the present controversy of this great principle, to which the Northern States are as firmly committed as the Southern States, Georgia can proudly challenge New York to trial before the bar of enlightened public opinion, and impartial history must write the ver- dict in her favor, and triumphantly vindicate her action in the course she has pursued.
Not only all the sovereign States of America have heretofore recognized this great truth, but it has been recognized by the able and enlightened Emperor of the French who owes his present elevation to the "consent of the governed."
He was called to the Presidency by the free suffrage or consent of the French people, and when he assumed the imperial title he again submitted the question to the "governed" at the ballot box, and they gave their "con- sent."
At the recent treaty of peace with the Emperor of Austria he ceded an Austrian Province to France, and Napoleon refused to "govern it," till the people at the ballot box gave "their consent" that he should do so.
The Northern States of America are today, through the agency of the despotism at Washington, waging a
629
STATE PAPERS OF GOVERNOR JOS. E. BROWN
bloody war upon the Southern States, to crush out this great American principle, announced, and maintained in a seven years' war, by our common ancestry, after it has won the approbation of the ablest and most enlightened Sovereign of Europe.
In discussing this great principle, I can but remark. how strange is the contrast between the conduct of the Emperor Napoleon and that of President Lincoln. Na- poleon refuses to govern a province till a majority of the people at the ballot box has given their consent. Lincoln, after having done all in his power to destroy the freedom and purity of the ballot, announces in his late proclamation, his determination to govern the sovereign States of the South by force, and to recognize and maintain as the Government of these States, not those who at the ballot box can obtain the "consent of the governed," or of a majority of the people, but those who can obtain the consent of one-tenth of the people of the State. Knowing that he can never govern these States with "the consent of the governed," he tramples the Declaration of Independence under his feet and pro- claims to the world that he will govern these States, not by the "consent of the governed," but by military power, so soon as he can find one-tenth of the governed humili- ated enough to give their consent.
But the world must be struck by the absurdity of the pretext upon which he bases this extraordinary preten- sion. He says, in substance, the Constitution requires him to guarantee to each State a republican form of Gov- ernment. And for the purpose of carrying out this pro- vision of the Constitution he proclaims that so soon as one-tenth of the people of the seceded States shall be
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.