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 WHERE WE STOOD 
 
 AND 
 
 WHERE WE STAND. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE UNION AS IT WAS AND THE CONSTITUTION AS IT IS." 
 

WHERE WE STOOD AND WHERE WE STAND. 
 
 Four thousand years ago, u Ishinaelites caine from 
 Gilead with their camels, bearing spicery, balm and 
 myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt;" and doubt- 
 less to carry back the productions of Egypt. God has 
 diversified the earth with different climates, each yield- 
 ing peculiar fruits, whose interchange, as in the above 
 example, renders man every where useful to all his 
 fellows, and encourages mutual dependence. Every 
 climate occasions, also, institutions and habits congenial 
 to its inhabitants, but uncongenial usually to men of 
 other climes, whereby, probably, God designed to pro- 
 mote harmony among the inhabitants of each locality, 
 and to prevent conflicts between different localities. 
 A union under one government of great climatic 
 diversities is, therefore, a device of man, not of God. 
 History is but a record of wars to forcibly consolidate 
 under one government climatic diversities, or to forci- 
 bly separate climatic diversities from such consolida- 
 tions ; and the eventual disruption of all great empires 
 so constituted, attests that climatic diversities must 
 ever ultimately become disunited. 
 
 But what God has thus separated for man's good, 
 our American Confederacy joined together by the 
 Constitution of 1787, whereby the North and the 
 South were united under one government — a now 
 marriage, not of "January and May," but of January 
 
and August. The new union was peculiar by its vol- 
 untary formation : thirteen different families consenting 
 to live in one house, and for the singular purpose of 
 "insuring domestic tranquillity,' 7 despite the proverb 
 that no two families can live together peacefully. But 
 each of our thirteen families was to mind only its own 
 affairs, and especially not to intermeddle with the 
 domestic arrangements of any other family. What 
 more could be needed in " Hail Columbia happy land," 
 by "a band of brothers joined, who peace and safety 
 hoped to find." Had some prophet whispered what 
 would occur in these latter days, every member of the 
 Convention would have answered, "Is thy servant a 
 dog that he should do this great thing ?" Have we 
 not proclaimed, "that to secure life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness governments are instituted, deriv- 
 ing their just power from the consent of the gov- 
 erned ; and that when any form of government becomes 
 destructive of these ends, it is the people's right to 
 alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, 
 founding it on such principles, and organizing its 
 powers in such form as shall seem most likely to effect 
 their safety and happiness?" — and the prophet of evil 
 would have been hissed as a lying spirit. 
 
 Nothing could be better than the objects of the new 
 Confederacy, and nothing could be wiser than the 
 Constitution by which the objects were to be attained ; 
 but was human nature good enough for the proposed 
 government, and wise enough for its requirements? 
 Nobody asked the question, and had it been asked, an 
 affirmative would have been indignantly responded : 
 all men hating injustice when no selfish motive thereto 
 is present ; yet, alas ! no saint can foresee the sinner he 
 
may become under the promptings of self-interest, as 
 no man can foresee what a coward he may become 
 when he is brought to face danger. Of another diffi- 
 culty the Convention seem to have been unaware : 
 they labored to limit the new government's authority, 
 supposing its limitations could be accomplished by apt 
 phrases, but forgetting that language is interpreted by 
 the readers thereof, who are as changeful as time and 
 as different as individuals. "Whoso sheddeth man's 
 blood, by man shall his blood be shed," was deemed 
 an explicit and divine sanction for capital punishment 
 no longer than man favored the punishment. Indeed, 
 the numerous Christian sects who derive their conflict- 
 ing creeds from the same oracles, demonstrate thereby 
 the impracticability of limiting by words the meaning 
 of words ; hence, before John Adams, the second Presi- 
 dent of the Confederacy, was well seated in his office, 
 politicians had subsided into the two opposite parties 
 that, under various names, have continually agitated 
 the country ; one construing the Constitution so as to 
 subordinate all climatic diversities to the control of a 
 Congressional majority, and the other party seeking to 
 preserve each State's peculiarities from Congressional 
 power. The struggle for supremacy of these two 
 parties, constitutes nearly all our civil history — the 
 struggle being perpetuated, and also demoralized, by 
 its constituting a game of chance to win political 
 power and pecuniary rewards ; and in which game all 
 citizens participate — the lowest as " egg men," who on 
 election days swarm our polls to sell their votes to the 
 best bidder, and the highest as leaders, who sell them- 
 selves, becoming anti-masons, anti-renters, an£i-slavery, 
 anti-catholics, anti-foreigners — "everything by turns, 
 
and nothing long. 1 ' For as a stage manager brings for- 
 ward the most attractive novelties, our politicians sup- 
 port the opinions that will catch the most voters, 
 irrespective of right or wrong, truth or falsity, con- 
 sistency or inconsistency. 
 
 When our Union was formed, the numerical strength 
 of its two climatic sections was pretty evenly divided, 
 but the North gradually waxed stronger than the 
 South, so that the contest would soon have been 
 decided adversely to the South, had the South not 
 been aided by Northern allies, who advocated the 
 Southern construction of the Constitution; though 
 recent events disclose that these Northern allies 
 regarded only the power and patronage they acquired 
 by aiding the South, and "point aV argent, point de 
 Suisse." The climatic peculiarities of the South 
 included chiefly domestic slavery, as essential to the 
 culture of cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco ; but being 
 thus an agricultural people, the South desired the 
 smallest practicable tariff on foreign importations. In 
 1836, when Congress distributed ratably to all the 
 States some thirty millions of dollars that were surplus 
 in the Federal treasury, the South opposed the distri- 
 bution as creating a new motive for high import 
 duties. From like motives, they opposed Congres- 
 sional expenditures for roads and harbors, desiring, in 
 the words of a Southern President, (Gen. Jackson,) to 
 make the general government a machine of the sim- 
 plest kind, and leaving local improvements to the 
 States respectively. John Quincy Adams, who was at 
 the time a Congressional Representative, ridiculed this 
 restriction of the government; and when previously 
 he was President, he advocated the Northern views of 
 
the Union, saying, "that while foreign nations, less 
 blessed than ourselves with freedom, which is power, 
 are advancing with gigantic strides in the career of 
 public improvements, were we to slumber in ignorance 
 or fold our arms, proclaiming to the world that we are 
 palsied by the will of our constituents, (the Constitu- 
 tion,) would it not be to cast away the bounties of 
 Providence, and doom ourselves to perpetual inferior- 
 ity ?" But the time had not arrived for a revolution 
 of our government from its original limited authority, 
 and Mr. Adams, for his heresies therein, was displaced 
 at the next Presidential election. 
 
 Thus, with varying alternations, waged the conflict 
 of constitutional limitation for more than half a cen- 
 tury, when the admission of California into the Union 
 as a free State, enabled a controlling New York Sena- 
 tor to declare in his place that " the battle had been 
 fought and won," California giving to the North a 
 majority in the Senate, as it already had in the House 
 of Representatives. Nor was the term "battle fought 
 and won," a mere figure of speech ; though few knew 
 so well as the eminent Senator all the consequences of 
 which it was to be the forerunner, and for the con- 
 summation of which he had labored so unremittingly, 
 believing, as we may charitably suppose, that he could 
 rule the storm as adroitly as he had raised the whirl- 
 wind. From his eloquence, and from clerical and lay 
 partisan assistance, the Federal government, as origin- 
 ally limited, and to which limitation the South persist- 
 ently clung, had become hateful to the North. It 
 required them to deliver back to bondage fugitive 
 slaves, and this, though admittedly constitutional, was 
 stigmatized as a " covenant with death and an agree- 
 
ment with hell." In short, the North was tired of the 
 Confederacy, and desired a national government as 
 ardently as the Jews wanted a king. They desired an 
 unlimited government, like that of other people, and 
 that the States should thereto be as subordinate in 
 all things as counties are to a State; and these tenets, 
 which the South abhorred as heresies, the North 
 insisted were only a return of the government to the 
 intention of its founders ; and both parties appealed 
 with confidence and equal honesty to the Constitution. 
 Such being the temper and theory of the North, 
 nothing remained to effectuate its advocated revolu- 
 tion but the election of a Northern President by 
 Northern votes alone, and in disregard of the South ; 
 and President Lincoln was so elected on the 4th of 
 March, 1861. 
 
 The revolution thus accomplished was exempt from 
 physical violence, and hence the revolutionary charac- 
 ter of the election was not obvious ; but no revolution 
 could be more complete in its avowed ultimate conse- 
 quences. The South still retained, with the aid of 
 Northern allies, a nominal majority in Congress for the 
 proximate session, and with which aid aggressions 
 against Southern peculiarities might have been mea- 
 surably restrained ; but the South knew these securi- 
 ties to be unreliable while all governmental patronage 
 was against them, and they despaired of any future 
 improvement. No alternative, therefore, seemed prac- 
 ticable to' the South, but to submit all its climatic 
 peculiarities to the control of Congress, or to secede 
 from the Union. The latter alternative eleven States 
 adopted, recalled their Senators and Representatives 
 
9 
 
 from Congress, and organized a Confederacy by them- 
 selves. 
 
 Had the South been permitted to depart as was 
 recommended by a military chieftain, "wayward sisters 
 depart in peace," both sections would have become 
 prosperous, contented and happy nations; each foster- 
 ing its own climatic peculiarities, and not clogged, as 
 heretofore, by adverse interests. Each section was, 
 also, large enough for any increase of population that 
 time could supply ; and with such increase, intersec- 
 tions^ commerce would have augmentedly benefited 
 both sections, as Great Britain realized after the Ameri- 
 can colonies became independent of her. But the 
 North, enriched by Southern intercourse, could ill 
 brook to lose, even by its own intolerance, the goose 
 that laid the golden eggs. Indeed, that the loss should 
 result from such a cause inveterated the pending evil, 
 no reproach being so poignant as self-accusation ; and 
 as blessings brighten as they take their flight, the 
 North exaggerated its personal loss, by claiming that 
 secession involved "the nation's life, liberties, consti- 
 tution, and government; 1 ' though truly it involved 
 nothing but a diminished territory. England's wisest 
 living writer, commenting on like exaggerations in 
 the French revolution, says: "When thou findest a lie 
 that is oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist only 
 to be extinguished ; they wait and cry earnestly to be 
 extinguished." But our lie could not be extinguished 
 without extinguishing with it all virtuous apology for 
 war against the South. The North accordingly resolved 
 that the wayward sisters, who claimed only to be left 
 alone, must "to save the nation's life, liberties, consti- 
 
10 
 
 tution, and government," be retained at any cost of 
 principles, blood, and treasure. 
 
 Thus commenced a second revolution of our gov- 
 ernment. The first revolution gave every Congres- 
 sional majority unlimited powers, and the second con- 
 verted our voluntary Union into an involuntary one ; 
 the two families that consented to live in one house, 
 "to insure domestic trauquillity," are to be forcibly 
 retained therein, though it insure domestic war. The 
 South, with its eight or nine millions black and white 
 people, had often threatened secession ; but the North, 
 with its twenty-three millions of free inhabitants, with 
 its established government, boundless wealth, credit, 
 naval and military resources, regarded the threat of 
 the South as the bark of a small dog too impotent to 
 bite. Even in 1861, a New York Senator laughed in 
 his place when a Georgian Senator talked of secession, 
 and a listening gallery echoed the laugh. That the 
 South would be massacred by its slaves, if Northern 
 assistance were not guaranteed by the Constitution, 
 was a Northern belief; and hence that the South could 
 not be kicked out of the Union, was a tenet acted on 
 as well as believed. No wonder, therefore, after the 
 actual secession of several States, our government 
 pursued its accustomed routine, like the old world of 
 Noah, "marrying and giving in marriage," till the 
 flood overwhelmed Sumpter, when it collected 75,000 
 three months volunteers, which we all thought exces- 
 sive; and which rushed to the fray as boys to a squirrel 
 hunt, and expecting no smaller sport and not much 
 greater danger. 
 
 Nor was the South aware of the task secession 
 created. They saw in the Federal Constitution no 
 
11 
 
 authority to coerce sovereign States, and vainly relied 
 that no extra constitutional power would be exercised 
 by a government that claimed to abide by the Consti- 
 tution. They looked, also, like the fabled hare with 
 many friends, to England and France, and especially 
 to Northern Democrats, who had long inspirited the 
 South to assert State rights against Northern encroach- 
 ments; and who, as late as February, 1861, at a State 
 Convention held at Albany, had wept in contemplation 
 of threatened coercion of the South, and had uttered with 
 applause, that the first blood to be shed in such a con- 
 test should flow at the North. Nothing, therefore, 
 more surprised the South, after secession prevented 
 alliance with them from yielding its accustomed 
 advantages, to see Northern Democrats abandon the 
 South, as a harlot abandons a bankrupt lover, and ply 
 their vocation where thrift would better follow fawn- 
 ing, becoming generals of invading Northern armies 
 and military governors of invaded Southern States ; 
 and, renegade-like, becoming the fiercest among the 
 fierce, and the bloodiest among the bloody. Others of 
 them, less inclined " to villainous saltpetre," sought 
 political power by advocating a vigorous prosecution 
 of the war; but, with the usual inconsistency of a false 
 position, rejoicing at Northern defeats, and denouncing 
 all measures promotive of success. " The Union as it 
 was, (a Union of only good-will, as they insist,) they 
 would restore by force ; and " the Constitution as it 
 is," (a Constitution which they declare is subverted,) 
 they would preserve by aiding the subverters. Zeal- 
 ous, also, against infringements of personal rights at 
 the North, they seem unaware that the coercions they 
 sanction against the South, are equally authoritative 
 
12 
 
 against the liberties of the North. But they complain 
 to only deaf ears; our people understanding better 
 than formerly the tricks of the "outs" to become 
 "ins," and valuing less than heretofore the privilege of 
 deciding which of two sets of unknown candidates 
 shall enjoy the spoils of office. 
 
 We commenced our civil war with the question : 
 Have we a government? and this question at least has 
 been decided by the war, though people may differ as 
 to whether the positive government is better than the 
 doubtful one. For himself, the writer prefers King 
 Stork to King Log. Our public affairs are now regu- 
 lated by eminent functionaries, while under our former 
 system affairs were regulated by majorities, who are 
 the young, the ignorant, and the prejudiced, and, 
 therefore, unfit to rule. If the pudding is to be tested 
 by the eating, the proverb decides in favor of our new 
 system, for while shorn of a third of our population, 
 the power we evince appals all Europe, and no people 
 are more surprised thereat than ourselves ; but with- 
 out our knowing that its origin is the change of our 
 government from a hesitating power to one that 
 devises prompt means to suit any desired end, regard- 
 less of what the means may be. And all effected by 
 a new reading of the Constitution, so as to favor 
 extension of powers instead of limitation. The war 
 power alone is found to contain exhaustless resources 
 for any emergency — official proclamations being able 
 to supply all legislative omissions ; and summary 
 arrest and deportation being able to subordinate to 
 loyalty al! telegraphic operators, all newspaper editors, 
 public orators, private slanderers, and unfriendly 
 critics ; so that for the first time we are unanimous in 
 
13 
 
 the prosecution of a war, though the present is less 
 adapted thau any other to promote unanimity. 
 
 Finally, the Constitution of 1787 was an attempt to 
 erect a house in which thirteen different families could 
 live together in unity. The experiment failed from 
 no defect in its organization, but from a defect in 
 human nature. We are now trying an amended 
 experiment, and as we could not make the different 
 families leave unassailed the peculiarities of each other, 
 we are trying to destroy all peculiarities, to make the 
 families homogeneous. But the remedy to be perma- 
 nent must be still more thorough. While the house- 
 hold continues of distinctly different families, they will 
 find occas:ons of disagreement, and the only perfect 
 remedy is to consolidate all families into one. The 
 change may be distasteful to many persons, and some 
 of us may weep at the dissipation of early political 
 dreams; while others, more philosophical, may settle 
 down into the poet's contented conclusion : 
 
 '• For forms of government let fools contest, 
 That which is best administered is best." 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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