our confused notions and loose talk about "delegated sovereignty;" "divided sovereignty;" "two sovereignties;" "federal sovereignty and state sovereignty, each supreme in its own sphere;" "the sovereign powers distributed between the state and the general governments;" "the absolute supremacy of the government," etc., etc. Never has there been, in the land now called "the United States of America," a sovereign government, or a sovereign power in government, since the British monarchy was displaced, in each and every colony, by a republic; for ever since that, the sovereignty has necessarily been in the people; and it is now the fundamental principle, that the absolute right is inherent in the people, of instituting, altering, or abolishing government at will. There can be no republic, unless the people continue to have sovereignty, or the right of self-government. And as sovereignty is only predicable of organization, and as the people were never organized except in states, it is certain that the sovereignty of our country must ever have dwelt in the said bodies of people, each for herself being sovereign; and that the federal and state governments are both, as Madison declared, the agencies of this sovereignty, and necessarily subordinate to it. "The sovereignty of government," says Daniel Webster, "is an idea belonging to the other side of the Atlantic. No such thing is known in North America." [Speech of 1833.]

States alone were Responsible for Secession and War. - How absurd it is to hold individual citizens responsible for secession, they having no more volition or power to stop the state than the Man in the Moon has to stop that orb! In Virginia, for instance, 150,000 voters, including General Lee, sent delegates to a convention, which duly deliberated, and ultimately voted the state out of the union. As a citizen, he was compelled to obey, and finally defend the state. Opposition, after the convention had acted, would have been punishable enmity to his commonwealth, she having possession of him and his family and estate, and the fullest possible power of punishment. It must strike every one, then, that states having seceded as bodies, and ipso facto carried all the citizens out of the union, Davis, Lee, and others, cannot be held responsible as individuals for secession, or for the war which the said states waged against the federal government. Regardless of the condition, position, wishes, or acts of any citizen, the state took the deliberate and solemn step of seceding from the union, and the further step of federating with other states, which had seceded for the same causes and about the same time. The important act of secession was done in precisely the form, and with the solemnities observed by the original states, in their corporate act of "assenting to" and "ratifying" the instrument of union called the federal

constitution, that is to say, a convention of each state, elected and empowered by the sovereign people thereof, after due deliberation, declared the will of that political entity or "moral person" called "the state" to be withdrawal of the consent and the " delegated" authority of said state from the federal constitution. This is secession. Now, this commonwealth, which had actual possession of and jurisdiction over her members, and which no citizen could escape from without running away from home, estate, family, and everything dear, and becoming an outlaw or an emigrant, this great repository of everything that mortal heart-strings entwine themselves around, having, of its own motion, withdrawn from the federation, Davis, Lee, or any other given citizen, was deported, as it were, from the union, having as little practical volition in the matter as an infant of emigrating parents. Nay, more, the state, with her hand actually upon him, exacted his submission and obedience under penalties which could have been enforced. And every one knows that such penalties did exist, and were enforced, and that malcontents were persecuted and driven out of their respective states. Whether a state, acting thus, did right or wrong, is not now the question; citizens had no choice. And, furthermore, as to Mr. Davis, he did not vote for secession, and did not even favor the policy, though he had no doubt as to the right.1 If General Lee voted at all, he voted against secession.

And States alone were Punishable. He is dull that does not perceive, and uncandid that does not acknowledge, that, as it was the people as a commonwealth that seceded, and committed the acts of hostility complained of, the said political body was the proper subject

1 Hon. O. R. Singleton, who was for many years an influential member of the Federal Congress from Mississippi, and who was subsequently in the Confederate Congress, wrote to the author substantially as follows: "Near the close of 1860, a short time before South Carolina seceded, a conference of our delegation in Congress was held in Jackson, Miss., at the instance of Governor Pettus. The main question propounded for discussion was, whether, in case South Carolina seceded, Mississippi should do likewise, or wait and endeavor to secure the co-operation of the Southern States. Senator Jefferson Davis declared emphatically against separate state action, arguing that secession was an unquestionable right belonging to every state, but that it was not to be resorted to, until every other peaceful means of securing redress had been exhausted. He gave cogent reasons why Mississippi should not secede at that time, and expressed the hope that by some means the necessity of her seceding at all might be averted. His views were such that I, with others, thought him altogether behind the people. In conclusion, he said his allegiance was due to his state, and that her choice, as well as her fate, should be his."

A private letter from Mr. Davis himself to the author contains the following: "A dissolution of the Union was with me always the last resort," "a very great, though not the greatest, of evils." He considered that a state had necessarily an unlimited right of self-preservation, and could but be the final judge of the means; and that the right of secession was one of the absolute rights involved in the nature of sovereignty, inherent, essential, and inalienable.

-a right

no state

of punishment, if this was due; and that such body must be reached by the ultima ratio, or not at all; for, as was said by Burke, "you cannot frame a bill of indictment against a people." The will, intention, and act, the ingredients of the offence charged, having been solely those of the state, it is common sense, and requires no argument, that the state alone is punishable. That the states fought, as such, against coercion, is a fact which the federal agency could no more prevent or undo, than it could change the principles of law applicable to such facts. And those judges some of them "pigmies perched on Alps". whose wishes upon these subjects father their thoughts, simply achieve falsehood, and attract derision by attempting to decree the non-existence of facts which even Deity could not destroy. It is simple and palpable untruth to say that there was no secession de facto, fighting de facto against the federal agency, no confederate government de facto. They might as well say there was no war de fucto. The Atonement was Complete. And, supposing the states to have been guilty, were they not punished enough? Multitudes of their children were slain, and their whole people long mourned in bitter anguish. They were reduced to unmitigated ruin and wretchedness. And, worse than all, they lost completely their freedom of will, and were degraded and humiliated as were never states before. Russian serfs had more liberty and protection. And, monstrous as it may seem, "the iron entered the soul" of these stricken and sorrowing commonwealths insufficiently to sate the devilishness of some of their native sons; for these have ever since traitorously striven with enemies to subjugate the said republics, and put their proud hearts permanently under the iron rule of ignorance and brutality!

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The Jus Gentium protected Confederates. The belligerent character of the Southern States, recognized as it was by foreign nations, and by the federal government, was, under the jus gentium, an ample shield to their citizens, no matter whether the recent conflict was a "civil war" or a "war between the states." Says Vattel [pp. 425-7]: "A civil war breaks the bonds of society and government, or at least suspends their force and effect; it produces in the nation two independent parties, who consider each other as enemies, and acknowledge no common judge. . . . They stand, therefore, in precisely the same predicament as two nations who engage in a contest, and, being unable to come to an agreement, have recourse to arms." "The obligation to observe the common laws of war toward each other is, therefore, absolute, indispensably binding on both parties." And as to Davis, Lee, and the officers and soldiers of such belligerent, their status of prisoners of war precluded all questions of civil punishment. Indeed, by hesitating on such a subject,

the federal agents courted the world's contempt. And those who persisted in prosecuting Davis, either knew not the law of the case,. or knowingly conspired to effect an unlawful purpose, evincing that "malice prepense" which makes homicide murder.

The Legitimate Conclusions. It is obvious, then, that the confederates observed the obligation of the social compact, the highest of all political obligations in a republic, and were true to their allegiance, and to the requirements of patriotism, as well as to the instinct of self-preservation; and that, if in the history of the last decade of years, any rebels and traitors appear, they are those who, being citizens and subjects of states, used federal force in "levying war against them," or adhered to their enemies, "giving them aid and comfort." Those who wage war against states must be "their enemies;" and the citizens of states, who assist such enemies, must be TRAITORS!

W

CHAPTER VII.

THE ARCHITECTS' IDEA OF THE EDIFICE.

JAS our federal system several distinct and sovereign political bodies, self-united, and consequently superior to the voluntary. bonds; or were these pre-existent bodies reduced from states to provinces, and consolidated into one commonwealth or nation? This is a simple inquiry of fact, as free from intrinsic difficulty as is such question concerning thirteen complete buildings, which the thirteen separate proprietors have united under a single all-sheltering roof, and provided with common corridors, walks, kitchen, back-yard, stable, pig-pen, hen-roost, and garden; or concerning thirteen pre-existent colleges, self-united in a university; or concerning thirteen neighboring proprietors who establish a common agency for their common concerns; or concerning thirteen associated commonwealths, whose "U. S." means either "united sisters" or "united states." In all such cases, the individuals are facts or entities, unchanged by association, and the thing formed by such association is technically named and described in legal and political terminology.

Now, if Inigo Jones, Sir Christopher Wren, Brunel, Michael Angelo, or Cheops had contemporaneously spoken or written of the structure he was building, that it was a palace, a church, a pyramid, or a tunnel, it would be laughable, if some one whether architect or not were to say, in after years, "No, it is a wharf," "an obelisk," a bridge," or "a steamship;" and if the latter were to argue on it, he would be derided, especially as the matter is one of fact, and not of interpretation, of technical description, and not of argument. The object of this chapter is to present the positive and unambiguous statements of the great architects of the federal edifice, in direct contrast with the utterances of Dane, Story, and Webster, and their perverting followers.

The Perversion to be Exposed. In Chapter II., I showed, by quotations, that the fathers considered sovereignty to remain in the people, and the so-called governments to be mere agencies with delegated powers. Of course this proved the falsity of the assumed "ab