SECESSION. 125 CHAPTER V. SECESSION. THE type of Major Jackson's political opinions has been already described, as that of a States'-Rights' Democrat of "the most straitest sect." This name did not denote the attachment of those who bore it to the dogmas of universal suffrage and radical democracy, as concerned the State Governments; but their advocacy of republican rights for these Governments, and a limited construction of the powers conferred by them on the Federal Government. Their view of those powers was founded on the following historical facts, which no well-informed American hazards his credit by disputing:-That the former colonies of Great Britain emerged from the Revolutionary War distinct and sovereign political communities or commonwealths, in a word, separate nations, though allied together, and as such were recog nized by all the European powers: That, after some years' existence as such, they voluntarily formed a covenant, called the Constitution of the United States, which created a species of government resting upon this compact for its existence and rights; a government which was the creature of the sovereign States, acting as independent nations in forming it: That this compact conferred certain defined powers and duties upon the Central Government, for purposes common to all the States alike, and expressly reserved and prohibited the exercise of all other powers, leaving to the States the management of their own affairs. They, therefore, did not sacrifice their nature as sovereignties, by acceding to the Federal Union; but, by compact, they conceded some of the functions of an independent nation, particularly defined, to the Central Government, retaining all the rest as before. These facts and this inference were uniformly held by the Commonwealth of Virginia at all times, being solemnly asserted when she joined the copartnership, and frequently reaffirmed by her Government down to the present day. They were, in substance, embodied in the Constitution of the United States itself, by a formal amendment, immediately after it went into effect. Since the era of the elder Adams, when the centralizing doctrine was utterly overwhelmed by the election of Mr. Jefferson, they have been professed in theory, though often violated in act, by every Administration of whatever party it. might be, and by ucarly every State. The party of the States'-Rights usually taught, from these principles, that the Federal Government ought to continue what it was in the purer days of Washington and Jefferson, unambitious in its claims of jurisdiction, simple and modest in its bearing, restricted in its wealth and patronage, and economical of expenditures, save in the common defence against external enemies. They held that all acts of legislation which interfered with those functions appropriate to the States as Commonwealths, and all those acts which turned aside from the general interests common to the States alike, to promote particular or local interests, were partial, usurping, and in virtual violation of the spirit of the Constitution. Among these, they classed all bounty laws designed to favor the inhabitants of a section, all protective tariffs, the chartering of a vast Banking Corporation in one of the States, and all meddling with the institution of domestic slavery in the States. They also held that the very Government, being the creation of commonwealths which acted as independent CREED OF STATES' RIGHTS. 127 nations in forming it, and originating in a covenant which they voluntarily formed as such, derived its whole authority from its conformity to the terms of that covenant: that, if the covenant were destroyed, the Government was destroyed, and its rightful title to allegiance from any person was annihilated that being gone which was the sole basis of it; and that, in the dernier ressort upon any vital instance of usurpation, the States themselves must be the judges whether the covenant was destroyed, and judges too of the necessity and nature of their redress. This right, to be exercised, indeed, under those moral obligations which should govern all international intercourse, they held to be inherent in the States as originally sovereign; while to suppose their federal compact divested them of it was preposterous, and what was, in the nature of the case, impossible. It would represent their voluntary act in acceding to the covenant as a political suicide. And it would have been equally preposterous for the Federal Constitution formally to confer it; it would have been the absurdity of the offspring's attempting to confer on its own parent the rights of paternity. Hence the absolute silence of the Federal Constitution concerning this inalienable right of the States was logically consistent, and is as incapable of implying anything against, as for, its just exercise. How natural and fair this construction is, may be shown by the argument of the great English moralist, Paley, against the theory which founds the government of States over individuals upon the fiction of a social compact. He reasons unanswerably, that if this were so, the violation of the original compact by the government of a commonwealth, in any one point, would destroy the binding force of that covenant on the other party, the citizen, and so annihilate all right to allegiance. Whence we should reach the ruinous and absurd proposition, that any one unconstitutional act in the ruler would release every citizen, in the future, from all rightful obligation to obey any law he enjoined, just or unjust. The argument is perfectly sound against the theory of a social contract between individuals, because the government of a State over them is not founded on any such contract, but on the ordinance of God. But in the case of the United States the fact was precisely opposite, for the whole Central Government actually did originate avowedly in "a social contract," to which the parties were States instead of persons. So that Paley's deduction is, in this case, perfectly true. But its results are, here, in no wise absurd or disorganizing; because the creation of the Federal Government did not originate a social order or civic life for the States, and its destruction, therefore, would not destroy nor even relax it. The jurisdiction of the States themselves—older and more sovereign societies, indestructible save by the hand of political murder from without-preserved and regulated the whole social order; and the few functions which had been by them lent to the Federal Government, upon the fall of the latter, would not perish, but naturally revert to the States which had granted them. In the integrity of their powers, therefore, was the civic life of the American people. The conception which the fathers of the Federal Constitution formed of their confederation, was that of a Common Agent for the equal benefit of the parties confederated, exercising no powers except those derived from their consent, and neither possessing nor needing any guarantee for those powers as against the parties, the States, save the obvious beneficence towards them of all its action. The Union was not a prison owned by some despot, within which the unwilling inhabitants were to be kept by force, making residence there the infliction, and escape the privilege; it was to be the home, created for their common happiness by a family of freemen, where residence would be the privilege, and exclusion the penalty; where each member of the TRUE THEORY OF FEDERAL UNION. 129 brotherhood abode only because he chose to do so; and yet there was no danger that the membership would be prematurely dissolved, because the advantages of its just and beneficent rules would insure on the part of each member the desire to continue in it; and the threat of exclusion would be the sufficient discipline to reduce a capricious party to reason. And such was the Federal Union during the life of its founders; a government more deeply seated in the love of its people, and therefore stronger than any in Christendom; more productive of public wealth and happiness in its action; weak for aggression against the rights of its citizens, yet powerful for their defence against external enemies. In this point was intended to be the essential wisdom of its structure; that, being forbidden to enforce, by the strong hand, even its legitimate will (much more its illegal) upon the parties to it, the States, it was compelled to foster the motive for compliance by making its authority a minister of good only, and not of evil. Thus did our patriotic fathers attempt to solve the problem, hitherto unsolved, of securing the freedom of the parts, and yet giving sufficient unity to the whole, for protection against unprincipled power from without. Had all the parts possessed public virtue enough to understand and keep their obligations, the American Union would have continued a great, because a benign government. But with this great balance-wheel of free consent struck from its fabric, it became at once the most mischievous, cruel, and impracticable of all institutes, a centralized democracy, owning no law save the caprice of the numerical majority. The States' Rights party could prove that their conception of the government was the true one, not only by the closest deduction of reasoning, but by notorious facts. One of these was, that the framers of the Constitution themselves left the Federal Government unclothed with any powers of coercion over the |