USA > Georgia > The Confederate records of the State of Georgia, Vol 2 pt 2 > Part 12
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found abject enough to take an oath to support his unconstitutional acts, and at the same time support the Constitution and shall do this monstrous deed, he will permit them to organize a State Government and will recognize them as the Government of the State and their officers as the regularly Constituted authorities of the State. These he will aid in putting down, driving out, expelling and exterminating, the other nine-tenths, if they do not likewise take the prescribed oath.
One-tenth of the people of a State put up, and aided by military force to rule, to govern or exterminate nine- tenths! And this to be done under the guise or pro- fessed object of guaranteeing republicanism! What would Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Hancock, or even Hamilton, have said to this kind of republicanism? What say the conservative Northern statesman of the present day, if permitted to speak? Does such a Government as this derive its powers from the "consent of the governed?" Is this their under- standing of the republican Government, which the United States is to guarantee to each State? If so, what guar- anty have they for the freedom of their posterity? If the Government at Washington guarantees such repub- licanism as this to Georgia, in 1864, what may be her guaranty to Ohio and other Western States in 1874?
The absurdity of such a position on Constitu- tional principles or views, is too glaring for comment. When such terms are offered to them, well may the peo- ple of these States be nerved to defend their rights and liberties at every hazard, under every privation, and to the last extremity.
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But I must notice the other great truth, promulgated in the Declaration of Independence-"that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and inde- pendent States."
George the Third denied this great truth in 1776 and sent his armies into Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia to crush out its advocates, and maintain over the people a Government which did not derive its powers from the "consent of the governed." President Lincoln, in 1861, has made war upon the same States and their Confeder- ates, to crush out the same doctrine by armed force. Yet he has none of the apparent justification before the world that the British King had. The colonies had been planted, nurtured and governed by Great Britian. As States they had never been independent and never claimed to be. This claim was set up for the first time, in the Declaration of Independence. Under these cir- cumstances there was some reason why the British Crown should resist it. But the great truth proclaimed was more powerful than the armies and navy of Great Britain.
On the 4th of July, 1776, our fathers made this decla- ration of the freedom and independence of the States. The revolution was fought upon this declaration, and on the 3d day of September 1783, in the treaty of peace, "His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, to-wit: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mary- land, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to be free, sovereign and independent States, that he treats with them as such," etc.
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On and after that day Geogia stood before the world clad in all the habiliments and possessed of all the at- tributes of sovereignty. When did Georgia lose this sov- ereignty? Was it by virtue of her previous compact with her sister States? Certainly not.
The Articles of Confederation between the Colonies, during the struggle, set forth the objects to be attained and the nature of the bond between the parties to it, and the separate sovereignty of each of the States a party to it, was expressly reserved. Was it when she with the other States formed the Constitution in 1787? Clearly not. The Constitution was a compact between the thirteen States, each of which had been recognized separately by name, by the British King, as a free, sov- ereign and independent State.
The objects and purposes for which the Federal Gov- ernment was formed were distinctly specified and were all set forth in the compact. The Government created by it was limited in its powers by the grant, with an express reservation of all powers not delegated. The great at- tribute of separate State Sovereignty was not delegated. In this particular there was no change from the Articles of Confederation, sovereignty was still reserved and abided with the States respectively. This more "per- fect Union" was based upon the assumption that it was for the best interest of all the States to enter into it, with the additional grant of powers and guarantees-each State being bound as a sovereign to perform and dis- charge to the others all the new obligations of the com- pact. It was so submitted to the people of the States respectively and so acceded to by them. The States did not part with their separate sovereignty by the adoption
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of the Constitution. In that instrument all the powers delegated are specifically mentioned. Sovereignty, the greatest of all political powers, the source from which all others emanate, is not amongst those mentioned. It could not have been parted with except by grant either express- ed or clearly implied. The most degrading act a State can do is to lay down or surrender her sovereignty. Indeed it cannot be done except by deed or grant. The surrender is not to be found in the Constitution amongst the ex- pressly granted powers. It cannot be amongst those granted by implication for by the terms of the compact none are granted by implication except such as are inci- dental to or necessary and proper to execute those that are expressly granted. The incident can never be greater than the object-and if nothing in the powers expressly granted amounts to sovereignty, that which is the great- est of all powers, cannot follow or be carried after a lesser one, as an incident by implication -- and then to put the matter at rest forever, it is expressly declared that the powers not delegated are reserved to the States respec- tively or to the people. Sovereignty the great source of all power, therefore was left with the States by compact, left where King George left it, and left where it has ever since remained, and will remain forever if the people of the States are true to themselves and true to the great principles which their forefathers achieved at such cost of blood and treasure in the war of 1776.
The Constitution was only the written contract of bond between the sovereign States in which the cove- nants are all plainly expressed, and each State as a sov- ereign pledged its faith to its sister States to observe and keep these covenants. So long as each did this, all were bound by the compact. But it is a rule well known
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and universally recognized in savage as in civilized life -as well understood and as generally acquiesced in. between sovereign States, as between private individ- uals, that when one party to a contract refuses to be bound by it and to conform to its requirements, the other party is released from further compliance.
Without entering into an argument to show the man- ner in which the Northern States have perverted the con- tract, and warped its terms to suit their own interest in the enactment and enforcement of tariff laws for the protection of their industry at the expense of the South, and in the enactment of internal improvement laws, coast navigation laws, fishery laws, etc., which were in- tended to enrich them at the expense of the people of the South, I need cite but a single instance of open, avowed, self-confessed and even boasted violation of the compact by Northern States to prove that the Southern States were released and discharged from further obli- gation to the Northern States by every known rule of law, morality, of comity.
One of the express covenants in the written bond to which the Northern States subscribed and without which, as is clearly seen by reference to the debates in the Convention which formed the Constitution, the South- ern States never would have agreed to or formed the compact, was in these words:
"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 dis- charged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
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Massachusetts and other abolition States, utterly re- pudiated, annulled and set at naught this provision of the Constitution, and refused either to execute it or to permit the constituted authorities of the United States to carry it out within their limits.
This shameful violation by Massachusetts of her plighted faith to Georgia, and this refusal to be bound by the parts of the Constitution which she regarded bur- densome to her and unacceptable to her people, released Georgia according to every principle of international law, from further compliance on her part. In other words the Constitution was the bond of Union between Georgia and Massachusetts, and when Massachusetts refused longer to be bound by the Constitution, she thereby dissolved the Union between her and Georgia.
It is truthfully said in the Declaration of Independ- ence, that "experience hath shown that mankind are disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are ac- customed." So it was with Georgia and her Southern sisters in this case. Though Massachusetts and other Northern States, by their faithless acts and repudiation of the compact, had dissolved the Union existing be- tween the States, the Southern States did not declare the dissolution, hoping that a returning sense of justice, on the part of the Northern States might cause them again to observe their Constitutional obligations. So far from this being the case, they construed our forbear- ance into a consciousness of our weakness and inability to protect ourselves and they organized a great sectional party whose political creed was founded in injustice to
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the South and whose public declarations and aets sus- tained the action of Massachusetts and the other faithless States.
This party, whose creed was avowed hostility to the rights of the South, triumphed in the election for Presi- dent in 1860. The election of a Federal Executive by a sectional party upon a platform of avowed hostility to the Constitutional rights of the South, to carry out in the Federal administration, the doctrines of Massachu- setts and other faithless States, left no further ground for hope that the rights of the South would longer be respected by the Northern States, which had not only the Executive, but a majority of the Congress.
The people of the Southern States, each sovereign State acting for itself, then met in Convention and in the most solemn manner known to our form of Government, resumed the exercise of the powers which they had dele- gated to the common agent, now faithless to the trust reposed in it.
The right of Georgia as a member of the original compact, to do this, is too clear for successful denial. And the right of Alabama, and the other States which had been admitted into the Union since the adoption of the Constitution, is equally incontrovertible, as each new State came into the Union as a sovereign, upon an equal footing in all respects whatever, with the original parties to the compact.
The Confederate States can therefore, with confi- dence, submit their acts to the judgment of mankind, while with a clear conscience they appeal to a just God to
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maintain them in their course. They were ever true to the compact of the Union, so long as they remained mem- bers of it-their obligations under it were ever fully per- formed, and no breach of it was ever laid at their door, or truly charged against them. In exercising this un- doubted right to withdraw from the Union, when the covenant had been broken by the Northern States, they sought no war-no strife. They simply withdrew from further connection with self-confessed, faithless Confed- erates. They offered no injury to them-threatened none-proposed none-intended none. If their previous Union with the Southern States had been advantageous to them, and our withdrawal affected their interests in- juriously, they ought to have been truer to their obliga- tions. They had no just cause to complain of us, the breach of the compact was by themselves-the vital cord of the Union was severed by their own hands.
After the withdrawal of the Confederate States from the Union, if those whose gross dereliction of duty had caused it had reconsidered their own acts and offered new assurances for better faith in future, the question would have been fairly and justly put to the seceded States in their sovereign capacity to determine whether, in view of their past and future interest and safety, they should renew the Union with them or not, and upon what terms and guarantees; and if they had found it to be to their interest to do so, upon any terms that might have been agreed upon, on the principle assumed at the beginning, that it was for the best interests of all the States to be bound by some compact of Union with a Central Government of limited powers, each State faith- fully performing its obligations, they would doubtless have consented to it. But if they had found it to their
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interest not to do it, they would not and ought not to have done it. For the first law of Nature as applicable to States and communities, as to individuals, is self-pro- tection and self-preservation.
Possibly a new Government might have been formed at that time, upon the basis of the Germanic Confedera- tion, with a guaranty of the complete sovereignty of all the separate States, and with a central agent or Govern- ment of more limited powers than the old one, which would have been as useful for defence against foreign aggression and much less dangerous to the sovereignty and the existence of the States than the old one, when in the hands of abolition leaders, had proved itself to be.
The length of the time for which the Germanic Con- federation has existed, has proved that its strength lies in what might have been considered its weakness-the separate sovereignty of the individual members and the very limited powers of the Central Government.
In taking the step which they were forced to do, the Southern States were careful not to provoke a conflict of arms or any serious misunderstanding with the States that adhered to the Government at Washington, as long as it was possible to avoid it. Commissioners were sent to Washington to settle and adjust all matters relating to their past connection or joint interests and obligations, justly, honorably and peaceably. Our Commissioners were not received-they were denied the privilege of an audience-they were not heard. But they were indirectly trifled with, lied to and misled by duplicity as infamous as that practiced by Phillip of Spain towards the peace Commissioners sent by Elizabeth of England. They were
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detained and deceived, with private assurances of a pros- pect of a peaceful settlement, while the most extensive preparations were being made for war and subjugation. When they discovered this they withdrew and the Gov- ernment at Washington continued its vigorous prepara- tions to reinforce its garrisons and hold possession of our forts and to send armies to invade our territory.
Having completed his preparations for war, and re- fused to hear any propositions for a peaceful adjustment of our difficulties, President Lincoln issued his procla- mation declaring Georgia and the other seceded States to be in rebellion, and sent forth his armies of invasion.
In rebellion against whom or what? As sovereign States have no common arbiter to whose decision they can appeal, when they are unable to settle their differen- ces amicably, they often resort to the sword as an arbiter ; and as sovereignty is always in dignity the equal of sov- ereignty, and a sovereign can know no superior to which allegiance is due, one sovereign may be at war with an- other, but one can never be in rebellion against another.
To say that the sovereign State of Georgia is in re- bellion against the sovereign State of Rhode Island is as much an absurdity as it would be to say that the sover. eign State of Russia was in rebellion against the sover. eign State of Great Britian in their late war. They were at war with each other, but neither was in rebellion against the other, nor indeed could be, for neither owed any allegiance to the other.
Nor could one of the sovereign States be in rebellion against the Government of the United States. That Gov-
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ernment was the creature of the States, by which it was created; and they had the same power to destroy it at pleasure, which they had to make it. It was their com- mon agent with limited powers; and the States by which the agency was created had the undoubted right when it abused these powers, to withdraw them. Suppose by mutual consent all the States in the Union had met in Convention, each in its seperate sovereignty capacity, and had withdrawn all the delegated powers from the Federal Government, and all the States had refused to send Senators or Representatives to Congress, or to elect a President; will any sane man question this right or deny that such action of the States would have destroyed the Federal Government? If so the Federal Government was the creature of the States and could only exist at their pleasure. It lived and breathed only by their con- sent. If all the parties to the compact had the right, by mutual consent, to resume the powers delegated to them by the common agent, why had not part of them the right to do so, when the others violated the compact-refused to be bound longer by its obligations, and thereby released their co-partners? The very fact that the States-by which it was formed, could at any time by mutual consent disband and destroy the Federal Government, shows that it had no original inherent sovereignty or jurisdiction. As the creature of the States it had only such powers and jurisdictions as they gave it, and it held what it had at their pleasure. If, therefore, a State withdrew from the Confederacy without just cause, it was a question for the other sovereign States to consider what should be their future relations towards it ; but it was a question of which the Federal Government had not the shadow of jurisdic- tion. So long as Georgia remained in the Union, if her
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citizens had refused to obey such laws of Congress as it had Constitutional jurisdiction to pass, they might have been in rebellion against the Federal Government, because they resisted the authority over them which Georgia had delegated to that Government and which with her consent it still possessed. But if Georgia for just cause, of which she was the judge, chose to withdraw from the Union and resume the attributes of sovereignty which she had delegated to the United States Government, her citizens could no longer be subject to the laws of the Union, and no longer guilty as rebels if they did not obey them.
It could be as justly said that the principal, who has delegated certain limited powers to his agent in the tran- saction of his business, which he has afterwards with- drawn on account of their abuse by the agent, is in re- bellion against the agent; or that of the master is in rebellion against his servant; or landlord against his tenant; because he has withdrawn certain privileges for a time allowed them; as that Georgia is in rebellion against her former agent, the Government of the United States.
These I understand to be the great fundamental doc- trines of our republican form of Government so ably ex- pounded in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 and 1799, which have ever since been a text book of the true republican party of the United States. Departure from these principles has destroyed the Federal Govern- ment and been the prolific cause of all our woes. Out of this departure has sprung the doctrine of loyalty and dis- loyalty of the States to the Federal Government, from which comes, ostensibly, this war against us, which is it-
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self at war with the first principles of American Constitu- tional liberty. It involves the interests, the future safety and welfare of those States now deemed loyal, as well as those pronounced disloyal. It is the doctrine of absolu- tion revived in its worst form. It strikes down the essen- tial principles of self-government ever held so sacred in our past history, and to which all the States were indebted for their unparallelled career, in growth, prosperity, and greatness, so long as these principles were adhered to and maintained inviolate.
If carried out and established, its end can be nothing but centralism and despotism. It and its fatal corol- lary-the policy of forcing sovereign States to the dis- charge of their assumed Constitutional obligations, were foreshadowed by President Lincoln in his inaugural address.
Now at the time of the delivery of that inaugural address it was well known to him that the faithless States above alluded to, and to whose votes in the elec- toral college he was indebted for his election, had for years been in open, avowed and determined violation of their Constitutional obligations. This he well knew, and he also knew that the seceded States had withdrawn from the Union because of this breach of faith on the part of the abolition States, and other anticipated vio- lations, more dangerous, threatened from the same quar- ter. Yet without a word of rebuke, censure or remon- strance with them for their most flagrant disloyalty to the Constitution and their disregard of their most sacred obligations under it, he then threatened, and now wages war against us on the ground of our disloyalty, in seek- ing new safeguards for our security when the old ones
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failed. And the people of those very States, whose dis- loyal hands have severed the ties of the Union-breaking one of the essential parts of the compact, have been, and are, his most furious myrmidons in this most wicked and unjust crusade against us, with a view to compel the people of these so outraged States to return to the dis- charge of their Constitutional obligations! It may be gravely doubted if the history of the world can furnish an instance of greater perfidy or more shameful wrong.
But while the war is thus waged, professedly under the paradoxical pretext of restoring the Union that was a creature of consent, by force, and of upholding the Constitution by coercing sovereign States, yet its real objects, as appears more obviously every day, are by no means so paradoxical. The Union under the Constitu- tion as it was, each and every State being bound faith- fully to perform and discharge its duties and obligations, and the Central Government confining itself within the sphere of its limited powers, is what the authors, projec- tors and coutrollers of this war never wanted and never intended, and do not now intend, to maintain.
Whatever differences of opinion may have existed at the commencement among our own people, as to the policy of secession, or the objects of the Federal Government all doubt has been dispelled by the abolition Proclamation of President Lincoln, and his subsequent action. Mad- dened by abolition fanaticism, and deadly hate for the white race of the South, he wages war not for the resto- ration of the Union-not for the support of the Consti- tution-but for the abolition of slavery and the subju- gation and, as he doubtless desires, ultimate extermina- tion, of the Anglo-Norman race in the Southern States.
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Dearly beloved by him as are the African race, his acts are prompted less by love of them than by Puritanie hate for the Cavliers, the Huguenots, and Scotch-Irish whose blood courses freely through the veins of the white popu- lation of the South. But federal bayonets can never reverse the laws of God, which must be done, before the negro can be made the equal of the white man of the South. The freedom sought for them by the abolition party, if achieved, would result in their return to bar- barism, and their ultimate extermination from the soil, where most of them were born and were comfortable and contented under the guardian care of the white race be- fore this wicked crusade commenced.
What have been the abolition achievements of the ad- ministration ? The most that has been claimed by them is that they have taken from their owners and set free, 100,000 negroes. What has this cost the white race of the North and South? More than half a million of white men slain or wrecked in health beyond the hope of re- covery, and an expenditure of not perhaps less than four thousand millions of dollars. What will it cost at this rate to liberate nearly 4,000,000 more of slaves? North- ern accounts of the sickness, suffering and death which have under Northern treatment, carried off so large a proportion of those set free, ought to convince the most fanatical of the cruel injury they are inflicting upon the poor helpless African.
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