,3) 
 Mk. AMBROSE'S LETTERS 
 
 ON 
 
 THE REBELLION. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN P. KENNEDY. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HUED AND HOUGHTON. 
 BALTIMORE: JAMES S. WATERS. 
 
 1865. 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 
 
 HuRD AND Houghton, 
 
 iu the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of 
 
 New York. 
 
 /) rt^s- 
 
 RIVKESIDE, C. 
 PRINTED BT H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 
 
A WORD TO THE READER. 
 
 These letters of Mr. Paul Ambrose were writ- 
 ten at intervals, as their dates will show, from the 
 close of the second year of the Civil War down to 
 the restoration of peace after the surrender of Lee. 
 They were addressed to the author's old friend, Mr. 
 Seaton, of the " National Intelligencer," and, with 
 the exception of the last, were published in that 
 paper. The topics they bring into discussion are 
 those suggested by the principles and incidents of 
 the rebellion as these rose to view in the rapid tran- 
 sit of events. In the study of these topics the reader 
 will not fail to remark how gradually and sharply 
 the destined plot of this great drama was developed, 
 from day to day, in the progress of what we might 
 call the ripening of a wonderful revolution in the 
 political and social character of the nation. 
 
 Mr. Ambrose has endeavored to explore the se- 
 cret motives which impelled a class of politicians in 
 the South, not without some effective cooperation 
 from auxiliaries both in the North and West, to 
 contrive the overthrow of the Union. He has also 
 
IV A WORD TO THE READER. 
 
 brought into review the most popular and authori- 
 tative assumptions of that political philosophy which 
 may be said to be endemic in the South, and which 
 has had such signal influence in swaying the mind 
 of that region towards the unconscious but certain 
 establishment of perpetual war between the States ; 
 for nothing is more fixed in the fate of nations than 
 the impossibility of peace under conflicting sover- 
 eignties. 
 
 In the four years of desperate struggle that 
 have gone by, the whole country has remarked 
 how strangely each stroke of war smote the mind 
 of the people with a new conception of the issue to 
 which they were giving their strength. Each year 
 brought a new phase to the conflict, every month 
 unexpected change in its direction, new interpreta- 
 tion of its mysteries, stronger conviction of the power 
 that shaped its course. 
 
 Now that the strife has come to an end, and we 
 can look calmly over the wreck of the war and see 
 how much the tempest of its wrath has destroyed, 
 and how much it has regenerated and reformed, we 
 are struck with amazement at the magnitude of the 
 achievement : we acknowledge it to be far above all 
 human premeditation ; far beyond the reach of un- 
 assisted human agencies. We see in this consum- 
 mation, the mysterious grandeur of an old Scriptural 
 Prophecy or Proclamation of a Divine command ; 
 and we contemplate the end at which we have 
 
A WORD TO THE READER. V 
 
 arrived with the awe and reverence due to the 
 greatest and most memorable era, except one, that 
 finds a record in human annals, — the Era of the 
 Emancipation of four millions of Slaves, and the 
 Extirpation of African slavery forever. The Curse 
 of Ages has been lifted from two continents. Slav- 
 ery has disappeared everywhere within our borders, 
 and begins to-day to perish in Africa, to wither in 
 Brazil, and all South America. The war has struck 
 the blow that makes it henceforth incapable of life, 
 beyond the present century, in any part of the 
 world. 
 
 Everything that may serve to note the history of 
 such an era, has a value that makes it worth pres- 
 ervation. It is chiefly on this score, that Mr. Am- 
 brose has authorized the collection of these Letters 
 in the present volume. But what had more force 
 in bringing him to this conclusion, was the persua- 
 sion which led him to believe that, being written 
 in the kindest spirit of old friendship, and, in great 
 part, with a special view to the restoration of good 
 will South of the line, they might do some service, 
 if brought to the perusal of certain of our " Southern 
 brethren " who have unwittingly, against all their 
 antecedents, got strangely out of place in this quar- 
 rel. And it was added to this suggestion, that other 
 of these brethren, of a more inveterate stamp, might, 
 perhaps, experience a wholesome influence in turn- 
 ing over these pages, — if it were only for the oppor- 
 
VI A WORD TO THE READER. 
 
 tunity it would furnish them for a review of their 
 old teachings and traditional conceits touching gov- 
 ernment, which they had learned from the schools, 
 and which had apparently so much to do in getting 
 up this singularly miscalculated rebellion of theirs. 
 
 Now, to both of these classes of thinkers, these 
 Letters — should they fail to convince those to whom 
 they are tendered that they have fallen into error 
 In regard to certain favorite dogmas — will, at least, 
 offer a modest plea for the reconsideration of opin- 
 ions which are now popularly claimed to be settled 
 by the war, but which, I think, judicious persons 
 would say, had much better be settled, if that be 
 practicable, by argument and honest conviction. To 
 bring this about would certainly be a point gained 
 of inestimable value to the future peace and cordial 
 intent of the country. Mere conquest is but a hol- 
 low peacemaker : it leaves the bitter root still in 
 the ground. To pluck that out by the force of a 
 true and manly judgment, instead of leaving it to 
 die under the slow decay of time, will go far to turn 
 our calamity into a blessing. 
 
 We have many points yet to settle, which will 
 require all the wisdom and all the good temper on 
 both sides, which the war has left us. In these pend- 
 ing and coming questions the South has a much 
 nearer and more sensitive interest than the North. 
 Let me give the men of that section a word of kind 
 advice, in exhorting them to face their fortunes with 
 
A WORD TO THE READER. vii 
 
 an equal mind, to anticipate the predestined course 
 of events, and to outrun the hopes of the country 
 by ready and cheerful provision for the inevitable 
 future. They have come to the threshold of a new 
 nationality : let them cross it like a wise generation, 
 with a brave confiding step, and they will live to 
 rejoice in a new prosperity, more permanent and 
 happier than the old. 
 
 JOHN P. KENNEDY. 
 Baltimobe, August 1, 1865^ 
 
MR AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 January, 1863. 
 
 My dear Mr. Seaton : — This year, eigh- 
 teen hundred and sixty-three, marks our en- 
 trance upon the third annual period of the civil 
 war. The quarrel still rages with unabated 
 fury. Indeed, as it grows older, it seems to 
 become instinct with fiercer hatreds and to 
 gather new vigor of resistance from its desper- 
 ation. Is it not strange that such " a zeal to 
 destroy " should so fire the heart of American 
 citizens afrainst the life of a nation whose birth 
 and career have been the theme of more in- 
 cessant, boastful, and extravagant panegyric 
 than the affection of any people ever before 
 heaped upon their country ? Posterity will 
 read the history of this commotion with an 
 interest full of amazement at the intensity of 
 the passion it has stirred in the hearts of its 
 
2 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 authors, and the utter insignificance of the 
 provocation upon which it arose. They will 
 distrust with natural wonder the narrative 
 which informs them that large communities of 
 intelligent people, as happy in their homes as 
 a propitious Heaven and a beneficent Govern- 
 ment could make them, peaceful and prosper- 
 ous in the enjoyment of every blessing coveted 
 by man, fondly addicted to self-gratulation for 
 their well-earned eminence amongst nations, 
 envied by the whole world for their freedom, 
 conscious only of Government by its ever-pres- 
 ent bounty ; that they should turn upon the 
 work of their own hands, and in a year of sin- 
 gular cheerfulness — a year of ovations, festiv- 
 ities, and pageants — should, all at once, con- 
 vert their own Paradise into a Pandemonium, 
 and fall to rending the magnificent structure 
 of their liberties into fragments ; that they 
 should pursue this awful labor of demolition 
 through two long years of such carnage and 
 desolation as the world never saw before, and 
 should, with still more bitter hate and eager 
 ferocity, enter upon a third : that a thinking, 
 shrewd, kind-hearted. Christian people should 
 do this, with unremitting effort to render the 
 obloquy and disgrace of the American name 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 3 
 
 immortal ! How shall after-ages study this ter- 
 rible anomaly without a charitable doubt of its 
 truth ? 
 
 I know how painfully you meditate over this 
 crisis, and I cannot but believe — nay, I am 
 sure — that many of our old friends on the 
 other side of the line are in full sympathy with 
 us in deploring the madness that has brought 
 our country into this unhappy distraction. If 
 we could but reach them with an invocation 
 to a calm review of those elements of discord 
 which now separate us, I should be full of 
 hope that the same wise spirit of counsel which 
 won our confidence and love in past time, 
 would bring us, as of old, into full accord, and 
 that the kindly and powerful influence they 
 were wont to exercise over the brotherhood, of 
 which they and we were equally proud as citi- 
 zens of our broad Republic, would be exerted 
 within their own sphere, to stay the further 
 rage of this tempest and open the path to that 
 harmony and union which have been so cause- 
 lessly disturbed. 
 
 With this intent and the indulgence of this 
 hope, I address these letters to you, purposing, 
 if haply the chances of the war should allow 
 them to cross the line, to send them forth with 
 
4 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 a message of kind remembrance to old and 
 cherished friends there, who I would fain be- 
 lieve have preserved their integrity and their 
 reason unclouded by the passions which have 
 hurried the multitudes around them into the 
 dreadful vortex of the rebellion. 
 
 Your friend, PAUL AMBROSE. 
 
 To Wm. W. Seaton, Esquire, 
 
 Washington. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 SUDDEN CONVERSIONS. 
 
 January, 1863. 
 
 When a votary desires to make a sacrifice, 
 he will find sticks enough under every hedge 
 to kindle the fire. There is a Latin proverb 
 to the same purport — " Qui vult ccedere canem 
 facile invenit fustem.^^ My interpretation of 
 this bit of experience is, that whenever we set 
 our hearts upon a forbidden enterprise, an easy 
 virtue will encounter no difficulty in the search 
 for the means to get it on foot. Or, let me 
 put it in another shape more germane to my 
 present subject : Whenever it is necessary to 
 support a bad or doubtful cause by an argu- 
 ment, he is but a sorry casuist who will have 
 to so far to find one. 
 
 I am every day struck by the proof which 
 the rebellion aftbrds to the accuracy of this in- 
 sight into the nature of the ordinary conscience 
 of mankind. It is curious to note the facility 
 
6 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 with which, at this time, many of the most 
 respectable minds of the country, even many- 
 eminent in public affairs, have permitted them- 
 selves to lapse into that fatal apostasy which, 
 in a moment, has cast aside the honorable con- 
 servatism of their whole lives, and plunged 
 them into that very maze of political error 
 which they have always taught themselves 
 and others to shun. 
 
 It is not lono; ago when it was almost the 
 universal conviction of our most approved 
 statesmen, both North and South, and still 
 more that of the great multitude who take 
 their opinions at second hand, that the doc- 
 trine of secession was a shallow invention of a 
 few Quixotes in politics. In the days of Gen. 
 Jackson it was denounced and derided as the 
 blackest of treasons by the whole of that im- 
 perious party which, under his lead, swayed the 
 public mind with absolute authority. When 
 he said " the Union must be preserved," these 
 words meant something more than a policy of 
 conciliation ; they were uttered as an angry 
 threat against those who meditated disunion, 
 and intimated that, if necessary, the Union 
 should be preserved by the sword. The words 
 were applauded by thousands and tens of thou- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 7 
 
 sands of those who to-day are crying out " this 
 Union shall be destroyed." When he said, in 
 strong and unequivocal phrase, that secession 
 was treason, these same thousands reechoed the 
 sentiment with such earnest repetition as to 
 plant it in the very heart of the country as an 
 article of faith. The intuition of the masses 
 in this conviction was sustained by the better 
 informed judgment of the most eminent ex- 
 pounders of the Constitution, by the Courts, 
 by Congress, and by the Cabinet, at that time 
 illustrious for the great ability and experience 
 of its members. It was not less sustained by 
 the quiet support of nine-tenths of the educated 
 men in every State, who, taking no share in the 
 popular demonstrations of political action, gave 
 their own healthful tone of thought to the social 
 circles of their respective neighborhoods. 
 
 There were notable exceptions, it is true, to 
 this common consent of opinion ; many in South 
 Carolina, where a threatened revolt had been 
 staked upon the issue ; some in other States, 
 and more particularly in Eastern Virginia, 
 where a peculiar system of traditionary dia- 
 lectics had bred a class of hair-splitting doc- 
 trinaires., not less remarkable for the eccen- 
 tricity of their dogmas than for the acuteness 
 
8 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 with which they maintained them. The phi- 
 losophers of the Resolutions of '98 were few 
 enough and grotesque enough, in the ordinary 
 estimation of the country, to provoke a good- 
 natured laugh at the perseverance with which 
 they muddled their brains in the mystification 
 of a problem that, in the common computation, 
 had about as much practical value as that more 
 celebrated scheme of Laputa, the extracting of 
 sunbeams from cucumbers. But even the Res- 
 olutionists, for the most part, stood by Jackson, 
 and turned their back upon the doctrine of 
 secession. 
 
 Indeed, it may be affirmed, as an historical 
 fact, that the whole South has, in different 
 stages of our national career, at one time or 
 another, repudiated this doctrine. 
 
 The present generation is but little aware, 
 and many of the last generation of Southern 
 statesmen now alive choose to forget, that there 
 once was an occasion which called forth a great 
 deal of notice of this pretension of the right 
 of a State to secede from the Union, and that 
 the prevailing sentiment of the South then 
 branded it as a foul treason. 
 
 The Hartford Convention, after much pre- 
 liminary announcement in the Legislatures of 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 9 
 
 New-England States, met in December 1814, 
 to devise plans for the security and defence of 
 those States in the war with Great Britain, and 
 to adopt such measures of self-protection as 
 were "not repugnant to their Federal obliga- 
 tions as members of the Union." A different 
 purpose was suspected by their political ene- 
 mies ; and, whether justly or not, the popular 
 belief of the South was, that, notwithstand- 
 ing the restriction they had set upon their 
 action, it was their design, in certain contin- 
 gencies, to recommend the retirement of their 
 States from the Union. The members of that 
 Convention have vehemently denied this charge, 
 but, so far as the South was concerned, utterly 
 without effect. Every man, woman, and child 
 of the South who was capable of receiving an 
 impression from the topics of the day, heard 
 the subject alluded to in conversation, or read 
 of it in the papers, only as a scheme to dissolve 
 the Union — a project of secession. It was 
 at that time the word " secession " itself first 
 became familiar as a term of our political vocab- 
 ulary. Before that date Mr. Jefferson called 
 it " scission ; " and, by the by, pronounced it 
 to be incompatible with any government. 
 Whether, therefore, the Hartford Convention 
 
10 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 was slandered or not — as I believe it was — 
 by this imputation, the general impression of 
 its truth south of Mason and Dixon's line, 
 brought up the opportunity for the expression 
 of Southern opinion on the question of seces- 
 sion. Now, I am sure I am correct when I say 
 that the imputed purpose of the Convention 
 was denounced from one end of the Southern 
 States to the other, with peculiar bitterness, as 
 a purpose to commit a monstrous treason. They 
 who remember the events of that day know 
 that every leading man hi those Slates, who 
 made this supposed design of secession a theme 
 for a speech from any forum ; that the general 
 current of popular opinion in educated society; 
 the voice of the multitude which repeats the 
 passwords of the day ; and the M'hole flow of 
 editorial comment in the most authentic presses, 
 — all united in a common note of censure upon 
 it as treason. 
 
 More recentty, in 1850 and 1851, when 
 South Carolina, in her vigilant outlook for an 
 opportunity to strike another blow at the Union, 
 thouMit she had found it in the admission of 
 California, and had summoned the malcontents 
 of the South to a new attempt at secession, 
 every one remembers, how her favorite scheme 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 11 
 
 of crushing out our nationality failed for want 
 of cooperation from her sister States. The 
 manly opposition of a loyal minority within her 
 own borders, and, still more, the calm good 
 sense of those to whom she appealed outside of 
 her borders, defeated her charitable design. 
 The people of Mississippi met in Convention 
 and adjourned their deliberations with a sober 
 resolution against the doctrine of a right of 
 secession. Georgia discussed it, through the 
 press and on the hustings, by her ablest ex- 
 ponents of constitutional law, and set her seal 
 of condemnation upon it. It found no strength 
 with which it was able to shake the faith of the 
 people in their conviction of the right to be 
 regarded as a nation. In that defeat there was 
 nothincr more to be admired than the instinc- 
 live recoil of the masses from the insidious 
 teachings of ambitious politicians who sought 
 to seduce them into this treason ao-ainst the 
 Government ; nothing more significant of the 
 common perception of the danger and disgrace 
 of this principal of disunion than the dexterity 
 with which some of the present oracles of seces- 
 sion then shirked the responsibility of appear- 
 ing as its advocates. 
 
 In the Border States it had, at that date, no 
 
12 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 foothold amongst men of any repute In society, 
 except perhaps in the rare and scattered in- 
 stances of a few super-subtle extremists on the 
 theory of State rights. Even with them it 
 was rather a speculation than a practical prin- 
 ciple. Maryland might have had a handful 
 of such men, hut nobody heard of them. Ken- 
 tucky and Missouri could boast of as few. Vir- 
 ginia, notwithstanding her passion for political 
 metaphysics, though a little more demonstra- 
 tive than the others, gave no further counte- 
 nance to this heresy than the grandiloquence 
 of a few of her country squires shed upon it 
 when indulging their endemic proclivity to- 
 wards the oracular at the monthly meetings of 
 the county courts — the Solons of a great State, 
 which they had seen, within their own days, 
 dwindlino; down from a star of the first to one 
 of a fifth mamiitude in the firmament of the 
 Union — a very natural experience to breed 
 thoughts of discontent and separation. 
 
 In all this long period, from the date of the 
 Constitution until that of the inauguration of 
 this civil war, during which the fundamental 
 ideas of our Government were acquiring solid- 
 ity through that process of induration by which 
 forms of polity become permanently estabhshed 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 13 
 
 in the traditional respect of the people, the na- 
 tionality/ of the Union was every day growing 
 to be a more universally accepted fact. With 
 the exception of a few sporadic instances of 
 dissent, the mind of the country was settling 
 down upon the conviction that the integrity of 
 the Union was secured by the organic law, and 
 could not lawfully be broken by any course of 
 proceeding known to the Constitution or im- 
 plied from the conditions under which it came 
 into existence ; in short, that nothing but rebel- 
 lion and successful revolution could overthrow 
 it. This conviction grew up in a state of peace 
 which afforded leisure for calm and studious 
 deliberation ; a state of peace attended with 
 such occasional perturbations as served to bring 
 the question into prominent notice, and to invite 
 a careful consideration of its terms and inci- 
 dents, and yet free from that passion which is 
 apt to cloud the judgment of the country. No 
 national problem could be settled in circum- 
 stances more propitious to its true solution. 
 
 How does it happen, after such an experience 
 with such a result, that, all at once, the year 
 1861 should find the question not only thrown 
 into the wind, but the almost universal judg- 
 ment of the country absolutely reversed, 
 
14 ME. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 throughout a whole section of the South, em- 
 bracino; some eio;ht or nine States and some 
 four or five millions of citizens ? 
 
 It would be very absurd to say that this 
 change sprang out of a more thorough study 
 of the history of the Government or a deeper 
 insight into the philosophy of the Constitution. 
 The year 1861 brought a tornado of violent ex- 
 citements ; men do not think with more care- 
 ful deliberation in such a storm. It brought 
 fierce ambitions into play, conspiracies, the 
 clash of arms, the frenzy of party rage ; these 
 are not the companions of patient research or 
 wise conclusions. In point of capacity the men 
 of 1861 were not the superiors — I hope their 
 amour propre will not be offended by my bold- 
 ness — of Marshall or Story, of Madison or 
 Hamilton, of Webster or Clay, of Spencer 
 Roane or Lowndes, of Livingston or Jefferson, 
 or even of Washington. How many more 
 might I mention ? Neither were these same 
 men of 1861 wiser or more enlightened than 
 they themselves were in 1851, when many of 
 them took pains to teach their compatriots the 
 fallacy as well as the danger of secession. 
 
 It is unpleasant to come to this conclusion, 
 but thera is no other left to us. We must look 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 15 
 
 for this sudden abjuration of our ancient faith 
 to causes which spring from less noble motives 
 than conviction, and belong to a lower range 
 of human action than that of honest judgment. 
 We must submit to be disenchanted of the 
 illusion that the many excellent men we were 
 accustomed to admire, and among them so 
 many of our cherished friends, were too staunch 
 in their truth, and too courageous in their vir- 
 tue, to be shaken by any popular tempest. Let 
 us confess with sorrow that many — far too 
 many to be thought of without a sigh for our 
 country — had not the stamina for a time like 
 this, and that they have either yielded to the 
 spell of a popular excitement they had not the 
 equanimity to withstand, or to the tyranny of a 
 dictation they had not the manhood to brave. 
 To one or the other of these influences they 
 have surrendered the pride of their own intel- 
 lectual eminence, their consistency, and their 
 independence. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding appearances to the con- 
 trary and the fact that many, from whom we 
 hoped better things, had fallen off, I still believe 
 that there is a host of true and patriotic men 
 scattered through every State of the Southern 
 Confederacy, who but bide their time to speak 
 
16 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 a potent word in support of that blessed old 
 Union which the madness of our day has 
 brought into jeopardy. I think you and I could 
 name some of our old comrades, who will yet 
 be heard sounding, that clarion note of loyalty 
 which the country has often heard in past time, 
 when these very dangers now upon us were 
 only looming in the distance. They are quiet 
 now ; many of them in voluntary exile, even 
 in the bosom of the communities in which they 
 dwell ; silent and sorrowful, no doubt, and 
 longing for the day when they may come for- 
 ward to speak of peace. I would fain believe 
 that many good men of this cast are held in 
 reserve by Providence for that special service. 
 They wait for the subsiding of the waters, 
 when it may be safe to venture forth in quest 
 of the olive-branch. With what full hearts 
 and overflowing eyes will they be welcomed to 
 our bosoms, if they bring us that sacred sym- 
 bol ! Let us wait and hope. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. IT 
 
 LETTER III. 
 SECESSION. 
 
 February, 1863. 
 
 . It has been often said that the idea of re- 
 strictino: Government to a written constitution 
 is a fallacy ; that such a constitution is inevi- 
 tably incapable of providing for the emergen- 
 cies of national progress. The real constitu- 
 tion of a nation lies deeper than its visible 
 ordinances, — in the character, habits, and cus- 
 toms of the people, which do not admit of a 
 complete expression by instrument of writing. 
 The written fundamental law provides only for 
 what is foreseen, and is, therefore, but imper- 
 fect wisdom. What is not foreseen lies in the 
 breast of the nation, to be taken care of, when 
 it comes into view, by such mode of disposal as 
 the case may require ; either by process ap- 
 pointed for amendment, which is always slow 
 and uncertain ; or by gradual and imperceptible 
 adoption, which is only the work of years ; or 
 by quick resort to such power as is at hand to 
 
18 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 meet an exigency which the nation recognizes 
 as a necessity too urgent for delay. In one or 
 the other of these modes a nation organizes 
 itself and conforms its institutions to its needs. 
 It crystallizes in the forms appropriate to its 
 special quality. Thus all orderly government 
 is manifested as a growth, and not merely as a 
 formula. 
 
 We have something of a verification of this 
 opinion in the changes which have already 
 crept into our Constitution by the side-paths of 
 usage, and in the constant tendency towards 
 change which, if not accomplished, has yet 
 given birth to many party contests to procure 
 it. The practical alteration of the mode of 
 electing the President is one example ; the 
 acquisition of territory, as in the purchase of 
 Louisiana, is another ; the recent enactment of 
 legal tender and the suspension of habeas cor- 
 pus are initiatory movements in the same direc- 
 tion, and may be regarded as a primary utter- 
 ance of a necessity which in time may grow 
 into established law. We may readily enumer- 
 ate cases in which the Constitution — thoiwh 
 now but seventy-four years old — has been 
 modified, or at least settled by construction ; 
 and it is somewhat noticeable that in most of 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 19 
 
 these expansions, if not invasions, of the letter, 
 the strict constructionists have led the way. 
 You and I can remember v\^hen the party now 
 most active in urging the Government to make 
 a railroad to California, was uncompromising 
 in its denial of power to construct the Cumber- 
 land turnpike. Some of them were so con- 
 scientious as to refuse a vote for paving the 
 Pennsylvania Avenue. 
 
 These scruples are obsolete now ; not be- 
 cause the written law is changed, nor that it 
 is discovered to admit of a new meaning, but 
 simply because it does not meet the exigencies 
 of national growth. A change in the organic 
 law has been effected by construction — that is 
 to say, by adding something to the Constitu- 
 tion, or taking something away from it, or 
 otherwise interpreting its meaning. 
 
 I cannot find fault with this gradual adapta- 
 tion of the fundamental law to the wants of the 
 nation. In general, it is a healthful mode of 
 change, and is ordinarily the natural expres- 
 sion of a necessity, — a tacit acknowledgment of 
 the will of the nation that its institutions should 
 be moulded to the public convenience, — and 
 is apt to be a wiser process of amendment than 
 that prescribed by law. It moves in the track 
 
20 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 of experience, and does not go beyond its re- 
 quirements. Such amendments, indeed, are 
 experiences, not experiments. We thus insen- 
 sibly get out of the trammels of a written con- 
 stitution, by building upon it, through a series 
 of accretions, a traditional constitution which, 
 in the course of a few centuries, will ripen into 
 a solid organism exactly suited to the needs and 
 instincts of the people. 
 
 The final good, however, is not attained with- 
 out many alternations between failure and suc- 
 cess, — the vibrations of the needle before it 
 settles upon its true point. It is only reached 
 through occasional strugo-les, turbulent conflicts 
 sometimes, and sometimes great convulsions. 
 The ordinary process of national development 
 is, in the main, peaceable. A century of prog- 
 ress may go on without a war, but epochs 
 emerge sooner or later when disputed demands 
 come into the arena of debate and opposing 
 ideas assert themselves in arms. No nation has 
 ever reached its highest term of manifestation 
 without a resort to the fierce arbitrament of the 
 sword and many a field of blood. 
 
 This seems to be the normal law of human 
 society, by which it is ordained that Govern- 
 ments shall arrive at their greatest capability 
 
ME. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 21 
 
 throncrh a career of strife and sufFerino;. The 
 sinews of nations are strengthened by conflict, 
 and their virtues nourished by the discipUne of 
 pain and sorrow. We are at this day passing 
 through one of these dreadful probations. 
 
 I think any man trained in the study of his- 
 tory might have predicted that at whatever 
 period in our national career the doctrine of a 
 constitutional right on the part of a State peace- 
 ably and at its own pleasure, to secede from the 
 compact of the Union, was seriously asserted 
 and attempted to be exercised by a party in 
 the country or by one or more States, such an 
 attempt would necessarily produce a conflict of 
 arms. Whatever might be the question upon 
 v^hich the claimant should choose to institute 
 this proceeding, — "whether on commercial tariffs, 
 on slavery, on domestic or foreign policy, or any 
 mere project of ambition, it matters not what, 
 — the enterprise would invoke the determined 
 resistance of every man who cherished a re- 
 gard for the nationality of the Union : and, if it 
 could not be defeated by argument and persua- 
 sion, it would drive the parties into the colli- 
 sion of battle. If the advocates of the principle 
 should succeed in that battle the old govern- 
 ment would disappear, an entire new order of 
 
22 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 tilings would arise, and history would be fur- 
 nished with one more example of disrupted 
 empire and fragment communities settling into 
 new forms or w^arring tlirough ages of change- 
 ful disorder. If, on the other hand, they should 
 be overthrown, the Constitution would come 
 forth purified and renovated by the ordeal, and 
 would strike with deeper root into the soil of 
 the national faith and take a more sturdy 
 growth in the attachment of the people. I 
 think these might have been the predictions of 
 any learned student of the prevailing senti- 
 ment of the American people, without waiting 
 for the insight afforded him by the sad realities 
 of the present day. 
 
 For myself, I do not hesitate to affirm that I 
 think this doctrine of a right of secession so 
 intrinsically mischievous, so incompatible with 
 any national progress, and so destructive of all 
 rational hope of peace or happiness, that if it 
 really had any place in our system, it should be 
 the first duty of this generation to get rid of it 
 at any cost ; that, in this earnest efibrt of com- 
 bined States to plant it amongst the acknowl- 
 edged rights of the members of the Union, it is 
 worth all the sacrifice of this war, however long 
 it may be protracted, worth all the tribulation 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 23 
 
 it has brought or may bring us, to free our 
 posterity from a heresy so full of evil to us 
 and to them. 
 
 Notwithstanding the vehemence with which 
 this right is now asserted, the question, I am 
 happy to believe, is not yet removed from the 
 domain of argument which may be addressed, 
 with some hope of patient consideration, to 
 many honest minds in the South, to whom the 
 disappointments of defeat or, at least, the delay 
 of success, may have brought a calmer judg- 
 ment and a more complacent temper. It is in 
 that hope I expand the limits of this letter. 
 
 No one, I believe, has ever claimed Secession 
 to be one of the rights acknowledged by the 
 Constitution to reside in the States. The sec- 
 ond section of the sixth article of the Consti- 
 tution would seem to infer exactly the reverse. 
 Its advocates generally claim it as a reserved or, 
 more properly, an implied right, resulting from, 
 what they assert to be, the original Sovereignty 
 of the States. They say, that the States, being 
 sovereign when they entered into the Union, 
 and being the creators of the Union, necessarily 
 retain all their original sovereignty — which 
 they affirm to be inalienable by any compact — 
 to be exercised whenever they think proper : 
 
24 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 that, in fact, they are bound by the laws of the 
 Union only as long as they choose to remain 
 in it. 
 
 I have two objections to make to this state- 
 ment. The first relates to the character and 
 nature of the sovereignty claimed by the States, 
 which I shall notice more at laro-e in a future 
 letter, affirming, for the present, that the States 
 possess no such sovereignty as is claimed for 
 them. The second objection I make is — that, 
 supposing a State to possess every attribute of 
 sovereignty compatible with our system of gov- 
 ernment and to the fullest extent asserted by 
 the defenders of the doctrine, it may, quite as 
 effectively as an individual person, enter into a 
 social or political compact and bind itself to the 
 conditions and duties of that compact, even to 
 the complete and perpetual surrender of its sep- 
 arate existence as an independent corporation. 
 
 This is precisely what the original States did, 
 so far as they acted, as States, in forming the 
 Constitution. But, combined with this State 
 action in forming the Constitution, there Avas 
 another party to the compact, more powerful 
 than the States — the people of all the States, 
 who designated themselves as " the people of 
 the United States " — the nation — who were 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 25 
 
 the acknowledged repositories of all power, both 
 over the States and over the National Govern- 
 ment, and who, in that name, declared the 
 supreme law by which both the National and 
 State Governments were to be controlled in the 
 due administration of the system they proposed 
 to the country. In short, they, the people, 
 created the United States and made them em- 
 phatically one nation, with supreme powers 
 within the orbit assigned to it. 
 
 The question is simply reduced to this : Do 
 the United States constitute a nation, or do 
 they represent an agglomerate of nations, bound 
 together by a temporary bond of a texture so 
 feeble that any one may lawfully put an end to 
 the combination whenever it may find a motive 
 to do so ? Was it the intention of the States 
 and the people really to construct a temporary 
 alliance of separate nations, dependent for its 
 duration upon a tenure so frail as the possible 
 and probable discontent of a dominant party in 
 any one of the associated nations ? 
 
 The answer to this question will lead us 
 directly to a consideration of what we must 
 suppose to be the common-sense view which 
 the founders of the Government took of the 
 enterprise they had in hand, — I mean to the 
 
26 MR, AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 estimate they made, whilst they were engaged 
 in moulding the Constitution, of the object 
 they intended to accomplish. This is an a pri- 
 ori view of their purpose, and avoids all debate 
 upon those subtleties of interpretation which, 
 at a later day, ingenious logicians have invented 
 to prove a right of secession. 
 
 What did the authors of the Constitution 
 intend to establish, when they met togethdl" to 
 frame a Constitution for the Government of 
 the United States ? 
 
 I waive all reference to that record of histor- 
 ical facts, which is now extant, to prove that 
 the controlling majority of the Convention dis- 
 cussed the question, and maturely decided that 
 their purpose was to erect a nation out of Con- 
 federate States, which nation should possess 
 every function of supremacy necessary to pre- 
 serve its own existence ; and that to estabhsh 
 and secure such supremacy the several States 
 should surrender, or, in more appropriate 
 phrase, should be denied every attribute of 
 sovereignty that could interfere with or impede 
 the free and full exercise of the national sov- 
 ereignty it was their design to create, and 
 equally their declared intention to render per- 
 petual. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 27 
 
 I waive all ref^eiice to this record, and, for 
 the present, look only to what must have been 
 the common-sense view which these clear- 
 sighted men took of the task committed to 
 them. Did they deem it expedient or wise to 
 invest, either by grant or implication, the States 
 then existing, or which in future time might be 
 organized, with what is now claimed as the 
 right of secession ? 
 
 In responding to this inqviiry it is only neces- 
 sary to reflect upon some of the most prominent 
 and obvious consequences which follow the prac- 
 tical application of this right. We shall then be 
 able to determine how far these are compatible 
 with the design of the Constitution, as this is 
 apparent in its text. 
 
 It is not a strained conclusion to assume that 
 the architects of the structure intended to make 
 a self-preserving and not a self-destroying Un- 
 ion ; that they proposed a system which should 
 protect the vital interests of the country, not 
 expose them to unnecessary peril ; a system that 
 would work through coming ages and promote 
 the prosperity of many generations. 
 
 Looking at their projected labors in this light, 
 I proceed to remark upon the incidents which 
 the most ordinary foresight Avould discover as 
 
28 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 the probable attendants upon" the exercise of a 
 right of secession, and which our late experi- 
 ment of it has brought into view as actual im- 
 pending dangers. 
 
 1. The retirement of any State from the 
 Union, even in the mildest mode of such a 
 proceeding, could not but be accounted a most 
 disastrous calamity, full of peril not only to the 
 domestic peace of the country, but also to its 
 foreio;n relations. 
 
 An act of secession by the smallest State in 
 the Union would make that State, according 
 to the theory, an independent government. In 
 that character it would have a ri^ht to form alii- 
 ances with foreign powers, to place itself under 
 their protection ; even to unite itself as a de- 
 pendency to the most formidable enemy of the 
 States it had left, and thus give to such an 
 enemy a foothold on the soil, with all the ad- 
 vantages he could desire for invasion, — the 
 very danger which it was a prime object of the 
 Union to avert. It would be in the power of 
 the least of the States, in this category, to dis- 
 turb the regulation of the national commerce, 
 by the adoption of an adverse system of trade, 
 by discriminating duties, by restricted privileges 
 of navigation, and other devices of annoyance. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 29 
 
 It would furnish a refuge to fugitives from 
 justice, and, what is worse in the computation 
 of ills, according to the ethics which have lately 
 grown almost into a religion in some portions 
 of our country, to fugitives from servitude. It 
 is easy to conceive how very inconvenient such 
 a neighbor might become to the general wel- 
 fare of the nation by a thousand forms of vex- 
 ation open to the practice of the most inconsid- 
 erable State in such a relation. 
 
 How much more significant and aggravated 
 would be these irritations in the case of the 
 secession of a large central State like that of 
 Pennsylvania ! Can we believe that the fram- 
 ers of our National Government contemplated 
 with complacency the possible contingency 
 of a large and powerful Commonwealth, lying 
 in the very bosom of the Union, erecting itself 
 into an independent government, and assuming 
 a character that might, in any event, authorize 
 it to embarrass the communication between the 
 North and South ; to exact duties upon every 
 transit of merchandise ; to demand passports 
 from every traveller, or totally to interdict both 
 and compel the severed fragments of the nation 
 to seek their intercourse with each other by a 
 long detour around her borders ? Can we per- 
 
30 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 suade ourselves that the men of 1787 had in 
 their thoughts the foundation of a Union that 
 should be subject to such contingencies as 
 these ? 
 
 2. Secession not only endangers the national 
 welfare by planting a foreign nation within the 
 circle of the Confederacy, but it absolutely par- 
 alyzes the Government by depriving it of the 
 capacity to perform its most necessary func- 
 tions. 
 
 The Government is authorized and, by its 
 needs, required to contract debts and to pledge 
 the faith of the whole nation for their payment: 
 Secession rends it asunder and disables it from 
 performing this pledge. 
 
 The Government makes treaties : Secession 
 repudiates or impairs them. 
 
 The Government builds forts, creates armies 
 and navies, founds arsenals, establishes mints, 
 post-offices, hospitals : Secession seizes, appro- 
 priates, or destroys all these within the reach 
 of its arm. 
 
 The Government acquires territory, holds 
 public lands, and erects States : Secession con- 
 fiscates these possessions and applies them to its 
 own profit. 
 
 The history of Florida aifords a striking 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 31 
 
 illustration on this point. That territory was 
 originally purchased by the United States at 
 the cost of five millions of dollal-s. Some fifty, 
 or perhaps a hundred millions more were ex- 
 pended in its defence. It was purchased on 
 considerations purely national, as essential to 
 the commercial and military advantage of the 
 country. It contains about thirty millions acres 
 of available land, which, by the purchase, be- 
 came a public domain. Emigrants from other 
 States went there and were allowed to settle on 
 this domain upon payment of a small amount 
 per acre for the fee. In the year 1845 there 
 had emigrated into this territory a population 
 which, added to the settlers already there, 
 amounted to something less than forty thousand 
 white persons, who had become the owners of 
 perhaps some two or three millions of acres. 
 In this year, 1815, these persons very earnestly 
 desired the privilege of being erected into a 
 State, and to that end petitioned the Govern- 
 ment of the United States to confer upon them 
 this greatly desired boon. At that date the 
 high tariff of 1842 was in full operation ; the 
 question of slavery was as rife, as active, and 
 as virulent in its agitation of the country as it 
 has ever been since ; in short, every Southern 
 
32 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 grief, as interpreted in the inflamed politics of 
 our day, was as poignant at that time as it was 
 in 1860. Notwithstanding these motives " to 
 heap curses upon the Union," which some of 
 the most authoritative teachers of Southern 
 rights were then urging upon their disciples, 
 the people of Florida, with their eyes open to 
 all the " iniquities " they now impute to the 
 National Government, prayed for admission, 
 and they were kindly received and welcomed 
 as a loyal addition to the fellowship of States. 
 After a brief existence of fifteen years, dur- 
 ing which the Government was known to them 
 only by the profusion of its bounties, upon some 
 pretence of convenience — for they had none 
 of oppression — they avail themselves of this 
 right of secession to enable them to retire from 
 the Union. By this act they not only claim to 
 deprive the people of the United States of the 
 whole benefit of the considerations which orig- 
 inally induced the purchase of this territory 
 from Spain, as a national necessity — the great 
 forts upon the coast, the naval depots, the sup- 
 ply of ship-timber, the light-houses and guides 
 to navigation, and the means of protecting the 
 commerce of the country — but they also as- 
 sume a right to the eminent domain of all the 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 33 
 
 public lands and to appropriate them according 
 to their own pleasure. The white population 
 of Florida to-day is about double what it was 
 in 1845, something less than eighty thousand ; 
 and if we suppose the public lands they have 
 seized and sequestered by this exercise of the 
 lawful right of secession to be twenty millions 
 of acres, they would be able to divide amongst 
 the present white men, women, and children of 
 Florida something more than two hundred and 
 fifty acres of land apiece, which would repre- 
 sent the legitimate profit of a right which, it is 
 asserted, the founders of the Government of 
 the United States, deliberately and in the full 
 exercise of their wisdom, reserved to the people 
 of the States. 
 
 Certainly, we might very reasonably presume 
 that, if the framers of the Government con- 
 templated such a possibility as the case of Flor- 
 ida presents, now in actual existence, they 
 would have ordained, as an indispensable enact- 
 ment of the Constitution, that no territory ac- 
 quired by the nation should ever be lifted up 
 into the dangerous eminence of a State ; that, 
 indeed, the " old Thirteen " alone should limit 
 the circle of sovereio^nties armed with this 
 power of spoliation ; that no other portion of 
 3 
 
34 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 the national domain should be permitted to 
 hatch its cockatrice brood of serpent States 
 to sting the parent which nursed them in its 
 bosom. 
 
 3. The Constitution declares that " no State 
 shall, without the consent of Congress, enter 
 into any agreement or compact with another 
 State." Secession, as its first step, annuls this 
 law and seeks auxiliary alliance from its neigh- 
 bors. 
 
 Nothing would be so impracticable, and 
 therefore nothing so improbable, in the devel- 
 opment of this doctrine of secession, as the 
 attempt of a single State of the Union to set 
 up for itself an independent nationality, to be 
 maintained without the aid and concurrence of 
 other States. The geographical relations 'of 
 certain groups of States, into which the Union 
 is divided by climate and production and by 
 similarity of institution, present, very distinctly 
 to our notice, characteristic affinities which cre- 
 ate, both socially and politically, a more inti- 
 mate connection between the members of these 
 several groups than is observable in the larger 
 and more important circle of the Union as 
 defined by the Constitution. The Planting 
 States form one of these groups ; the Western 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 35 
 
 States another : so of the Middle States, and, 
 further north, the New England. They are all 
 associated in one grand and beneficent political 
 bond ; but, in these minor and natural divisions, 
 they are allied by sympathies and sentiments 
 which grow out of proximity of position and 
 that identification of pursuit and interest which 
 the conditions of their social life impress upon 
 them. 
 
 When any State, therefore, should meditate 
 the purpose of withdrawing from the Union, in 
 the exercise of this asserted right, it would nat- 
 urally, and indeed we may say it would neces- 
 sarily, as an indispensable auxiliary to its pur- 
 pose, seek the alliance of the States which stand 
 in kindred relation with itself, and would use 
 all the means at its command to enlist them in 
 its cause. 
 
 So apparent is this necessity to persuade or 
 seduce other States whose prejudices or sym- 
 pathies may be wrought upon to concur in the 
 "work of disruption, that it may be regarded as 
 the most flagrant mischief that attends the 
 assertion of the right to secede. It brings up 
 before us that enormous wrong, — the most 
 deadly which can be inflicted on any State, — 
 the secret plotting of eager agents of discon- 
 
36 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 tent to inflame the heart of peaceful communi- 
 ties with imaginary griefs, and rouse them to 
 the temper of an assault against the existence 
 of the nation. It shocks us by the perception 
 of a danger of disintegration which, once com- 
 menced, may go on until the whole political 
 fabric is crumbled into fragments. 
 
 In the events which have plunged the nation 
 into its present state of distress we have nota- 
 ble exemplification of this incident of secession. 
 The discontents of South Carolina — the first 
 State which inaugurated the civil war — were 
 notoriously peculiar to that Commonwealth. 
 They had existed for thirty years, and were 
 greatly exasperated by — if indeed they did 
 not owe their birth to — the quarrel of 1832, 
 when the pride of the State was humbled by 
 the peremptory measures taken by the National 
 Administration. At that period her claim to a 
 right of secession was, as I have shown in a 
 former letter, not only bluntly repelled by the 
 Government, but equally repudiated by every 
 State in the Union, and Carolina was forced to 
 submit not less by the threat of coercion by 
 President Jackson, than by the rebuke of the 
 States to which she had appealed for coopera- 
 tion. Her mortified pride made her from that 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 37 
 
 era the inveterate enemy of the Union. In 
 the act of secession of December, 1860, she 
 only accomplished the long-harbored design for 
 which she had been waiting with ill-concealed 
 impatience ever since the arrow had pierced 
 her side. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding the rash boast with 
 w^hich she entered into this fatal measure — 
 that she would plunge into the maelstrom of 
 secession alone, irrespective of cooperation from 
 any other State — no one believes that she 
 would have assayed the experiment if she had 
 not ascertained beforehand that she would be 
 supported by the auxiliaries which immediately 
 afterwards hastened to her aid. There is abun- 
 dant proof in this concerted movement — if 
 we had it not from other sources — that, long 
 before and in preparation for this event, a con- 
 spiracy had been formed to seduce, cajole, or 
 compel other States into complicity with a plot 
 which she had contrived and set in motion for 
 the redress of her own griefs. 
 
 The whole country knows with what signal 
 and almost indignant reproof several of the 
 States now in rebellion rejected the first over- 
 tures to join in this enterprise ; how emphati- 
 cally the people of Virginia, Tennessee, North 
 
38 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, and others ex- 
 pressed their disapprobation of the petulant 
 and boastful treason of South Carolina. And 
 yet the country now sees these very States sub- 
 dued to the service of the conspiracy by the 
 intrigues and domineering importunity of the 
 political agents who had cast their fortunes in 
 this venture. 
 
 It is therefore, that I say the worst evil, 
 attendant upon the practical assertion of this 
 pretended right of secession, exists in the fact 
 that an imperious necessity forces the agents of 
 the plot to the device of infusing their own dis- 
 content into the minds of neio;hbor communi- 
 ties, and of seeking, by unlawful solicitation 
 and sinister arts, to spread the circle of the con- 
 spiracy over other States. Thus, the letter and 
 the theory of the Constitution are violated and 
 set at nought by overtures and by compact and 
 agreement with other States, which, w^hether 
 secret or open, are equally offensive and repug- 
 nant to the obligation that every State assumes 
 on entering into the Union. 
 
 4. Secession very distinctly assails and de- 
 stroys the personal rights conferred by the Con- 
 stitution upon the people of every State in the 
 Union. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 39 
 
 Being a citizen of the United States I am 
 entitled to all the privileges of that citizen- 
 ship in every State. In other vrords, no State 
 v^ithin the compass of the Union, as created 
 by the Constitution, can treat me as an alien. 
 This I take to be the meaning of that clause 
 which guarantees to the citizens of each State 
 "all privileges and immunities of citizens in 
 the several States." 
 
 Secession in a moment rescinds and io-nores 
 this right. He w^ho holds a patent for an inven- 
 tion, or copyright of a book, loses it through- 
 out the seceded States. He who possesses 
 property in such a State, or an expectation of 
 an inheritance in it, may be deprived of it by 
 seizure and confiscation or by escheat : if he 
 be a creditor he may be forbidden to sue for or 
 collect his debt. In all these cases the Amer- 
 ican citizen, who is secured by the Constitu- 
 tion against any interference with these rights, 
 becomes dependent on the comity merely of 
 the seceding State for their acknowledgment. 
 Whatever may be the policy of such a State 
 in regard to this acknowledgment — whether it 
 be swayed by temperate and just counsels or 
 by the angry passions which are most likely to 
 predominate in the separation — it is obvious 
 
40 MR. AMBROSE'S LETJERS. 
 
 that the citizen of the nation loses every per- 
 sonal as well as public right, which the fore- 
 thought of his ancestors had conferred upon 
 him, in so much of his native land as is cut off 
 by the scission, and is left entirely at the mercy 
 of the State for such favor as its Government, 
 exasperated it may be by his obtuseness in not 
 assenting to the teaching of secession, may be 
 disposed to grant. 
 
 5. The right to secede from the Union im- 
 plies a right to expel from the Union. If one 
 can withdraw from many, many may withdraw 
 from one. If the Union may become inconve- 
 nient or disagreeable to one, one may become 
 disagreeble to the Union. If one, for that 
 reason, may retire, why may not the others for 
 that reason expel ? The Constitution makes 
 no regulation for either case ; and if the logic 
 of secession be sound — that the State sover- 
 eignty may be resumed on a motive of discon- 
 tent, and is then at liberty to adopt its own 
 "mode and measures of redress" — the logic 
 is equally sound that infers in fav6r of a ma- 
 jority of State sovereigns, being discontented 
 with one, the same liberty to adopt their own 
 mode and measure of redress. These rights — 
 if there be any right at all to break up the 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 41 
 
 compact of Union — are correlatives. Can anv 
 champion of these transcendent State-rights 
 distinguish between the lawfulness of these two 
 proceedings of secession and expulsion ? Both 
 have the same foundation, if either have any, 
 in that sovereign " will and pleasure " which 
 secessionists affirm every State retains in petto 
 as a reserved prerogative. 
 
 Now, we may fancy with what a fiery burst 
 of insulted majesty one of these hot-headed 
 States which have been so arrogant in their 
 claim of a right of secession — South Carolina, 
 for example — would have resented a proposi- 
 tion of expulsion suggested to the Council of 
 the Union by any other State as the peaceful 
 process allowed by the Constitution to get rid 
 of her as a troublesome sister. Imagine the 
 flare-up in the Old Dominion against the inso- 
 lence of such a proceeding applied to her. 
 What conclaves should we not have, what a 
 flurry of political conventions, what a buzz and 
 hum in every village, what indignant protests 
 against usurped power from sophisters of the 
 State-rights academy, what refined distinctions 
 and discriminations from the abstraction-mon- 
 gers, and what instant threat of war, seizure 
 of Gosport Navy- Yard, of Harper's Ferry, of 
 
42 .MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 forts and arsenals, and all the other violences 
 and menaces which buro;eon from the stock of 
 Southern temper I What ! claim a right to 
 drive a sovereign State out of the Union made 
 by our fathers ; to deprive us of our inestimable 
 privileges as members of the Great Republic, 
 whose birth was consecrated by the blood of 
 heroes from every State and shed upon a hun- 
 dred fields ; to strip us of our proud preroga- 
 tive of American citizenship ; to derange or 
 destroy our commerce ; to deprive us of our 
 rights in the common domain, won by the 
 united strength and valor of all the States ; to 
 take away from us the protection of the com- 
 mon defence, our share in the benefits of the 
 common treasure, and to cast us upon the wide 
 world a dwarfed and dishonored people, a prey 
 to the power and domination of any enemy 
 who may find it his interest to subdue us ; 
 and then to insult our intelligence by telling us 
 that your right to inflict this injury and disgrace 
 upon us is a right reserved to you by the found- 
 ers of our Union ! I ! 
 
 What a volume of such rhetoric as this would 
 be poured out at every cross-road hustings in 
 the w^liole country ! 
 
 Repulsive as the assertion of such a claim as 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 43 
 
 this would be to the cherished traditional idea 
 of national unity and to the common percep- 
 tion of the duty of securing to every State its 
 rights in the Union, in which the people of the 
 United States have been educated, it is not 
 more repulsive than that parallel and correla- 
 tive claim of a State to retire from this con- 
 nection at its own pleasure. Of the two, the 
 latter is the least tolerable in a fair, statesman- 
 like estimate of its incongruity with the gen- 
 eral welfare of the nation ; for, whilst the first 
 is the most improbable of all contingencies in 
 the progress of government, and would never 
 even ba thought of but under such provocation 
 as, in the nature of things, must be so exces- 
 sive, persistent, and enormous as to be, in com- 
 mon experience, impossible ; the latter, as our 
 recent history proves, would be an ever-present 
 danger from its adaptation to the use of politi- 
 cal faction and from its quality to captivate the 
 multitude by its flattery of State pride. 
 
 To an earnest and thoughtful reflection on 
 the attributes of our Union and the dangers to 
 which it is exposed, it must occur that all that 
 can be urged against the expulsion of a State, 
 may be with equal force, and with deeper con- 
 viction of the necessity of impressing it upon 
 
44 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 the popular mind, be urged against the seces- 
 sion of a State. The arguments touching the 
 right are the same ; the mischief to be averted 
 is incomparably the greater in the case of 
 secession. 
 
 I might enlarge this enumeration of the anom- 
 alies which become apparent in the contrast be- 
 tween the manifest design which the authors of 
 the Constitution had in view, and the equally 
 manifest incidents which belong to the practi- 
 cal application of this pretended right of seces- 
 sion. But it is only necessary to glance at 
 those which I have arranged under these five 
 divisions, to perceive that the antagonism is so 
 positive and so destructive of the scheme of the 
 Union which occupied the thoughts of the leg- 
 islators, that to impute to them such an obstruc- 
 tion, as a premeditated contrivance, is to charge 
 them with the folly of constructing a machine 
 which, by its inherent disregard of mechan- 
 ical laws, was incapable of performing its most 
 necessary and important functions — a machine 
 w^hich must soon jar itself out of all possibility 
 of action and tumble to pieces by the strain of 
 its own friction. We should lose all respect 
 for the memory of such bungling workmen, as 
 this theory would compel us to regard those 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 45 
 
 great and good statesmen who have, for seventy- 
 years, been consecrated in our affections as the 
 wisest and best of the founders of States. 
 
 So far, in the consideration of this question 
 of secession, I have confined my view to the 
 difficulties which the doctrine presents as an 
 impediment to the administration of the Gov- 
 ernment in conformity with the obvious design 
 of the Constitution. In the next letter I shall 
 discuss it more briefly under another aspect. 
 
46 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 SECESSION. 
 
 March, 1863. 
 If we could accord to the philosophy of the 
 Southern school the merit of even a plausible 
 theor}^ in its inculcation of the right of seces- 
 sion, and could admit that this right secured a 
 principle which a State might, in some possible 
 emergency, find it useful to bring into practice 
 for its own advantage, and that, contemplating 
 the rare occurrence of such a possibility, the 
 framers of the Constitution did really intend to 
 give it a place in their scheme, as a latent power 
 to be awakened into activity only as a substi- 
 tute for revolution, we should find ourselves 
 arrested at that point by the remarkable failure 
 of the Constitution to provide for its own exe- 
 cution ; and, in the total absence of all regula- 
 tion upon this subject, we should be obliged to 
 conclude either that this feature of the scheme 
 was abandoned, or that, in some moment of 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 47 
 
 drowsy forgetfulness, those notoriously vigilant 
 and astute gentlemen whom we are accustomed 
 to laud as the sages of our golden age — Wash- 
 ington, Hamilton, Franklin, and the rest — 
 had withdrawn from their watch and left their 
 otherwise consummate work not only unfinished 
 but actually too imperfect to admit of the first 
 step towards the demonstration of this element, 
 which, it is said, they intended to incorporate 
 into the structure. On this matter of secession 
 they preserved a silence so profound, and so 
 extraordinary — if they had any consciousness 
 of its existence — as to make it the most ob- 
 scure and helpless of antiquarian studies to 
 determine, at this day, whether a solitary man 
 of that era ever heard the idea of secession 
 broached, or ever dreamed of it himself. Noth- 
 ing so difficult now as to tell when it was first 
 thought of, who originated it, and where it is 
 to be found. 
 
 Looking to the portentous magnitude of this 
 power, to the embarrassments it would produce, 
 and the contingencies it would create, it is in- 
 conceivable that law-makers of the most ordi- 
 nary sagacity could recognize it as an existing 
 principle in their scheme of government, with- 
 out devoting a chapter to its definition and to 
 
48 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 the necessary provision for its consequences. 
 They would have devised ordinances to meet 
 every category into which an act of secession 
 would have thrown the country. They would 
 have pointed out the modus operandi., — the 
 assembling perhaps of a National Convention, 
 the manner of announcement of the proposed 
 withdrawal, and the arrangement of its condi- 
 tions. They would have made a rule for the 
 division of public property, the payment of 
 debts, the modification of treaties, the protec- 
 tion of private rights, the disposal of territory, 
 and the numerous other matters affecting the 
 public peace and safety, which this destructive 
 process would call into urgent notice. 
 
 To make secession what it is claimed to be, 
 a peaceable proceeding, would require a code of 
 legislation of the highest wisdom. Without 
 such legislation its attempt could be nothing 
 else than a turbulent, headlong rush into a melee 
 of fierce political strife. 
 
 Now, we are to suppose that, with all these 
 necessities and direful consequences in view, 
 our fathers consented in silence to this malig- 
 nant power ; that they delivered to their pos- 
 terity the great work confided to their labor — 
 the creation of an Union designed to be as per- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 49 
 
 feet and as nearly perpetual as human wisdom 
 could make it — with the seeds of this mortal 
 disease planted in its heart, planted with their 
 knowledge and approval ; that they made no 
 provision to mitigate its virulence or assuage 
 the pain of its stroke ; did not even name it, 
 but left it a silent and lurking poison in the 
 inmost depths of the Constitution, to destroy 
 the life of the nation whenever occasion might 
 awaken it into activity. We are to believe this, 
 and then exalt our fathers amongst the bene- 
 factors of mankind, as the first founders of a 
 State who ever had the sagacity to provide a 
 power for the early and swift destruction of 
 their own work, and to leave that power under 
 the simple guidance of its own unregulated dis- 
 cretion, or, as present events interpret it, its 
 own blind passion. 
 
 This conclusion is the more revolting to us, 
 when we reflect, in the light of events now dis- 
 turbing the country, by what dishonest means 
 a State may be driven to practice this method 
 of separation ; how much it is at the hazard of 
 faction ; how the proceeding may be procured 
 by a forced vote against the will of the people ; 
 how it may be stimulated by the mad impulses 
 of a day, in some access of that capricious rage 
 4 
 
50 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 to which the passions of the muUitude are so 
 easily excited by popular leaders. This step 
 once taken, the natural drift of events soon 
 makes it irrevocable. No day of calmer judg- 
 ment, no future repentance of a generation 
 weeping over the crime of their ancestors, 
 may haply find the juncture suitable to restora- 
 tion. Or if that season to retrieve the error 
 come, how mournfully may it illustrate, by its 
 delay, the dreadful catastrophe of a plunge into 
 an abyss from which the return is only through 
 an ocean of blood and years of sorrow ! 
 
 Turning aside from these considerations, 
 which seem to be sufficiently cogent of them- 
 selves to settle the question, I propose to devote 
 this letter to a few remarks upon what I regard 
 the total unsoundness of the argument by which 
 the advocates of the right of secession generally 
 undertake to maintain it. They are accus- 
 tomed to affirm that it legitimately results from 
 the theory of the original or antecedent sover- 
 eignty of the States ; that the States, when they 
 entered into the compact of Union, reserved 
 all the rights of absolute sovereignty, to be 
 resumed by them, whenever they, in their own 
 judgment of the necessity, might think proper 
 to do so. They go further than this, and, refin- 
 
MB. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 51 
 
 ing upon the nature of sovereignty, they say 
 that this right to resume did not require any 
 assertion as a reserved poAver, but necessarily 
 resulted from the inherent and inalienable qual- 
 ity of sovereignty ; that it is of no avail in the 
 argument to inquire whether the founders of the 
 Union had or had not a conception of seces- 
 sion, the right to withdraw from the compact 
 was still there in virtue of the orisiinal sover- 
 eignty, and could not be given away even by 
 the State itself. It was something of " a higher 
 law," a kind of divine right, far above the Con- 
 stitution and Union ; a right which lay in nuhi- 
 bus, or — in language more suitable to its high 
 pretension — in the empyrean, until it was 
 wanted here on earth. This is the transcen- 
 dental extreme of the Southern philosophy on 
 the subject. The Seceding States have acted 
 on this theory. Some of them simply repealed 
 the declaration of their assent to the ratification 
 of the Constitution ; repealed, as Mr. Everett 
 has well stated it, "an historical fact," — im- 
 plying, by that act, that what was once a fact 
 of past time is no longer a fact ; they repealed 
 the fact that, in the year 1789, Virginia agreed 
 to come into the Union on the terms proposed, 
 — an incident no more repealable than the sur- 
 
52 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 render of Yorktown. The act of ratification 
 was a deed, not a law ; it was an acknowledg- 
 ment of fealty to the United States, which 
 neither party conceived was an act subject to 
 any modification or repeal by any future leg- 
 islature or convention. Since that day the 
 higher law has been discovered, and has been 
 brought down from its cloudy abode — deus 
 ex machina — to throw our whole continent 
 into confusion. 
 
 I need not say, after what I have written in 
 my previous letter, that I totally dissent from 
 every item in this summary of the doctrine of 
 secession ; but, for the present, I pretermit all 
 objection to the theory it proposes, and pro- 
 ceed to notice the condition in which it leaves 
 the question. 
 
 Suppose it be a sound principle that this 
 right results from the original sovereignty of the 
 State, and that no compact, however solemn, 
 can bind a State to the renunciation or circum- 
 scription of its sovereign attributes longer than 
 it is its own continuous will to be bound ; or 
 suppose that those States, in forming the Union, 
 actually reserved this right, as the prerogative 
 of their antecedent sovereignty, these admis- 
 sions would bring us to the recognition of an 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 53 
 
 anomalous diversity in the composition of the 
 Union, which has never hitherto been perceived, 
 and which would, if it really existed, become 
 the source of endless quarrel. The right of 
 secession, on this foundation, would be limited 
 to those States only which can estabhsh a claim 
 to an original or preexisting sovereignty. The 
 Union would be divided into States having the 
 right, and States not having the right — one 
 portion of the Confederacy elevated in rank 
 and majesty above the other. Those having 
 the right would be the "old Thirteen," with 
 the addition of the State of Texas, which came 
 into the Union bringing with it the attributes 
 of a previously existing sovereignty. 
 
 The Union now consists — sj^eaking of it 
 as it was at the commencement of the rebel- 
 lion — of thirty-four States. Of these, twenty- 
 one have been created by act of Congress ; 
 and amongst these twenty-one, Texas alone 
 had an anterior existence as a sovereign power. 
 Twenty of the- States, therefore, are, as lim- 
 ited sovereignties, the mere creatures of the 
 National Government. 
 
 Can it be claimed for these twenty States, 
 that they hold a reserved right to resume their 
 sovereignty and to retire from the Union as in- 
 
54 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 dependent nations ? Clearly, resumption is not 
 the word applicable to them. How resume what 
 they never had, — absolute and independent 
 sovereignty ? So there is another distinction 
 that cannot be got rid of, — States in the Union 
 that may resume, and States that may not re- 
 sume. These new States, if they do anything 
 in this way, must seize what was never given 
 to them, — must usurp a prerogative they never 
 had, in order to bring them to an equal dignity 
 with the old States, or elevate them to the rank 
 of Texas. That is the absurd dilemma of seces- 
 sion. Many of those States are formed on ter- 
 ritory purchased by the National Government 
 for the benefit of the nation ; all of them on 
 territory either purchased or ceded for the ad- 
 vancement of the common welfare. If they 
 lapse from their present condition by abandon- 
 ing their privileges in the Union, one would 
 naturally say they lapsed back into their orig- 
 inal predicament. That is precisely what the 
 old States claim by their secession. The new 
 States would fall back into Territories, the old 
 ones into Sovereignties. And thus we have 
 another distinction between the States, lo0-i- 
 cally resulting from the theory of secession. 
 The idea that the new States could lapse into 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 55 
 
 something greater than their original condition 
 is a solecism that, in a less grave argument, 
 would be called "a bull." Th^ Territories 
 were not given away to the people who inhabit 
 them, but organized for the use and advantage 
 of the Union. They had no antecedent sover- 
 eignty whatever. They were clothed with no 
 power but that which was necessary to make 
 them loyal members of the American Union. 
 The most absurd thouMit that could be im- 
 puted to Congress, when it gave them political 
 existence, is, that in elevating them to the rank 
 of States, it was giving them a power to destroy 
 the Union, and to aggrandize themselves at the 
 expense of all the other States. It is simply pre- 
 posterous to say that the Constitution contem- 
 plated any such consequence when it author- 
 ized Concrress to create new States. If such a 
 consequence could, in any contingency, law- 
 fully result from this power, no greater folly 
 could be ascribed to the people of the United 
 States than that of authorizing any Territory 
 to be erected into a State. It would be a cheap 
 way of despoiling the Union of its most valued 
 possessions. 
 
 At one time the Government intimated a 
 wish to purchase Cuba for one hundred mil- 
 
56 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 lions of money. What possible inducement 
 could persuade an American statesman to de- 
 sire such an acquisition, if the acknowledged, 
 lawful consequence of such a purchase could, 
 in any event, authorize the inhabitants of that 
 island, after they were organized as a State of 
 the Union, — which would have immediately 
 followed, — to withdraw from the compact and 
 assume an absolute sovereio;n dominion over 
 that rich possession, appropriate its land to 
 their own use, and deprive the nation of all the 
 advantage, it designed by the purchase ? Yet 
 such is the claim made by the right of seces- 
 sion, and such not only the possibility, but, 
 judging from our recent experience in the case 
 of Florida and Louisiana, the imminent prob- 
 ability of the assertion of this right. .Once let 
 the people of Cuba into the secret of our "ver- 
 dant simplicity" on this point, and we open to 
 them the perception of an easy and profitable 
 device by which they may obtain one hundred 
 millions of our money and still secure Cuba to 
 their own disposal and control. 
 
 This is a reductio ad absurdum. and ought 
 to be conclusive to any sound judgment, that 
 the right of secession cannot be predicated, at 
 least in the case of the new States, — I mean 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 57 
 
 the States created by act of Congress. Now, I 
 think it is good argument to say, that if there 
 be no right of secession in the new States, it 
 does not exist in the old. Our system was 
 designed to be homogeneous. We detect no 
 discrimination between the States in their con- 
 stitutional description. They are all designated 
 by the same investiture of rights and duties ; 
 literally equal in all attributes and relations. 
 The distinction between new and old is simply 
 chronological. The authority to make addi- 
 tions to the Union is given in few words, with- 
 out qualification. " New States may be ad- 
 mitted by Congress into this Union." That is 
 all the Constitution utters on the subject. 
 
 It could not have escaped the authors of this 
 clause that the new States would, in process of 
 time, grow up to great influence and impor- 
 tance in the system. They probably foresaw 
 that these States might eventually come to 
 constitute, in numbers and wealth, the most 
 powerful portion of the Union ; for they had 
 even then large territories in their view which 
 were beginning to germinate in the develop- 
 ment of political organization. New acquisi- 
 tions of territory were probably not beyond the 
 forecast of many members of the Convention. 
 
58 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 They were also convinced that no disparity of 
 rights between old and new States would ever 
 be recognized or tolerated. 
 
 Now, the new States — those to be formed 
 out of the public domain — having no pretence 
 to a right of secession deduced from original 
 sovereignty, could only obtain it by express 
 grant. Such a grant no one has ventured to 
 contend is found in the Constitution. We 
 may fairly argue that if the framers of the 
 Constitution believed the old States had this 
 right by implication, they would have also con- 
 ferred it upon the new by grant ; that they did 
 not so cojifer it on the latter, is proof that they 
 did not believe in its existence in the former. 
 The conferring of it upon either would have 
 been to recognize what I have shown to be, in 
 the old States a right to perpetrate a most fla- 
 grant injury upon the country, and, in the new, 
 a right to aggravate the crime of breaking up 
 the Union by adding to it the inducement to 
 plunder the public treasury by the trick of 
 seizing the public domain ; — even, in a sup- 
 posable case like that of Cuba, to convert a 
 large appropriation for a purchase into a gra- 
 tuity without an equivalent. Doubtless the 
 answer to this insinuation would be, that the 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 59 
 
 honor of the States which boast of their chiv- 
 alry may be safely trusted that no such wrong 
 would be inflicted. That might have been 
 a plausible answer years ago. But look at 
 Florida now. Look at every seceding State 
 that holds any portion of the public domain. 
 Look at the seizure of the mint, — the early 
 and swift confiscation of all Government prop- 
 erty, — as the first steps in the rebellion. We 
 shall have a settlement of all these, perhaps, at 
 the Greek Kalends ! 
 
 I have but one more point to notice in my 
 reference to the special grounds upon which 
 the secessionists defend their doctrine, and 
 with that I shall finish this letter and dismiss 
 the subject. 
 
 The whole argument in favor of secession is 
 founded on a petitio principii which I hold to 
 be totally inadmissible. The common state- 
 ment of that argument is, that the Union is 
 but a confederacy of sovereign States ; merely 
 a complex league^ in which each member re- 
 tains all the sovereignty of an independent 
 nation ; that the Federal Government is noth- 
 ing more than an agency created by these 
 States for the convenience of performing cer- 
 tain functions for their benefit. From this 
 
60 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 statement, the deduction seems to be univer- 
 sally accepted by the secessionists, and even too 
 carelessly allowed by their opponents, that the 
 Union being a league, any member of it has a 
 right to withdraw whenever it chooses to do so. 
 They concede that if the United States were a 
 Nation^ in the proper sense of that term, they 
 could not do this. A League^ they say, pre- 
 sents a different case. A member may with- 
 draw from a league. 
 
 Now, I do not mean to spend any time in 
 controverting the basis on which this proposi- 
 tion rests, — the affirmation, namely, that the 
 Union is simply a league, or that it was cre- 
 ated only by the States. That notion has been 
 abundantly refuted by abler pens than mine. 
 But I deny the deduction drawn from this ba- 
 sis. If this were true, in point of fact, I think 
 it a great mistake to affirm that the member of 
 a League of sovereign States has any right to 
 retire from the association at its own pleasure. 
 
 A league between States is a compact more 
 solemn and more binding than an ordinary 
 treaty between nations. It has all the charac- 
 teristics and responsibilities of a treaty ; but it 
 has something; more. It involves the delicate 
 relations of a government within the orbit as- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 61 
 
 signed to it ; invites and necessitates the adop- 
 tion of a course of action and policy which 
 pledges a common faith to the due observance 
 of numerous obligations indispensable to the 
 daily discharge of its functions. It is con- 
 stantly contracting engagements to which every 
 member of the league is bound, and which, 
 being for the benefit of the w^iole, cannot be 
 repudiated by one without inflicting a wrong 
 — sometimes a vital wrong — upon the rest. 
 
 In respect to a common treaty between two 
 nations, it may be said, in a loose sense, that 
 either party has a right to declare that the 
 treaty has been violated by the other ; but the 
 other has an equal right to deny the infraction. 
 If they cannot accommodate matters, the only 
 resort for a settlement of the difference is to 
 war. To retire from a treaty is to give a law- 
 ful cause for war. There is no such thing 
 known as a peaceable right to secede from a 
 treaty, unless the treaty contains an express 
 stipulation to that effect. Such a right never 
 results from the single fact of the absolute 
 sovereignty of the parties. 
 
 What foundation, then, is there for the as- 
 sertion that, in a league, this sovereignty of 
 the parties gives each this right ? 
 
62 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 The old Confederation which existed before 
 the present Constitution, was strictly a league 
 of States. It did not pretend to be a nation. 
 Yet nothing was more abhorrent to the ideas 
 of the men who formed, and acted under, that 
 Confederation, than this notion of a right exist- 
 ing in any member to secede from it, or in any 
 manner to alter its terms but by the unanimous 
 consent of all the members. The nature and 
 force of the Confederate oblio-ations on this 
 point are well defined by Luther Martin in his 
 address to the Legislature of Maryland, on his 
 return from the Convention which formed the 
 Constitution. 
 
 Speaking of the old Confederation, he says : 
 
 " That in forming our original Federal Government 
 every member of that Government, that is, each State, 
 expressly consented to it ; that it is a part of the compact 
 made and entered into, in the most solemn manner, that 
 there should be no dissolution or alteration of that Federal 
 Government without the consent of every State, the mem- 
 bers of and parties to the original compact ; that, there- 
 fore, no alteration could be made by the consent of a part 
 of these States, or by the consent of the inhabitants of 
 a part of these States, which could either release the 
 States so consenting from the obligation they are under 
 to the other States, or which could in any manner be- 
 come obligatory upon those States that should not ratify 
 such alterations." 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS, 63 
 
 This argument was used by Mr. Martin in 
 support of his opposition to the mode proposed 
 by the Convention for the ratification of the 
 Constitution by the concurrence of seven 
 States ; and, being used simply in the way of 
 argument, was an appeal to the received opin- 
 ion of that day in reference to the old Confed- 
 eration, — an opinion which, apart from his own 
 high authority, was clearly a correct one. Now, 
 it must be observed that the Articles of Confed- 
 eration are as silent as the Constitution on the 
 subject of secession. Mr. Martin's argument 
 is a deduction from the nature of the compact 
 or treaty of Confederation ; that, although the 
 States were recognized in that compact as abso- 
 lute sovereignties, they could not dissolve or 
 alter the Government without the unanimous 
 consent of the members in the league. Where 
 was the nVht of secession if this view is a sound 
 one? The whole of Mr. Martin's address, 
 which is an elaborate discussion on the princi- 
 ples of the Constitution, is worthy of study in 
 reference to this question. He was a harsh 
 critic lipon the labors of the Convention ; saw 
 many defects in the Constitution which time 
 has proved to be imaginary ; made many proph- 
 ecies of its malign influence upon the country 
 
64 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 which have never been fulfilled ; complained 
 of its nationality as pregnant with mischief to 
 the States, and even went so far as to say, " we 
 considered the system proposed to be the most 
 complete, most abject system of slavery that 
 the wit of man ever devised under the pretence 
 of forming a Government of free States;" 
 yet, with all these evil portents looming upon 
 his disturbed vision, it never occurred to him 
 that there was lodged in this system a power 
 which could in a moment shiver it into atoms, 
 and thus dissipate all these apprehensions of 
 the terrible bondage to which he fancied these 
 "Free States" were doomed. Indeed, it is im- 
 possible to read that address without perceiv- 
 ing, on every page, that the idea of secession 
 never entered into his thoughts, and had never 
 been entertained by the men of that day. It 
 would have at once dispelled all his fears and 
 answered half the objections he so anxiously 
 urged against the work of his compatriots. 
 
 The student of our history will find many tes- 
 timonies in the records of our initiatory era, in 
 addition to this of Mr. Martin, which will be 
 equally conclusive to convince him that no man 
 who had any part in the fabrication of the Con- 
 stitution, nor any portion of the public who 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 65 
 
 anxiously watched the progress of that work, 
 ever intimated an idea that a right to withdraw 
 from the Union existed either by inference or 
 grant as a privilege left to or conferred upon 
 the respective States. Upon that point the 
 silence was universal and pregnant with mean- 
 ing. It is very evident that generation re- 
 garded the compact as designed to be perpetual. 
 They would not even agree, as may be seen in 
 Mr. Madison's letter to a member of the New 
 York Convention, to allow a State to make a 
 conditional ratification, by way of experimental 
 probation of the Constitution, before a final ac- 
 ceptance of it. It was to be perpetual ; they 
 must take it so, or not at all, is the import of 
 his direction. 
 
 We have no difl^iculty in perceiving that the 
 founders interpreted the ratification as an irre- 
 vocable surrender by each State of all the power 
 required to be surrendered for the common 
 benefit. And, as the Government was the 
 compound result of State action and popu- 
 lar action, the surrender of power by the 
 State was an act which was confirmed and 
 rendered doubly irrevocable by the concurrent 
 vote of the people of the whole of the States, 
 who came in as a third party, binding them- 
 
 5 
 
6Q MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 selves and their States to the compact, through 
 their several State Conventions. Out of this 
 joint action between States and people grew 
 A NATION, in which was skilfully and beauti- 
 fully combined two sovereignties, — the one 
 the complement of the other, — a national 
 sovereignty supreme in the national sphere ; a 
 State sovereignty supreme in the State sphere ; 
 neither clashing with the other, but both to- 
 gether making up the whole sum of sovereignty 
 which is essential to a complete nation. The 
 States were clean shorn of every vestige of 
 sovereignty in the circle allotted to the National 
 Government ; and the National Government 
 was, in like manner, shorn of every vestige of 
 sovereignty in the circle appropriated to the 
 State government. They were complements 
 to each other; and the National Government 
 has just as much right to abrogate the State 
 power and release itself from its obligations to 
 the States, as the States have to abrogate the 
 national power and release themselves from 
 their obligations to the nation. 
 
 This view of the mutual relations between 
 the two authorities distinctly defines national 
 rights and State rights, which are equally clear, 
 equally sacred, and equally guarded against 
 encroachment from each other. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 67 
 
 It has not been my purpose to comment at 
 large upon these principles in our Constitution, 
 or to gather up the numerous demonstrations 
 of them which our early history affords. My 
 chief object in this and the former letter was 
 to show that the States and people of the 
 United States have contracted obligations, by 
 the compact of the Constitution, which are 
 totally irreconcilable with the asserted right of 
 secession ; that, with the impediment of this 
 right, the harmonious and even the most indis- 
 pensable performance of the functions of our 
 Government would become impossible, and 
 that the foundation of the right, as asserted by 
 its advocates, has no support in the views en- 
 tertained by the founders, or in the institutes 
 of national law. 
 
68 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 KEVOLUTION. 
 
 October, 1863. 
 
 Notwithstanding the pretence set up by 
 the movers of this great disorder in the coun- 
 try, their scheme is nothing more nor less than 
 an attempt to subvert the Government by a 
 revolution. It suited their purpose to claim it 
 as the exercise of a peaceful right of secession. 
 
 We perceive many obvious motives of policy 
 to suggest to them this expedient. If they 
 could persuade the country that the States 
 were merely asserting a right which belonged 
 to them as members of the Union, they would, 
 to the extent of that persuasion, be able to con- 
 front the Government with the charge of deny- 
 ing to them their admitted privileges under the 
 Constitution. Whether wise or not in seced- 
 ing from the Union, would be a question upon 
 which people might differ ; but the right would 
 not be controverted. If they could impress 
 the world with this opinion, then it would fol- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 69 
 
 low that to resist them would be adjudged by 
 the world to be a simple and inexcusable act of 
 aggression. The Government would be re- 
 garded as the assailant, and they would be the 
 injured party. They might, with this advan- 
 tage, appeal to the sympathies of mankind as a 
 people oppressed by unlawful force, and assume 
 the part of patriots contending for their dearest 
 rights. They would present themselves to the 
 tribunal of public judgment as legitimate, inde- 
 pendent States, having a claim, by the law of 
 nations, to immediate recognition by all other 
 Powers ; not States struggling in the throes of 
 revolution to make themselves free, but States 
 free in their antecedent life, and now, by virtue 
 of the common fundamental law, free from all 
 alliance with their late associates, self-controlling 
 and in full organization as nations from the 
 moment they severed their connection with the 
 Union. In such an aspect of their case, the 
 law which controls the policy of nations, on 
 the question of recognizing a people who revolt 
 against their rulers, would have no application. 
 The question would not arise, " Are these peo- 
 ple able to detach themselves from the Govern- 
 ment that ruled them, and to maintain their 
 attempted nationality by their own strength ? " 
 
70 MR, AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 but it would be, with all the outside world, 
 " What right have we to refuse to acknowledge 
 the existence of a body politic which, by the 
 organic law of the Confederacy to which it was 
 once attached, has become an independent na- 
 tion, through the appointed form of a declara- 
 tion of its own will to be so ? " The admission 
 of this principle annuls the whole law of trea- 
 son in respect to the retiring State. It is no 
 longer under the jurisdiction of the common 
 Government. Its people owe no allegiance to 
 that Government ; they have, in a moment, 
 become aliens. If war be made upon them, it 
 is a war of established belligerents ; they are 
 alien enemies to each other ; and the party that 
 begins the war must find its justification in the 
 ordinary code of nations applicable to the dis- 
 putes between foreign Powers. The mere act 
 of separation, being in pursuance of an actual 
 right, is no just cause for war. The retiring 
 party has committed no offence. All he asks 
 is, "Let us alone." This was the conv^enient 
 theory upon which the fomenters of this com- 
 motion ostensibly commenced their operations. 
 According to this theory there could be no 
 rebellion, and, of course, no revolution. The 
 Governments of the States and of the Union 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 71 
 
 were only developing their future in the due 
 process of the normal law of their construc- 
 tion ; falling to pieces, it is true, but falling to 
 pieces in pursuance of the design and in the 
 manner prescribed by the authors of the Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 This is the rationale of their action, as ex- 
 plained in the official expositions of the gov- 
 ernment set up in the revolting States, and 
 which is urged, with eager reiteration, upon 
 the cabinets of Europe. As yet they have 
 met no acknowledgment of their claim. The 
 cabinets persist in regarding the war as rebel- 
 lion and its aim revolution. Foreign Powers, 
 therefore, we may infer, do not accept the doc- 
 trine of secession. It is true, some foreign 
 statesmen, who are well-wishers to the downfall 
 of the great American Republic, and who 
 delight to encourage any plot which may com- 
 pass so happy an end, give, now and then, a 
 stimulating hint of their favorable conviction 
 on this point ; but no nation has yet been so 
 hardy as to make it a ground for interference 
 in our quarrel. They, one and all, subject the 
 question of intervention to the test afforded by 
 national law and usage as applied to the case 
 of revolting fractions of a State. 
 
72 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 There being no right of secession, as I have 
 demonstrated in my last two letters, the whole 
 movement to sever the Union is simply an 
 enterprise of revolution. No proclamation of 
 a more lawful foundation for it, no pretension 
 of a different purpose contemplated by its 
 leaders, no protestation of innocence of trea- 
 sonable design, by the thousands who have 
 taken up arms, or of the multitudes of men 
 and women who afford material aid and com- 
 fort to the movement, or encourage it by their 
 sympathy, can alter its nature. The object 
 aimed at is revolution, and the means are 
 rebellion. The champions of the cause are 
 rebels. If the rebellion be without such justi- 
 fication as the moral law sanctions, then it is 
 one of the blackest of crimes ; the rebels are 
 traitors, and they justly incur the penalty of 
 treason. If, on the other hand, there be such 
 justification for an effort to subvert the Gov- 
 ernment as is recognized in the moral code of 
 the most enlightened nations, the rebellion is 
 without guilt, and the rebel, notwithstanding 
 the oifence which the law may impute to him, 
 is untainted by the crime of a traitor. It is 
 the Government, in that case, that betrays, and 
 the citizen lawfully resists. 
 
'MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. T3 
 
 This is a brief summary or outline of the 
 ethics of rebellion, as expounded by the most 
 liberal jurists of this age, and as universally 
 accepted in our country. There is no right we 
 are less disposed to deny than that of revolu- 
 tion. It is an instinct of American society to 
 sympathize with the revolt of a people against 
 their rulers. We are perhaps too apt to do so 
 from an a priori presumption that every gov- 
 ernment oppresses somebody, and that people 
 never revolt without good cause. There is a 
 popular attraction in the idea of fighting for 
 " our rights," — a phrase often tnore alluring 
 to a love of adventure than susceptible of defi- 
 nition. I have no doubt that the Southern 
 armies are filled by the influence of this senti- 
 ment. Rash and thoughtless young men, who 
 have never paused a moment to inquire into 
 the merits to the cause, have rushed into rebel- 
 lion simply because it was rebellion. Men of 
 riper years have thrown themselves into it, with 
 that traditionary idea that revolution itself 
 is a glorious incident, and that it is heroic to 
 sustain it. I think this trait of our national 
 character will disclose the secret of much of 
 that enthusiasm which has spread over the 
 South and brou2:ht the rebellion into favor with 
 
74 ME. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 many worthy men who, to this day, are unable 
 to give an intelligible account of the motives 
 which seduced them Into the conflict. I think 
 it will explain the phenomena of epauletted 
 bishops and priests In jackboots, deserting their 
 vineyards to swagger In the camp. I think It 
 will satisfactorily solve the riddle of the re- 
 markable virulence with which the women on 
 that side scream out their joy at every wound 
 that is inflicted upon their country. Rebellion 
 has become the fashion in that gentle world, 
 and, like another fashion there, Is utterly heed- 
 less of the uncleanness into which It dips its 
 skirts. 
 
 Passing by these illusions or mere stimulants 
 of temper which have driven so many to the 
 compromise of their loyalty, I propose to ex- 
 plore the real motives, as far as they are 
 attainable, that have led men of influence and 
 capacity to attempt so bold and desperate an 
 enterprise as the overthrow of the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 In looking for these motives, we should expect 
 to find either, on the one side, some oppressive 
 feature in our Constitution or some inveterate 
 and incurable evil in its administration ; or, on 
 the other, some mistaken conception of injury 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 75 
 
 resulting from Government, some intolerable 
 anomaly of social life only imagined curable 
 by separation ; or, in the absence of induce- 
 ments as honest as these, some depravity of 
 personal ambition daring enough to meditate 
 the destruction of the State in order to com- 
 pass its ends. I remark, in clearing the way 
 for this inquiry, that the first man is yet to be 
 found, North or South, who, in the way of 
 excuse for rebellion, has alleged that he has 
 suffered wrong from a solitary act of this Gov- 
 ernment. No man has been so bold as to affirm 
 that there is a single statute in the national 
 code, a single decree of the Executive ; that 
 there is any treaty, or any judicial decision of 
 the national judicature, which has ever given 
 offence to a Southern citizen or afforded any 
 fair ground of complaint to a Southern State, 
 at the date at which this rebellion was inaugu- 
 rated. It does not abate the truth of this 
 assertion to say that there have been, in the 
 seventy years' experience of the Union, various 
 questions of policy broached and determined, 
 upon which political parties have differed ; that 
 laws have been passed, treaties made and Ex- 
 ecutive proceedings adopted, which roused the 
 opposition of parties, both in the North and the 
 
76 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 South. These are but the regular and antici- 
 pated incidents of all popular government, and, 
 indeed, manifest the healthful freedom of opin- 
 ion by which alone all good governments are 
 preserved. These divisions of opinion were 
 general, pervading the whole country, and dis- 
 tinctive of no section. What I mean to affirm 
 is, that no legislation ever transcended the nat- 
 ural and proper limits prescribed to the legiti- 
 mate action of the Government in determining 
 and shaping the public policy ; that nothing 
 has been done but in accordance with the 
 power given by the Constitution, and what the 
 Constitution contemplated as the appropriate 
 office of legislation. There were tariffs en- 
 acted, there were laws prohibiting and laws 
 allowing slavery in the Territories, internal 
 improvement and national-bank laws, upon all 
 of which there were various dissenting opin- 
 ions and frequent political conflict ; but all this 
 legislation was founded upon precedent estab- 
 lished in the earliest age of the Government 
 and continued to the latest ; and, what is of 
 some significance in this view, these laws were 
 passed during the long period in which the 
 Government was mainly directed under the 
 control of Southern votes. No sensible states- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 77 
 
 man could find in such legislation an honest 
 ground for rebellion. They were acts of 
 administration, changeable at the will of the 
 people. It would be as absurd as wicked to 
 make them the pretext for overthrowing the 
 Government. 
 
 Indeed we have the testimony of the rebels 
 themselves that the structure of the Govern- 
 ment aflforded them no cause of complaint ; for 
 they immediately adopted the same Constitu- 
 tion, with some few modifications, as the frame- 
 work of their own Confederacy. Amongst 
 these modifications they did not even incorpo- 
 rate that which might be regarded as descrip- 
 tive of the peculiar demand of the revolution, 
 — an express affirmation of the right of seces- 
 sion. If we may infer anything from their 
 reticence on this point, it is that they were not 
 willing to expose their own Confederacy to the 
 blows of the same weapon which they found 
 had such facile power to destroy that they 
 were casting off. They, at least, were willing 
 to leave an expressed right of secession open to 
 future advisement, and allow the question, in 
 the mean time, to float upon the varying tide 
 of construction. I venture to prophesy that as 
 their experience grows older, and their sover- 
 
78 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 eign harmonies are more and more tested, they 
 will be less and less inclined to honor the doc- 
 trine with a clause in their constitution. Cer- 
 tainly we may infer from this omission that 
 the failure of our Constitution to recognize this 
 right does not present the gravamen for which 
 they have plunged the country into rebellion. 
 I would not charge that numerous body of gen- 
 tlemen — whom I have referred to in a former 
 letter as the long and persistent denouncers of 
 secession as treason — with a vagary so extrav- 
 agant as that. As the matter stands now, it 
 is evident that the rebel Convention at Mont- 
 gomery were not fully prepared to vindicate 
 their zeal in their professed faith, by testifying 
 to it in their works when the opportunity for 
 the first time was presented to them. 
 
 Notwithstanding these few alterations, the 
 Government rejected and the Government 
 adopted are so entirely the same in all their 
 leading features and minor details, and espe- 
 cially so identical in their capacities for good 
 or evil administration, that it is very clear this 
 revolution was not inaugurated to get rid of 
 any existing grievance or tyrannical authority 
 resulting from the Constitution of the United 
 States. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 79 
 
 We are left, then, to seek in the administra- 
 tion of the Government, the source of the dif- 
 ferences which, it is supposed, could only be 
 satisfactorily adjusted by a dissolution of the 
 Union. 
 
 Upon this point I might remark, in passing, 
 that it would take a very strong case of wrongs 
 inflicted by the administration of a Government 
 
 — whose administration is changeable at brief 
 periods by the act of the people themselves, and 
 always under the control of popular represen- 
 tation in which the whole nation has a voice, 
 
 — it would be necessary to make a very strong 
 case of continued and persevering oppression, 
 through such an administration, to justify a re- 
 sort to the terrible process of relief found in 
 civil war. 
 
 When we ask the question, " Has the South 
 been impelled to adopt this extreme remedy 
 of revolution, by the galling tyranny practised 
 upon it through years of unmitigated suffering 
 by the oppres^ve temper of the majority, ex- 
 hibited in a constant course of hostile admin- 
 istration ? " we have an answer in the fact, 
 that from the 4th of March, 1789, until the 
 4th of March, 1861, the administration of pub- 
 lic affairs has been almost wholly in Southern 
 hands. 
 
80 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 We have had, during that period, fifteen 
 Presidents, of which nine were native South- 
 ern men, three natives of New England, two 
 of New York, and one of Pennsylvania ; of 
 those which were not natives of the Slave 
 States three were Democrats, of whom the 
 South was wont to boast as " Northern men 
 with Southern principles," and were distinctly 
 chosen and elected by Southern influence ; of 
 the remaining three two were Whigs, distin- 
 guished for their equitable administration and 
 irreproachable performance of their duty, in 
 which they received the efficient support of 
 the whole Whig party of the South. The only 
 President, in all that space of seventy-two years, 
 who might be plausibly charged with a Northern 
 bias in his administration was the elder Adams, 
 the companion of Washington, and the incum- 
 bent of the presidential office for but one term, 
 at the close of the last century. It may be 
 also remarked, that from the 4th of March, 
 1801, when it may be said that parties be- 
 came distinctively organized, down to the 4th 
 of March, 1861, a period of sixty years, the 
 Government was administered by Southern 
 Presidents for forty-one years, and by Presi- 
 dents born in the Free States nineteen years. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS, 81 
 
 During the whole of this latter period of sixty 
 years the representation in both Houses of 
 Congress is to be noted for a preponderance 
 of Southern influence in the control of the 
 policy of Government, maintained, in part, 
 through the numerical strength of the South- 
 ern vote, and, still more decisively, by the party 
 predilections of the Democratic members. 
 
 It is vain, therefore, in the view of these 
 facts, to suppose that this rebellion can pre- 
 tend to any justifiable cause arising out of the 
 ordinary, legitimate, and habitual administra- 
 tion of the Government. 
 
 Where, then, shall we seek for that bead- 
 roll of wrongs which the enlightened justice of 
 mankind in this age demands from every peo- 
 ple who meditate a recourse to arms against 
 established authority ? What is the provoca- 
 tion which may be rightfully pleaded in the 
 great forum of national judgment, still more, 
 before the awful tribunal of Heaven, for this 
 dreadful assault upon the social order, yea, 
 upon the very existence of the grandest and 
 most prosperous of Commonwealths ? 
 
 Even to this day we have seen no clear and 
 intelligible proclamation of the real motives 
 which impelled this outbreak. Speculation, 
 
82 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 both here and in Europe, gropes blindly 
 through a maze of conjectures to make a 
 plausible theory for this extraordinary phe- 
 nomenon. Prizes are offered for essays to 
 explain it. The gravest and the lightest rea- 
 sons are assigned to it. It is the terrible 
 plague spot of slavery ; it is the trivial dis- 
 comfort of incompatible temper ; it is com- 
 mercial tariffs ; navigation laws ; unequal dis- 
 tribution of patronage ; disappointed ambition ; 
 provincial antipathies ; " quot homines tot sen- 
 tenticB,''^ Why is there not some solemn and 
 earnest State paper put forth, in "decent re- 
 spect for the opinions of mankind," which shall 
 solve these doubts ? We have had more than 
 one ostentatious attempt of this kind, but they 
 all fail to rise to the dignity of an excuse. They 
 do not agree with each other. They present 
 no consistent specific statement of injuries in- 
 flicted upon the South by the Government, to 
 which the whole people in revolt can refer as 
 their defence for taking up arms, or which sen- 
 sible men might not be ashamed to avow as a 
 justifiable motive for revolution. 
 
 We find it hard to reconcile the inauo^uration 
 of a rebellion of such magnitude as this, with 
 our own estimate of the insufficiency of the ex- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 83 
 
 cuse for it, and our previous knowledge of the 
 respectability, both in character and intelligence, 
 of many of the individuals concerned in getting 
 it up. We make every allowance for pride and 
 prejudice, for ambition, for excitability of tem- 
 per, for extravagance of political theory, and all 
 the other influences which may disturb an honest 
 judgment, but there still remains the problem, 
 — Why did men of ordinary ability and fore- 
 thought, to say nothing of men of larger scope, 
 enter upon an adventure of such fearful import 
 as this ? The question has often been asked, 
 Have they presented any grievance which a 
 dissolution of the Union would remove ; in fact, 
 not make worse ? The inadequacy of the rea- 
 sons given for the instalment of this momentous 
 struggle would compel us to believe, if we did 
 not, from, our own observation of events, know 
 it before, that the ostensible causes are not the 
 real ones, and that we must seek elsewhere for 
 the true exposition of the movement. 
 
 We feel no surprise at the rapid spread of 
 the rebellion through the South, after it was 
 once set on foot. However much we may la- 
 ment the width and tenacity of its grasp, and 
 the fatal aberration into which it has drawn 
 many estimable persons, amongst whom we 
 
84 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 recognize friends we shall ever think of with 
 regret, we cannot but regard their defection as 
 the natural sequence of the great primal wrong 
 which brought them into such a temptation, 
 and we shall never abandon the hope tliat the 
 same facility of yielding which carried them 
 astray, will be equally apt, when the occasion 
 may serve, to bring them back. I have hinted, 
 in a former letter, at the category in which 
 they are placed. I know that it is the nature 
 of all rebellion to be constantly making a new 
 case for its reinforcement ; and it scarcely fails 
 to happen, that the multitudes who are swept 
 into its train are unable to resist the motives 
 they find for complicity presented to them in 
 the disorders which the violence of war, the 
 emergencies of State, and the inevitable inva- 
 sions of personal comfort and private right 
 bring upon themselves or the communities in 
 which they live. As passion rises reason sub- 
 sides, and the minds of excitable men become 
 all aglow with the indignation of present griefs. 
 It is enough for them that injuries — which a 
 calm reflection would show them to be the 
 necessary and natural concomitants of civil 
 commotion, and for which, therefore, the au- 
 thors of the commotion themselves are respon- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 85 
 
 sible — are perpetrated within their view ; it is 
 enough for them that the Government, whilst 
 reeling under the blows of the rebellion, resorts 
 to its highest prerogative of defence, and wields 
 an unaccustomed power against the treason that 
 strikes at its life ; they are filled with resent- 
 ment at the present calamity, and at the use 
 of force to conquer revolt, and do not pause to 
 consider the awful crime which hurls these dis- 
 asters upon society, nor the sacred duty which 
 rebelUon casts upon the Government to pre- 
 serve itself from destruction. Man grows self- 
 ish when terrors surround him, and the first 
 instinct, even of the brave, is to fly to the pro- 
 tection of their friends before they will lift an 
 arm for their country. This is natural to the 
 common herd of mankind. It is only from 
 the truly heroic, from those who possess that 
 rare wisdom which discerns the path of duty 
 with vision undisturbed by passion or affec- 
 tion, and who have the courage to follow it, we 
 may expect an example of that noblest patriot- 
 ism which accounts our country dearer than 
 all other human blessings, and its service 
 only subordinate to that we owe our Creator. 
 We are not surprised, therefore, that the 
 thoughtless, the ignorant, or the impulsive 
 
86 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 members of an excited community lose sight 
 of the grandeur of a national cause and become 
 the assertors and champions of the meaner but 
 more intelligible quarrel of the neighborhood, 
 the district, or the section. Unhappily it is so 
 ordained that the fate of empire does not rest in 
 the hands of the wise, the good, and the valiant, 
 without a counterpoise, more or less hurtful, 
 from the foolish, the vicious, and the weak. 
 
 It is not from this crowd of followers in the 
 track of revolution that we may hope to pro- 
 cure an intelligible exposition of its origin or 
 its aims. They can only give us their own 
 personal aggravations, or, at best, the delusions 
 which have kindled their enthusiasm and bewil- 
 dered their reason. But from those who first 
 conceived the design and gave it headway, and 
 who still assume to shape and direct its prog- 
 ress, we have to exact a more rigorous respon- 
 sibility, and hold them accountable to public 
 judgment, if they can offer no adequate and 
 upright justification for the desolation they 
 have cast into the bosom of tlie country, and 
 for the terrible issues of the conflict. They 
 have not yet done so. That their enterprise 
 admits of no such dfefence I shall endeavor to 
 show in the further prosecution of this inquiry. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 87 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 REVOLUTION. 
 
 October, 1863. 
 
 The aspiration of Southern ambition, which 
 has reached to the cKmax of rebellion, was 
 not the growth of a month or a year. Those 
 who have watched the course of public events, 
 and noted the development of opinion in the 
 South for years past, have seen many signs 
 of the coming peril ; and, if the country 
 was not prepared for it, it was not for want 
 of an occasional warning. Everybody knew 
 there were restless spirits in the South who 
 would rejoice in the opportunity to destroy the 
 Union, and that these were endeavoring to 
 create a sectional sentiment that might favor 
 the accomplishment of their wish. But the 
 common faith of the country in the patriotism 
 of the people of the South, and the profound 
 conviction of the whole North, and we may 
 say also of the larger part of the Southern com- 
 munities, that no motive existed which could 
 
88 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 possibly stir up the people of any State to the 
 mad enterprise of assailing the integrity of the 
 Union, dispelled every apprehension on this 
 score. The public generally regarded the 
 danger as a chimera. Even the Government, 
 which ought to have been distrustful enough 
 to put itself on guard, seemed to be utterly un- 
 conscious of the cratherins: trouble. Never was 
 a country taken so much at unawares. 
 
 The year 1860 was one of great prosperity. 
 The nation exhibited something more than its 
 customary light-heartedness, and had risen into 
 a tone of hilarity from the peculiar excitements 
 of the year. The spring was occupied with 
 celebrations of the advent of the Japanese Em- 
 bassy, which signalized the enlargement of our 
 commerce with the East, and autumn was filled 
 with pageants to welcome the heir of the Brit- 
 ish throne, whose visit was regarded as an 
 event of national congratulation that promised 
 long peace and happy fellowship with the 
 world, — a token of new strength and greater 
 influence to the Republic. It was a year dis- 
 tinguished by public demonstrations of faith 
 and hope in the future destiny of the country. 
 Few persons were willing to believe, or allowed 
 themselves to think, that, whilst we were thus 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 89 
 
 increasing the popularity of the nation abroad, 
 and inaugurating an era of remarkable promise 
 to the advantage of our foreign and domestic 
 interests, there was any considerable party 
 amongst us who could harbor the parricidal 
 design of crushing these brilliant hopes in the 
 destruction of the country itself, or that the 
 band of political agitators, to whom the public 
 was accustomed to impute such a design, could 
 so infatuate their followers as to prevail with 
 them to attempt it. It was in this state of 
 confident security, and in the very midst of 
 these peaceful manifestations, that the storm 
 broke upon the country. 
 
 Notwithstanding this dissonance between the 
 tone of public feeling at that time, and the ter- 
 rific incident which grated upon it with such 
 inopportune discord, the rebellion came as a 
 predestined feat. The year, the month, almost 
 the week of its explosion, had been determined 
 in councils held long before, and the plot broke 
 into action at its appointed time, to surprise 
 and discomfit, with a sudden shock, the peace- 
 ful temper of the Government and its friends. 
 
 It was preordained that the Presidential 
 Election of 1860 should supply the occasion 
 and the dai/, though it did not supply the mo- 
 
90 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 live for this wicked attempt against the life of 
 the nation. 
 
 Let us endeavor to extract from the history 
 of the times, and from our own knowledge of 
 the course of events, what we can find to ex- 
 plain the inducements that moved the actors in 
 this terrible tragedv. 
 
 It has grown to be an almost universally ac- 
 cepted fact, on the northern side of Mason and 
 Dixon's line, that this rebellion owes its origin 
 simply to a sense of danger to the institution of 
 slavery aroused in the Southern mind by the 
 political agitations of the question of its value, 
 which have engrossed so much of the public 
 attention during the last thirty years ; and that, 
 to avert this danger, the South had resolved 
 upon separation from the North. 
 
 I think this view of the origin of our troubles 
 much too narrow. Slavery, of itself and for 
 itself, is not the cause of the rebellion. I do 
 not believe that there was one intelligent, lead- 
 ing, and thinking man in the South, when 
 this rebellion broke out, who imagined that 
 slavery was in any kind of danger either from 
 the action of the National Government or the 
 State Governments ; nor that it could be suc- 
 cessfully assailed by the hostility that was ex- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 91 
 
 hibited against it in the public or private opin- 
 ion of Northern society. T think that Southern 
 statesmen were and are perfectly convinced 
 that the Government of the United States, em- 
 bracing both National and State organizations, 
 afforded an impregnable security to the insti- 
 tution of slavery v^^hich no power on this con- 
 tinent, in its lawful course of administration, 
 could disturb : and, moreover, that the guar- 
 antees which these organizations combined offer 
 to that institution are not only entirely ade- 
 quate to its protection, but are such as no gov- 
 ernment ever before supplied, and such, also, 
 as no government, of the same scope of ju- 
 risdiction and power, would ever again agree 
 to make. It is the merest sham and make- 
 believe for any Southern man to pretend that 
 the institution of slavery was ever brought into 
 peril before this rebellion exposed it to the dan- 
 gers that now surround it. I can hardly sup- 
 pose that any man of sense in the South could 
 believe otherwise than that a war, once pro- 
 voked between the States, would be the only* 
 effective agency which could destroy or impair 
 it against the will and without the cooperation 
 of the Slave States themselves. 
 
 That the slave interest has been domineer- 
 
92 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 ino; and aojcpressive in its endeavor to control 
 the administration of the public affairs of the 
 Union, is a fact of common observation ; and 
 that it has been exceedingly reluctant to part 
 with this power of control, as the gradually 
 increasino; strength of its antaojonist element in 
 the nation made it apparent that it must soon 
 do, is equally true. If we add to these consid- 
 erations the influence of slavery upon the char- 
 acter, habits, and social life of the ruling class 
 of Southern citizens, we may perceive the de- 
 gree and extent in which it may be regarded 
 as the causa causans of the rebellion, in the 
 minds of certain ambitious men who assumed 
 to direct Southern opinion, and who, acting in 
 concert, plotted and executed this great act of 
 treason. 
 
 It is, at the same time, true that slavery may 
 be reckoned as the iyyimediate cause of the war, 
 in the estimate of a very considerable portion 
 of the Southern people. Danger to the security 
 of slave property furnished a taking watchword 
 Jo a large and influential class of these. The 
 phantom of negro equality, which haunts the 
 imagination of the lower stratum of Southern 
 society, furnished another not less potent for 
 mischief. These topics were adroitly handled 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 93 
 
 to excite the passions and alarm the fears of 
 both the upper and under sections of these 
 impressible communities, and were found very 
 effective in mustering men into the ranks of 
 revolt. They were discussed as popular mo- 
 tives to rebellion, and used to give it a 
 plausible justification. They supplied a ready 
 argument adapted to the prejudice or mental 
 capacity of the several parties to whom it was 
 addressed, and they especially served to famil- 
 iarize the people with the thought of breaking 
 up the Union. 
 
 These agitations of the slave question had 
 something of the same effect upon portions of 
 the people of the North ; for the aversion to 
 the Union was not alone harbored in the 
 South. I have no doubt that the extreme 
 opinions on this subject, preached and written 
 by a sect in New England, had a most perni- 
 cious influence in extending the thought of 
 dissolution through the South. There was an 
 equal fanaticism on both sides, quite as evident 
 in favor of slavery in one section as against it 
 in the other. Secessionists and abolitionists, 
 in the ultra phases of their respective demands, 
 were in full accord as to the ultimate remedy 
 of the grievances they imagined themselves to 
 
94 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 suffer. It was curious to see how, in ascending 
 the gamut of their opposite extravagances, the 
 two parties kept pace with each other on the 
 scale, of which the highest note on each side 
 was disunion. Both North and South were, at 
 the beginning, in harmony in admitting slavery 
 to be a social evil which was to be consider- 
 ately dealt with and abandoned when that could 
 be done without injury to existing interests. 
 From this point Southern enthusiasts diverged 
 in one direction. Northern in another. With 
 one, slavery rose to be asserted successively as 
 a harmless utility, as a blessing, a divine insti- 
 tution, and, finally, as " the corner-stone re- 
 jected by the builders," upon which a new 
 dynasty was to be constructed, and our old 
 cherished Union to be dashed into fragments. 
 With the other, slavery, passing through equal 
 grades, was declared to be a disgrace ; a great 
 national sin ; a special curse of Heaven ; and, 
 at last, a stigma that made the Union " a cove- 
 nant of hell," and which, therefore, should be 
 shattered to atoms to give place to another 
 order of polity. The two opposite lines thus 
 converged in the same point, — that of dissolu- 
 tion. This is the extreme boundary to which 
 a passionate monomania conducted the agita- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 95 
 
 tions of thirty years of the subject of slavery. 
 The uTitation produced by this persevering 
 and angry reverberation of the question, from 
 side to side, undoubtedly prepared the people 
 of the South for the explosion of 1860, and 
 equally prepared the people of the North for a 
 prompt resentment against it, and thus misled 
 the popular opinion on both sides to regard the 
 slavery question as the immediate source of 
 the attempt at revolution. But the contriv- 
 ers, the heads and leaders of the scheme, had 
 a much deeper purpose than the removal of 
 any imagined danger to the security of the in- 
 stitution. They took advantage of the com- 
 mon sensibility of their people on this subject 
 to aid them in a design of much wider import. 
 It is only necessary to note the solicitude 
 with which Southern politicians of the last and 
 present generation have contemplated the in- 
 vasion of their supremacy in the Government, 
 and the importunate zeal with which they have 
 insisted upon preserving an equilibrium be- 
 tween Free and Slave States, — meaning by 
 that the preponderance of Southern influence, 
 — to be convinced that the perpetuity of their 
 control of the Administration has been the lead- 
 ing idea of their policy. The threat of dis- 
 
96 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 union has been the customary persuasion by 
 whicli they have, from time to time, endeav- 
 ored to subdue the first symptoms of disaffec- 
 tion to their ascendency. This liad become 
 the famihar terror of every Presidential can- 
 vass since the great flurry of Nullification in 
 1832, and, in fact, its frequency had made 
 it so stale, that when, at last, the danger 
 was really imminent, the country was incred- 
 ulous of the event, as much from derision of 
 the threat as a worn-out trick, as from the 
 common conviction that no cause had arisen 
 to provoke it. 
 
 Looking at the various pretexts upon which, 
 as occasion prompted, this disunion was threat- 
 ened, — the tariflP, the navigation laws, the dis- 
 tribution of patronage, the Texas question, the 
 admission of CaHfornia, the Kansas organiza- 
 tion, the Territories, — all of which have been 
 used in turn by the Cotton States to frighten 
 the nation with the danger of rupture, we have 
 in these the most perspicuous guide to the true 
 motives of the breach of 1861. The fact was 
 then at last demonstrated, that the hour was at 
 hand when other interests in the country were 
 to have a hearing and an influence, and that 
 the majority of the nation meant to govern it ; 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 97 
 
 that the South must take its due and proper 
 place in the Union and relinquish its ambition 
 of undivided empire. That long-feared and 
 long warded-off day had come, and with it 
 came the first real, unfeigned, absolute pur- 
 pose of the partisan politicians of the Southern 
 States in combination, to separate the South 
 from the North, and to attempt to build up 
 a power at home, in which Southern politics 
 and Southern ambition should have undisputed 
 sway. The Union was enjoyed as long as it 
 ministered to the ascendency of the Planting 
 States, but was -to be cast off as soon as the 
 nation reached that epoch in its progress at 
 which it was able to release itself from the 
 thraldom of sectional control, and to regulate 
 its policy in accordance with the demands of 
 the general welfare. 
 
 Never was that selfishness which is the char- 
 acteristic sin of sectional politicians, more offen- 
 sively demonstrated than in the alacrity with 
 which the prominent men of these Planting 
 States — I mean especially to designate, by this 
 term, that region which is devoted to the pro- 
 duction of cotton, rice, and sugar — combined 
 to destroy the unity, and, as they hoped, the 
 strength, and even the very existence, of this 
 
98 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 nation, at the first moment when the opportu- 
 nity promised them a chance of success. Their 
 cool repudiation, not only of the obligations of 
 honorable citizenship, but also of the simple grat- 
 itude due to a commonwealth of brethren of the 
 same family, which had watched over them in 
 their days of weakness, and nursed them into 
 the full vigor of manhood, and which had, more- 
 over, conferred upon them all the political im- 
 portance they had ever attained, — this act will 
 stand forever prominent in the history of this 
 sad time, as the darkest blot the rebellion will 
 leave upon the character of its most conspic- 
 uous contrivers and agents. Think of the 
 trivial pretences and the positive treachery of 
 those States purchased, created, and reared by 
 the Union, — Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Arkan- 
 sas ! Think of the good example, the good 
 faith, and the nice sense of honor of those older 
 States which persuaded these to strike at the 
 heart of the beneficent parent who had given 
 them existence, protection, and a heritage of 
 matchless prosperity ! Think of the obliga- 
 tions which these States owe to the Union, 
 and then inquire into the real motives which 
 tempted them to bring down upon the nation 
 the terrible calamity of civil war ! 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 99 
 
 We shall look in vain, as I have before re- 
 marked, for this motive in any right denied the 
 States by the National Government, or any 
 privilege withheld which State or individual 
 citizen might lawfully or reasonably demand. 
 
 But, supposing there were some wrong in- 
 flicted by the Government, in the course of its 
 administration, upon one or more of the States, 
 and — to put the case of opposition upon its 
 strongest ground — -supposing the right of se- 
 cession to be acknowledged as the lawful resort 
 of a State, certainly we may say, in view of the 
 special compact of the Constitution, and of the 
 plighted faith of the people of every State to 
 stand to and abide by all the responsibilities 
 and duties created by the common National 
 Government, every consideration of justice, as 
 well as of propriety and self-respect, would im- 
 pose upon the complaining party the necessity 
 of making a deliberate and friendly appeal to 
 the rest of the nation for redress through the 
 means provided by law. How much more im- 
 perative is the obligation of such appeal when 
 no right of secession is contained in the com- 
 pact, and when the proceeding, unless sanc- 
 tioned by the general consent of the nation, 
 could only be classed in the category of revo- 
 
100 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 lution ? To make a decent case of justification 
 for revolution, every tribunal of moral law or 
 enlightened opinion would hold that, as a pre- 
 liminary fact, that consent should be asked and 
 refused ; and, moreover, that the insurgent 
 party should be able to show such a violation 
 of compact by the offending government, as 
 to produce intolerable oppression for which no 
 remedy was to be found but that of separation. 
 
 Now, nothing is more clear than that neither 
 of these conditions existed. There was no con- 
 sent sought for or expected, but, on tlie con- 
 trary, a haste in rushing into rebellion, which 
 one might almost believe was intended to pre- 
 vent the risk of either consent or conciliation. 
 
 There was no intolerable oppression, or, 
 indeed, oppression of any kind. The utmost 
 point to Avhich any mover of the sedition went, 
 was to affirm that it was feared there might be 
 some oppression hereafter, — though that was 
 not very intelligibly made out in the result of 
 the Presidential election, which proved the 
 successful party to be in a minority of the 
 whole vote of the country. We had heard, it 
 is true, a great deal about the iniquity of import 
 duties and protection of domestic industry, but 
 these were only the common resources of all 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 101 
 
 Governments, and, indeed, when it concerned 
 Southern interests, were the special requisitions 
 of Southern policy ; as, for example, in the in- 
 variable demand from the South for the pro- 
 tection of sugar and cotton, — to say nothing 
 of the protection insisted upon by the South 
 for our early cotton manufacture. 
 
 We had heard a complaint that the bounty 
 of the Government had fallen in stinted meas- 
 ure upon the South in the expenditures of the 
 revenue ; but the fact was that the public treas- 
 ure was applied in that section to the establish- 
 ment of forts, arsenals, navy-yards, hospitals, 
 custom-houses, mints, and other public struct- 
 ures, quite as liberally as they were needed, 
 and certainly without any idea of unjust dis- 
 crimination ; whilst, in addition to these ex- 
 penditures, enormous amounts, far greater than 
 were appropriated to any other section, were 
 expended in the purchase and defence of South- 
 ern territory. 
 
 We had heard a great deal said about the 
 injustice of Congress in refusing to allow the 
 extension of slavery into the territories north 
 of the Compromise line ; indeed, this was mag- 
 nified, at last, into the chief provocation to the 
 war. But quite apart from the political folly 
 
102 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 and the moral atrocity of planting slavery 
 afresh, and with premeditated design, in free 
 communities, it is to be remarked as a very 
 notable fact, in connection with this as a ground 
 of quarrel, that the Missouri Compromise was, 
 itself, a Southern measure, and its passage 
 hailed throughout the South as a signal vic- 
 tory. It is also worthy of note, that, from the 
 beginning of the Government, Southern states- 
 men have refused to allow slavery to go north 
 of that line, 36° 30'', in the Territories ; and 
 that the Northwestern Territory, embracing all 
 the Western States north of the line, was made 
 inviolably free soil by the demand of Virginia, 
 through Mr. Jefferson, and by the support of 
 Southern votes. 
 
 We may pursue this inquiry through all the 
 history of the past, and we shall find that all 
 these topics of complaint against the Govern- 
 ment, which have furnished themes for popular 
 discourse and irritation of the Southern mind, 
 and which, for more than a quarter of a cen- 
 tury, have been urged as incentives to disunion, 
 are but pretexts employed as lures to entrap the 
 ignorant, or as devices to stimulate the sedition 
 of men who welcome anything that may give 
 plausibility to a foregone purpose of revolt. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 103 
 
 The pursuit of independence by these con- 
 federated States has a very different aim from 
 the redress of such shallow griefs as these. 
 
 Whoever shall be able hereafter to reveal 
 the secret history of those various conclaves 
 which have held counsel on the repeated at- 
 tempts to invade and conquer, — or, as the 
 phrase was, liberate Cuba ; whoever shall un- 
 fold the schemes of seizing Nicaragua, of aiding 
 revolution in Mexico, of possessing Sonora, will 
 make some pretty sure advances in disclosing 
 the true pathway to the sources of this re- 
 bellion. The organization of the Knights of 
 the Golden Circle, and their spread over the 
 country ; their meetings and transactions ; who 
 managed them and set them on to do their ap- 
 pointed work, — whoever shall penetrate into 
 the midnight which veiled this order from view, 
 will also open an authentic chapter in the his- 
 tory of this outbreak. 
 
 There was a great scheme of dominion in 
 this plot. The fancy of certain Southern pol- 
 iticians was dazed with a vision of Empire. 
 Years have been rolling on whilst this brilliant 
 scheme was maturing in their private councils, 
 and at intervals startling the nation by some 
 unexpected eruption. The design, which lay 
 
104 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 too deep in darkness to be penetrated by the 
 uninitiated, occasionally rose to the surface in 
 some bold and rash adventure, which either 
 the vigilance of Government, or the imperfect 
 means of success which the necessity of con- 
 cealment imposed upon it, rendered abortive. 
 The Cuban expeditions miscarried ; the Sonora 
 failed ; the Nicaragua forays were defeated, — 
 all these chiefly by the careful watch of the 
 Government. Large sums of money were 
 squandered in these fruitless adventures, and 
 many lives were lost. Worse than these mis- 
 haps, eager hopes were disappointed and long- 
 indulged dreams dissipated. It was found that 
 the Union was in the way ; that the National 
 Government was the impediment ; and that, 
 as long as the South was bound to obey that 
 Government, these cherished schemes would 
 be always certain to miscarry. This experi- 
 ence turned the hostility of thwarted ambition 
 against the Union, and directed the thoughts 
 of these agents of mischief towards its destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 Then came the next movement. There is, 
 I think, a better foundation than mere rumor 
 for saying that overtures were made, before 
 the rebellion broke out, to the Emperor of 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 105 
 
 the French for support and patronage in the 
 scheme ; that a very alluring picture was pre- 
 sented to him of a great Southern Confederacy, 
 to embrace the land of cotton, of sugar, of cof- 
 fee, of the most precious tobaccoes, and of the 
 choicest fruits, of the most valuable timber, and 
 the richest mines, — comprehending the Gulf 
 States, Cuba, St. Domingo, and other islands, 
 Mexico, Central America, and perhaps reach- 
 ing even beyond into the borders of South 
 America, — a great tropical and semi-tropical 
 paradise of unbounded affluence of product, 
 secured by an impregnable monopoly created 
 by Nature. This large domain was to be or- 
 ganized into one Confederate Government, and 
 provided with the cheapest and most docile and 
 submissive of all labor ; its lands were to be 
 parcelled into principalities, and landlords were 
 to revel in the riches of Aladdin's lamp. This 
 was the grand idea which the Emperor was 
 solicited to patronize with his protection, for 
 which he was to be repaid in treaty arrange- 
 ments, by which France should enjoy a free 
 trade in the products of French industry, and 
 precedence in gathering the first fruits of all 
 this wealth of culture. Certainly a very daz- 
 zling lure this, to the good will of the Emperor ! 
 
106 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 It is said the Emperor was quite captivated 
 with the first view of this brilUant project, but 
 on riper deUberation was brought to a pause. 
 The scheme, he discovered, stood on one leg: 
 the whole structure rested on slavery, which 
 was much too rickettj a support to win favor 
 in this nineteenth century with the shrewdest 
 of European statesmen. The plot was " too 
 light for the counterpoise of so great an oppo- 
 sition." The structure might last a few years, 
 but very soon it would tumble down and come 
 to nought. And so, it is whispered, the Em- 
 peror declined the venture. This is a bit of 
 secret history which time may or may not 
 verify. From some inklings of that day which 
 escaped into open air, I believe it true. We 
 heard various boastings, in the summer of 1860, 
 of French support to the threatened separation, 
 and there were agents in Europe negotiating 
 for it. During all that preliminary period there 
 was a great deal said in the South about reviv- 
 ing the slave-trade. When the Emperor re- 
 fused, this was suddenly dropped and England 
 was then looked to as the ally in the coming 
 revolt. Abolition England was to be won by 
 another strategy. The Montgomery Conven- 
 tion asserted a clause in the Confederate Con- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 107 
 
 stitution forbidding tlie slave-trade, and, oddly 
 enough for a government founded on the cen- 
 tral idea of slavery, the commissioners who 
 represented it in England were authorized to 
 assure the British Minister that it was really 
 the old Government which was fighting to per- 
 petuate slavery, whilst the new one was only 
 seeking free trade ; thereby gently insinuating 
 a disinterested indifference on the slave ques- 
 tion, which might ultimately come into full 
 accord with England on that subject. These 
 revelations stand in strange contrast with the 
 popular theme that has rushed so many into 
 the rebellion. As the matter now rests, the 
 rebel Government has quite platform enough 
 to be as pro-slavery or as anti-slavery as its 
 European negotiations may require ; and if 
 these should utterly fail, there is nothing in 
 the constitutional provision to interrupt the 
 African slave-trade a single day. For what is 
 that provision worth in a region where neither 
 courts nor juries would execute the law ? 
 
 Whilst this grand idea of tropical extension 
 was seething in the brain of the leaders, and 
 their hopes of fruition were vivid, the plan was 
 to confine the revolt to the Cotton States, — - 
 or, at least, to give the Border States a very 
 
108 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 inferior role in the programme. Thej might 
 come in when all was adjusted, but were to 
 have no share in the primary organization. 
 Every one remembers how these Border States 
 were flouted in the beginning, and told they 
 were not fit to be consulted, and that the only 
 advantage they could bring to the Southern 
 Confederacy was that of serving as a frontier 
 to prevent the escape of slaves. But when 
 the original plan was found to be a failure, 
 the views of the managers were changed ; the 
 Border States became indispensable to any 
 hope of success, and the most active agencies 
 of persuasion, force, and fraud were set in mo- 
 tion to bring them in. How mournfully did it 
 strike upon the heart of the nation when Vir- 
 ginia, in the lead of this career of submission, 
 sank to the humiliation of pocketing the affront 
 that had been put upon her, and consented to 
 accept a position which nothing but the weak- 
 ness of her new comrades induced them to 
 allow her ! 
 
 Since the hope of this broader dominion has 
 come to an end, the rebellion is still persist- 
 ently pursued for the accomplishment of its 
 secondary objects. There is still, doubtless, 
 some residuary expectation that, even without 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 109 
 
 foreign patronage, in the event of success, this 
 desire of extension of territory may in time be 
 gratified ; but it is no longer the chief object 
 of pursuit. The pride of the South, its re- 
 sentment, its rage, are all now enlisted in 
 pushing forward to whatever consummation 
 they may imagine to be attainable. They now 
 insist on independence from the very hatred 
 their disappointments have engendered. But 
 they seek it, too, as the only method left for 
 the maintenance of that class domination which 
 they have ever enjoyed, and which they are 
 now unwilling to surrender. 
 
110 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS, 
 
 LETTER Vn. 
 
 EEBELLION. 
 
 January, 1864. 
 
 In the preceding letters I have had occasion 
 to say much of Secession and Revolution, and 
 to show the diflferent categories in which they 
 respectively place the war waged by the South. 
 It requires no great insight to perceive the 
 relation which these two ideas, considered as 
 motives of conduct, have to the question of 
 mere right and wrong in this conflict. In that 
 view they have a notable significance, and stand 
 very wide apart. I recur to them now to make 
 some remarks on that point, and to note the 
 alternate use the partisans of the South have 
 made of these two topics as persuasives in aid 
 of their project to destroy the Union. 
 
 By the opportune use of both, as occasion 
 favored, they have increased the popularity of 
 their cause. They would have failed if they 
 had been compelled to present it to their peo- 
 ple singly, upon either of the two. Neither 
 
ME. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. Ill 
 
 secession alone, nor revolution alone, would have 
 found that undivided support which is essential 
 to success. In that storm of excitement raised 
 by their chiefs at the beginning of the strife, 
 and in the flurry of that vainglorious, and, I 
 might say, insolent spirit of defiance, — that con- 
 temptuous disparagement of the North as a self- 
 ish, vulgar, and craven people, over whom they 
 promised an easy victory and a short war, — 
 the Southern masses were hurried along into 
 the irrevocable step of rebellion. Few stopped 
 to weigh the excuse for such a step, but listened 
 with willing ear to every pretext, however false 
 or feeble, in its justification, which partisanship 
 or political bigotry could suggest. The multi- 
 tude were incapable of any accurate or con- 
 scientious opinion on the subject ; all were 
 anxious to take a quick part in the coming 
 fray, not doubting for a moment that the pre- 
 ordained feat was to be accomplished with little 
 more expenditure of means than the show of 
 force and a swaggering boast of certain tri- 
 umph. Thus it came that we saw the instant 
 exhibition of that martial array, which aston- 
 ished the world by its magnitude and the sober 
 thinking people of the Loyal States by its mad- 
 ness. All that host which came into ihe field, 
 
112 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 and that great reserve which stood behind it at 
 home, claimed the vindication of their conduct 
 on one or the other of these motives, — often in 
 the avowal of both. They professed secession, 
 or revolution, or both, quite indifferent to the 
 moral responsibility inferred by either. 
 
 I have observed many persons, whose pre- 
 vious education and habit of opinion had com- 
 mitted them against the doctrine of secession, 
 seizing with avidity upon what they were glad 
 to call a right of revolution, too plainly as a 
 mere salvo to bring their easily satisfied con- 
 sciences into accord with their foregone resolve 
 to embark in the rebellion. They imagined 
 they had found a complete justification in so 
 wretched a self-deceit as this, even for a deed so 
 portentous as that of rending their country in- 
 to fragments. They did not deign to ask them- 
 selves the question whether their revolution 
 had a single plea to redeem it from the disgrace 
 of an immeasurable crime. It was enough to 
 call it " revolution," and thenceforth treason be- 
 came transmuted into a virtue. ''You are very 
 much mistaken, sir," said a young Marylander, 
 conversing with an acquaintance in Washing- 
 ton, just after the famous nineteenth of April, 
 speaking with exultation of that bloody scene 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 113 
 
 ill the streets of Baltimore, in which citizen 
 soldiers, whilst peaceably marching through, in 
 obedience to law and in the performance of 
 honorable duty, were ferociously set upon and 
 murdered, — the young spokesman himself 
 scarcely concealing his own participation in the 
 affair, but describing it as a heroic exploit, — 
 " You are much mistaken when you call this 
 a riot. No, sir ; it is a revohition ! Maryland 
 does not go for secession, she goes for revolu- 
 tion." All thought of crime had, of course, 
 vanished from his mind. His heart was full of 
 war. He was ready to desolate every field in 
 Maryland and convert her chief city into a 
 blackened ruin. Revolution — with what ex- 
 cuse for it ! — had been installed. The next 
 step was to make it glorious with carnage. 
 
 With such a flippant and silly casuistry as 
 this, how many thousands have imbrued their 
 hands in the blood of their brethren ! 
 
 I have seen others, not quite bold enough to 
 outface the opinion of the community in which 
 they lived, by an open avowal of a purpose of 
 revolution — there being still some prudent 
 suspicion that the people of the neighborhood 
 were not yet maddened up to the delusion of 
 believing in the tyranny of our free Govern- 
 8 
 
114 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 ment — who have gradually slid into the doc- 
 trine of secession, as the only shift left them to 
 gratify a love for political excitement, and to 
 furnish a pretext for joining the ranks of com- 
 rades who had fired their imagination with 
 visions of honor and hopes of personal reward 
 to be won over the prostrate body of their 
 country. In such case the feeble plea of se- 
 cession — once called the peaceful process of 
 change — was held to justify all the wild vio- 
 lence which preluded and challenged the meas- 
 ures taken by the Government for its own 
 defence. 
 
 I will not say that there are not large num- 
 bers of persons in the South who have given 
 their aid to this destructive war on more honest 
 grounds. It is not credible that, in a conflict 
 of such momentous issues, whole communities 
 should rush into it with such earnest zeal as 
 stirs the heart of the Southern States, and 
 should pursue it with such brave perseverance, 
 through such an experience of suffering and 
 sacrifice as we now witness, without being 
 sustained by some very vivid conviction of 
 right and duty. We know too well, and deplore 
 too poignantly, the fact that in those ranks are 
 found many men adorned with the best qual- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 115 
 
 ities that inspire respect and confidence. Their 
 armies and their councils are full of them. 
 They do us a great injustice if they think we 
 underrate either their sincerity or their per- 
 sonal worth. How joyously would we welcome 
 them back to that brotherhood which they have 
 so recklessly broken ! But all history warns 
 us that the virtue of strife is not to be judged 
 by the fervor of its champions nor by the earn- 
 estness of their convictions. A false principle, 
 unhappily, more potently invokes the intem- 
 perate vindication of mankind than a true one. 
 It wages a fiercer war ; although, in the end, it 
 is surest of overthrow. When it is brought into 
 conflict with the sentiment of a society as pow- 
 erful as its own, the very hazard of its assertion 
 presents a danger which exaggerates it into a 
 passion that so distempers the mind as to make 
 reflection hopeless. Many good men of the 
 South have been swept from their feet by this 
 impulse as by a whirlwind. 
 
 It is very difiicult to find the means of 
 friendly approach, in a rebellion like this, to 
 the class of men I have just described, — men 
 who, with honest convictions, have fallen into 
 the error of false opinion, through temperament 
 or local influence or some ply of early educa- 
 
116 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 tion. The wrong-headed are proverbially ob- 
 stinate, even in the debates of tranquil life ; they 
 are proportionately hopeless of persuasion in 
 the great turmoils of public affairs, when pas- 
 sion stimulates the heart and inflames the pride 
 of the mind. 
 
 In looking to this description of really earn- 
 est champions of the South, we shall find them, 
 like the others, divided between the two mo- 
 tives to which I have referred. 
 
 There are not a few of the most authorita- 
 tive of these champions who, by some strange 
 aberration which almost amounts to an idiosyn- 
 crasy, have grown up in the conscientious belief 
 that our national Union was never, and never 
 meant to be, anything better than a rope of 
 sand, — the feeblest voluntary compact, un- 
 guarded by a single defence against the supe- 
 rior power of the States ; that no one owed it 
 allegiance, — not even the poor respect of rev- 
 erence ; that no State owed it obedience any 
 further than suited its own convenience. Such 
 a fancy must naturally engender contempt for 
 the Union whenever a contingency should arise 
 to bring it into conflict with State preten- 
 sion. 
 
 We may trace this extraordinary doctrine to 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 117 
 
 a political vice which has been nursed in the 
 peculiar constitution of Southern society, and 
 which has given the predominant hue to all 
 characteristic Southern opinion ; that most per- 
 nicious vice of an exorbitant and engrossing 
 State pride, — a sentiment, which we may say, 
 is not only dangerous, but fatal to any just 
 estimate or conception of the national suprem- 
 acy. 
 
 I do not stop here to consider the source, the 
 extent or the influences of this sentiment. I 
 have only to remark, that it takes hold of much 
 of the Southern mind with the grasp and qual- 
 ity of a great egotism, creating an emotion of 
 self-glorification in those who foster it, and 
 breeding ideas of sectional and personal supe- 
 riority which make them jealous of the Na- 
 tional Government, and, in a certain sense, 
 unfriendly to all who look upon that Govern- 
 ment as a paramount power. They habitually 
 desirade the Union in the common esteem of 
 their circle, reduce their politics to the stand- 
 ard of a narrow provincialism, and disqualify 
 themselves for that comprehensive statesman- 
 ship which embraces catholic love of country. 
 
 We have been accustomed in past time — 
 long before this sad commotion had ruffled the 
 
118 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 surface of our peaceful life — to smile at some 
 of the phases of character which this sentiment 
 had impressed upon a class of country gentle- 
 men very frequently encountered in the older 
 States of the South. Many a man of this 
 worshipful order, jocund and complacent in 
 the patriarchal dignity conferred by hereditary 
 bondsmen and acres, has been pleasantly noted, 
 in those innocent days, for a constitutional 
 dogmatism on the question of the sovereignty 
 of the State, and for the radiant self-satisfac- 
 tion with which he was wont to demonstrate 
 the shallowness of that pestilent fallacy which, 
 he affirmed, so often misled the logic of Con- 
 gress and muddled the brains of Webster and 
 Clay, — and even, he was sorry to believe, of 
 Marshall and Madison, — the fallacy, namely, 
 of supposing that the United States could law- 
 fully a.spire to the grandeur of a nation. Cen- 
 tralization was the phantom which appeared 
 especially to haunt the minds of these worthy 
 gentlemen. " We are plunging into the gulf 
 of centralization," was their common warning. 
 If, in making this dogma clear, they were some- 
 what incomprehensible or even tedious, they 
 were always earnest and, in their own judg- 
 ment, infallible. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 119 
 
 But whilst this State pride did no greater 
 harm, in our earher and happier era, than the 
 producing this crop of impracticable dialecti- 
 cians, whose obstructive philosophy was con- 
 stantly overleaped by the general good sense of 
 the nation, and whom the country could afford 
 to endure, and even to flatter, for the good- 
 natured vanity of their opinions, it has, in this 
 later and sadder day, converted its once innoc- 
 uous votaries into seditious plotters against the 
 common peace, and, by rapid transition, into 
 fierce soldiers and implacable rebels. It has 
 now become apparent that this excessive pride 
 of State has been silently, for half a century 
 or more, sowing the seeds of that dreadful 
 strife of which the present generation is reap- 
 ing the harvest. 
 
 All of this class of thinkers — whom I have 
 sought to characterize by their extravagant 
 devotion to a distorted ideal of the ascendant 
 position of the State in our political system, 
 and by their personal sentiment of State pride 
 and its corollaries of State rights, as these are 
 magnified by the lens of Southern opinion — 
 are, by natural consequence and fair deduction 
 from their antecedents, out-and-out Secession- 
 ists, honestly consistent in their faith, and do 
 
120 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 not pretend to, or desire, other justification for 
 their participation in the present disturbance, 
 than that which they find in their own phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 There is another class, the counterpart to 
 these, equally sincere in their conviction, 
 wholly opposed to this theory of secession,' 
 w^holly unstricken by this inordinate estimate 
 of the State, who are afflicted with a hallucina- 
 tion even more mischievous. They are men 
 who have wrought themselves to the belief 
 that the National Government has already 
 grown to be a monster of such horrid propor- 
 tions and propensities as to be no longer endur- 
 able by a free people ; that it has been per- 
 verted — to use their own language — into " a 
 consolidated despotism," under the pressure of 
 wdiose malignant power all liberty, civil and 
 religious, is doomed to be crushed out ; that 
 the representative system no longer affords 
 space for the expression of the popular will as 
 a defence against executive ambition ; that 
 State organizations are no longer barriers 
 ao-ainst national encroachments, and that the 
 President and his party are not only the abso- 
 lute lords of the ascendant, but that their 
 power is destined to be perpetual and univer- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 121 
 
 sal. Such are the spectres that have affrighted 
 the imagination of these men and moved them 
 to the melancholy conviction that nothing short 
 of a bloody revolution can rescue them and 
 their generations from the grasp of this inex- 
 orable tyranny. Nothing, therefore, in their 
 view, is more righteous, manly, and patriotic 
 than a stern appeal to the sword as a redress 
 for their wrongs. In this excited temper they 
 rush into the melee oT revolution, with the sin- 
 cere hope of being able to regain their lost lib- 
 erties in a New Confederacy enlightened and 
 sustained by the tolerant and freedom-loving 
 nature of Southern opinion, — and founded on 
 the sacred corner-stone of unlimited African 
 slavery ! 
 
 Both of these opposite groups of thinkers are 
 now profoundly in earnest in this conflict, and, 
 what is certainly calculated to excite the won- 
 der of an unconcerned spectator, are quite in 
 harmony with each other, acting together for a 
 common end, apparently unconscious of their 
 divergence of creed, and the trouble they 
 might expect to find, in the event of success, 
 to administer to their mutual satisfaction the 
 form of government they have unanimously 
 adopted. 
 
122 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 Now, it is to be remarked that, whilst the 
 master spirits of this furious war have seen the 
 value and taken advantao;e of these alternate 
 agencies which have been so busy in stirring 
 up the people to a revolt against the Govern- 
 ment ; and whilst they have lost no opportunity 
 to encourage this variety of motive, and have 
 plied every artifice of seduction or force to 
 lure, drive, or drag impetuous manhood and 
 credulous age, no less than pliant youth, into 
 fatal alliance with the crime of treason, by every 
 argument adapted to the prejudices, scruples, 
 or different temperaments they had to deal 
 with, they have themselves been cautious, in 
 every public or official proclamation of their 
 enterprise, to avoid any acknowledgment of a 
 design of revolution. Whatever the intrinsic 
 motive of their assault has been, however vio- 
 lent and revolutionary their proceeding, the 
 official attitude they have assumed is that of 
 States asserting their right to a peaceful and 
 constitutional retirement from the National 
 Union. They proclaim a right of secession as 
 the sole basis of their action ; whilst it is too 
 unhappily evident that both their design and 
 practice are revolution in its boldest and rudest 
 form of exhibition. Their proclamation is 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 123 
 
 intended for the world, and more especially 
 for that European world whose sympathy they 
 have evoked, whose aid they have expected, 
 and whose moral support it was deemed all 
 important to conciliate. 
 
 They were too astute not to perceive that 
 — whilst their scheme was simply a design to 
 destroy the Union by a daring and impious act 
 of violence, and upon its ruins to construct a 
 separate empire of their own, adapted to the 
 polity suggested by their personal ambition and 
 the greed of a fancied boundless wealth — they 
 w^ould hold a vantage ground in the great quar- 
 rel by keeping out of view every consideration 
 which might infer their acknowledgment of a 
 rebel position. 
 
 We may easily recount the obvious disad- 
 vantages which such an avowal would have 
 thrown in their way, and which the secession 
 theory — if the world could be persuaded to 
 accredit it — would avoid. 
 
 First. The acknowledgment of a revolution- 
 ary movement would (as I have hitherto had 
 occasion to remark) have carried the admission 
 that they were the aggressors in the war; that 
 war was contemplated by them as the neces- 
 sary and premeditated means of their success, 
 
124 MB. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 and was, consequently, an act of their own 
 making, — for revolution always implies rebel- 
 lion, and rebellion is war. 
 
 Second. It would have silenced at once that 
 popular outcry against coercion whicii was found 
 so effective, in the beginning of the quarrel, in 
 exciting a prejudice against the Government, 
 by charging it with the perpetration of a fla- 
 grant outrage against States that were merely 
 asserting their constitutional rights. For rebel- 
 lion being in its nature aggressive, every man 
 would acknowledge that the Governmer.t would 
 be but in the performance of its clearest duty 
 in arraying the force of the country to resist 
 the blow aimed at it and to punish the assail- 
 ant. If there be any obligation more distinctly 
 sanctioned by the concurrent opinion of man- 
 kind or the law of nations, and the neolect of 
 which is stigmatized by a deeper disgrace than 
 any other in the sphere of public duty, it is 
 that which is demanded of every nation to pro- 
 tect the welfare of its people against " privy 
 conspiracy, sedition, and rebellion," — those 
 three grievous plagues of organized society 
 agaiiist which the Church weekly invokes the 
 deliverance of Heaven. If, therefore, the rebel 
 leaders had announced their desicrn as one of 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 125 
 
 revolution, seeking to overthrow the laws and 
 break up the established order of the Union by 
 violent application of force, there was no man 
 amongst them so obtuse as not to be capable of 
 seeing how senseless must have been the com- 
 plaint against the President for invoking the aid 
 of the military power of the country to resist 
 them. 
 
 Third. They knew that a scheme of revolu- 
 tion, being an appeal to those who are discon- 
 tented with the Government to rebel against it, 
 only addresses itself to such as believe in its 
 expediency, and leaves all who do not assent 
 to that expediency at liberty to refuse their 
 aid ; that this freedom of action would, in the 
 first stages of the movement, have allowed a 
 large portion of the people of the South the 
 opportunity to stand firm to their loyalty, and 
 refuse to take any share in the revolt against 
 their country ; whilst, on the secession theory, 
 the State would act in its sovereign capacity, 
 and, by declaring the separation complete, 
 would exact the obedience of its citizens. In 
 the first case, the citizen would regard himself 
 as an individual free agent, with full liberty to 
 decide upon his own conduct ; in the latter, he 
 would be overborne and coerced by a corporate 
 
126 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 authority claiming his allegiance and subordi- 
 nating his individual will to what is called the 
 public interest. 
 
 Fourth. Revolution also infers another and 
 still more embarrassing right, — that of coun- 
 ter revolution. If the State may rebel against 
 the National Government, why may not an 
 aggrieved or discontented portion of the people 
 of the State rebel against the State ? Rebellion 
 is a teacher of " bloody instructions " which 
 may " return to plague the inventor." What 
 argument can Virginia, for example, make in 
 favor of a revolt against the authority of the 
 Union, that may not be used with tenfold force 
 by her own western counties to justify a revolt 
 against her ? Virginia herself had really no 
 definable grievance against the Union. She 
 was absolute mistress of her own domestic gov- 
 ernment, and could freely enact and execute all 
 laws which she might deem necessary to her 
 own welfare within her own limits. No human 
 power could interfere with her there. She has 
 never yet indicated a single item of grievance 
 resulting from the acts of the Federal Govern- 
 ment. In fact that Government has always 
 been, in great part, in her own hands, or under 
 the control of her influence. If she has not 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 127 
 
 been liappy and prosperous it is her own fault. 
 I mean to say, she has no cause whatever to ex- 
 cuse her rebelHon against the Union. Yet she 
 revolted ; we may say, gave to the revolution 
 a countenance and support without which it 
 would have speedily sunk into a futile enter- 
 prise. Having come into it, she assumed the 
 right to compel her unwilling citizens to cast 
 their lives and fortunes into the same issue. A 
 large portion of her people, comprising the in- 
 habitants of many counties in the mountain 
 region of the AUeghanies, have always been 
 distinguished — as, indeed, seems to be the 
 characteristic of all our mountain country — 
 for their strong attachment to the Union. 
 These people have an aversion to slavery, and 
 have been steadily intent upon establishing and 
 expanding a system of free labor. Tliey have, 
 in fact, very little in common, either of sen- 
 timent or interest, with the governing power 
 of the State. When, therefore, the question 
 of secession was submitted to them, they voted 
 against it. From that moment they were 
 marked, and when the State, under the con- 
 trol of its lowland interest, raised the banner 
 of revolt, its first movement was to invite the 
 Southern army to occupy the mountain dis- 
 
128 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 tricts, to overawe and drive the people there, 
 not only into submission to the dominant power 
 of the State, but into active hostility against 
 the Union. To this end these loyal people were 
 pursued with a bitter persecution, harried by a 
 ruffian soldiery, hunted from their homes into 
 the mountain fastnesses, their dwellings burnt, 
 their crops destroyed, their fields laid waste, 
 and every other cruelty inflicted upon them 
 to which the savage spirit of revolution usu- 
 ally resorts to compel the consent of those who 
 resist its command. The inhabitants of these 
 beautiful mountain valleys are a simple, brave, 
 and sturdy people, and all these terrors were 
 found insufficient to force them into an act of 
 treason. They refused, and in their turn re- 
 volted against this execrable tyranny and drew 
 their swords in favor of the Union. What 
 more natural or righteous than such a resist- 
 ance ? And yet, Virginia affects to consider 
 this the deepest of crimes, and is continually 
 threatening vengeance against what she calls 
 these rebels : — Virginia, the rebel, denounc- 
 ing rebellion ! 
 
 Her own plea is, that she has only seceded; 
 but Western Virginia rebels. There is a great 
 difference ! 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 129 
 
 The Southern Confederacy, like Virginia, 
 sees tliis great difference in the two catego- 
 ries, and is quick enough to take advantage, 
 as occasion serves, of that which suits its pur- 
 pose. 
 
 The same state of things exists in Eastern 
 Tennessee, in Western North Carolina, in 
 Arkansas, and even in parts of, Georgia and 
 Alabama. Counter revolution would be rife 
 in many districts, if the rebel Government did 
 not suppress it with an iron hand, and sub- 
 jugate the people by the presence of military 
 force. Even this would be impossible if they 
 had not insinuated into the popular mind of 
 the South, as largely as they have done, the 
 conviction of a right of secession, and per- 
 suaded the country that they were acting on 
 that theory, and were but asserting the legiti- 
 mate sovereignty of the States. 
 
 Western Virginia, for two years, endured 
 the privation and suffering of this cruel and 
 wicked attempt to enforce its submission and 
 compel its people to abjure their earnest and 
 eager allegiance to the Union — two years that 
 left them without law, without any of the ap- 
 paratus of government, helpless in everything 
 but their own firm resolution and voluntary self- 
 9 
 
130 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 control as an orderly community ; until, find- 
 ing themselves under a necessity for organiza- 
 tion, they erected their broken community into 
 a government claiming its foundation in a just 
 and righteous revolution, and in that character 
 sought a place in the Union. Congress assented 
 to their claim, and holding them, moreover, as 
 loyal men, cgnstituting a majority in number 
 of the whole people of Virginia who retained 
 a lawful citizenship in that State, accorded to 
 them the right to express the voice of the State 
 in favor of the division which thus gave a new 
 member to the Union. 
 
 What lawful objection can the South make 
 to this counter revolution, but the simple, and, 
 in the actual state of the case, absurd idea 
 that it is not itself pursuing a career of revo- 
 lution, but only a constitutional right of seces- 
 sion ? 
 
 Lastly, I may add to the considerations which 
 have operated upon the mind of the Southern 
 leaders in their endeavor to persuade the world 
 that they are not amenable to the responsibili- 
 ties of a rebellion, one which I have presented 
 in a former letter, and which I briefly repeat 
 here as necessary to the completeness of this 
 summary. The inauguration of a rebellion 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 131 
 
 imposes upon those who attempt it the neces- 
 sity of showing a just cause for such an assault 
 upon the peace of society. It must be no 
 casual disturbance of the welfare of a district, 
 no fancied possible wrong impending over the 
 future, no motive of factious ambition, but 
 a real, present, permanent element of actual 
 or prospective discontent which is beyond the 
 reach of peaceful redress through the appointed 
 forms of amendment, but which is so radicated 
 in the constitution of government that nothing 
 short of forcible resistance can remove it. The 
 writers in the interest of legitimacy, as that is 
 understood in European law, say it must be 
 a condition of intolerable and irremediable op- 
 pression. Our American doctrine does not go 
 so far as that. We substitute for it a reason- 
 able apprehension of an incurable perversion of 
 government towards the invasion of public or 
 private rights. And, even in that case, rev- 
 olution cannot justly be resorted to until, by 
 appeal to all the normal or appointed means 
 of redress, it is proved that remedy is hope- 
 less. Short of these conditions, revolution is 
 the greatest of crimes, the blacker in propor- 
 tion to the unrealit^T- of the asserted grief or the 
 neglect of the resort to the ordained process of 
 
132 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 amendment. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive 
 of any justifiable motive to revolution in a 
 popular representative government, where the 
 whole sovereign power resides in the people 
 themselves, and their constitution and laws are 
 subject to any amelioration suggested by the 
 popular will. Certainly the founders of our 
 government supposed that, in the scheme they 
 matured, they had forever extinguished the 
 right of revolution. 
 
 But those I have enumerated are, at least, 
 the conditions to which the leaders of the pres- 
 ent rebellion would be bound to submit their 
 action, if they confess a design to overthrow the 
 Union by force ; and, confessing that design, 
 they would occupy simply the position of rebels 
 fully aware of the hazards and the penalty of 
 their undertaking, and presumably ready to 
 meet them. In that view they become liable 
 to be treated as traitors, they, their aiders and 
 abettors. They lose all claim to the protection 
 of the laws, and, still more emphatically, to 
 the right to exercise any privilege of national 
 citizenship. They can hold no office. State or 
 Federal, which implies allegiance to the Gov- 
 ernment ; they abjure or renounce all right to 
 give a vote in either State or national affairs 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 133 
 
 where tlie qualification demands national citi- 
 zenship ; they are enemies, while in arms, to 
 be met in mortal conflict ; when subdued, they 
 are culprits, dependent upon the clemency or 
 the justice of the Government. 
 
 It was to avoid these conclusions, as I have 
 said, that the authors of this movement have 
 been careful to veil their proceeding under the 
 official proclamation of the right of secession. 
 
 They have found it a difficult task to recon- 
 cile the impetuous rashness of their career with 
 this theory. Secession, if honestly conceived 
 to be a right, and honestly pursued, would have 
 sought, at least, a preliminary parley in a con- 
 vention. It would have moved slowly along 
 through all the customary forms of debate. It 
 would have published a manifesto of its motives 
 for the separation, and calmly laid down the 
 law which defined its privilege, and have shown 
 the unanimity of the Southern people in the 
 belief of it. None of these things has it done. 
 The conductors of the proceeding began in a 
 paroxysm of impetuous enthusiasm ; asserted 
 their purpose in a general muster of their 
 forces ; put every State in arms, and furnished 
 their magazines of war ; boasted of their prow- 
 ess, with threats of seizure of the Capital, and 
 
134 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 even of invasion and conquest of the North ; 
 glorified themselves with the imagination of 
 an unlimited control over the sympathy and 
 interest of foreign Powers, which they confi- 
 dently contemplated as prompt and irresistible 
 allies. Their language was not only that of 
 arrogant dictation, but of eager and bloody de- 
 fiance. They rushed forward with a precipita- 
 tion which seemed, and no doubt was intended, 
 to preclude all reflection or inquiry into the 
 merits of the cause. There was the ominous 
 glimmer of predetermined war in every step 
 that was taken. Their first act was to close 
 the courts against the recovery of debts, which 
 was sufficiently explained, in the sequel, by the 
 confiscation of all moneys due to Northern cred- 
 itors. The "Charleston Mercury," exulting 
 in the approach of the day for assembling the 
 State Convention, maliciously spoke of seces- 
 sion as "quasi war," which would justify, what, 
 even then, it recommended, the sequestration of 
 all property in the South belonging to North- 
 ern citizens. They seized the national forts and 
 arsenals wherever they could lay their hands 
 on them ; insulted the nation and disgraced 
 themselves by a contemptible act of contrived 
 treachery in compassing the surrender of the 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 135 
 
 army in Texas by the complicity of its own 
 officers. They wanted money, and they seized 
 the mint at New Orleans ; arms, and they 
 seized the manufactory at Harper's Ferry ; 
 ships, cannon, and naval stores, and they 
 forcibly took possession of the navy-yard at 
 Gosport, and pounced upon revenue-cutters, 
 private steamers, and merchant-vessels at their 
 moorings ; they even exhorted and encouraged 
 officers of the navy, to whom the nation had 
 confided the guardianship of its honor and its 
 flag, to betray that sacred trust, by an act too 
 base to find expression in the vocabulary of ex- 
 ecration. All these things were done, for the 
 most part, in the States where they were per- 
 petrated, before they had even laid the flimsy 
 foundation of an ordinance of secession, and 
 done, too, by the orders and assistance of men 
 who have wearied the public ear with the cease- 
 less vaunt of their chivalry ! 
 
 Senators and Cabinet Ministers, as well as 
 officers of the army and navy, did not scruple 
 to retain their posts for no other reason than 
 the advantage it gave them in striking a more 
 sure and deadly blow at the heart of the Gov- 
 ernment which had elevated them to these 
 honors. History, in its most revolting chap- 
 
136 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 ters, does not furnish a page of deeper infamy 
 than that engendered by the madness of this 
 wicked zeal to destroy. Perfidy would seem 
 to have risen to the rank of a cardinal virtue : 
 ^''Tanta vis moi^biy uti tabes, civium animos in- 
 vaserat!^^ 
 
 These acts, let me repeat, were chiefly the 
 forerunners of the deed of secession, perpe- 
 trated in a time of peace, and whilst the Na- 
 tional Government was yet in the hands of the 
 perpetrators, a helpless, compliant, and almost 
 willing accessary to their design ; when the 
 small national army and navy were scattered 
 far and wide ; when that untrained military 
 power which sleeps in the bosom of the Re- 
 public, and which no peril had yet awakened, 
 could not possibly have been arrayed to meet 
 the emergency ; when the public mind was 
 palsied by the sudden stupor which this in- 
 credible outrage had cast upon it. In these 
 circumstances was the peaceful process of se- 
 cession set on foot, and the deceived masses of 
 the Southern States stimulated into that un- 
 natural frenzy which wildly hurried them into 
 a treason from which retreat soon became im- 
 possible. 
 
 When this drama of Secession came to the 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 137 
 
 stage of its formal enactment in the passage 
 of the secession ordinances, it was character- 
 ized by frauds only more stupendous than 
 those I have described, because they impli- 
 cated a greater number of actors and spread 
 over a wider surface. 
 
 Whilst some of the States, perhaps a major- 
 ity of them, were in earnest in their resolve to 
 secede, the most important States were not ; 
 and if the people in these had been left to 
 the free expression of their wish they would 
 have refused. The Convention of Virginia 
 had been elected by a vote which was largely 
 against secession, and the Legislature which 
 authorized that Convention had taken care to 
 provide that no ordinance of secession should 
 have any effect unless ratified by a subsequent 
 expression of the popular w^ill in the regular 
 election. When the Convention assembled at 
 Richmond there was a majority of its members 
 opposed to the ordinance. The scenes that 
 were enacted in the sequence of the proceed- 
 ing by which that majority was reduced to a 
 minority, are only partially known to the 
 country. Whilst the sessions were open to 
 the public observation the majority held its 
 ground, but amidst what perils and appliances 
 
138 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 every inhabitant of Richmond at that time 
 knows. The best men of the State, and there 
 were many, who had dared to speak in the 
 Convention in favor of the Union, were ex- 
 posed to the grossest insults from the mob that 
 filled the lobbies, and by whom they were pur- 
 sued with hootings and threats to their own 
 dwellings. Still, no vote could be got suffi- 
 cient to carry the ordinance. The Conven- 
 tion then resolved to exclude the public and 
 manage their work in secret session. From 
 that day affairs took a new turn. The commu- 
 nity of Richmond was filled with strife. The 
 friends of the Union, both in the Convention 
 and out of it, — a large number of persons, — 
 were plunged into the deepest anxiety and 
 alarm. They felt that the cause was lost, and 
 that the sentiment of the majority of the State 
 would be overruled. Quarrels arose. Ardent 
 and reckless men were distempered with pas- 
 sion. It was no longer safe to discuss the 
 subject of the day in the streets. The hotels 
 were filled with strangers, loud, peremptory, 
 and fierce. A friend of the Union could not 
 mingle in these crowds without certainty of 
 insult, nor eveii sometimes without danger of 
 personal violence. The recusant members of 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 139 
 
 the Convention were plied with every expe- 
 dient to enforce their submission. The weak 
 were derided, the timid bullied, the wavering 
 cajoled with false promises and false represen- 
 tations of the state of opinion in the country. 
 Those who could not be reached by these ar- 
 guments, but who were found pliable to more 
 genial impulses, were assailed by flattery, by 
 the influences of friendship, by the blandish- 
 ments of the dinner-table, and finally carried 
 away by the. wild enthusiasm. of midnight rev- 
 elry. If the Convention had sat in Staunton or 
 Fredericksburg — anywhere but in Richmond — 
 no ordinance of secession would probably have 
 been passed. As it was, it was a work of long 
 and sinister industry to bring it about. It be- 
 came necessary to fire the people with new and 
 startling sensations, — to craze the public mind 
 with excitement. To this end messages were 
 sent to Charleston to urge the bombardment 
 of Sumter. The fort was accordingly assailed 
 and forced to surrender, notwithstanding an 
 assurance from the commander that he could 
 not hold out three days for want of provisions. 
 The President's proclamation calling out the 
 militia — which was the necessary and ex- 
 pected consequence of this outrage — supplied 
 
140 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 all the rage that was wanted. The whole 
 South became ablaze. Men lost all self-con- 
 trol, and were ready to obey any order. The 
 vote of the Convention had been canvassed 
 from time to time, during this process of ripen- 
 ing the resolution of members for the act of 
 secession, and it was now found that it might 
 be successfully put. It was taken three days 
 after the surrender of Fort Sumter, and the 
 public were told it was carried by a large 
 majority. Subsequent disclosures show that 
 upwards of fifty of its members stood firm and 
 preserved their equanimity in this great tem- 
 pest of passion. The scene at the taking of 
 the vote is described by one of its members as 
 the riot of a hospital of lunatics. 
 
 The ratification of this act was yet to be 
 gone through, as prescribed by the law, in a 
 vote of the people to be taken in May. That 
 proceeding was substantially ignored in all that 
 followed. An appointment of members to the 
 rebel Congress was immediately made, to repre- 
 sent the State in the Provisional Government 
 then established at Montgomery. The Presi- 
 dent of the new Confederacy was forthwith 
 invited to send an army into the State ; and, 
 accordingly, when the month of May arrived, 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 141 
 
 troops were posted in all those counties where 
 it was supposed any considerable amount of 
 loyalty to the Union existed amongst the peo- 
 ple. The day of flection appointed for the 
 ratification found this force stationed at the 
 polls, and the refractory people mastered and 
 quelled into silence. Union men were threat- 
 ened in their lives if they should dare to vote 
 against the ordinance ; and an influential leader 
 in the movement, but recently a Senator of the 
 United States, wrote and published a letter hint- 
 ing to those who might be rash enough to vote 
 against secession, that they must expect to be 
 driven out of the State. Of course, the ratifi- 
 cation found no opposition in any doubtful 
 county. I do not say that, in a free vote, it 
 might not have been carried. Harper's Ferry 
 and the Gosport Navy Yard had both, in pur- 
 suance of that policy of profitable sensation- 
 making, been seized in the interval after the 
 passage of the ordinance, and the passions of 
 the people had been still more fiercely wrought 
 up to a fury that had banished all hope of 
 reflection ; but my object is to show that the 
 wdiole secession movement was planned and 
 conducted in the spirit of headlong revolution 
 and premeditated war. ' 
 
142 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 In Tennessee the proceeding was even less 
 orderly than in Virginia. In Missouri it was 
 no better. The attempt was made to carry 
 Kentucky and Maryland by the same arts and 
 the same frauds, but utterly failed. Maryland 
 has repudiated secession and its abettors with a 
 persistent and invincible loyalty. Kentucky, 
 under severe trials and in the actual contest of 
 civil war, has bravely and honorably preserved 
 her faith and repelled every assault. Secession 
 has never won an inch of her soil that it did 
 not temporarily win by the sword, and was not 
 again forced to abandon. In not less than 
 seven or eight elections has she declared her 
 unalterable fealty to the Union by overwhelm- 
 ing majorities. There has never been the 
 smallest ground for a pretence of her accept- 
 ance of a place in the Southern Confederacy, 
 where, nevertheless, she is feigned to be repre- 
 sented by members in both houses of the rebel 
 Congress, — not one of whom would dare to 
 show himself openly in the district he affects to 
 represent. We are at a loss to imagine any 
 pretext to claim this stanch and loyal State as 
 one in that treasonable fellowship, unless it be 
 that, being the birthplace of their President, 
 it was necessary to claim it for the Confederacy, 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 143 
 
 in order to avoid the awkward predicament of 
 having rewarded, with the highest honor, the 
 man who could, in violation of the most sacred 
 principles of Southern chivalry — certainly that 
 most ostentatiously clamored in the ear of the 
 world, as distinctive of the Southern cause — 
 consent to draw his sword against his own 
 State. 
 
 It is not necessary to pursue further the his- 
 tory of these events as they were developed in 
 the first stage of this ferocious assault upon the 
 Union. Those I have brought into view are 
 quite sufficient to afford us an unmistakable 
 index to the purpose and temper of the South- 
 ern leaders. They denote rebellion, and noth- 
 ing but rebellion, against the lawful Government 
 of the United States, — rebellion conceived in 
 the bitterest hostility and perpetrated with im- 
 mediate recourse to arms. They prove the dis- 
 simulation of that official challenge to the world 
 to recognize, in this terrible attack upon the 
 public order, an honest assertion of a constitu- 
 tional right. They cast an air of shocking 
 mockery over that peevish plaint which came 
 up everywhere, at that day, from the depths of 
 the Secession, — " All we ask is, Let us alone /" 
 
 The movement was revolution, — an attempt 
 
144 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 to break to pieces an existing dynasty by force ; 
 and history will so describe it. Let it be meas- 
 ured by the law of Revolution. If the National 
 Government has grievously failed in its duty to 
 any State, afflicting it with an irremediable 
 wrong, let it be so judged and the revolution 
 vindicated. If, on the other hand, the Gov- 
 ernment of the Union has done them no wrong ; 
 if these complaints have grown out of the mere 
 illusion of a heated fancy ; still more, if this 
 wild and reckless outrage upon the peace of 
 society has been prompted by the insolence of 
 ambition ; and the credulous hosts of the South 
 have been persuaded by fraudulent misrepre- 
 sentation to lift their hands against the pater- 
 nal and beneficent Government that has pro- 
 tected them and given them the inappreciable 
 blessings of a grand and powerful republic ; 
 and, above all, if the contrivers of this flagitious 
 plot have been pandering to the rival enmity 
 of the great Powers of the earth, to win their 
 aid in this parricidal enterprise, and have sought, 
 by the unutterable baseness of complicity with 
 them, to shear the American people of that 
 strength which has made them and their institu- 
 tions the refuge of oppressed Freedom through- 
 out the world — then, we say, let them be held 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 145 
 
 to tlie strict responsibility of that immense 
 crime. 
 
 And, again, if there really be any consider- 
 able portion of the people of the United States 
 — sufficiently considerable to originate authen- 
 tic opinion — who believe in the doctrine of 
 secession and are capable of the enormity of 
 this revolt to bring it into exercise, then, 
 also for that reason, let the war 2:0 on until 
 every fibre of that pestilent heresy is cut out 
 and forever destroyed in the fire of popular 
 censure, that no germ of it may remain to 
 engender a new growth of disaster and ruin in 
 this beautiful garden of American liberty. 
 
 10 
 
LETTER VIII. 
 
 CONSPIRACY. 
 
 March, 1864. 
 
 I OPEN now a curious chapter in the rebel- 
 lion, which brings into view facts that have not 
 been noticed as attentively as they deserve. 
 No complete history of this great disturbance 
 can be written without giving them a conspicu- 
 ous place in the narrative. 
 
 The scheme of separating the States was an 
 old design, almost as old, in the meditation of 
 a class of Southern politicians, as the Union 
 itself. I have had occasion, in a previous let- 
 ter, to show, in a very cursory way, that some 
 leading politicians of the South speculated on 
 such a project upon the election of the first 
 Northern President, the elder Adams. Dis- 
 union then was " a speck no larger than a 
 man's hand." The turn of fortune, which 
 gave to the nation a succession of Virginia 
 Presidents for twenty-five years afterwards, 
 temporarily satisfied these malcontents, and 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 147 
 
 allowed them, at least, to tolerate the Union 
 during that happy period of unbroken Southern 
 dominion. But it only threw the policy of 
 separation into abeyance ; for as soon as the 
 continuance of that succession was interrupted, 
 by the election of the second Adams, the old 
 grief returned, and disunion once more became 
 a muttered thought. " The speck " began to 
 expand into a lurid cloud, and grew darker and 
 darker until it broke upon the land in this tem- 
 pest of blood and fire. That it did not sooner 
 come to a crisis is due alone to the supple com- 
 placency of the Democratic party. They flat- 
 tered the lordly ambition of the aristocratic 
 South, courted its favor, obeyed its behests, 
 and found a satisfactory compensation in being 
 permitted to share in the spoils of the victory 
 which their alliance enabled their patrons to 
 win. It has always been a sad and sore fact 
 for an honest lover of his country to contem- 
 plate — the successful cajolery with which the 
 South played off that great party of the North, 
 to make it subservient to the selfish afid sec- 
 tional purpose of putting the whole Union at 
 the foot of its slaveholding master. The good 
 and honest men of that party see this now, 
 and acknowledge it with a blush for the dupery 
 
148 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 to which, in the full career of their success, 
 they unconsciously — we must hope — suc- 
 cumbed. They were never entirely awakened 
 to this delusion until the cannon of Sumter 
 startled them from the tranquil enjoyment of a 
 friendship which they had found, through long 
 years, too prolific in its rewards to allow a 
 question of its sincerity. But the truth is, and 
 these good gentlemen have so found it, the 
 South never had the slightest esteem for its 
 Northern comrades, the least respect for their 
 worth, or the smallest sympathy with their 
 opinions. Nothing is stranger than that long 
 association of the aristocratic with the demo- 
 cratic element of the country — " the cavalier 
 and the mud-sill," to adopt the elegant phrase 
 of Southern speech — pigging it together in 
 tlie same truckle-bed. I do not wish to dis- 
 parage the intelligence or the patriotism of the 
 many excellent men who were brought into 
 that equivocal companionship, in which, doubt- 
 less, they had persuaded themselves that they 
 could turn it to account for the good of the 
 country ; but it must always be hereafter — 
 since the events of 1860 have opened their 
 eyes — a matter of surprise to themselves that 
 they could have endured so long in such a rela- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 149 
 
 tion, made sucli sacrifices of personal indepen- 
 dence to sustain it, and worked so diligently to 
 build up the power and exalt the pride of the 
 South at the expense of the nation ; and, in 
 the end, to find how little respect they had 
 won from their allies, and how little permanent 
 advantage for themselves. Nothing less than 
 an extravagant obhquity of sight or lamentable 
 blindness could have misled a party, so osten- 
 tatious in its boast of a distinctive love of the 
 people, to seek or suffer an alliance or frater- 
 nity Avith a school of politicians who never dis- 
 guised their contempt for the people, who never 
 spoke of the North but in terms of obloquy, 
 and who never, on the national theatre, pro- 
 fessed any other policy than that of absolute 
 Southern domination. It is very apparent 
 now^ that there never was any real democratic 
 sentiment in the old Southern States, and it is 
 a great marvel that the Democratic party 
 should have been so Ions in findinsi; that out. 
 
 Southern feeling on this point is very out- 
 spoken, ever since the rebellion has forced it to 
 throw off the disguise under which it so long 
 but so scantly concealed its aversion to its old 
 auxiliaries. I have at hand a few memora- 
 bilia which show how contemptuously Southern 
 
150 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 men regarded, and even how bitterly they 
 detested, the alhes they once found so conven- 
 ient to their needs, and whom they only flat- 
 tered as long as they could make them their 
 tools. When the time arrived at which they 
 could remove the mask and utter their scorn, 
 it was in no stinted tone that they expressed 
 openly the sentiment which had before been 
 breathed only in the confidence of private life. 
 The " Richmond Whig " of the 28th of May, 
 1861, very early in the rebellion, gives us a 
 sample of this long pent-up but then explosive 
 estimate of the North. 
 
 u We " — says this organ of the ruling sen- 
 timent of the seat of the Confederate Govern- 
 ment — " must bring these enfranchised slaves 
 back to their true condition. They have long 
 very properly looked upon themselves as our 
 social inferiors — as our serfs ; their mean, 
 niggardly lives, their low, vulgar, and sordid 
 occupations have ground this conviction into 
 them. But, of a sudden, they have come to 
 imagine that their numerical strength gives 
 them power, and they have burst the bonds of 
 servitude and are running riot with more than 
 the brutal passions of a liberated wild beast. 
 TJieir uprising has all the characteristics of a 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 151 
 
 ferocious servile insurrection We, of 
 
 the South, sought only to separate our destiny 
 from theirs, content to leave them to pursue 
 their own degraded tastes and vicious appetites, 
 as they might choose. But they will not leave 
 us this privilege. They force us to suhdue 
 them or be subdued. They give us no alterna- 
 tive. They have suggested to us the invasion 
 of their territory and the robbery of their 
 banks and jewelry-stores. We may profit by 
 the suggestion as far as invasion goes — for 
 that will enable us to restore them to their twr- 
 mal condition of vassalage^ and teach them that 
 cap in hand is the proper attitude of the servant 
 before his master.^' This in May, 1861 ; when 
 no blow had been struck but that inflicted by 
 their own cannon upon Sumter, no purpose 
 indicated by the North but that of protecting 
 the Government against violence, and the res- 
 toration of the country to every right which 
 had been given to it by the Constitution. 
 
 This is but a specimen of the peevish and 
 insane malice against the Free States with 
 which an influential class in the South entered 
 into this war. I could multiply examples of 
 the same madness, exhibited in the same cir- 
 cles, from the beginning of the rebellion to the 
 
152 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 present day ; but I shall confine myself to 
 another extract of later date, to which I refer 
 only because it has a special significance to my 
 subject from its having been provoked by a 
 recent offer of friendship from a remnant of the 
 Northern Democracy which, unmoved by the 
 bitter contumely all along heaped upon them, 
 were still willing to bow to the rod lifted for 
 their chastisement, and, with a shameful abne- 
 gation of their manhood, to proffer a new sub- 
 mission to their imperious masters. With what 
 utter loathing is that advance repelled, in the 
 following notice of it by the Government organ 
 of the rebel Confederacy in Richmond, " The 
 Enquirer " of March, 1863. It leaves no room 
 to doubt what portion of the North was the 
 particular object of Southern contempt in that 
 sally of vituperation I have quoted above. 
 
 " To be plain," says this paper, in com- 
 menting upon the suggestions of these com- 
 plaisant friends, " we fear and distrust far 
 more these apparently friendly advances of the 
 Democrats than the open atrocity of the phi- 
 lanthropists of Massachusetts. That Democratic 
 parti/ always was our worst enemy, and, hut for 
 its poisonous embrace, these States would have 
 been free and clear of the unnatural Union 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 153 
 
 twenty years ago. It is not the Sewards and 
 Sumners, the Black Republicans and Abolition- 
 ists who have hurt us. They were right all 
 along; there was 'an irrepressible conflict' 
 
 between two different civilizations If 
 
 we did not discover, as soon as the Abolition- 
 ists, this great truth, it was because the Demo- 
 cratic party, neutral as it was in principle, false 
 to both sides, and wholly indifferent to the 
 morale of either of the opposing communities, 
 placed itself between, raised the banner of 
 ' spoils ' — and we all know the rest. The idea 
 of that odious party coming to life again makes 
 us shiver. Its foul breath is malaria ; its touch 
 is death." 
 
 Let us remark that this diatribe is directed to 
 that branch of the Democratic party which re- 
 joices in the name of Breckinridge. The Breck- 
 inridge Democracy, as it is called, ever since 
 they placed him at their head as their leader, 
 are everywhere, with few exceptions, the seces- 
 sionists of the South and their sympathizers in 
 the North. All other Democracy has proved 
 itself true and loyal. I could not count a half 
 score of those who refused to go with Breckin- 
 ridge who are not ardent supporters of the 
 Union. There may be such, but I do not 
 
154 AIR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 meet them. In the main, the country has 
 found no purer patriots, no more earnest and 
 steady friends, no braver or more wilHng sol- 
 diers in this war than the Democracy who re- 
 coiled from marching under that Breckinridge 
 banner ; whilst under that banner are gathered 
 all the doubtful and all the zealous defenders, 
 pursuers, and apologists of the rebellion. The 
 schism has brought out the sheep from the 
 goats. They are no longer one, and the Dem- 
 ocratic party is redeemed, in the good opinion 
 of the country, by this winnowing which has 
 cast all its true patriots into their proper posi- 
 tion, and left the false in an array which all 
 men can see and none mistake. Now, looking 
 to this notorious fact, and measuring its import 
 by the estimate which the South makes of all 
 democracy, and especially reflecting upon the 
 universal acceptance of aristocratic rule in the 
 South, what are we to think of the sincerity of 
 that old-time profession of democracy by Breck- 
 inridge himself, by Jefferson Davis, by Toombs, 
 and the whole roll of Southern professors of 
 that repudiated and despised creed ? Still more, 
 what are we to think of the manhood, the hon- 
 esty, and the intelligence of that fragment of the 
 same party in the North, and their obsequious 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 155 
 
 truckling to the haughty guides of Southern re- 
 belHonwho "shiver " at the proffered contact? 
 What is to be seen in this but the basest spirit 
 of self-seeking and longing for the opportunity 
 to make a bargain, in which the only consider- 
 ation that can be offered is the betrayal of the 
 country ? 
 
 With this brief glance at the position h'eld 
 by the Democratic party and the power it pos- 
 sessed, in combination with the South, to con- 
 trol the course of political events, I am now 
 prepared to take up the principal topic of this 
 letter, — the conspiracy by which the disruption 
 of the Union was supposed to be secured. 
 
 As long as the Southern chiefs were perfectly 
 sure that they could hold the Government by 
 the aid of the Democratic party of the Free 
 States, they were content that things should 
 move along in a peaceful current. But the 
 demonstration made by each returning census, 
 for the last thirty years, of the rapid increase of 
 the vote of the Free States, was, in their appre- 
 hension, a portent of evil. They saw in it the 
 swift advance of the day which was to strip 
 them of that monopoly in the administration of 
 the public affairs to which their ambition had 
 been educated, almost into the conception of it 
 
156 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 as a birthright. Mr. Calhoun had warned 
 them of the coming of that day, and, in great 
 part, devoted his hfe to the invention of devices 
 to avoid it. To this end, he taught the dogma 
 of the right of the minority to control the 
 majority, even on the broadest questions of 
 national policy, through the intervention of 
 State sovereignty ; asserted the right of nullifi- 
 cation ; preached the doctrine of a perpetual 
 equihbrium in the Government between Free 
 and Slave States altogether irrespective of the 
 growth of free communities and of the inevitable 
 tendency — which our whole history had exem- 
 plified — towards the increase of these through 
 the operation of that economic law which has 
 always been driving slavery from North to 
 South. No matter what disparity between 
 the population of Free and Slave States these 
 changes might produce, it was his theory that 
 the equilibrium of political power should be pre- 
 served. To secure this, he proposed, amongst 
 other plans, a dual Presidency, somewhat re- 
 sembling the arrangement of the Consulship, 
 or more after the manner of that of the Tri- 
 bunes, in the organism of the Roman Repub- 
 lic, — one of his Presidents to wield the Slave 
 power, the other the Free, and each to be armed 
 with a veto upon the legislation of Congress. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 157 
 
 The idea which lay at the bottom of these 
 teachings is that which has manifested itself in 
 such virulent and destructive activity at this 
 day, as a principle wholly incompatible with 
 republican government — that human bondage, 
 namely, may rightfully be insisted upon, not as 
 a temporary and accidental encumbrance, which 
 a wise policy may endure and provide for in its 
 transient state, but as a necessary and whole- 
 some incident of social organization, to be main- 
 tained, promoted, and perpetuated by Christian 
 statesmanship as an essential ingredient of the 
 body politic, and even — as the later develop- 
 ment of the doctrine explains it — as " the 
 corner-stone " of free government. But be- 
 yond and above this emanation of a barbaric 
 philosophy, and more captivating to the South- 
 ern mind, the sentiment inculcated by this great 
 leader was a jealous vigilance to provide for 
 and secure, under all contingencies, the politi- 
 cal ascendency of the South ; and that ascen- 
 dency, through his influence, thus became not 
 only the universal aspiration of the people of 
 the Planting States, but a postulate which they 
 were determined to elevate into a constitutional 
 right. For the maintenance of this right the 
 governing class — often very justly called the 
 
158 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 Oligarchy — of these States have alway been 
 ready to dissolve the Union whenever it should 
 become apparent that, in the Union, they must 
 lose their power. 
 
 The obvious danger, in their view, was, that 
 when the population of the Free should reach 
 to a preponderating majority over that of the 
 Slave States, the Democratic party would be 
 compelled to succumb to the popular will of 
 the North, and would not hesitate, in that 
 emergency, to abandon their Southern support 
 for richer and more abundant pastures within 
 their own geographical limits ; that this party 
 would bid a cheerful adieu to their old employ- 
 ers, as soon as they could find better service, 
 happy to get rid of patrons whose gratitude for 
 sacrifices made and favors bestowed was con- 
 fined to the simple payment of the wages of 
 the bargain, and never rose to the height of a 
 sentiment of respect. Astute Southern politi- 
 cians always prophesied this event, and looked 
 without regret to the day when they would be 
 obliged to face its approach and devise meas- 
 ures to guard themselves against its conse- 
 quences. 
 
 The Presidential election of 1856 was fiill of 
 signs of this long-meditated crisis. It, how- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 159 
 
 ever, passed over without harm : the allies 
 were yet true, and the election of Mr. Bu- 
 chanan was a Southern victory. But it soon 
 became apparent that the South could never 
 gain another, — at least without concessions, 
 which, in the Southern philosophy, would be 
 more disagreeable than a defeat. The leading 
 men of the South, in fact, regarded that as the 
 last election that would ever occur under the 
 Constitution and Union ; and, from that day, 
 an active conspiracy was contrived and set in 
 motion to accomplish the object which many 
 had long wished and many more had long 
 feared. 
 
 I call it a conspiracy because it was the 
 secret plot of influential and managing men to 
 compass a design which was quite impossible of 
 achievement by open and honest appeal to the 
 people. The good sense and natural affection 
 of the Southern masses would have recoiled 
 from a plot for disunion at any time, up to the 
 day of the first act of secession, if they had 
 been openly invoked to such an enterprise. It 
 required both time and skill " to fire the South- 
 ern heart and instruct the Southern mind " for 
 this venture. And I think I may add that, 
 even now, after three years of terrible conflict, 
 
160 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 a large amount of Southern heart remains yet 
 unjired to that dread crime, still more of South- 
 ern mind — if it dared speak its secret — yet 
 wholly uninstructed in the necessity or the 
 right of this desolating revolution. 
 
 In the interval between 1856 and 1860, the 
 great problem which engaged the mind of the 
 plotters was, how to frustrate the Democratic 
 party of the North, which had already found a 
 formidable candidate in Mr. Douglas. The 
 difficulty presented by that problem was sur- 
 mounted in the manner which it is now my 
 purpose to describe. 
 
 The chief element of the plot was the neces- 
 sity of sundering that party by such a blow as 
 should forever separate its Union-supporting 
 section from those who could be persuaded to 
 destroy the Union — a separation which, it was 
 supposed, would finally gravitate into a specific 
 division of the Northern and Southern mem- 
 bers. The great and desired effect of this 
 schism would be to nullify the power of 
 the party in the coming election, insure its 
 defeat, and render the election of the North- 
 ern candidate a certain result. This was the 
 theory of the movement. It was particu- 
 larly important that Mr. Douglas should be 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 161 
 
 defeated, but also important tliat he should be 
 nominated and kept in the field by his friends. 
 The party was quite strong enough to elect its 
 candidate if it should be allowed to unite its 
 vote upon one name. The tactics of the oc- 
 casion required two candidates. To produce, 
 therefore, an effective and irreconcilable divis- 
 ion, it was necessary to introduce some new 
 and repulsive item into the programme of the 
 Democratic policy ; something that would be 
 sure to produce an explosion. 
 
 The slave question, as usual, furnished the 
 theme for disturbance. The party was already 
 dividino; on the doctrine touchino; the extension 
 of slavery into the Territories and the alleged 
 duty of the Government to protect it there. 
 There was much quarrel on this point, and the 
 North was giving some evidence of making 
 a stand against the Southern demand. Mr. 
 Douglas and his friends were very stanch in 
 resistance, and their cause was growing obsti- 
 nate in the Free States, whilst it had no little 
 amount of support in the others. The leaders 
 of the plot were not altogether sure that they 
 might not lose the hoped-for division of the 
 party, on this point of protection of slavery in 
 the Territories, by some compromise of opin- 
 11 
 
162 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 ion, of which they had frequent example in pre- 
 vious canvasses : the North might yield some- 
 thing, or a considerable force from the South 
 might fall in, — and so make a strong party 
 again. It became, therefore, necessary to sup- 
 ply a fresh ground of dissension. This was 
 found in a demand for the renewal of the Afri- 
 can slave-trade. If the party could be put 
 under the opprobrium of the slightest suspicion 
 of that design, it was manifest that no Free- 
 State Democrat could incur it and live. The 
 party of the North could go very far, as they 
 had heretofore gone, in defending and protect- 
 ing slavery, but the revival of the slave-trade 
 could not possibly sit upon any Northern stom- 
 ach. This, then, was the card to be played. 
 
 Accordingly, in the years 1858 and 1859, 
 ground was broken in this new campaign. The 
 right and purpose to revive the African slave- 
 trade was broached to the people of the South, 
 with an intrepidity never equalled in the ex- 
 ploits of the boldest demagogues of any coun- 
 try. The press put out its feelers on this point, 
 and orators of note descanted upon it with a 
 startling audacity. In the lead of these was 
 Mr. Yancey, who both wrote and spoke with 
 great effect upon the subject; and the question, 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 163 
 
 thus thrown open to pubUc advocacy, found 
 many champions and more friends. In the 
 summer of 1859 consultations were held at the 
 White Sulphur Springs of Virginia, where 
 several prominent leaders had gathered together 
 to devise plans for giving full significance and 
 currency to the movement. Soon afterwards, 
 the subalterns who were accustomed to light 
 their lanterns from the fire of the greater lights, 
 were put in motion to circulate and extend the 
 new doctrine, and these took their instructions, 
 not only without reluctance, but with that 
 ready consent which, to an observant specta- 
 tor, was evidence of a preconcerted scheme 
 that only awaited the order of promulgation to 
 become the experimental strategy of a party. 
 
 It was remarkable that this assault upon the 
 honor of the South brought none of those indig- 
 nant protests which we have heard in old time 
 against the enormity of the slave-trade, — the 
 very mention of which was formerly wont to 
 produce a shudder of disgust. Some few 
 old-fashioned people and old-fashioned presses 
 might have uttered a feeble remonstrance, 
 but these were lost or silenced in the inde- 
 cent license with which the public mind was 
 abused by the shameless defence of the pro- 
 
164 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 position, both in the written and oral discus- 
 sions of the period. This unchallenged bold- 
 ness and this singular silence of reproof were 
 most expressive and fearful omens, to any 
 one who could fully interpret their import, of 
 the calamity that was then brooding over the 
 land. It was very strange to see how little these 
 omens were heeded by the Government, still 
 more, how feebly they awakened the attention 
 of the Northern Democracy. Not even at 
 Charleston, where that Democracy was subse- 
 quently assembled in Convention, did its repre- 
 sentatives give any sign that they truly under- 
 stood or appreciated the dangers which lay, as 
 in a mine, beneath their feet. 
 
 Whilst the Southern public was thus becom- 
 ing familiarized to this disgraceful scheme by 
 popular harangues, other agencies were at work 
 to further the cause by practical experiment. 
 Southern citizens of note embarked in the trade ; 
 ships were fitted out and dispatched to the Afri- 
 can coast ; and, for the first time in fifty years, 
 the Atlantic shore of the Southern States was 
 polluted by the landing of cargoes of slaves di- 
 rect from Africa. The trade could scarcely be 
 called clandestine, with so little concealment 
 was it practised. The whole population seemed 
 
3IR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 165 
 
 to be implicated in saving the trangressors from 
 molestation and in aiding the distribution of 
 the cargoes. The victims of this piracy were 
 openly introduced on the plantations, and a 
 general complicity rendered futile the attempts 
 of the Government — very weak and faltering 
 it is true — to recover them. 
 
 We can hardly credit this singular change in 
 the morale of Southern society when we read 
 the accounts of the day which give us the 
 details of this trade. South Carolina seemed 
 to have gone mad on the subject. Amongst 
 other incidents I find this, as published in the 
 " Cheraw Gazette" : A Col. Hunt had adver- 
 tised, by way of encouraging this laudable spirit 
 of enterprise, a reward, to be given by him, of 
 a silver pitcher for the best specimen of a native 
 African negro, to be produced at an appointed 
 time and place for inspection ; and the " Ga- 
 zette," with something like gleeful satisfaction, 
 informs its readers that two boys were exhib- 
 ited, to the owner of whom the prize was ad- 
 judged. They are described with the tact of 
 a connoisseur, as remarkably healthy and intel- 
 ligent, — so intelligent that one of them had 
 already learned to say " wo " when he wanted 
 to stop a horse. This whole affair was un- 
 
166 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 doubtecUy nothing less than a bravado to 
 express derision and defiance to the Govern- 
 ment and to the general sentiment of the Free 
 States, which the recent importations of slaves 
 had offended ; and was, in its way, a step to- 
 wards that hideous rebellion which is now vis- 
 iting retribution upon the very actors in that 
 scene. 
 
 Every one remembers the farce of the prose- 
 cution, in the South, of some of the parties 
 engaged in this iniquitous attempt to revive the 
 trade. According to a statement I have seen, 
 from a paper published either in Charleston or 
 Savannah, — I forget which, — some of the 
 persons arrested and waiting in prison for trial 
 were temporarily released on parole, to enable 
 them to attend a political convention some hun- 
 dred miles off. 
 
 When one of these cases came before the 
 court for trial, Judge Magrath, according to 
 J;he published reports of the day, gave a very 
 encouraging lift to the friends of the trade, by 
 an exposition of the law which, if not ingen- 
 ious, was at least new, and was certainly a 
 very courageous onset against that once-uni- 
 versal sentiment of the country, which was 
 wont to boast that an American Congress was 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 167 
 
 the first power in the world that had vindi- 
 cated the honor of humanity by branding the 
 slave-trade as piracy. The import of this ju- 
 dicial exposition, as stated in the Southern 
 papers, was that slaves purchased abroad by a 
 citizen of the United States were property, 
 and were entitled to the same protection " on 
 the high seas " as any other American prop- 
 erty. If they were purchased, bona fide, in 
 Africa, — not stolen or kidnapped, — the Gov- 
 ernment had no right to molest the owner, but, 
 on the contrary, was bound to protect him; 
 and that the Act of Congress which declared 
 the trade piracy could not be construed to 
 apply to such an importation ; in that applica- 
 tion it would be unconstitutional and void. 
 
 Upon this decision, I believe, the party ac- 
 cused was acquitted. I regret that I have not 
 recourse to a report of the trial to allow me to 
 speak more precisely of its incidents. But the 
 prominent and most noteworthy feature of the 
 opinion of the court, as given in the current 
 news of the time, was the assertion of a right 
 to the protection of this property " on the high 
 seas." 
 
 Not long after this trial, the Charleston Con- 
 vention assembled, with a full representation of 
 
168 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 both extremes of the Democratic party. Its 
 ostensible purpose was to nominate a candidate 
 for the Presidency. The use intended to be 
 made of it by the Southern managers of the 
 plot — some of the chief of which were not of 
 the body, but outside members, holding the 
 wires in their hands, watchers and advisers — 
 was to consummate that feat of which I have 
 spoken, — the dismemberment of the party. 
 
 Of all the tricks of political legerdemain we 
 have ever seen, this was the most dexterous, — 
 this exploit of cutting a body in two and set- 
 ting the severed halves into a battle in which 
 both were sure to be demolished. The neat- 
 ness of the tour de jmsse was not so much in 
 the division — for that had been often per- 
 formed before — as in the skill with which 
 the fragments were set in mortal array against 
 each other. I will endeavor to point out some 
 salient strokes by which this was accomplished, 
 as I trace them through the published proceed- 
 ings of the Convention. 
 
 When this body assembled in April there 
 was, as I have remarked, a clear majority 
 for Mr. Douglas. He and his friends rested 
 mainly upon the position of the Cincinnati 
 platform of 1856. They had been stationary 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 169 
 
 whilst the tide of Southern sentiment had been 
 sweeping on in the current I have described. 
 The Cincinnati platform maintained Squatter- 
 sovereignty, as it was called, — which was a pro- 
 test against any intervention of the National 
 Government on the question of slavery : the 
 Government was neither to mar nor make. 
 It is worthy of remark that, in 1856, certain 
 hot-heads of the South, those present in the 
 Convention, insisted upon this non-interven- 
 tion with all that angry zeal which is charac- 
 teristic of the fire-eater, threatening to retire 
 from the Convention and to raise the old spec- 
 tre of secession if it should be refused. 
 
 Four years had swept away that humor, 
 and the demand of the same men was now 
 reversed. It was now for extreme interven- 
 tion, challenged upon pain of immediate rup- 
 ture, and, as usual, of peremptory resort to the 
 demolition of the Union. 
 
 In justice to the general character and com- 
 position of the Charleston Convention, it is 
 proper to say, there is no room to doubt that 
 nine out of ten of its members went into it 
 with no other expectation than that of ac- 
 complishing a Presidential nomination, and of 
 standing by it, in good faith, throughout the 
 
170 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 election; that they knew as little as the out- 
 side world of the scheme that was hatching. 
 From all the evidence furnished by the his- 
 tory of their proceedings, from what we know 
 of the men, and from what we have seen of 
 the eminent devotion of many of the most con- 
 spicuous members to the cause of the coun- 
 try in its recent trials, we must believe that, 
 if any of the large majority of that body had 
 penetrated the real design of which it was at- 
 tempted to make them the dupes, they would 
 have denounced it with an emphasis that 
 would probably have saved the nation from 
 these three years of bloody feud and all the 
 misery that is yet to follow. This remark is 
 confined to no sectional division of the Con- 
 vention. There is proof enough to show that, 
 in the Southern delegations, as well as in the 
 Northern, there were numbers of considerate 
 men whose conduct was guided by patriotic 
 views and true devotion to the Union. Un- 
 fortunately, the issues of the time were not in 
 their hands. The plot which frustrated their 
 hopes was secret, known to few, and even now 
 imperfectly understood. 
 
 I do not mean to say that there were not 
 many members in that Convention who were 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 171 
 
 not fully alive to the mischief which was likely 
 to ensue from the division growing out of the 
 opposition to the principles upon which the 
 nomination of Mr. Douglas was insisted upon. 
 The speeches of the occasion bear witness to a 
 lively apprehension on that score. But I find 
 nothing to indicate even a suspicion of a pre- 
 meditated design — which was the real object 
 of the conspiracy — to promote this division for 
 the purpose of procuring a defeat to the candi- 
 dates of both sides of the party, and, by that 
 means, to secure the election of the Republican 
 nominee, as the necessary condition of the casus 
 belli upon which the rebellion was predicated. 
 
 The plan was to drive the friends of Mr. 
 Douglas in the Convention into a separate 
 organization, by the promulgation of a pro- 
 gramme of the party policy which should as- 
 sert principles he could not adopt and which 
 the people of the North and West could never 
 tolerate ; and, if that programme was rejected 
 by the Convention, to form a new party upon 
 it. To this end a Committee was appointed to 
 report the platform of the party. By some 
 means, which do not appear, that Committee 
 was composed of a majority in favor of the 
 ultra Southern view. In the main body of 
 
172 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 the Convention many resolutions were sever- 
 ally offered looking to the construction of the 
 platform ; and these were referred, as often as 
 they were presented, to the Committee, either 
 with or without instructions, as the case hap- 
 pened. 
 
 The prominent and distinctive question in 
 dispute was The protection of Slavery in the 
 Territories by the intervention of the National 
 Government. 
 
 It was manifestly the purpose of certain 
 members of the Convention, aided by outside 
 advisers who were busy in fomenting the dis- 
 cord of the body, to get into the declaration 
 of the duty of protection, a covert recognition 
 of the slave-trade, in accord with the judicial 
 opinion of Judge Magrath. This purpose first 
 appears in the phrase of a resolution offered by 
 a gentleman from Alabama, — " That it is the 
 duty of the Government to afford legal protec- 
 tion to all classes of property, dave or otherwise^ 
 in the Territories, or 07i the High Seas,'''' 
 
 After some delay and amidst much variety 
 of movement, the same idea comes up in the 
 resolution of another member, in which the 
 phrase is significantly altered: "legal" protec- 
 tion is left out; the term "slave" is omitted, 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 1T3 
 
 and another clause inserted ; it reads : " It is 
 the duty of the Government to protect the 
 rights of persons and property on the High Seas, 
 in the Territories, or wherever else its consti- 
 tutional authority extends." Thereupon Gen. 
 Butler, of Massachusetts, — now distinguished 
 in a very different sphere of action, — gives a 
 pertinent hint that this phrase, of protection of 
 property on the seas, might be construed into a 
 design to reopen the slave-trade. 
 
 The resolution then goes to the Committee. 
 There, it is found that there is a majority of 
 one in its favor. The vote is IT to 16, — upon 
 which there is much secret rejoicing amongst 
 the conspirators, and stealthy consultation with 
 Mephistopheles behind the screen. After fur- 
 ther deliberation, the Committee make up their 
 report, and this article of the programme finally 
 emerges to the view of the Convention in some- 
 what modified form. It now appears in the 
 resolutions in this language : — 
 
 " That it is the duty of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment, in all its departments, to protect the 
 rights of persons and property in the Territo- 
 ries, and wherever else its constitutional author- 
 ity extends.'''' 
 
 The words " on the high seas " are discarded, 
 
174 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 and the periphrase retained which legally cov- 
 ers the same proposition. Gen. Butler's hint 
 had manifestly awakened some solicitude, and 
 it was thought necessary not to name the broad 
 ocean, lest members should become alarmed. 
 The mass of the Convention, as well as that 
 of the country at large, was engaged with the 
 question of protection of slavery in the Territo- 
 ries : the " wherever else " of the resolution 
 might pass as an expletive, in which the un- 
 wary might see no harm, or it covered the 
 District of Columbia and the Forts, and so 
 might escape immediate observation. The 
 masters of the plot were aiming at the pos- 
 session of a weapon for future use, which, in 
 due time, they could bring into service. They 
 wanted the ratification of the principle affirmed 
 by Judge Magrath ; and they got it. If this 
 programme were adopted, what more distinct 
 sanction could be given to the slave-trade ? 
 What more certain than the defeat of any 
 Presidential candidate who should stand upon 
 it? 
 
 This was now the majority report. There 
 were two minority reports. The larger of 
 the two reaffirmed the Cincinnati platform of 
 1856, with some additions on other questions 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 175 
 
 of policy. The other was made by Gen. But- 
 ler alone, and presented the Cincinnati plat- 
 form, pure and simple, without any addition. 
 
 Upon these several reports a most earnest 
 debate arose. Members grew angry, and it 
 was very evident that the party was broken, 
 and the plot in full career of successful achieve- 
 ment. Strong appeals were addressed to the 
 mischief-making members, prefiguring the re- 
 sult of this quarrel and warning against it. 
 Governor King, of Missouri, declared " that 
 this platform would nominate Mr. Seward 
 [then the presumed candidate of the Repub- 
 lican party] and make him President." 
 
 Mr. Paine, of Ohio, " charged them to re- 
 flect, to pause in their mad career ; to remem- 
 ber in advance what the consequence of a dis- 
 ruption would be, and they would see liow justly 
 the consequences tvoidd be laid on the Souths 
 
 To these warnings, and others in the same 
 tone, Mr. Yancey replied, " that the Demo- 
 cratic party must accept defeat with cheer- 
 falness on a principle rather than seek success 
 with its violation." He concluded his speech, 
 says the report, " by eloquently urging the 
 Southern delegates to be true to their consti- 
 tutional duty, and not to lend themselves to a 
 
176 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 palpable wrong to obtain a present victory." 
 This " palpable wrong," let it be noted, was 
 nothing more than an adherence to the prin- 
 ciples asserted by the Cincinnati Convention 
 of 1856, in which he and several of his com- 
 rades threatened secession and disunion if the 
 doctrine he was now repudiating were not 
 adopted. 
 
 The great result for which he and others 
 were struggling was the overthrow of the 
 party and the success of the Republican ticket. 
 This feat was now on the eve of accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 The Convention, soon after this, came to 
 a vote. The majority report was rejected by 
 165 yeas to 138 nays. Thereupon a great stir 
 arose. The Convention got into the condition 
 of a beehive in commotion. In a little while 
 a series of abdications began, and, before an 
 hour had passed, the greater part of the South- 
 ern members had retired in duda;eon. The 
 egg was hatched ; the breach was mortal. 
 From that hour the Democratic party was an 
 effete corporation, and the seed of secession 
 was deeply planted in a rank soil, quickly to 
 bourgeon into a Upas-tree of treason and re- 
 bellion, and to distil tears and blood over the 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 177 
 
 happiest and most prosperous nation in the 
 world. 
 
 How this breach was followed up by the or- 
 ganization of the fragments into separate bodies ; 
 by adjournment to Baltimore and Riclimond, 
 and subsequent assemblage of both divisions, at 
 the former city, in June ; by further abdications 
 there ; by continually widening dissension ; by 
 nomination of Douglas on one side and Breck- 
 inridge on the other ; and then, in due course, 
 by signal defeat of both in the election, and con- 
 sequent accomplishment of the desired success 
 of the Republican party, need not be told. All 
 that has gone into the record of our melancholy 
 history, where it will remain forever to rebuke 
 and frighten wicked ambition in all future time. 
 
 I cannot, however, close this narrative with- 
 out availing myself of a remarkable commen- 
 tary upon these events, supplied to my hand by 
 the speech of one of the most intelligent actors 
 in the scene, and one of the most acute of its 
 expositors. 
 
 On the 23d of June, 1860, when the scat- 
 tered Convention was again assembled at 
 Baltimore, and the last abdication took place, 
 Pierre Soule spoke these words ; — 
 
 "I am not at all discouraged by the emotion 
 12 
 
178 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 which has been attempted to be created in this 
 body by those who have seceded from it. We, 
 from the furthest South, were prepared. We had 
 heard around us the rumors which were to be initia- 
 tory of the acts which you have witnessed this day, 
 rand we knew that the conspiracy, which had been 
 brooding for months past, would break out on this 
 occasion, and for the purposes which are obvious to 
 every member. Sirs, there are in political life men 
 who were once possessed of popular favor, and who 
 considered that favor as an inalienable property, 
 and who cling to it as something that can no longer 
 
 be wrested from their hands They saw that 
 
 the popular vote was clearly manifesting to this 
 glorious nation who was to be their next ruler. 
 More than eight or ten months before the Con- 
 vention assembled the name of that future ruler 
 (Douglas) had been thrown into the canvass and 
 was before the people. Instead of bringing a can- 
 didate to oppose him ; instead of creating before the 
 people issues upon which the choice of the nation 
 could be enlightened ; instead of principles discussed, 
 what have we seen ? An unrelenting war against 
 the individual presumed to be the favorite of the 
 nation, — a war waged by an army of unprincipled 
 and unscrupulous politicians, leagued with a power 
 which could not be exerted on their side without dis- 
 gracing itself and disgracing the nation. 
 
 "When the Convention assembled at Charles- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 179 
 
 ton, the idea had not yet struck their minds that 
 a movement, of the nature of the one which has 
 been effected, could be based upon the doctrines 
 of the distinguished gentleman from Alabama, Mr. 
 Yancey, who has fathered this secession. It was 
 presumed by those political intriguers outside of 
 the Convention who were manoeuvring the measures 
 through, by which the destruction of the Democratic 
 party was to he effected, — it was presumed by them 
 that it laid in their power, after raising the storm, 
 to manage and guide it. But it will be found, be- 
 fore forty-eight hours have elapsed, that in that 
 storm they are bound eventually to sink and dis- 
 appear. For it is idle for Southern men to disguise 
 the true object of that movement : Secession from the 
 Democratic party can be nothing else than the dis- 
 ruption of that party at the very moment when the 
 hopes of the whole nation are hanging on its con- 
 tinuing in power. Secession is a word intended 
 to conceal another word of more significancy. If 
 secession was to fnd an echo amongst the people 
 of this great Confederacy, then no longer could this 
 republic boast that the structure which its fathers 
 created with so much sacrifice and so much toil was 
 a noble experiment. Secession must beget disunion. 
 Upon what pretence must secession have been pre- 
 dicted ? I wish not to do those distinguished gen- 
 tlemen, who stepped out of this room this morning, 
 the injustice to suppose that they truly parted from 
 
180 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS, 
 
 you because of your having decided the question of 
 internal organization in a manner that did not agree 
 with their views. They may give this as a pre- 
 tence. They may use it as a cloak to cover their 
 desertion from the party, — hut the truth cannot he 
 disguised: whether deluded or not, they are tools in 
 the hands of intriguers and their course must neces- 
 sarily tend to disumonJ^ 
 
 This is the speech of Mr. Soule when the 
 Democratic party, having received the first 
 blow of severance at Charleston, had reassem- 
 bled in divided fragments at Baltimore, and 
 there completed the dismemberment by retire- 
 ment, from the major body, of the remaining 
 few who had hesitated at Charleston. The 
 contumacious fragment formed a separate or- 
 ganization, adopted the majority resolutions 
 which had been rejected at Charleston, and 
 nominated Mr. Breckinridge, a man of such 
 popularity, especially in the Border States, as, 
 in the estimate of the conspirators, would be 
 certain to draw off a vote large enough to 
 make the division of the party fatal to the 
 success of either candidate. Breckinridge thus 
 became the representative and symbol of the 
 conspiracy, and the Breckinridge Democracy, 
 wherever you find it. North, South, East, or 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 181 
 
 West, the very bone and sinew of the revolu- 
 tion. 
 
 I ask you to review this chain of facts in the 
 light of preparatives to the rebellion. 
 
 First. We have seen that extraordinary and 
 sudden zeal of certain leading Southern men to 
 revive the African slave-trade as a topic of dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 Second, The bold enterprise of Southern 
 citizens in the actual pursuit of the trade, 
 the successful importation of slaves, and the 
 distribution and concealment of them by the 
 connivance of planters, and even the derisive 
 ostentation with which the trade was confessed 
 and public opinion defied by the more zealous 
 and intemperate of its advocates. 
 
 Third. The decision of the South Carolina 
 judge, and the remarkable sympathy of the 
 community with those arraigned, and their 
 immunity from punishment, or even social 
 censure. 
 
 Fourth. The covert attempt to affirm the 
 principles of that decision in the Convention. 
 
 Fifth. The preordained breach of the party 
 and the retirement of that portion of the South- 
 ern members who were afterwards the most 
 earnest and zealous prompters and champions 
 of the rebellion ; and, 
 
182 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 Last, Their organization of a new party ; 
 the nomination of a candidate whose popular- 
 ity was a sure obstruction to the success of his 
 rival, and a guarantee for the election of the 
 Republican candidate, — in which event the 
 casus belli of the projected revolution rested. 
 
 When the groundwork of the rebellion was 
 thus laid, every man who was implicated in 
 the plot took his place. The great fact upon 
 which the dissolution was predicated being 
 thus made sure, it was forthwith announced 
 in a thousand bar-rooms, in the resolutions of 
 numerous popular assemblies, in the harangues 
 of countless orators, and in every Southern 
 press under the control of the conspirators, 
 that if the Republican candidate should be 
 elected the South would withdraw from the 
 Union. Thus, months before the suffrages of 
 November were deposited in the ballot-box, 
 the secession of the States — teterrima causa 
 belli — was a predestined event. 
 
LETTER IX. 
 
 STATE RIGHTS. 
 
 January, 1865. 
 
 When this insane quarrel of the South 
 with the North first came to blows, the ques- 
 tion between them, as exhibited in the debates 
 of Congress, in the wrangling of the Peace 
 Conference, and in the negotiations of the two 
 parties, was reduced to this single demand on 
 the part of the South : " We insist upon the 
 right to plant slavery, at our pleasure, in all 
 the free territory of the nation." An almost 
 boundless empire of this free soil lay open to 
 settlement between the Ohio and the Pacific 
 Ocean. The South said, "It is our right to 
 set slavery in every acre of it, and we must 
 have that right acknowledged or we shall rend 
 the nation into fragments." The North re- 
 plied, " Keep what you have within your own 
 confines, but never will we consent to blast 
 that great free empire of the future with the 
 curse of slavery." And . thereupon the South 
 
184 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 drew the sword to assert and maintain that 
 very act of offence and insult to the sense and 
 humanity of the age for which, nearly ninety 
 years before, Virginia arraigned the monarch 
 of England in twenty successive remon- 
 strances ; of which all the colonies complained 
 as a grievous wrong, and which Mr. Jefferson 
 introduced into the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence as one of the chief topics to justify the 
 Revolution. 
 
 To this point was the whole controversy 
 ostensibly reduced when the South withdrew 
 in dudgeon from further parley. Every other 
 point was accommodated. Congressional in- 
 terference with slavery in the States — already 
 prohibited, as all parties agreed, by the Con- 
 stitution — was proffered to be secured against 
 all future hazard by an irrepealable constitu- 
 tional amendment. The Missouri Compromise 
 line was substantially restored in the arrange- 
 ment of New Mexico, which opened every foot 
 of territory south of that line to slave settle- 
 ment. But all this Vv^ould not do ; the un- 
 limited privilege was insisted on. Upon this 
 a large majority of the nation took their stand ; 
 and the South withdrew and put itself in battle 
 array to fight for the extension of slavery into 
 free territory. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 185 
 
 Four years of war have made great changes 
 in the aims of the first belligerent. The South 
 no longer fights for the extension of slavery. 
 " We are fighting for our territory," says Mr. 
 JeflPerson Davis in one of his late messages to 
 his Congress ; as if he wished to impress the 
 outside world, as well as his comrades, with a 
 pathetic sense of the sacred character of his 
 cause. He would have the world believe that 
 this ruthless and despotic Government of the 
 United States has wantonly forced this war 
 upon the South to despoil its people of their 
 country, their homes, and their firesides ; and, 
 indeed, it would seem that he had given this 
 idea some currency on the other side of the 
 Atlantic, when English statesmen declared our 
 resistance to the rebellion to be only a contest 
 for empire. 
 
 It was a shrewd device on the part of the 
 South to persuade its own people that this war 
 was got up to defend their right to their own 
 soil. Nothing, perhaps, but the end to which 
 this war is hastening will dispel that delusion. 
 Victory for the Union will find every foot of 
 territory just where it was before the strife be- 
 gan. Some owners may have fled from their 
 possessions, — that will be as they have chosen ; 
 
186 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 many will have perished, and all who survive 
 may find much difference in the value of what 
 is left ; but the law of the soil will be the 
 same, the home and country the same, and 
 our renovated nation will move onward in its 
 grand career, the same beneficent protective 
 power which it was before wicked ambition es- 
 sayed to strike it out of existence. Still, it is 
 true, the great mass of those who have enlisted 
 under the banner of this revolt do really be- 
 lieve that from the first they have been fight- 
 ing for their own homes. Even so considerate 
 a man as General Lee, the commander-in-chief 
 of the rebel forces, has said that he only took 
 up arms to defend his own State of Virginia 
 against unlawful invasion. Now, let any man 
 tell us what rights of home or country were 
 ever endangered in any State of this Union by 
 the Government of the United States, until the 
 revolting States themselves put them in jeop- 
 ardy ? You say you are fighting for your ter- 
 ritory. If you are, is it not because your rash 
 resort to unprovoked war has compelled us — the 
 people of the United States — to fight for ours ! 
 Were we not, most reluctantly, compelled to 
 fight for a whole section of our country which 
 you were striving to wrench from us ? — for our 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 187 
 
 territory of Florida and our territory of Louis- 
 iana, both of which we bought with ready money, 
 paid in good red gold ? Are we not fighting for 
 our navy-yard at Pensacola, built by the nation, 
 not for the convenience of the State of Flor- 
 ida only, but for the refuge and repair of our 
 shipping, which, from all quarters, plies in the 
 Gulf ? Are we not fighting for our forts, all 
 the way from Sumter to the Rio Grande, which 
 we had constructed at great cost, to protect our 
 commerce from injury and insult ? Are we not 
 fighting for our Mississippi River, that we may 
 hold it freely forever for the benefit of the na- 
 tion, without toll or tribute, or homage to any 
 power upon earth ? Are we not, in fact, fight- 
 ing for our rights in our State of Virginia, our 
 State of South Carolina, Georgia, and the rest 
 that have assumed,- by proclamation and war, to 
 oust us from privileges which belong as much 
 to each of us as to those who seek to exclude 
 us ? 
 
 Who can tell me why Louisiana is not as 
 much my State as it is the State of John Slidell 
 or of Pierre Soul^, — the two Senators who 
 represented it in the Congress of the Union ? 
 Mr. Slidell, a native of New York, and who 
 lived there up to a mature manhood, chose to 
 
188 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 cast his fortunes in the city of New Orleans. 
 He went with the same certainty of an assured 
 welcome that he would have had if he had 
 elected to make his new home in Albany. 
 He was a citizen of the Union, and, as such, 
 was entitled to claim all the privileges of a 
 domicil in any State within its circle. His 
 citizenship in Louisiana was as full and as per- 
 fect as that in New York. 
 
 Mr. Soule's case had less original strength 
 than his colleague's. He was a Frenchman, 
 and had no foothold, like that of Mr. Slidell, 
 until he gained the privilege of the national 
 citizenship. This, therefore, was his first step, 
 without which he could make no career for 
 himself in any State. With it, all were open 
 to him. He also chose Louisiana as the the- 
 atre of his fortune, obtained his naturalization, 
 and from that day found himself in a position 
 to contend for all the honors an American 
 citizen might win in any State of the Union. 
 Here are two men holding high authority in 
 the Government, exercising great influence 
 over the affairs of the nation, and sent into 
 the Senate by the choice of a State to which 
 for a considerable portion of their lives they 
 were absolute strangers, and into whose con- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 189 
 
 fines they had, perhaps, never journeyed until 
 years after they had come to man's estate. 
 
 Is it not somewhat startling to hear, after 
 reflecting upon such an experience as this, men 
 of calm and honest judgment, and of educated 
 intelligence, maintaining as a sound, or even a 
 plausible theory of this common-sense, practical 
 Government of ours, that a State of the Union 
 may lawfully — I mean without rebellion and 
 revolution — • deny to me or any other citizen 
 of the United States, residing outside of its bor- 
 ders, the same right of domicile and domestica- 
 tion, and right to pursue a path of fortune or 
 ambition which has been so freely and prosper- 
 ously opened to the Senators from Louisiana ? 
 Is it not still more strange that those gentle- 
 men themselves should be found in the ranks 
 of those who assert this right of exclusion ? 
 The case of Messrs. Slidell and Soule I cite 
 only as a conspicuous example. Full three 
 fourths of the whole South, bating the emi- 
 nence of the position, stand in the same cate- 
 gory, — that of migrated citizens who change 
 their domicile from one State to another mainly 
 because they are equally citizens of both. This 
 capacity to range over the Union, protected by 
 a shield of universal citizenship, is the most 
 
190 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 vital principle of our progress ; it is scarcely 
 an exaggeration to say it is one of the most 
 precious of our rights. It strikes me as one 
 of the chief obstacles which must ever be pre- 
 sented to the reflection of those rash men who 
 meditate a severance of the Union, that the 
 great majority of the people, as distinguished 
 from the leaders, will never willingly surrender 
 this unstinted citizenship ; and that, whenever 
 such a surrender is forced upon them by the 
 passion or the artifice of a revolution, the re- 
 sult will be but temporary, and the desire to 
 regain what is lost a motive to ceaseless agi- 
 tation. The present rebellion is daily verify- 
 ing this remark. Every man on the Northern 
 side of the line feels that the pretension of seces- 
 sion is an invasion of his personal right, whilst 
 multitudes on the Southern side cannot com- 
 prehend what they are to gain by limiting the 
 area of their privilege as American citizens. 
 That doubt is now gradually breaking upon 
 their minds for solution. 
 
 The plea for this limitation or circumscrip- 
 tion of citizenship is attempted to be explained 
 in a theory of State Rights, to the examination 
 of which I propose to devote the rest of this 
 letter. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 191 
 
 This subject of State Rights has been greatly 
 mystified, in the popular conception of it, by 
 the uses to which it has been put. The rights 
 of the States, as practically demonstrated in 
 the ordinary operations of State government, 
 scarcely excite debate. Nobody denies them* 
 Every one sees in them a healthful and benefi- 
 cent power which conipletely satisfies the peo- 
 ple. No one has ever thought of disputing the 
 right of the States to make and alter their con- 
 stitutions in their own way and at their own 
 pleasure. We are accustomed to see them 
 exercise every function of government with- 
 in their sphere, without the imagination of a 
 possible objection. They make laws, establish 
 judiciaries, define crimes and punishments, erect 
 corporations, levy taxes, construct public works, 
 regulate education, — in short, enact and do 
 everything appertaining to their internal gov- 
 ernment and domestic welfare, without a com- 
 ment from any quarter to suggest a doubt of 
 their power. The only condition required of 
 them in this wide sphere of action is, that they 
 shall do nothing which is forbidden by the 
 National Constitution. 
 
 These are the undoubted rights of the States, 
 and might be exercised to the end of time with- 
 
192 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 out being questioned. The experience of almost 
 a century has afforded the most abundant proof 
 that, in the orderly administration of these 
 powers, they have been found ample to pro- 
 tect the peace and happiness of the people, and 
 to promote their prosperity. 
 
 This formula of State rights is intelligible to 
 the plainest understanding. There is no com- 
 plexity in it, no knotty question to puzzle the 
 politicians ; and the great majority of the people 
 of the whole nation would be, if let alone, and 
 I have no doubt are, perfectly satisfied with it, 
 as expressing the limit of State powers. 
 
 Still there is, in the common acceptation, 
 something in the very term, State rights, 
 which obscures this plain, practical demonstra- 
 tion of them, by connecting them with a vague 
 imagination of some attribute too subtle for or- 
 dinary minds, — some abstract, reserved power, 
 which may be applied, in great emergencies, 
 even to the dissolution of the Government. It 
 is looked upon as a piece of artillery which may 
 be brought out, on occasion, from a secret arse- 
 nal, to threaten the nation and put it upon its 
 good behavior. This notion of State rights 
 comes up from a political school which, for 
 nearly half a century, has been indoctrinating 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 193 
 
 the youth of the country, and especially the 
 Southern youth, in its pernicious philosophy, 
 breeding premeditated hostility to the Union. 
 It has at last produced its proper fruit, in iden- 
 tifying itself and its disciples with this great, 
 bloody, futile rebellion, — in the doom of which 
 it wdll find, also, its proper punishment. 
 
 The distinctive doctrine which characterizes 
 the school asserts an original, inherent, inalien- 
 able sovereignty in each State of the Union. 
 It affirms the States to be sovereign powers, 
 possessing an absolute right to determine for 
 themselves their relations to each other and to 
 the whole. It maintains that, as an expedient 
 of convenience, these States have created a 
 common agency to transact their common busi- 
 ness in reference to matters of general or for- 
 eign concern, to which agency they have 
 agreed, by a compact with each other, to com- 
 mit certain described powers, with a tacit res- 
 ervation of their right to determine, each State 
 for itself, whether the agency lawfully performs, 
 in any arising case, the duty assigned to it, and, 
 upon an adverse determination of the question, 
 to decline submission, to nullify the proceeding, 
 and even, in the last resort, to retire from the 
 association. This agency is described as the 
 13 
 
194 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 Federal Government, which is supposed to ex- 
 ist upon no stronger or more durable tenure 
 than may be deduced from this theory of State 
 Rights. 
 
 This conception of the ^laracter of the Union 
 and of the powers of the Government has been 
 of slow and reluctant growth. It was discussed 
 at the formation of the Constitution, and re- 
 jected. It had a party then, and has had, 
 under various conditions, a party ever since ; 
 but it never has had the consent of the people, 
 nor a majority of the leading minds of the 
 country in its favor. The most distinguished 
 of its advocates have been quite as distinguished 
 amongst its opponents ; and it has been used 
 and disused, approved and rejected by the same 
 persons and parties at different dates, to suit the 
 political emergencies of the day. It claims to 
 have had its most authentic enunciation in the 
 Resolutions of Virginia and Kentucky, in 1798 
 and 1799, notwithstanding its positive repudi- 
 ation by the author of the first of these reso- 
 lutions, Mr. Madison, and its incongruity with 
 the written opinions of the author of the sec- 
 ond, Mr. Jefferson. It boasts of its support in 
 the names of Calhoun, McDuffie, and Hamil- 
 ton, as the doctrine of South Carolina, in 1832, 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 195 
 
 notwithstanding the deliberate, studied, and co- 
 gent refutation of it written by one of these 
 statesmen, and pubHshed with the hearty con- 
 currence of the other two, in 1821. It has 
 never, indeed, been a widely accepted doctrine, 
 even in the South, until this rebellion found it 
 to be the most convenient and effective lenitive 
 to the conscience of that multitude of men and 
 women who w^ere in search of a pretext for the 
 indulgence of the pride and passion that revelled 
 in the fancy of a Southern dominion. Then, 
 all at once, it became the creed of the party ; 
 an article of faith to the insurgents ; an article 
 of fashion and badge of gentility to their sym- 
 pathizing friends outside of the line of fire. 
 
 In reflecting upon these two aspects of the 
 theory of State Rights — that plain exposition 
 of them seen in the daily administration of the 
 State governments, and, in contrast with it, 
 this ultra dogma of sovereignty — it is worthy 
 of remark that every State has thriven whilst 
 it confined its ambition to the scope indicated 
 by the first ; and that what discord, feud, and 
 damage have marred the prosperity of any sec- 
 tion of the Union, or disfigured the annals of 
 any State, have been coincident with politi- 
 cal aspirations towards a power to subordi- 
 
196 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 nate the National Government to a State su- 
 premacy. 
 
 The question to which this review of the 
 State Rights theory brings us is one of great 
 interest : Are the States sovereigns, in the 
 sense which claims for them a reserved inhe- 
 rent power to assert, in any event, a suprem- 
 acy over the National Government ? — in fact, 
 are they sovereigns at all ? 
 
 According to that scientific definition of sov- 
 ereignty which we generally find in treatises 
 upon national law, those States are not, and 
 never have been, sovereigns. I mean by this to 
 affirm, that, adopting the notion of sovereignty 
 as expounded in the books, — especially in the 
 writings of European jurists, — there is no such 
 attribute of sovereignty in any State of this 
 Union as belongs to an independent nation. 
 Whatever quantum of sovereign power exists 
 in the individual States is derivative and second- 
 ary^ not original or inherent; it comes from 
 grant or permission of a higher power, and is 
 subject to all the conditions that higher power 
 may have imposed upon it, or may in future 
 impose upon it. 
 
 The present thirty-six States have grown up 
 out of thirteen British Colonies and the terri- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 19T 
 
 tory purchased, or otherwise obtained, by the 
 Union since the adoption of the Constitution. 
 It is to the Thirteen Colonies, therefore, that 
 we must look for any germ of sovereignty that 
 may be supposed to reside in the States. 
 
 Confessedly the colonies were not sovereign 
 powers. They were corporations, existing by 
 grants from the Crown. They were invested 
 by their charters with a broad privilege of self- 
 government, reaching pretty nearly to all the 
 functions of domestic or municipal polity now 
 exercised by the States. But still they were 
 subjects of the Crown, bound, in many respects, 
 by the laws of Parliament, and liable to the 
 forfeiture of their charters for misconduct. Of 
 course, such organizations could not be said to 
 possess the character of sovereigns, in the sense 
 in which that character is now claimed for the 
 States. 
 
 By what action or means, it may then be 
 asked, could these colonies be converted into 
 sovereign States ? I answer, amongst other 
 means, — such as the grant of the parent State, 
 or its abandonment of the colony, — such com- 
 munities may become sovereign authorities by 
 conquest, A people may turn upon the power 
 that rules them, engage in a war of revolution, 
 
198 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 and, if successful, they may acquire territory 
 and independence by right of conquest, and 
 lawfully become absolutely sovereign. 
 
 This leads us to inquire. Were the colonies 
 converted into sovereign States by this right of 
 conquest ? Let us take a brief glance at the 
 history of their transformation. The breach 
 between the mother country and the colonies 
 grew out of certain acts of Parliament and 
 Executive interferences, which were regarded 
 as infringements of the rights of the people of 
 these communities as English subjects. These 
 grievances were supposed to assail the political 
 rights of the people of all the colonies. There 
 was, therefore, a common cause of complaint. 
 After much remonstrance from the people, 
 speaking through their legislatures, and through 
 city, county, and other popular assemblages, 
 it became apparent that the discontent was 
 leading to the outbreak of a rebellion, and to 
 the probable establishment of an independent 
 government. This state of things naturally 
 brought to the consideration of the people an 
 inquiry into their capability to sustain a con- 
 test with the mother country. The purpose of 
 such a contest would be to conquer a right to 
 possess the country and govern it ; their only 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 199 
 
 means to do this lay in the combined strength 
 of the people of the colonies, marshalled in ar- 
 mies. The important question, therefore, was, 
 How were these armies to be obtained and 
 supported ? The answer came in a universal 
 demand, from one end of the country to the 
 other, for Union. Before anything was at- 
 tempted. Union was indispensable. " Let the 
 people unite and make common cause," was 
 the cry from New Hampshire to Georgia. 
 " Let us stand by each other, and, if justice 
 be not done to our demands, let us apply our 
 united force to the extino-uishment of the Brit- 
 ish sovereignty here, and the establishment in 
 its place of a sovereignty of our own ! " This 
 was the resolve that rang like a trumpet-note 
 through the country. 
 
 The great mass of the people of the several 
 colonies had arrived at this determination in 
 1776. They had been discussing questions of 
 adjustment and redress in Congress for two 
 years before this, in the hope of peaceful settle- 
 ment with the Crown ; but their propositions 
 were rejected, and the Congress of that year 
 took the final and decisive step, called for by 
 the people, of declaring the independence of 
 the colonies, and making a direct appeal to 
 arms to secure it. 
 
200 ^]R. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 This declaration was made "by the repre- 
 sentatives," as they describe themselves, " of 
 the United States of America in General Con- 
 gress assembled," and announces the act to be 
 done " in the name and by the authority of the 
 good people of these colonies." 
 
 In this paper they take occasion to announce 
 the principles of human right by which they 
 held themselves justified in the great enterprise 
 they were about to undertake. These princi- 
 ples found but little support in the political 
 philosophy of that age ; they were, however, 
 distinctively American, and have, from the 
 date of this declaration, ever been regarded as 
 the true basis of our Government. Amongst 
 other things, they announce that governments 
 are instituted to secure the rights of the people, 
 and derive their just powers only "from the con- 
 sent of the governed ; " and they declare, more- 
 over, " 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 in- 
 stitute a new government " on such principles 
 as "shall seem most likely to effect their safety 
 and happiness." This summary of rights is fol- 
 lowed by a statement of the many acts of usur- 
 pation and tyranny, on the part of the Crown, 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 201 
 
 that were deemed sufficient to warrant the 
 attempt at revolution to which this declara- 
 tion was the prelude ; and the document ends 
 with the momentous proclamation, " That these 
 United Colonies are, and of right ouglit to be, 
 Free and Independent States." 
 
 This is all so familiar to an American reader 
 as almost to require an apology for its repeti- 
 tion. But I have found it necessary to recall 
 these passages in order to ask attention to three 
 points presented by them, which I think wor- 
 thy of notice : — 
 
 1. That they affirm the consent of tJie people 
 to be the only legitimate foundation of govern- 
 ment, and the only authority competent to alter 
 the form of government ; an affirmation which 
 imports simply that the sovereignty of a nation 
 resides only in the people. 
 
 2. That this Declaration was issued to the 
 world, by the representatives in that Congress, 
 as the act^ and in the name^ of " the good people 
 of these colonies ; " and, 
 
 3. That in proclaiming the colonies thence- 
 forth to be ''''free and independent States.,^^ it 
 does not assume to describe them as sovereign 
 States. They were pronounced free and inde- 
 pendent of any allegiance or subjection to the 
 
202 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 British Crown ; but whether they were to be 
 independent sovereignties or integral parts of a 
 future nation rested entirely, according to the 
 principles formally laid down in this same pa- 
 per, upon the determination of " the good peo- 
 ple of these colonies," — in other words, "upon 
 the consent of the governed," when the time 
 should come to make a government. 
 
 Now, this was the starting-point of the new 
 order of things. The war was just begun. 
 What government the United Colonies then 
 had may be described as of the simplest form 
 of revolutionary, Provisional Government, sud- 
 denly got up for the emergency, and to be 
 moulded into something better hereafter. The 
 Colonial Assemblies or Conventions sent dele- 
 gates to a general Congress to consult and to 
 do what they thought best. This Congress was 
 composed of but one House. The administra- 
 tion was carried on by committees. There was 
 neither time nor temper to construct a govern- 
 ment. The movement of the Revolution de- 
 pended solely on the patriotism of the people 
 and the spontaneous or volunteer obedience of 
 the several colonies to the requests of Con- 
 gress. 
 
 The people flew to arms from every town, 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 203 
 
 village, and hamlet, and repaired to their sev- 
 eral camps wherever they were summoned. 
 Virginians, Marylanders, and Pennsylvanians 
 marched to Massachusetts ; and in turn, Mas- 
 sachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire sent 
 their men to Virginia and Carolina. In action 
 the whole country was one nation, struggling 
 for one object, — the expulsion of the British 
 power from the circle of the " Old Thirteen," 
 and the establishment in place of it of the 
 power of "the good people of these colonies." 
 
 The contest lasted seven years. In the end, 
 Britain was beaten, her dominion extinguished, 
 her sovereignty wrested from her and transfer- 
 red to another hand. To whom was that sov- 
 ereignty transferred ? To those who conquered 
 it. Who were they ? Was it Virginia ? Was 
 it Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania ? 
 No; not any one of these, but all together. 
 The sovereignty, then, went to all together, 
 — " to the good people of these colonies " who 
 originated the war, carried it through, and 
 made themselves a nation, with free choice of 
 their own future organization. 
 
 No one of the colonies, during all this strug- 
 gle, singly declared itself independent. No one 
 had the power to maintain such a declaration, 
 
204 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 if it had been made. No one, consequently, 
 possessed any capability to make itself sover- 
 eign. If, therefore, after the declaration of in- 
 dependence, any State or States became vested 
 with any kind of sovereignty, it must have 
 been by the grant, permission, or acquiescence 
 (which is implied consent) of " the good peo- 
 ple of these colonies"; and this, of course, re- 
 pels the idea of original and inherent State 
 sovereignty. 
 
 Now, it did occur, pending the war and 
 after the Declaration, that the States did as- 
 sume to be sovereign. This is a curious pas- 
 sage in our history, which is marked by some 
 striking demonstrations of a mistake made by 
 our ancestors, in their first conception of the 
 character as well as of the necessities of the 
 Union they were about to establish. 
 
 The Articles of Confederation were adopted 
 in 1777, but not entirely ratified until 1781. 
 They were the first expression of the idea of 
 government for the Union. They were begun 
 in an effort at government a year before the 
 Declaration of Independence, and at a time 
 when, as Washington remarked, "No sensible 
 man on the continent desired independence;" 
 when all hoped for satisfactory adjustment of 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 205 
 
 diiferences with the Crown. The first out- 
 lines, therefore, made no reference to sovereign 
 States. 
 
 Yet it cannot be doubted — for the evidence 
 is clear — that the Congress of '77 and its suc- 
 cessors had a large majority whose conception 
 of the new government did not go beyond the 
 imao;ination of a League of Sovereign States. 
 The Congress that framed and adopted the ar- 
 ticles explicitly declared the doctrine of State 
 sovereignty in the second article, in the follow- 
 ing terms : " Each State retains its sovereignty, 
 freedom, and independence, and every power, 
 jurisdiction, and right which is not, by this Con- 
 federation, expressly delegated to the United 
 States in Congress assembled." 
 
 It is worthy of note, that, at the date of this 
 act, the States had not come into possession 
 of sovereignty, freedom, or independence ; they 
 were all engaged in the war to conquer these 
 privileges, — a war which had only begun. 
 How could any of these States retain what 
 none of them had yet obtained ? Much more, 
 how could each of them retain sl sovereignty 
 which not one of them had even pretended 
 before this to assert for itself, and which the 
 people — the proclaimed source of all sover- 
 
206 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 eignty — had not yet even been asked to con- 
 fer upon them ; which, indeed, they had not 
 yet the power to confer upon them ? 
 
 It was a strange solecism in the poHtical 
 action of that old Congress, this undertaking 
 to distribute sovereignty amongst the States, 
 when they had not yet secured it for them- 
 selves ! But the act was liable to a still greater 
 objection ; for, supposing that the States had 
 conquered their independence, where did the 
 delegates of that Congress, or any subsequent 
 one, get authority to declare a State a sover- 
 eign power ? They had just proclaimed it to 
 be a fundamental principle — that all lawful 
 government rested solely on the consent of the 
 people. Had they the consent of the people to 
 this act ? Did they, indeed, ask the consent of 
 the people of any one State to authorize them to 
 form the government they were then devising ? 
 No, not one. They were not themselves even 
 elected by the people. They held their seats 
 by the selection of their legislatures, not by 
 popular vote. Did they, when their work was 
 done, refer it to the people for ratification ? 
 No ; the utmost that they did was to refer 
 the ratification to the States ; and, in fact, the 
 people never did act upon that scheme of the 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 207 
 
 Confederation at all. Clearly, the whole pro- 
 ceeding must be regarded, when tested by the 
 principles of the Declaration of Independence, 
 as a usurpation on the part of the States. Still, 
 it is true, the people acquiesced. The great 
 business of the time did not admit of nice de- 
 bates on points of power, and the people had 
 too much respect for the patriots who guided 
 the public counsels to question what they did 
 in their endeavors to establish the nation. And 
 so, we may admit that the Government of the 
 Confederation, during its short existence, did 
 really recognize — with the acquiescence, if not 
 the consent of the people — the theory of the 
 sovereignty of the States. The history of tjiat 
 old Confederation, its hasty birth, its halting 
 and feeble existence, and its early death, afford 
 irresistible evidence of the utter incompetency 
 of that State-rights theory to answer the most 
 ordinary needs of the nation. 
 
 The Confederation was finally ratified by the 
 States in 1781. It had been four years under 
 debate. One of the prominent objections made 
 to it, and which longest delayed its acceptance, 
 shows how naturally the sense of the country, 
 when called into action free from the influence 
 of a political theory, turned towards a true 
 
208 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 perception of the rights that grew out of the 
 contest of the Revolution. The difficulty that 
 stood in the way of the Confederation was a 
 question of territory. Several of the States 
 claimed, under their colonial charter, a width 
 and breadth of boundary which gave them the 
 area of an empire of yet unsettled land. Vir- 
 ginia, especially, held large tracts beyond the 
 Ohio. The smaller States objected to a con- 
 federation which acknowledged State sover- 
 eignty over this vast, uncultivated domain. 
 They objected that this domain did not right- 
 fully helong to the States that claimed it by 
 their charters, but belonged to all the colonies, 
 «s a national possession conquered 'from the 
 British Crown by the united arms and common 
 resources of the whole. They contended, in 
 effect, tliat no one State had gained anything 
 by conquest, and that what was gained was 
 gained by all for the benefit of all. It was 
 only by a promise of judicious compromise 
 with this objection, looking to a future surren- 
 der of their claims, that even the States ao-reed 
 to adopt the Confederation. 
 
 And now came the trial of the State-rights 
 theory. The Confederation formed upon it, 
 even before it went into full operation in 1781, 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 209 
 
 had been pronounced a failure. After the 
 peace, in 1783, the failure became every day 
 more manifest. The letters of the statesmen 
 of that time are full of complaints of the utter 
 inefficiency of the system — the League of Sov- 
 ereign States — to answer the most indispensa- 
 ble demands of government. Congress was 
 continually suggesting expedients of amend- 
 ment ; the States were constantly endeavoring 
 to reconcile the two evidently incompatible 
 ideas of national welfare and State sover- 
 eignty by propositions to patch up the one 
 with grudged and stinted concessions from 
 the other. But all would not do. The coun- 
 try was fast "descending," as Washington ex- 
 pressed it, " into the vale of confusion and 
 darkness." There was really but one remedy 
 against this state of things, and that was finally 
 recognized by Congress in 1787, by the resolu- 
 tion to call a Convention to meet in Philadel- 
 phia in May of that year, "for the sole and 
 express purpose of revising the Articles of 
 Confederation, and reporting to Congress and 
 the several Legislatures such alterations and 
 provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in 
 Congress and confirmed by the States, render 
 the Federal Constitution adequate to the exi- 
 14 
 
210 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 gencies of government and the preservation of 
 the Union." 
 
 How that Convention dealt with the ques- 
 tion of State sovereignty I propose to make the 
 subject of the next Letter, 
 
LETTER X. 
 
 STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 February, 1865. 
 
 Chronologically, the State-rights, or State- 
 sovereignty idea, lasted in theory ten years, 
 from 1777 to 1787. Practically, it was a caput 
 mortuum from the beginning to the end of its 
 term. During the war the Government got 
 along in spite of the obstructions of the theory, 
 — propelled by the patriotism of the country ; 
 after the war it did not get along at all. The 
 public affairs were generally at a dead-lock. 
 The national finances were in inextricable con- 
 fusion ; the public engagements were repudi- 
 ated ; the current debts were unpaid ; the na- 
 tional treaties were unfulfilled ; the commerce 
 of the country was left without regulation ; the 
 States were in a continual quarrel with each 
 other upon the extent of their boundaries and 
 their separate right to territory, which their 
 united arms had won from its former owner ; 
 
212 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 insurrection was threatened ; the Government 
 had no power either to make peace between 
 the disputants, or to protect itself. The States 
 were all sovereigns, and could conduct things 
 according to their own humor. 
 
 When the Convention met, there was a 
 party in that body which rather seemed to 
 favor this state of things. The small States 
 were jealous of the large, and this sentiment 
 was reciprocated from the large States, by a 
 disparaging estimate of the value of the small. 
 But the great and wise leaders of the Conven- 
 tion came to their duty with a full appreciation 
 of the importance of the labors before them. 
 They came with an earnest determination to 
 break up the rickety League of 1777, and sub- 
 stitute in its place a nation. They came 
 resolved to restore that principle of the Dec- 
 laration of Independence which had, for ten 
 years, been thrown into abeyance, — the prac- 
 tical acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of 
 the People. An objection was made as to 
 the extent of the authority conferred upon the 
 Convention to create a new government. It 
 was said that Congress had only given them 
 power to revise and amend the old Articles 
 of Confederation. The reply was: We shall 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 2l 
 
 propose our new government to the people, 
 and, if they ratify it, it will be the act of the 
 sovereign power of the nation, and so of su- 
 preme authority. Upon this basis the labors 
 of the Convention were conducted to the end. 
 The result was, the present Constitution was 
 finally ratified by the people of every State 
 assembled in convention. 
 
 The key to a true interpretation of the char- 
 acter and power of the National Government, 
 and of the relation of the State governments 
 to it, will be found in that simple principle, so 
 distinctly announced in the Declaration, — the 
 sovereignty of the people of the Union, or, in 
 the language of the paper itself, " of the good 
 people of these colonies." 
 
 As my subject now leads me to make some 
 remarks upon this question of sovereignty, I 
 must premonish you that I entirely repudiate 
 and discard that scientific or professional defi- 
 nition of this term, to which I made some allu- 
 sion in my last Letter, as accepted in trans- 
 Atlantic treatises on national law, and which 
 definition, I think, has been too broadly adopted 
 into our own. 
 
 I have never seen it noticed that our dis- 
 tinctively American form of government is 
 
214 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 founded on a basis which repels the European, 
 or Old-World, idea of sovereignty and allegi- 
 ance. I am, therefore, perhaps, venturing on 
 an entirely new ground, when I assert that the 
 relations between the State and the people, as 
 created by our scheme of polity, are not to 
 be measured by the rule which determines 
 the character of sovereignty and allegiance, as 
 known to the monarchical forms of society. 
 Sovereignty and allegiance are feudal ideas. 
 They are correlatives, which suppose a chief 
 on one side and a vassal on the other. They 
 describe attributes and duties of 2^erso7is, — the 
 sovereign lord and the lieo-eman. One owes 
 protection, the other obedience. The liege- 
 man, according to the old feudal custom, came 
 into court and pledged himself, by oath, "to be 
 faithful to the king and his heirs, and truth 
 and faith to bear, of life and limb and terrene 
 honor ; and not to know or hear of any ill or 
 damage intended him, without defending him 
 therefrom." This was, in the primitive days 
 of feudalism, the pledge of allegiance.^ when 
 made to the sovereign, — oi fealty., when made 
 to a superior or lord who himself was a feuda- 
 tory to the sovereign. 
 
 This idea of sovereignty and allegiance be- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 215 
 
 came, in process of time, expanded beyond its 
 original narrow feudal limits, and found a place 
 in our national law, as the expression of the 
 relation between the subject or citizen and the 
 State. But it has never lost, in monarchical 
 countries, its personal attribute ; it is inva- 
 riably, in such countries, exhibited as a per- 
 sonal relation. Sovereignty is personated in 
 the king ; allegiance is personated in the per- 
 formance of the duty due from the subject to 
 the king. 
 
 It is easy to trace the transition of this idea 
 into the field of the general rights and obliga- 
 tions which the law of nations of the present 
 age has laid down for the government of prince 
 and people, and, more abstractly, for defining 
 the relation between State and citizen. But it 
 will be found that, throughout this transition, 
 the seminal idea is always preserved ; there is 
 always present in it some vestige of its original 
 reference to person. The sovereign is an au- 
 gust power visibly represented in the monarch ; 
 his person is sacred, his authority paramount, 
 he can neither give it away nor diminish it; 
 by a fiction of law, he never dies ; the man 
 may abdicate, but the king cannot ; his right 
 comes from Heaven ; it is inherent and in- 
 
216 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 alienable. The subject is the servant or vassal 
 of this power, and owes to the possessor of it 
 all respect, deference, and veneration. He is 
 guilty, not only of bregjch of law, but of inde- 
 corum and irreverence, when he disobeys his 
 sovereign. And when he rises against him in 
 rebellion, or abets those who do so, he commits 
 treaso7i, which he is educated to believe is a 
 species of parricide. These are the traditional 
 ideas which come to us from the other side of 
 the Atlantic, and which have very notably im- 
 printed their character upon our philosophy in 
 defining the relation between the State and the 
 citizen. We have, however, nothing in our 
 system of government, either State or National, 
 which precisely answers to this trans- Atlantic 
 idea of sovereignty and allegiance, notwith- 
 standing our seeming adoption of it in our 
 national jurisprudence. We have no symbol- 
 ism by which to represent either ; no material, 
 visible sovereign ; no form for the manifesta- 
 tion of personal allegiance from the subject. 
 There is nothing apparent to exact that rev- 
 erence of sovereignty or that humility of alle- 
 giance which are uppermost in the foreign 
 conception of government. Then, again, we 
 have nothing from which may be inferred an 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 217 
 
 original and inherent right to govern in any 
 State or National organization. We reduce 
 government to a very simple principle, — the 
 will and consent of the people. We have lit- 
 tle or no reverence for old forms or old ideas, 
 but brush them away without compunction the 
 moment we find them to be an obstruction. We 
 have but little veneration for those in authority ; 
 they are our servants, and we change them 
 when we choose, ■ — perhaps much too often. 
 We invest government wdth no mystery, but 
 look upon it as a machine of our own making, 
 which we may take apart and put together as 
 often as we may conceive it necessary for its 
 better working. At bottom, our constitutions, 
 one and all, are, in fact, unwritten. Reducing 
 them to their ultimate term, they may be ex- 
 pressed in one sentence, — " The Government 
 shall be what the people may, from time to 
 time, ordain it." A convention may come to- 
 gether twice, thrice, a dozen times in a century, 
 in any State, or in behalf of all the States, and 
 adopt a set of fundamental ordinances which 
 shall be i>:ood until another convention shall 
 supersede them by a new enactment. That 
 is now recognized law all over the country. 
 These conventions even make new Bills of 
 
218 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 Rights, — in other words, new declarations of 
 the inalienable, inviolable, and imprescriptible 
 rights of American citizens, — to hold good un- 
 til another convocation shall discover a fresh 
 and better assortment of the eternal principles 
 of human freedom ! 
 
 With these differences of doctrine and prac- 
 tice between us and the Old World, it is very 
 obvious we have no need, and, indeed, no pos- 
 sibihty, of retaining the Old-World notions of 
 sovereignty and allegiance. We have kept 
 the terms, — and that is all. Sovereignty, in 
 our practical exposition of it, simply means the 
 power to make and execute the laws, and im- 
 plies, of course, the power to appoint agents 
 to perform this function. That power resides 
 only in the body of the people. The people 
 appoint representatives to organize a govern- 
 ment ; which government is required and con- 
 trived to discharge such duties as the people 
 have agreed to consign to it. 
 
 In accordance with this scheme, the people 
 of the United States have ordained, by the 
 Constitution, that the National Government 
 shall exercise, in their name, certain sovereign 
 powers, and shall, within the prescribed limits, 
 also represent their sovereignty. So far, the 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 219 
 
 National Government may be called sovereign. 
 The same people have also ordained that the 
 States shall, in like manner, be authorized to 
 exercise certain sovereign powers. There were 
 thirteen States, which, as colonies of the Brit- 
 ish Crown, had been invested with a power to 
 govern themselves according to their own will, 
 within a defined sphere of action. The people, 
 speaking through the Constitution they had 
 made, said to these thirteen States : " You 
 shall exercise all the functions of sovereignty 
 to which you have been accustomed, except 
 in such matters as we find it convenient to 
 prohibit. And, as we propose hereafter to 
 create many more States, we shall give to 
 them the same powers that are allowed to you, 
 subject them to the same restrictions, and make 
 them, in all respects, your equals; that is to 
 say, we shall confer upon them precisely the 
 same amount of sovereignty that you possess." 
 Now, whatever sovereignty may be said to 
 reside in the States has this origin. It comes 
 hy grant from the people of the United States ; 
 it was not preexistent, independent, or original. 
 It is a qualified, conditional sovereignty, which, 
 in the European sense, is no sovereignty at all, 
 and which, in our American sense, is the only 
 
220 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS, 
 
 kind of sovereignty that can exist in any State 
 organism. The sovereignty is in the people, 
 and not in the organized government : there., it 
 is a representation, only, of sovereignty. The 
 question then arises, Is there not a separate 
 sovereignty in the people of each State ? That 
 question I have answered in the last Letter, — 
 " No ; for the people of no State," as I have 
 said, " ever proclaimed or conquered a separate 
 sovereignty." The National Constitution ab- 
 solutely negatives the claim to original or inde- 
 pendent sovereignty in any State of the Union. 
 That Constitution was constructed on the as- 
 sumption, in which the whole country acqui- 
 esced, that a majority of the people of the 
 United States, virtually represented in conven- 
 tion and supported, in a subsequent vote, by a 
 majority of the people of the States, had full 
 authority to propose, ordain, and establish the 
 fundamental law for the government of the 
 whole nation, calling themselves, in the docu- 
 ment, "We, the people of the United States." 
 These concurrent majorities — the great 
 law-originating power of the Union, the uni- 
 versally admitted representative of the national 
 sovereignty — spoke in the language of com- 
 mand and prohibition. They said to each 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 221 
 
 State, " You must be careful to establish, and 
 maintain republican government within your 
 confines ; you shall grant no title of nobility. 
 If you fail to observe this law, the nation will 
 interpose and legislate for you. You shall not 
 coin money, nor emit bills of credit, nor collect 
 duties on imports." The phrase was peremp- 
 tory : " No State shall " do any of those things 
 which the people then thought it expedient to 
 prohibit. 
 
 Here is the exercise of a power above all 
 the States. Wlio was it said, " No State shall 
 do this or do that ? " First, the representa- 
 tives of the people of the whole Union, and, 
 after them, the representatives of the people of 
 the several States, by whose fiat this became 
 law. " We, the people," said it. Could not 
 the same authority have circumscribed State 
 action within still narrower limits ? Yes ; and 
 they did so. They said: "You shall not 
 make war nor peace, nor treaties, nor have an 
 army or navy without the permission of the 
 nation. You shall not have a post-ofiice, nor 
 a custom-house." In fact, they cut off from 
 the States, one by one, almost every power or 
 attribute which the world is accustomed to 
 regard as a badge or sign of sovereignty, and 
 
222 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 left them in possession of little more than that 
 municipal power which the world is equally 
 accustomed to regard as the characteristic limit 
 of subordinate governments. It is obvious, 
 then, that the States had a master. How does 
 this agree with the theory of original, inherent 
 sovereignty ? 
 
 Still, it is true that the States exercise sov- 
 ereign powers : that is, they make and exe- 
 cute laws. To do this is one of the highest 
 acts of sovereignty. But note, that it is one 
 thing to exercise sovereign powers and another 
 to he sovereign. The City Council makes and 
 executes laws within its little circle of govern- 
 ment, and so far represents a fraction of the 
 great sovereignty of the nation. Yet it is not 
 a sovereign, except on a small scale, in that 
 only sense in which we may call a State a sov- 
 ereign of larger dimensions. There is really 
 no more inherent and primitive sovereignty in 
 one than in the other. In regard to both State 
 and City Council, — and going still higher, to 
 the National Government, — all these organ- 
 isms are but 7'epresentatives of sovereign power ; 
 the actual sovereignty being resident only in 
 the aggregate people, who can make and un- 
 make each and all of them at their pleasure. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 223 
 
 So, whatever sovereignty there is, comes by- 
 permission or appointment of the people, and 
 must conform itself to the conditions of that 
 permission. 
 
 This is the limit and scope of State Sov- 
 ereignty, and, whilst it is preserved within 
 this limit and faithfully administered by loyal 
 States, it will be found to be all the State 
 Sovereignty that is necessary to render Amer- 
 ican liberty forever secure against disastrous 
 assault. Indeed, I can conceive nothing more 
 certain, in the long run, to break down demo- 
 cratic government and overthrow public lib- 
 erty, than the permanent incorporation of this 
 idea of original, inherent sovereignty into any 
 section, subdivision or fragment of the nation, 
 or anywhere but in the aggregate of the people. 
 
 As the fact of sovereignty, according to our 
 republican system of government, is exhibited 
 in the making and executing of the laws, so 
 our allegiance, which is its correlative, consists 
 in nothing more nor less than in faithful obe- 
 dience to the laws. A citizen has no higher 
 duty — I mean no compulsory higher duty — 
 than that. Every man who honestly and truly 
 obeys the laws does all that our scheme of gov- 
 ernment demands of him in the way of alle- 
 giance. 
 
224 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 When a Virginia Senator, just at the date of 
 the breaking out of this rebellion, said, on the 
 floor of the Senate, " I owe no allegiance to 
 the United States ; my only allegiance is due 
 to the State of Virginia, and what I give to 
 the Government I give through her," he but 
 uttered the words of that sad delusion which 
 has spread mourning and sorrow around every 
 fireside in his native State. If he really meant 
 what these words would seem to imply, it was 
 that he owed no obedience to the laws of the 
 United States, except so far as Virginia per- 
 mitted him to obey them ; and that his State 
 had the right, in the exercise of her sovereign 
 will, to discharge him from the obligation of 
 obeying these laws. 
 
 What foundation is there for this vainglori- 
 ous boast, " I owe no allegiance to the Gov- 
 ernment of the United States ? " 
 
 Does not that Government rightfully make 
 laws for the whole nation ? Are not these laws 
 " the supreme law of the land ? " What title 
 above this — nay, as high as this — has* any 
 State to command obedience to its laws, in 
 opposition to those of the nation ? The " land " 
 is the whole country, in contradistinction to a 
 State, and embraces the whole round of States. 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 225 
 
 " The supreme law of the land " is, by its very 
 terms, as it is by its nature, the law of the only 
 sovereign ; for there cannot be two grades of 
 sovereigns. The people of "the land" are, 
 individually^ the subjects of that law and owe 
 it obedience. Collectively^ they are the makers 
 of that law, and may alter and amend it to suit 
 their own wants. Their obedience to this law 
 is the only allegiance possible to them. Their 
 sovereign possesses no personality or visible 
 existence to whom an act of homage, allegi- 
 ance, or fealty can be offered. The sovereign 
 to them is an abstraction, and exists simply in 
 the law which rules over all. Allegiance is 
 nothino; else than Obedience to that law. 
 
 The same kind of allegiance, and no other, 
 we owe to the laws of the State in which we 
 live. For the State derives its right to make 
 laws to bind those who live in it from pre- 
 cisely the same source as the National Gov- 
 ernment, — that is to say, the people of the 
 United States. They have agreed that the 
 people of New York and of Virginia may exer- 
 cise the law-making power within certain limi- 
 tations ; outside of these limitations, they have 
 said New York, and Virginia and the rest shall 
 not make laws. They have said, for example, 
 15 
 
226 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 " Within the sphere of your domestic affairs, 
 you may make laws, — taking care, however, 
 that, within that sphere, you make no ex-post- 
 facto law, nor make any law impairing the 
 obligation of contracts ; for these things we 
 forbid. Outside of your domestic affairs, we 
 deny you all power of legislation — except 
 that, if there be anj^thing we have not specifi- 
 cally forbidden you to do, tJiat you may do, 
 until we otherwise order. Let the champions 
 of State sovereignty rack their brains over this 
 point as long as they may, they will find no 
 escape from this conclusion — that the people 
 of the United States, as an aggregate political 
 body, are the masters of the whole system of 
 government, both National and State, and law- 
 fully may, and always will, distribute power 
 and arrange the functions of both National and 
 State organizations to suit their own views of 
 the growth and necessities of the nation. Now, 
 whatever State Sovereignty is compatible with 
 that general mastership of the people, the 
 States possess, and nothing more. 
 
 It is impossible, it strikes me, notwithstand- 
 ing all that is said to excite jealousy and dis- 
 trust of this popular power of the nation, to 
 conceive a safer or more wholesome depositary 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 227 
 
 of the sovereignty of the Union than this. It 
 can have no motive to aggrandize one portion 
 of the system under its control at the expense 
 of another. There is no natural antagonism 
 between the National and State organizations, 
 but, on the contrary, mutual and incessant de- 
 pendence. There is no necessary conflict of 
 interest ; wherever that has appeared, it has 
 aiisen out of an assumption, on the part of the 
 States, of prerogatives that were not in har- 
 mony with the common welfare. Every man 
 of the Nation is also a man of a State ; and it 
 is the aggregate of the men of the nation who 
 form and construct both. It would seem that 
 nothing could be devised so likely to keep both 
 in harmony. Certainly nothing, one would 
 think, would be so certain to render perfect 
 harmony in the Union hopeless, as the inde- 
 pendent sovereignty which is claimed in oppo- 
 sition to this theory. 
 
 If these views of the sovereignty of the peo- 
 ple, as demonstrated in the Constitution, need 
 further development, we shall see them more 
 clearly announced in the provisions made for 
 amendment. 
 
 The power to amend, to alter or modify, is 
 a power to construct and establish. I know of 
 
228 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 no limitation to this power. Has any one ever 
 thought of raising the question of its scope and 
 extent ? Would it not be regarded as a very 
 absurd objection to a proposed amendment, 
 that the people of the United States had no 
 right to make it ? I take it, that whatever 
 amendment is adopted in accordance with the 
 provisions laid down in the Constitution for 
 making amendments, becomes at once the 
 supreme law. This power may change, one 
 by one, or all together, every feature of the 
 Constitution. It may build States into empires, 
 or dwarf them into municipalities ; define State 
 rights, abolish slavery, regulate suffrage, silence 
 the logic of secession, and dispose of the thou- 
 sand questions that touch the public welfare, 
 with the full authority of a sovereign mandate. 
 The power is unbounded. The only, but the 
 all-sufficient, checks upon it are the responsi- 
 bility of the representative to his constituents, 
 and the vote of the nation in the act of ratifi- 
 cation. 
 
 This power to amend, therefore, may be 
 said to exhibit the highest manifestation of the 
 popular sovereignty. 
 
 Now, let us see where it Is lodged. 
 
 We shall find that the Constitution so ar- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 229 
 
 ranges the process of amendment that every 
 proposition shall come from a majority of the 
 people of the United States, speaking through 
 the representatives of the whole Union ; and 
 shall be ratified by a still larger majority of 
 the people, speaking through their representa- 
 tives in the several States. 
 
 1. The proposition must be made with the 
 consent of two thirds of both Houses of Con- 
 gress ; those in the House representing two 
 thirds of the people of the whole Union ; those 
 in the Senate representing two thirds of the 
 Senatorial constituency, which may or may 
 not be, according to the nature of the division, 
 the expression of two thirds of the States ; for 
 Senators of the same State, by dividing, may 
 neutralize the vote of the State. To this mode 
 of originating an amendment there is an alter- 
 native provision. Two thirds of the States 
 may, by their Legislatures, require Congress 
 to call a National Convention to propose 
 amendments. This convention is a single body 
 elected by the qualified voters of the whole 
 Union, and is, in the strictest sense, a repre- 
 sentation of the whole people. 
 
 2. When the amendment is thus proposed 
 and sanctioned by the people, in either of the 
 
230 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 orms of proceeding above described, it is then 
 to be submitted to a second ordeal of popular 
 consent, by its reference to the Legislatures of 
 the several States ; or, if Congress should have 
 reason to believe that State Conventions, ex- 
 pressly elected by the people of each State, 
 V70uld more accurately represent the popular 
 opinion, the Constitution gives it power to 
 order such Conventions to be held and the 
 question of the amendment to be consigned to 
 them. In whichever of these two forms the 
 amendment is subm.itted for ratification, it re- 
 quires that the people of three fourths of the 
 States shall thus give their consent to make it 
 a law. When that majority is obtained, then 
 the act is complete, and thenceforth the Gov- 
 ernment moves in accordance with this new 
 command. 
 
 In this process of amendment, it is to be 
 noted that the alteration in the Constitution 
 can only be proposed by the representatives 
 of the nation, assembled either in Congress 
 or in special National Convention ; that it is 
 the people of the United States, represented 
 per capita^ from equal districts over the whole 
 nation, who possess this great sovereign pre- 
 rogative oF initiating a new arrangement or 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 231 
 
 alteration of the fundamental law ; that the 
 supreme law is in the keeping of the Union, 
 and that the Union is the nation. When the 
 amendment is thus initiated, I wish it also to 
 be noted, that it is the people of the States who 
 are called upon to express, through their Legis- 
 latures, or — if these be not deemed by Con- 
 gress reliable exponents of the popular opinion 
 — through State Conventions, their consent to 
 the amendment, by the concurrence of the ma- 
 jority of the voters of not less than three fourths 
 of the States. 
 
 This is the machinery provided, by the found- 
 ers of the Government, for the exhibition of that 
 sovereign power which may make and unmake 
 every fundamental law for the guidance and 
 control of every National and State institution 
 within the Union. When that power once is- 
 sues its mandate, who can lawfully disobey it ? 
 Suppose it were to say that no slavery shall 
 henceforth exist within the confines of the 
 Union ; would this command be disputed by 
 any State in the circle ? If it should, would 
 the courts uphold it in such dispute ? These 
 questions are easily answered. They are an- 
 swered already. The whole people understand 
 them. The war has made them very intelli- 
 
232 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 gible. The great majority of the people of the 
 United States have said, " We must be done 
 with slavery." How have they set about to 
 make that saying good ? They propose an 
 amendment of the Constitution. Is there any 
 inherent sovereignty in any State of this Union 
 which can say, I will disobey that law ? 
 
 It is a subject of curious interest, at this 
 time, to look back to the Convention of 1787 
 and collect from the proceedings of that body 
 the notions which its leadino- men entertained 
 of their own power, in conjunction with that 
 of the people, to regulate and establish the 
 whole scheme of the Union. There were some 
 of these men disposed to break up the State 
 system. General Hamilton thought the States 
 ought to be reduced to mere political divisions. 
 Some even thought that the State lines might 
 be altered so as to equalize their several terri- 
 tories. Randolph, Madison, and others were 
 very emphatic in demanding a National Gov- 
 ernment. Patrick Henry would not accept a 
 seat, to which he had been appointed, because 
 he feared a National Government as hostile to 
 liberty, — a sentiment which he lived to retract. 
 Some were vehement in insisting upon a per- 
 petual license to the importation of African 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 233 
 
 slaves, whilst Mason, of Virginia, denounced 
 not only the trade in slaves, but slavery itself, 
 as a heinous national sin. 
 
 What I specially note, as pertinent to my 
 subject, in these incidents, is, that on all sides 
 it seemed to be conceded that, whatever might 
 be the result of their work, — whether it should 
 ultimately limit or enlarge State authority ; 
 whether it should establish a nation or a league ; 
 consolidate power or distribute it, — whatever 
 might be done, the product would be an en- 
 tirely lawful achievement, and, when ratified, 
 would be the supreme law of the land to which 
 all must yield obedience. There is everywhere 
 apparent in these proceedings, the conviction 
 that the Convention acted with implicit faith 
 in the sovereignty of the people, as the foun- 
 tain of all power, and as altogether sufficient 
 to ordain and establish the law which was to 
 regulate both the National and State govern- 
 ments. 
 
 There was one question raised in these de- 
 bates, which wa^ very significant in reference 
 to this subject of State Sovereignty, and which 
 is noteworthy now from the singular miscon- 
 ception to which it has been exposed. 
 
 Mr. Randolph, at an early day of the ses- 
 
234 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 sion, offered fifteen resolutions, of which the 
 sixth proposed to confer upon the National 
 Government a power " to call forth the force 
 of the Union against any member of the Union 
 failing to fulfil its duty." Mr. Patterson, also, 
 at a later period, offered a proposition, that 
 " if any State., or any body of men in any State, 
 shall oppose or prevent the carrying into exe- 
 cution such acts or treaties, the Federal Exec- 
 utive shall be authorized to call forth the power 
 of the confederated States, or so much thereof 
 as may be necessary to compel an obedience 
 to such acts," &c. These propositions met a 
 prompt dissent from Hamilton, Madison, Ma- 
 son, and others. They argued against the 
 propriety or expediency of incorporating into 
 the Constitution the idea of, what they called, 
 coercing a State. 
 
 Hamilton said : " How can this force be 
 exerted on the States? It is impossible. It 
 amounts to ivar between the parties. Foreign 
 powers will interpose, confusion will increase, 
 and a dissolution of the Union will ensue." 
 
 He regarded the making of war on a State 
 as an acknowledgment of it as a belligerent, 
 which would allow it to claim the riofht to 
 form foreign alliances. This acknowledgment, 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 235 
 
 he also perceived, would create confusion in 
 the relations of the people to the Government, 
 as it would enable the State to assume upon 
 itself the responsibility of the citizen's disobe- 
 dience to the national law ; and, what is still 
 more worthy of note at this time, he saw in 
 this admission of a belligerent right — what we 
 may now consider prophetic — imminent dan- 
 ger to the Union. 
 
 Madison argued to the same effect. Speak- 
 ing of the predominant theory of the Constitu- 
 tion as then proposed, " he called," says the 
 report, " for a single instance in which the 
 General Government was not to operate on 
 the people mdividually. The practicability of 
 making laws," he added, " with coercive sanc- 
 tions for the States, as political bodies., has been 
 exploded on all hands." 
 
 Mason, in a previous stage of the debate, 
 as we read in the notes of the Convention, 
 " argued very cogently, that punishment could 
 not, in the nature of things, be executed on the 
 States collectively, and, therefore., such a govern- 
 ment was necessary as could directly operate on 
 individuals., and would punish those only whose 
 guilt required it." 
 
 It is strange that these opinions of Hamil- 
 
236 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 ton, Madison, and Mason should be quoted for 
 the double purpose. First, of showing that they 
 treated the State as a sovereign power ; and 
 Second, that, being sovereign, it was their 
 opinion that it could not, for that reason^ be 
 coerced, or — as the term was used to signify 
 — be subjected to military attack and punish- 
 ment by the Government. Their argument 
 was the very reverse of this. It said : " Do 
 not recognize, in the constitution you are con- 
 structing, any such character in a State as 
 might authorize the National Government to 
 make war upon it, as a sovereign power ; if 
 you do so, it will follow that the State may 
 assert the right of a lawful belligerent ; shield 
 its citizens from their responsibility to you, by 
 claiming their allegiance to itself; and taking 
 advantage of the war, as putting an end to 
 all treaties and compacts, seize the opportunity 
 to retire from the Union. To obviate such a 
 mischievous relation between the States and 
 the Union, be careful to avoid any recognition 
 of a State as a subject of national hostility, 
 and construct such a government as shall have 
 power — in the language of Mason — ' to oper- 
 ate directly on individuals, and to punish those 
 only whose guilt required it.' 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 237 
 
 Hamilton, Madison, and Mason evidently 
 thought there should be no more recognition of 
 a power or a necessity to coerce a State than to 
 coerce a (bounty or a city. That, on the occur- 
 rence of a rebellion, it should be the province 
 of the Government to act only against those, 
 individually., who might be resisting, or aiding 
 others in resisting, the due and orderly execu- 
 tion of the laws, and by no means to allow any 
 delinquent to shield himself from punishment 
 by pleading that it was his duty to obey the 
 ■'aws of his State in preference to those of the 
 nation." 
 
 It seems almost incredible that any one 
 should argue that a State could not lawfully 
 be coerced because it is a sovereign power. 
 The logical conclusion runs in the opposite 
 direction. The only sound reason that could 
 be given for arraying an army against a State 
 w^ould be, that the State ivas a sovereign, and 
 entitled to be dealt with as only sovereign 
 powers are dealt with, when argument fails to 
 persuade ; for, it is only sovereign States with 
 which nations are accustomed to make war. 
 When States not sovereign transgress, redress 
 is sought, not in war with the subordinate 
 authority, but in the punishment of the indi- 
 
238 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 vidual who obeys its behests to the detriment 
 of the nation. 
 
 If the several States were what this ultra 
 State-rights doctrine asserts, sovereign commu- 
 nities, in the sense claimed for them, we have 
 abundant reason, in the dreadful teachings of 
 the last four years, to say that, but for the sig- 
 nal and total prostration of that theory in the 
 catastrophe of the rebellion, the members of 
 this Union would have been destined to quick 
 disintegration and perpetual war. The resist- 
 ance against this idea of coercion, therefore, by 
 the great leaders of the Convention, supplies 
 another proof, if more proof were wanting, of 
 their wise refusal to assign to the States any 
 higher attribute of sovereignty than that qual- 
 ified and restricted sovereignty which I have 
 endeavored to describe in this Letter. 
 
LETTER XL 
 
 PEACE. 
 
 July, 1865. 
 
 I WRITE a short Letter by way of conclu- 
 sion. The great events which followed so rap- 
 idly upon the date of my last, have brought 
 the task I have undertaken to an end. The 
 collapse of the rebellion, in the surrender of 
 its armies and the submission of its leaders, 
 leaves me but little motive to prolong the dis- 
 cussions presented in these Letters. 
 
 It was my purpose to say something on that 
 long-vexed question of Slavery, which has so 
 earnestly and so diversely stirred the feelings 
 of both North and South. But the interest 
 in that topic is suddenly and most happily 
 sunk in the fate of the rebellion. Slavery 
 has performed its mission in the world, and is 
 soon to be reckoned amongst the spent forces 
 that have disturbed or assisted the progress of 
 civilization. It is about to pass, with all its 
 imputed merits and demerits, with its wrongs, 
 
240 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 its crimes, its false pretences, its transient ser- 
 vice and whatever modicum of good of which 
 it was capable, into the great storehouse of 
 things finished upon earth, and to be henceforth 
 committed to the accusing record of history. 
 
 I regret to find that we have already begun 
 to wrangle about the final disposition of the 
 dShris which the demolition of that institution 
 has left in the political field. We are troubling 
 ourselves with vain disputes touching equality 
 of races, distinctions of complexion, and settle- 
 ment of suffrage. The Providence that has 
 conducted slavery up to the day of its extinc- 
 tion, I think, we may safely trust with the final 
 adjustment of the consequences. To me, it 
 seems to be a corollary from the great fiat of 
 that Extinction, that the emancipated slave shall 
 rise, in proper and due progress of elevation, 
 from his debasement, up to the enjoyment of 
 every faculty and every right he may prove 
 himself able to exercise; and that the only im- 
 pediment which may retard that progress will 
 be found in the attempt to coerce or direct it, 
 by the interposition of the power of tlie Na- 
 tional government. Nothing, it strikes me, 
 can be more appropriate, more certain, or bet- 
 ter adapted to insure the success of his advance- 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 241 
 
 ment, than the authority that belongs to, and 
 is especially cherished by, the State govern- 
 ments, for the regulation of their domestic 
 policy. Let them pursue their own course, 
 and I predict that not another decade will 
 elapse before every State in the Union will 
 find themselves compelled, by the strongest 
 inducements that govern human policy, to 
 use all the means at their command to make 
 the negro a useful and contented citizen. 
 
 I do not propose to give my reasons here 
 for this prophecy, but I will merely invite your 
 reflection to the fact, that four millions of peo- 
 ple are now added to a scarcely equal number 
 of population who heretofore dominated in the 
 South; and that the aggregate eight millions 
 are hereafter to constitute the body politic of the 
 same region. Does our past experience show 
 that republican government is possible, with 
 one half of the people permanently deprived 
 by the other half of equal political privileges ? 
 Reflect upon this question, and call to your aid 
 the history of the progress of political power and 
 especially of the right of suffrage, as these have 
 been developed in our growth, and I think you 
 will find no hesitation in making an answer. 
 Again, I would suggest for your meditation, an 
 
 16 
 
242 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 inquiry into the character of this emancipated 
 population, and ask you to notice that very 
 prominent fact which every Southern man un- 
 derstands, — namely, that the negro is by na- 
 ture the most amiable, imitative, and pliable of 
 all human beings; and that, with kind treat- 
 ment and friendly training, he may be made the 
 most effective and ever ready ally, in all polit- 
 ical enterprise, of that class of society which, in 
 his state of slavery, exercised mastership over 
 him. In the consideration of these qualities of 
 this docile race, and these opportunities and in- 
 ducements to create an influence over it, we 
 may ground our belief in the certainty of the 
 result I have predicted. 
 
 And, lastly, I invite you to weigh the value of 
 this remark, — that when the Southern repre- 
 sentation in the National Legislature is doubled, 
 (as it will be by the access of this population,) 
 it is against every theory sustained by our polit- 
 ical experience, to assume that the nation will 
 not demand the most complete equality of polit- 
 ical right for that mass which confers this addi- 
 tional power, and claim for itself the benefit of 
 the kindly sentiment and loyal attachment to the 
 Union, which the conferring of this boon must 
 inspire in the enfranchised population to whom 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 243 
 
 it is given. The gratitude and fidelity of these 
 people; thus earned by the government, the 
 loyal citizens of every State will insist upon 
 being brought to the support of the country, 
 through the instrumentality of the vote. 
 
 Referring to the obvious considerations which 
 these views suggest, and which I offer without 
 further discussion, I would, if I had any influ- 
 ence with Southern statesmen, advise them, of 
 their own motion, to take time by the forelock, 
 and provide in their several Constitutions that 
 every colored man who had tlie qualification of 
 residence, and who had attained to an intellec- 
 tual culture that enabled him to read his Bible, 
 should be invested with the right of suff'rage. 
 Such a provision would disarm all serious oppo- 
 sition to the prompt restoration of the States, 
 lately in rebellion, to all their former privileges, 
 and would disband the political parties which 
 have attempted an organization to confer this 
 right upon the lately liberated slaves. 
 
 Touching this question of Restoration, it is 
 pleasant to note how effectively that charitable 
 purpose is already aided by the prompt support 
 of the many old friends in the South we have 
 known in the past, whose stanch loyalty, though 
 long repressed, has never been extinguished in 
 
244 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS, 
 
 the dreadful trials of the time. I have never 
 abated my confidence in their coming to the 
 post of duty when the day of their service should 
 arrive* They have come forth at the appointed 
 time, and are fulfilling the predictions we have 
 made for them. But we have to rejoice, also, 
 that another auxiliary has come with them into 
 this field of duty, which the country did not ex- 
 pect, at least so soon. Side by side with the most 
 loyal, and even in eager competition with them, 
 have come many of those who had plunged into 
 the melee of civil war and either marshalled its 
 forces in the field or led its counsels in debate. 
 This marvel has appeared in conspicuous activ- 
 ity, as if to contradict the ordinary experience of 
 the world as gathered from all other civil com- 
 motions, and to furnish one more to the many 
 incidents that illustrate that anomalous char- 
 acter of our people, which makes them incom- 
 prehensible to those who do not live amongst 
 them, and altogether inexplicable in the phi- 
 losophy of those who measure men and States 
 by the standard of Old -World opinions. 
 
 The submission of the South was, to the 
 country, a sudden and most happy surprise. 
 It has been too prompt and too general to al- 
 low any one to doubt its sincerity. Whether 
 
MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS, 245 
 
 under the influence of a mistaken estimate of 
 political right, or of the illusion of some great 
 wrong and the consequent duty of resistance, 
 or whether impelled by thoughtless passion, or 
 swayed by the mere contagion of a popular 
 frenzy, the men of the South have fought for 
 their cause, and their whole population have 
 endured its privations and its pains, with a 
 bravery and a heroism, of which, in spite of our 
 anger and the sacrifices they have forced upon 
 us, we are secretly and personally proud, as 
 brothers of the same lineage and citizens of the 
 same country. It will hereafter be a point of 
 doubtful determination in the judgment of his- 
 tory, which is most worthy of admiration in 
 this war, — the eager, and, shall I not say, the 
 graceful submission of the conquered, as exhib- 
 ited in the frank confessions of the host that are 
 now appealing to the President for amnesty, or 
 the extraordinary clemency of the Government 
 in dealing with its erring children. 
 
 I notice these characteristics of the ending of 
 the strife, as signs of a happy future, and as per- 
 suasions, to both sides, in favor of perseverance 
 in that auspicious course of conciliation and wise 
 submission which will most certainly bring the 
 occurrence, the achievements, and the results 
 
246 MR. AMBROSE'S LETTERS. 
 
 of this gigantic conflict of opinion and arms to 
 be accounted, in our future history, as the great 
 purifier and renovator of our RepubHcan Em- 
 pire, and as the notation of the beginning of a 
 national strength and influence, both at home 
 and abroad, which no people have ever before 
 attained. 
 
 At this point I finish my allotted work. If 
 these Letters possess any interest to commend 
 their perusal, I shall be most happy to learn that 
 they have found a special facility of access to 
 those calmer minds in the South, whom the en- 
 grossments of the rebellion and the exaspera- 
 tion of conflict have not so seriously disturbed, 
 as to forbid a sober and honest reconsideration 
 of the few but very important topics I have 
 brouo;ht into review as the sources of that ter- 
 rible conflict from which the country has just 
 emerged. 
 
 31^77-2