USA > North Carolina > North Carolina in the War Between the States > Part 5
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Hamilton declared in the Federalist that the States were sovereign. Franklin, James Wilson, of Pennsylvania; Gouv- erneur Morris, Roger Sherman, and Oliver Ellsworth, spoke of the States as sovereign bodies. This doctrine was not denied in the earlier years of the Republic. The tenth amendment to the Constitution was adopted at the express instance of the States, in order to secure their sovereignty beyond all possible doubt.
Chief Justice Marshall gives an opinion, in these words, to wit: "The State governments did not derive their powers from the General Government, but each government derived its powers from the people, and each was to act according to the powers given. Would any gentleman deny this? * Could any man say that this power was not retained by the States, as they had not given it away? For does not a power remain until it is given away?"* Finally, is it possi- ble to conceive that an independent State would part with the priceless jewel of sovereignty by implication ?
* Elliott's Debates, vol. 3, pp. 369, 381.
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In opposition to this, Mr. Lincoln, voicing the doctrine of the Republican party, declared that the States, "were the creatures of the General Government."
It remains, finally, to mention the opinion of George Wash- ington himself. expressed in a letter to Benjamin Lincoln, October 26, 1788. He says: " Whoever shall be found to enjoy the confidence of the States, so far as to be elected Vice- President." &c. And just here it may be in place to allude to the popular error, that our system of Government is a mixed one, consisting in part of a representation of States, and in part of a representation of the people in all the States as an aggregate unit. It has been remarked before, that the larger States demanded, and were accorded, a larger represen- tation in Congress than the smaller States. But they enjoyed this right as States ; nor was there anything in this at all in- consistent with the federal principle. In the purest confeder- acies that have ever existed. States have been represented in proportion to the taxes they would be required to furnish in time of war. Thus. Prussia had a larger representation in the German confederation than Hanover. The President and Vice-President are elected upon the same principle, which fixes the ratio of representation.
This doctrine is further evident from the fact that three- fifths of the slaves, who were not of " the people," who were not citizens, and who possessed no political rights, were counted in the represented population. Thus, General Wash- ington said the exact truth, with precise accuracy, when he speaks of the Chief Executive as being elected by the States.
Mr. Davis, in his history, remarks with no less force and clearness than truth : "That in forming and adopting the Constitution, the States, or people of the States-terms, which, when used with reference to acts performed in a sov- ereign capacity, are precisely equivalent to each other- formed a new Government, but no new people ; and that, con- sequently, no new sovereignty was created-for sovereignty in an American republic can belong only to a people, nece
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to a government-and that the Federal Government is enti- tled to exercise the only powers delegated to it by the people of the respective States. That the term ' people, in the pre- amble to the Constitution and in the tenth amendment, is used distributively: that the only . people of the United States' known to the Constitution, are the people of each State in the Union ; that no such political community or cor- porate unit as one people of the United States then existed, has ever been organized. or yet exists : and that no political action by the people of the United States in the aggregate has ever taken place, or ever can take place under the Con- stitution. The fictitious idea of one people of the United States, contradicted in the last paragraph, has been so im- pressed upon the popular mind by false teaching, by careless and vicious phraseology, and by the ever-present spectacle of a great Government, with its army and navy, its custom- houses and post-offices. its multitude of office-holders, and the splendid prizes which it offers to political ambition, that the tearing away of these illusions, and the presentation of the original fabrie, which they have overgrown and hidden from view, have no doubt been unwelcome, distasteful, and even repellant, to some of my readers. The artificial splendor which makes the deception attractive is even employed as an argument to prove its reality.
" The glitter of the powers delegated to the agent serves to obscure the perception of the sovereign power of the princi- pal by whom they are conferred, as, by the unpracticed eye, the showy costume and conspicuous functions of the drum- major are mistaken for emblems of chieftainey-while the misuse or ambiguous use of the term Union and its congen- ers contributes to increase the confusion." *
If what has been remarked of Mr. Webster be correct, what shall be said of Motley? Mr. Webster spoke with guarded words. As before stated, his method was rather insinuation than bold assertion. Yet there was a limit be-
* " Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," pp. 158, 159.
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yond which even he did not go. There were some facts so very plain and well-established, and universally known, that he dared not call them in question. Not so with Motley. He cast aside all shame. He stated what was false, what he knew to be false, what everybody knew to be false, with all the impudence and swagger of a professional swindler. Like his tribe of venal office-seeking creatures, who write what they call history, to please the party in power, for the purpose of securing a good paying appointment, this Motley, in 1861, wrote as follows: " The Constitution was not drawn up by the States, it was not promulgated in the name of the States, it was not ratified by the States. The States never acceded to it, and possess no power to secede from it. It was 'ordained and established ' over the States by a power superior to the States ; by the people of the whole land in their aggregate capacity."
To say that the Constitution "was not ratified by the States," when the very condition of its adoption was made to depend upon the ratification of " nine of the States;" and when in point of fact it was ratified by each State in its or- ganic capacity as a State : and to say that it was " established over the States by a power superior to the States," when the Constitution itself says, "the ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution, between the States so ratifying the same;" to say this, evinces such a disregard of truth and honesty as to make such statements unworthy of notice. Motley had no influ- ence in moulding public opinion. He wrote after the crisis came, and, doubtless, with a view to the British mission, which he subsequently procured. He has only been alluded to in order to show the progress of the consolidation theory.
When Mr. Lincoln said that the States derived their pow- ers from the General Government, and "run" his "machine" upon that principle, the subversion of the Constitution was perfected-not in theory only but in practical act and effect.
* Letter to London Times, 1861.
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If the Union was a compact, entered into by sovereign States, then it followed as a necessary consequence that the States had a right to withdraw or secede from the compact. whenever in their judgment such a step would best promote their own welfare. But the expedieney of such action was a weighty question.
Among other considerations of grave import was : "Would there be war?" The majority of the people of the South thought there would not be.
Mr. Madison had said, in the Convention which framed the Constitution, in reply to a proposition "to call forth the force of the Union against any member of the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof," that " any gov- erninent of the United States founded upon the supposed practicability of using force against the unconstitutional pro- ceedings of the States, would prove as visionary and fallacious as the government of Congress." Mr. Madison moved the postponement of the proposition. It was postponed unani- mously, and never again revived. Mr. Madison said further, upon the same occasion, that " the use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an in- fliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked, as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might have been bound."
Governor Randolph, of Virginia, the mover of the resolu. tion to employ force, after the sigual defeat of that proposi- tion, declared in the Virginia convention that the General Government had no power of coercion.
Oliver Ellsworth. in the ratifying convention of Connec- ticut, said : " This Constitution does not attempt to coerce sovereign bodies, States, in their political capacity."+
Mr. Hamilton, in the New York convention, said : " To coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised."
*Madison Papers, pp. 732-761.
+Elliott's Debates, vol. 2, p. 199.
#Ibid., pp. 232, 233.
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Our own William R. Davie said he " supposed no man would support coercion."
Down to as late a period as 1850 there was scarcely a man to be found who advocated the right of coercion. From this time the doctrine began to find supporters, but they were few in number. As late as 1860 the New York Tribune, the great organ of the Republican party, said : " We must ever resist the asserted right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof; to withdraw from the Union is quite another matter. And, whenever a con- siderable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercice measures to keep her in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets."*
The New York Herald, a journal claiming to be inde- pendent of party influences, and to represent average popu- lar opinion, said, about the same time: " Each State is or- ganized as a complete government, holding the purse and wielding the sword, possessing the right to break the tie of the confederation, as a nation might break a treaty, and to repel coercion as a nation might repel invasion."
In January, 1861, after six States had seceded, an im- mense meeting was held in New York city. Mr. Thayer, a distinguished old line Whig, in his speech upon that occa- sion, said : " We can at least, in an authoritative way, and a practical manner, arrive at the basis of a peace separation. (Cheers.) * And if the incoming administration shall attempt to carry out the line of policy that has been foreshadowed, we announce that, when the hand of black Republicanism turns to blood-red and seeks from the frag- ment of the Constitution to construct a scaffolding for coercion- another name for execution-we will reverse the order of the French Revolution, and save the blood of the people by making those who would inaugurate a reign of terror the first victims of a national guillotine!" (Enthusiastic ap- plause.)+
*N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 9, 1860.
¡Speech at a mass meeting in N. Y., Jan. 31, 1861.
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At the same meeting Governor Seymour asked whether "successful coercion by the North is less revolutionary than successful secession by the South ?" and added, " Shall we pre- vent revolution by being foremost in overthrowing the prin- ciples of our Government, and all that makes it valuable to our people and distinguishes it among the nations of the earth ?"
Ex-Chancellor Walworth said : " It would be as brutal, in my opinion, to send men to butcher our own brothers of the Southern States, as it would be to massacre them in the Northern States."
De Tocqueville affirmed the Union to be a compact, and that the General Government possessed no power of coer- cion.
Even Mr. Lincoln, in his inaugural address, hesitated and wavered. Instead of announcing the policy of his adminis- tration to be coercion, the whole tone and spirit of what he said, seems to favor a peaceable separation.
Considering these expressions, it was not without reason that the majority of the Southern people thought secession would be peaceable. In the first place, they felt that the right existed: and in the second place, they thought this right was, if not recognized by the North as constitutional, at least recognized as legitimate on the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Added to this was the ex - pression of an immense, though not dominant party, at the North, opposed to coercion. But the wisest heads at the South counted on war. They were too well acquainted with the treachery and unserupulous character of the black Re- publican leaders to anticipate less. What, to them, had been the considerations of the Constitution, of plighted faith, of justice, of honor, of truth, of common decency? To them all these things were matters of "sentiment," and were not regarded as profitable rules for a race of practical, money- making business men. If a war would pay, they would wage a war, a treacherous war, a cruel and vindictive war-
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as advised by Horace Greeley and the Rer. Dr. Tyng. The result of their calculations was, that the pecuniary advan- tages to be reaped by a war, in the event of a success. would far outstrip the expense of carrying it on for a long number of years. On the other hand. if the North lost, it would be no worse off: because. if the South should separate peace- ably, the North would be equally ruined, as it depended upon the productive industries of the South, which it could exploit into its own pocket by means of sectional legislation.
There was a Webster school at the South. There were Southern men who did not believe in the right of secession. But they believed in the right of revolution. They believed in the principle of resistance to oppression, as clearly set forth in the Declaration of Independence. They believed in the doctrine of Mr. Webster's Capon Springs speech, in which he said (already quoted) speaking of the Constitution, " And if the North were deliberately, habitually and of fixed purpose, to disregard one part of it, would the South be bound any longer to observe its other obligations ?"
But many of these gentlemen became convinced before 1861 that it was the " fixed purpose " of the North to trample the Constitution under foot and to make a sectional war upon the institutions of the South, to secure greater power and aggrandizement for themselves. They had learned what it was to bear the galling yoke of a numerical majority, un- trammelled by any obligations of the plighted faith. They had learned the truth of De Tocqueville's remark about the numerical majority in the United States, when he said, " No obstacles exist which can impede, or so much as retard its progress, or which can induce it to heed the complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path." The old Whig party at the North formed a coalition with the black Republi- can, and about the same time it disappeared in the South.
If there could be any one particular cause which operated with more force than any other to produce this unanimity at the South, it was the Dred Scott decision and its consequences.
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It had been a favorite doctrine of the old Whig party at the South, that questions touching the rights of the States and their relations to the General Government were ques- tions of constitutional law, to be determined by the Supreme Court of the United States, and that such decision was final. In 1854 a case (the Dred Scott case) involving just such questions came before the Supreme Court. The court de- cided. seven of the nine judges concurring, that African slaves were not " part of the people" or citizens of the United States : that Congress had no right to exclude slavery from the territories, and that the Missouri compromise. 50 far as it related to the exclusion of slavery north of a certain. line, was unconstitutional. In a word, the Supreme Court decided in favor of every point for which the South con- tended.
How was this decision received by this black Republican party? They tortured the English language to frame epithets sufficiently vigorous and vile to launch against the devoted court. Upon the head of the learned and venerable Chief Justice Taney they poured out the seven vials of their wrath and hatred. The decision was repudiated. It was declared to have no binding force and effect. It added fresh fury to the malignant agitators, and fanned the sectional ani- mosity at the North into a fiercer flame. The torrent of popular passion increased in volume, until it broke over the feeble barrier of right and justice interposed by the Supreme Court. The last bulwark had been swept away. No hope remained. The South was now approaching unity of senti- ment. To show that they intended to pay no regard to this. decision of the Supreme Court the black Republican party actually organized itself in a formal manner upon the identical principles which the court had declared unconstitutional ! No conceivable method of expression could have pointed out their purpose and determination with more clearness and distinctness. It is not necessary to add that this determina- tion and purpose was the political subjugation and material ruin of the people of the South.
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Every consideration of honor and safety demanded resist- ance to the bitter end. The election of Abraham Lincoln. a sectional President, by a sectional vote, for a sectional pur- pose, and that purpose the attempted degradation of the South, was the signal for action. There is a passage in the Federalist of rare force and beauty, and of no less truth, which is as follows : " Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and it ever will be pursued until it be obtained. or until liberty be lost in the pursuit."
Justice was no longer to be hoped for in the Union.
When it became known that Lincoln was elected President of the United States South Carolina made immediate prepa- rations for secession. Her legislature called a convention, which assembled in Columbia, December 17, 1860. On the 18th the convention adjourned to Charleston, and on the 20th the ordinance was passed, which declared that " the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America, is. hereby dissolved."
Florida followed South Carolina on the 7th of January, 1861 ; Mississippi on the 9th, Alabama on the 11th, Geor- gia on the 20th. Louisiana on the 26th, and Texas on the 1st of February.
On the 4th of February a convention of delegates from the seceded States assembled at Montgomery, Alabama .. adopted a constitution, and organized the Confederate gov- ernment.
There were those, even yet, in the South who did not de- spair of an amicable adjustment. On the 18th of December .. 1860, Mr. Crittenden introduced his famous " compromise resolutions." The resolutions did not receive a black Repub- lican vote. The propositions of Mr. Etheridge, less favora- ble to the South, were not even entertained. Still, the efforts for peace were not abandoned. At the instance of the legis- lature of Virginia, commissioners from twenty States, known
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as the "Peace Conference," met at Washington in February. The border States were all present.
This conference recommended to Congress a plan less favorable to the South than the Crittenden resolutions. The recommendation was voted down in the Senate, and the House refused to entertain it. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas still remained in the Union. Mean- while the Confederate government dispatched commissioners to Washington to treat and negotiate for the removal of the Federal troops from Forts Pickens and Sumter, and to pro- vide for the adjustment of claims to the public property. They were informally received, and assured that, pending the negotiations, no change should be made in the status in quo. But they were most grossly betrayed. While these assurances were being made and negotiations pending, the Government at Washington was secretly making extensive preparations for coercion.
When the commissioners learned that transports and ves- sels of war, with troops, munitions and supplies, had already sailed southward from Northern ports, their eyes were opened to the deception which had been practised upon them. They became alarmed, and asked for a reply to their com- munication ; whereupon they were informed that the Presi- dent of the United States had determined to hold no com- munication with them whatever. Seward had acted with treachery, but had accomplished his purpose in delaying action on the part of the Confederate authorities, while he was endeavoring to reinforce the Southern forts. After repeated assurances on the part of Seward to Mr. Campbell, that Sumter should be evacuated, on the very day on which the last assurance was given the advance of the Northern fleet had sailed on its hostile mission for Charleston harbor.
The result is well known. Fire was opened on Sumter on the 12th of April, and on the 13th it capitulated.
The reduction of Sumter wrought up the North to a frenzy of excitement and rage. And yet, if South Carolina
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had the right to withdraw from the Union, she had the right to Sumter. If the Washington Goverment had no war- want for coercion, if the "erring sisters should go in peace," as so many Northern newspapers, preachers, and politicians had declared, then what was there remarkable in South Carolina possessing herself of her own fort. which a hostile fleet was hovering off the coast to reinforce? This insane fury was partly artificial and partly to be attributed to the sensational character of the Northern people. Doubtless this rage would have been increased had every man in Sumter been de- stroved, as the Goverment in Washington intended and hoped. Perhaps. too, the North believed that the South was merely vaporing. They declared as much. They said it was all " bruton falmen:" that the South could be " kicked out;" that the war would be over in " sixty days," &c., &c.
Now they knew that the South was in earnest-in deadly earnest. The North loved that Union under which they had grown rich, by plundering the South. Untold millions had been gathered under sectional legislation in tribute, With the South independent the North would relapse into its orig- inal poverty and obscurity. Their love of the Union was a matter of dollars and cents. They calculated that the expend- iture of a few billions of dollars, and what was of much less consequence, the slaughter of half a million men, would be a small consideration in comparison with the loss of the ben- etits of a protective tariff. Then, too, there were visions of army contracts among the manufacturers, of immensely increased transportation for the railroad companies, and of securing absolute control of the currency among the bankers, also dreams of a new aristocracy founded on shoddy. Finally, over and above all. was the old Puritan savagery, hatred and envy towards the South, which, long smouldering, now Hamed out in a fierce malignity.
Lincoln, with the advice of his aiders and abettors, quick to seize the favorable moment, took advantage of this wave of fanaticisin, issued his proclamation for 75,000 troops, and called upon the States to furnish their quotas. How North Carolina responded will appear in the following pages :
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NORTH CAROLINA
IN THE
WAR BETWEEN THE STATES.
CHAPTER I.
Upon the election of Mr. Lincoln the people of North Carolina divided themselves into two parties. One party maintained that his election proved beyond all matter of doubt that it was the settled intent and determined purpose of a large majority of the Northern people to utterly disre- gard and violate those rights of the States which underlay the form of Government and constituted its very essence, and which were furthermore plainly recognized in the Con- stitution. They thought, therefore, that every consideration of safety, as well as of honor, demanded that the State should withdraw from the compact of union, which they con- ceived a reckless majority at the North were perverting into an engine of lawless oppression and despotism. The other party, while deploring the election of a sectional President, were disposed to put up with present grievances and wait, hoping that time and a returning sense of justice would bring relief, rather than take a step which, when once taken, would be irretrievable, and which might lead to greater evils than those which already existed.
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NORTH CAROLINA IN THE
The following letter from Governor Ellis shows the state of public sentiment in North Carolina in the fall of 1860: *
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