THE STAT E S 0ERtEIGNIr:ZiE:COiR.:D M A S AC4 -H U S E TS. A. SON OF NORFOLK, -NORPOLK, VA: 4. W.'AX'HERLY, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, 157 MAIN ST. 1872, PRICITMOND, VA., November 15, 1872. S. S. Dawes, Esq., Norfolk, FV., DEAI> SIR:-You doubtless recollect the conversation I held with you a short time ago, in which I casually mentioned to you some of the evidences I had gathered of the diametrically opposite positions which the State of Massachusetts has held on the subject of State Sovereignty in two distinct periods of' her history; and that you then suggested to me the expediency of putting these evidences together in. some durable form for the infbrmation of the reading public of the South, and peradventure of some of the Northern people. Reflectiing on what you said, I at last decided to act on your suggestion, and, accordingly in the form of a letter to yourself, have thrown together, in the following pages, some important and ineffaceable facts in the political record of Massachusetts, which I have here and there interspersed with a few comments and reflections of my own naturally suggested by those facts. That I should publicly address the following pages to yourself I con - sider especially appropriate, because it was from your own suggestion the work has been written, and because of your well known consistent and unchangeable devotion to the political truths for which our Revolutionary forefathers successfully contended, and who little thought that those truths and the system of government they adopted, w-ere to be ruthlessly overthrown and scornfully trampled under foot ere the lapse of one short century after their vast sacrifices and Herculean efforts in the cause of free government. With sentiments of the highest esteem, I am, Dear Sir, very truly, your friend, A SON OF NORFOLK. ddg of furata, Jnni inits mttl i (usrvhirns, Page 3, line 2. —Insert "tlhe" before'"freedom." Page 5, line 35.-Chlange "a" into "e" in the word " independant." Page 6, line 13. —Change "1775" into " 1793." Page 10, line 4. —-Insert " t " in the word "Harford." Page 11, line 31.-I-nsert "as above described" after ihe word "confederacy." Page 11, line 37.-(TChange the first. "as' into "so." Page 16, line 23.-Strike out the word "for." Page 20, line 24. —-Change "McBeth" into " MacBeth." Page 20, line 31. —Insert "the" before "above." Page 23, line 2. —-Iisert'"of other" after the word "record,." Page 23, line 7. —Transpose the letters "i e" in the word "soveriegnty." Page 24, line.. —Insert "of 1789" after the word "confederacy." THE STATE —SOVEREIGNTY RECORD OF MASSACHUSETTS. RICHMIOND, VA: —November 13, 1872. 8. S. Dawes, Esq., 7orfolk, Va., DEAR SIR:-I have noticed in a recent number of the Boston Advertiser, (a Republican Journal,) some editorial comments on the results of the late Presidential election; and among those comments I was particularly struck by this remark of the editor, (as if he were announcing an event of great public benefit,) viz: STT STATE SOVEREIGNTY IS DEAD." What a melancholy, deplorable fact, what a commentary on the rapid political degeneracy of the American people in the short space of ninety-six years it is, that, in any quarter of the Union, an exponent of the opinions of the dominating and most numerous party can now be found exulting in so awful a public misfortune as the destruc. tion of the means and support of freedom of local government, the great right for which among others, the fathers successfully fought, and established with the most jealous care on, as they thought, the firmest of foundations, But if State Sovereignty is dead, who killed it? Surely not the people of the South; for they, as the whole world knows, fought to sustain it. If it was one of the most prominent features of the compact between the States, the very corner stone of the Constitution and Union, then they who overthrew it, if at the time living under it, were revolutionists, and therefore rebels; and the Advertiser thus, by its own dictum, convicts the people of the North of being the real rebels in the late war between the States. Was it indeed the corner stone of the Constitution, or a myth which in reality never had any support or basis in the Constitution, as the despotic party which now rules the country, actually asserts and affects to believe? In order that objection, on the score of latitude, may not be made by our " enemies," (Boutwell meo auctore for this expression,) if I should introduce Southern testimony for the solution of this ques 4 tion, I will therefore cite Northern witnesses to the stand, and in fact Massachusetts only, saving one or two brief exceptions. When the present Federal Constitution was placed, as it originally came from the hands of its framers, before the people of Massachusetts, in Convention in 1788, for acceptance or rejection by them in their own separate behalf, as they in their full, separate, and absolute sovereignty might see fit to do, they, (disapproving of it as it then stood,) yet accepted and ratified it, with the confident expectation however and a clear understanding from the friends of the Constitution, that the following (among others) important explanatory declaration, (then drawn up and proposed by Massachusetts herself,) should speedily be added to and become tin Article of the Constitution; viz: (and these are her own words,) " That it be explicitly declared that all powers not expressly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution, are reserved to the several States, to be by them exercised." Massachusettts saw, when the Constitution was first laid before her in the condition in which it had come from the hands of its framners, that if not amended in the mode indicated by her proposed declaratory article, the artful lovers of power and prerogative might and doubtless Would, as time wore on, endeavor to establish, from the general tenor of the Constitution as it had come from the hands of the framers, that the people by their ratifications had rmerged their several separate State Sovereignties into, what has since proved to be that capacious reservoir of power, the General Government, and had thus voluntarily instituted an(d intended to institute one great perfectly-sovereign political community called "The People of the United States." To prevent any chance of this, Massachusetts provided for the addition to the Constitution of her " explicit" declaration, (in which she inserted the word "delegated" to preclude the idea even of alienation,) and, as it were, stipulated for that addition by formally appending the declaration to her own ratification of the Constitution when she sent the latter to Congress. So much opposed was a large portion of her State Convention to ratifying the Constitution before her proposed amendments should be added to it, that, out of three hundred and fifty five members composing it, only one hundred and eighty seven could be persuaded to vote for ratification without the addition of the amendments prior to ratification; and the larger portion of those who did vote for ratification voted thus because of assurances made to them that the Constitution should be amended without delay. It is worth while to notice here, that, notwithstanding this. wise precaution of Massachusetts, the great historian Motley has, within a few 5 years past in a grave and important work, unblushingly stated, inl tihe fakce of Article VII, of the Constitution itself, (which says: "The ratification of tlhe conventions of nine Stcate shall be sufficient fr the establishment of this Constitution betueeen, the States so ratifyinll the saine,") a.nd in direct contradiction of the Tenlth Amendment and of the well known and recorded facts o' the case, that the people of the United States, as one people, one consolicdated political community, ordained and established the Constitution, and vested Congress with the sovereign powers it exercises. Thousands.of otherwise well informled people at the North who have read Motley, but who have not studied the Constitution for themselves nor investigated the facts of its h siory and the concomitant political history of the several political communi ties concerned in filamiin it and putting it in operation, religiously believe his utterly unfounded dictum on this sulject. But to go back to Massachusetts' "explicit declaration." In accordance with her desire and with that of some of the other States, this declaration was, in fulfillment of the assurances that had been made, proposed by Congress, at its first session under the present Constitution,. to the several States as an amendment to the Constitution, and, as soon as the necessary legal forms could be gone through for tlhe purpose.... (to-wit in 1791,) it became a declaratory Article of the Constitutionr now known as the Tenth Amendment or Article; and thus, as an au — thoritative commentary on the Constitution itself; it definitively and. as was then supposed, forever settled the question of State Sovereignty, and decided that the Government of the ITnited States possessed no original underived, inherent sovereingty of its own, or represented any such sovereignty as existing in one consolidated political community, but. was the mere recipient only of the right to exercise, for the benefit of the States, a certain few specified " powers" of sovereignty that were only " delegated" (,not alienated) to it by the several really sovereign parties to the compact, viz: the States, who each separately and for itself looked to no Constitution whatever (State or Federal) and to no earthly power outside of itself' for the warrant of its own inherent and underived, independant sovereignty. This was the first step, so- far as the present Constitution of the United States is concerned, that Massachusetts took to assert the existence of and to provide a Constitutional guarantee for the security of State Sovereignty; and notwithstanding her recreancy in recent years and at present from her earlier grand and promineit position in these matters, she yet will deserve the gratitude of posterity, (should 6 State Sovereignty be ever again recovered,) for her noble and successful stand in this behalf in the earlier days of the Republic. Massachusetts again stood forth the vindicator of State Sovereignty, when by the mouth of Judge Sullivan, her Attorney General, and afterwards Judge of the Supreme Court and Governor of the State, she said, (in 1791,) of the present Federal Constitution, that it was "a compact between the States," being a repitition of her more solemn and authoritative declaration of 1788, recorded in her act of ratification of the Constitution, where she terms it "an explicit compact "as if intending to indicate by the use of the word " explicit" that it was expressed too plainly to be susceptible of more than one interpretation. A third time did Massachusetts put in an appearance in energetic and successful defence of State Sovereignty, when in 1775, her Governor, John Hancock, and her Attorney General, James Sullivan, were summoned by the U.. Marshall to appear in court and, as the representatives of the sovereignty of Massachusetts, to answer to a suit of a citizen of another State. The Governor refused to obey the summons, although the Constitution provided for just such cases, and authorized this citizen to sue Massachusetts. The Governor forthwith summoned a meeting of the Legislature;' and in his opening speech to them he said, "I cannot conceive that the people of this Commonwealth, who by their representatives adopted the Federal compact, expected a State would be held liable to answer a cumpulsory civil process to an individual of another State or foreign kingdom." He also said that a "' consolidation of the States into one government would endanger the nation as a Republic, and eventually divide the States now united, or er:adicate the principles for which we have contended," meaning the principles fought for in the then recent Revolutionary War. Did he in prophetic moool then look forward to the present time and predict the wonders that now are being, and for the last eleven years have been enacted in this-what shall I call it? certainly not, Republic. In view of the exigency in which the Legislature of Massachusetts thus found their State, they passed on the 27th September, 1793, the following resolution, viz: "Resolved, That a power claimed of compelling the State to become a defendant at the suit ot an individual or individuals, is unnecessary and inexpedient, and in its exercise dangerous to the power, safety, and independence of the several States and repugnant to the first prinples of a Confederate government." Accordingly, to prevent the chance of any other attempt at offering such an indignity to a Sovereign State, Massachusetts again proposed 7 a farther amendmcent to the Federal Constitution as an additional guard and guarantee of State Sovereignty, and it was adopted and is now known as the Eleventh Amendment. John Hancock, James Sullivan, Samuel Adarns, Doctor Jarvis, Nathan Dane and many other great and leading men of Massachusetts took a very active and energetic part in this successful vindication of State Sovereignty.-[Foweler.] We see here that this Stat6 was then so determined to entrench State Sovereignty in an impregnable position, that she actually proposed and procured the atnul'ment of an original provision of the Constitution, viz: that provision in Section 2d, of Article III, which empowered a citizen of any State to sue any other State. And there to this day does that provision stand in the Constitution, a dead letter, forever void and of no effect, and utterly killed by the procurement of Massachusetts alone in her persistent efforts to guard securely and firmly establish the great controlling feature of the American system of Federal Government, State Sovereignty. Again did Massachusetts' stand up stoutly for the firm establishment of State Sovereignty, (although in this instance, I go backwards in my chronology of her noble persistence,) when through the voice of the great Sa.muel Adams, who was afterwards Lieutenant Governor of the State, she said, (in her ratifying convention of 1788,) of the declaratory amendment before referred to, that it " was consonant with the Second Article in the present (meaning the then existing first) confederation, viz: that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and izndependence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled." Observe just here particularly, that Samuel Adlams by claiming the Tenth Amendment of the present Constitution to be the equivalent of the Second Article of the first Constitution, plainly claims that the sovereignty itself resides in the States, not the States collectively, but separately in " each " State, and that certain "powers " of sovereignty, (that is to say, not the sovereignty itself but the right to exercise certain powers thereof,) are only' delegated," not alienated to Congress. This is just what the Tenth Amendment in the present Constitution asserts, and was intended, (on the motion of Massachusetts herself made out of abundant caution,) to declare. When Samuel Adams was appointed Lieut. Governor, (John Hancock being Governor,) he said, referring to his induction into office, " I shall be called upon to make a declaration, and I shall do it cheerfully, that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is and of right ought to be a fiee sovereign and independent State. I shall be called upon to make another declaration with the same solemnity, (his oath,) to support the Constitution of the Unitted States. I see no ilconsistency in this." Nor needed he to have seen it; for, while Massachusetts should choose to remain in the Confederacy, she herself, and therefore her State officers, would be in law and in honour bound to observe the terms of the compact. But there would have been very great inconsistelcy in his naking these two declarations at the same time, if the "United States in Congress Assembled" were not the mere governmeltal agency of a Confederacy, but were the representatives of one consolidated political community hav oriing riinal, inherent sovereignty of its sOn, Thus in these utterances of Samuel Adams, did Massachusetts for the fifth time declare State Sovereignty to Ibe the corner stone of her political creed, For the sixth time did this State declare her belief in State Sovereignty -on the. occasion of the Embargo, (declared in December 1807,) when it was well understood that not very long after the declaration, she -intended forcible resiltn:.s atnd sese.io)n if it should not be speedily repealed. When the Embargo was laid, it so enraged the people of Massachu;setts and of other New EnIgland States that a convention of delegates from those States to meet in New Haven was proposed and intended.-[Fowcle'r.] John Quincy Adams writing to Mr. G;les, of Vir-:gilnia, on this subject urged that "at' continuation of the Embargo much longer would certainly be met by Jorcibble resistance supported by the Legislature (of Mass.,) and probably by the judiciary of the State," And he added to the f;regoinl thuas " Tiht the object of the leaders Jhad been, for several years, the dissolution of the Union,, and the establishment of a separate Co'onfedercttion, I know fronm tunequivocal evidence.'" [See Niles' Register,Vol. XXXV, p. 138.] Here we have Massachusetts giving'to South Carolina at an early day emphatic lessons in the art of threatening, and, under certain continlgencies, in the purpose of per-,forming not only nullification but secession. In consequence of this apprehended lforcible resistance and, if not actual, yet threatened secession of New England, led on by Massachusetts, the Embargo was repealed on 1st March, 1809, just before the retirement of Mr. Jefierson from the Presidential office. For the seventh time did Masstachusetts, true to her early Statc-Rights' record, assert the independent sovereignty of the States and the merely confederative character of the Union, wheni in 1810, in reply to a cornmunication from the Governor, her Legislature said: " The allegicane they owe to the Commonwealth as a Sovereign, Inde. epdentet State'" &c., and in the same reply added, " this Commonwealth forms an im portant rmember of the National Cornfederacy^Y In 1812 we find this State for the eighth time standing tp stoutly and defiantly towards the General Government in -indication of her independent sovereignty. On the 18th of June, 1812, war was declared by the United States against Great Britain almlost solely in the inter4est of Massachusetts alnd other New England States. When, soon..after this declaration, a requisition was made by the General Government, in pursuance ofauthorit y given by the Constitution, on Governor Strong, of Massachusetts, f for fty-one comlpanies of infantry and ar-.tillery, he, taking the positioil that he was the representative of an Independent Sovereign ty, enduetd with the right of judging of the righfuilness of the requisition, positively rcmfsed to furn-)ish the troops called for. HIe officially commlunicated thi refusal to the Legislature of his State, and that body as well as the p3ople of the State approved his course. M[See Mfss. Reports, Vol. VIII, p. 548.] In the war of 1812-15, we find this State for the ninth time standing out iiz the bold assertion of her sovereignty, and doing this too by an overt act. During the progress of the war, [ oilej] her Legislature passed a law directingl the jailers of the State jails "to discharg e at the end of thirty days all British officers captured in the war, and wxho had been committed to their custody f)r close confinement," if not reinoved -before the end of the thirty days. If the people of M~ assachusetts were znot a distinct independent sovereignty, holdin that sovereignty as older than, and not deriving its existence fit(ro the Federal Constitution, nor from the fiat of' any sovereig ty or power outside of themselves, but on the contrary we re only a mern e firation of o ne grreat political community of ori(,inal and irheiret sovereointy, viz: the so-called 4"People of the U1nited SStas," ti!en, bond all, plrt dventture, tliis legislative act was, aceoriding to the position taken in the late war by Massachuselts herself, not the act of any eg islature whatever, bhot the unauthorized roceetd ings cf a cotombination of i)surrectionary individuals; andt those persons who pretended to be the State Legislature, and all persons supporting them in this mactter wvere traitors a.nd amenable to all the pains..lnd penalties of treason against the United States for "' adhereing to their enemies and givini thenem aid and cormfort." Il the eo ra the eio t e of the Legislature of Massachusetts to Congress, of 14th June, 1813), this State for the tenth time adhered to her State Sovereignty doctrine, whenl she says in that remonstrance, "If any extenlsive Coofider, te Republic is to be maint-ained, and we fervently lpray it mily, it can only be by a free communication of the grievances felt," &c. andc so on, to the end of the remonstrance. 2 10 "The eleventhL instance of this State's consistent ftiithflilness to the doctrine of State Sovereignty occurred in D)ec(nmer, 1814. In tl-at month and year the New England States, with Massachusetts as their leader, met in Convention in Harford, Connecticut, with what has been always well known, the intention of preparing for secession from the.Union undcer certain contingencies. After deliberations running through the space of three weeks, the Convention made a report, which the Leg-islature of Massachusetts approved of by a strong vote, and appointed a committee to report on the doings of the Convention. This Committee reported as fbllows: The Comminttee entertain a high sense of the wisdom and ability with which this Convention have discharged their ardluous duty, and while they maintain the principle of State Sovereignty, and of the duties which citizens owe to their respective State governments," &c. Il this report they term the Federal Constitution a " compact." The House adopted this report by a vote of one hundred and fifty-nine ayes to only forty-eight dissentients, thus shlowing in a most marked manner in what light Massachusct.e s at that day regarded State Sovereignty. For the twelfth time we find Massachusetts, in 1827, through the voice of one of her most distinguished, and, within her borders, most popular sons, (to-wit, John Quincy Adams, then at the head of the General Government,) proclaiming that if a State does imdeed transgress beyond its powers as reserved to it in the Federatl Constitution, it yet is not thereby divested of its State-hood, but is still a sovereign. President Adams in his special ime!ssage of February 5th, 1827, relative to the resistance of Georgia to Federal requisitions said, when adverting to civil officers of tlhat State, acting under the orders of their State, as follows " The surveyors are therefore not to be viewed in the light of individual and solitary tlransgressors., but as tlhe agents of a Sovereign State acting in obedience to authority which they believed to be binding on them." If this be so, how then could the State of Massachusetts and the United States Government with any show of justice or the slightest foundation in right, believe or affect to believe that the citizens of the Confederate States in the late war were guilty of treason against the United States as a mere co-mbination of insurrectionary individuals acting without authority from any sovereign power? They, Massachusetts and the United States Government, affected to believe, that, because certain Sovereign States did in their acts of secession do wrong, therefore the wrongful acts of such states were, ab initio, void, unauthoritative and of no effect, and that the State Sove reigntics attempting such'acts tlherefore and thereby ceased to exist; as if, (God save the mark!) a Sovereign, power, whenever it does wrong, thereby ceases to be a sovereign and utterly dies! The dolts! (or rather the hypocrites, for they k.new better,) did they not know that in every war, waged wherever and whenever on the fhce of the earth, one of the parties to it must be, e: nIecessitate rei, always in the wrong?'. Do they not know that, according to their baseless and shameless assumptions, (the Malssachusetts of the first half of this century herself being the judge,) if France should next week declare and wage war against Great Britain, and Great Britain should think France to be in the wrongl in so doing, then Great Britain, if successful in the war, would be.justified in punishing every captured French soldier or citizen taken in the act of aiding his country, as a member of a mere mob of insurrectionary persons acting only on their own individual responsibility? Methinks I hear some Massachusetts devotee of usurping and despotic power respond that States united under one General Government stand in vastly different relations to each other as to war between themselves, from the relations, as to this particular, existing between. Great Britain and France not associated in such a Union. The prompt and sufficient reply to this response, and one that will utterly pulverize it and strew its dust upon the winds, lies in the correct answer to the following two questions, viz: First, are the associated States united in a "Confederacy " by a mutual " compact" between themselves as equals, and " delegating" orly, (not alienating) certain, few, specifiedl, limited "powers' to the, General Government? And Second, is the separate, distinct sovereignty which each State' claims for itself a.n original, inherent sovereignty underived from, not conferred by, and not depending for its existence on tlhe compact? If the answer, as applicable to any confederacy anywhere or at any time on the face of the earth, be in the affirmative, (and the record of Massachusetts, as here presented fior sixty years after her accession to the Union, steadily gives such answer as to the American Union,) then to the supposed Massachusetts devotee of power and usurpation, common sense and the established maxims of Public Law would say, there is not and there could not be the slightest difference (as far as the waging of war is concerned,) in the two cases; for war in every age has been held by all publicists and all governments to rupture, abrogate and abolish all compacts between sovereign powers, and to remit the origi 12 hal parties thereto to- the originac status acnud relations whiche they held' towards each other ante fcdus. Although doubtless the unscrupulous party now dominating thiscountry would unblushingly reply to the foregoing by saying, (and of course without the slightest foundation in truth,) tha) t there was n compact between the States when the present Union was fbrmied, yet the political record of the Massachusetts of the first sixty years of that Union, utterly precludes her from opening her mouth on the subject, except to say that there wacs a compact between the States. A moiety of the people of Spain, inl her civil troubles commen — cing about three years ago. intended, (and they came very near to success,) to establish a system of confederated states composed of the present provinces of the country and embracing all her territory, each state to have its own' state government and control of its own localaffiirs. But in doing this did the people of Spain inteind at the sametime to abolish, to proclaim. as forever dead andl departed, their own national, original and inherent one supreme sovereignty which has existed over all Spain, whether held by kings or otherwise, as one, in.divisible thing for many centuries? Did they intend that at the momoent the confederacy should be formed, this sovereignty should. die, and that the one sovereign people of Spain should then as a political comnmunity die also, and that- succeeding to it, by their consent, should arise over the territory of each, of the several new states a separate, perfect, independent and thus original State Sovereignty acknowledging no other existing sovereignty as the source and measure of its own power? By no manner of means. The Spanish people were and are not such simpletons. They, like all possessors of sovereignty, whether obtained by usurpation, (as is the case now in this country,) or held as of right from original and immemlorial possession,. or from conquest in war waged between acknowledged sovereign parties to the war, intended never to divest themselves of it voluntarily,,. The Spanish people, acting in their character of one supreme sovereignty and one peopl!e, intended, after defining the boundaries of and creating the proposed new states, to confer on. them, to " delegate" to them the right to exercise as many of the "powers" of sovereignty as would answer the objects and purposes of local government. Whilethose states would be politically independent of each other in relation to their own separate local affairs, would they be each an independent sovereignty of original, inherent and underived powers, looking to nou source outside of itself for the warrant of those powers? The statement of the question, after remembering what precedes it, 4's carries its answer on its face; and that answer is, io, emphatically,. No! Their status would be, as to the independent sovereignty question, precisely the same as was the status of the American Colonies of Great Britian befoire the breaking' out of the Revolutionary war. The Colonies were totally independent of each otber, but they were all dependent,. for the right which they enjoyed of exercising certain powers of sovereignty, on their great common sovereign, the King of Great Britain, who, in their respective charters, had."delegated" those powers to them, taking care att the same time to expressly reserve to himself as their liege sovereign the allegiance of the Colonies to himself the sove-'reign' of the entire kingdom. Now in this actual caseof the Colonies, and in the supposed case-of the confederation of the Spanish Provinces, th-e grantor of the right to exercise sovereign powers was and would be exzcctly the opposite of the granting parties in the case of the American Union. In the latter case the delegation of powers came from the States as the orig'inal sovereigns in the case existing prior to the Union, and creating a governmental m.achinery for that Union dependent o.n them for its origin and existence; whereas in the case of the Colonies, they were created by Great Britain, who delegated to them whatever powers they possessed; and in like manner, had the Spanish Confederation taken place,.. the creation of the Spanish States and the conferring of powers on them would have proceeded from that one, actually existing and sovereign comunity, " The People of Spain." Hence after the formation of the confederation, should the people of any one or more of these States, pleading the orders of their respective States, attempt to carry out an act of secession from the confederacy, they would plead aulhority whlich had never been conferred on those States by their still existing creator, and therefore, in obeying such unauthoritative orders, would rightfully become amenable as traitors and rebels to their real, and only sovereign, " The People of Spain." Throuogh the voice of John Quincy Adams,. her son and representative in Congress in 1836, TMassachusetts again and for the thirteenth time proclaimed in that year her fealty to the doctrine of State Sovereignty. Mr Adams then,.in the debate relative to the admission of Arkansas into the Union, termed Congress "the representative of that federation compounded partly of slave-holding and partly of entirely free States." The deduction from this utterance is of course that if the union of the States is a federation, then the parties to it, viz: the States, must necessarily be each an independent sovereign; for no political power outside of them claimed allegiance from or control of them. 14 For the fourteenth time, through the voice of this her great aind gifted son, did Massachusetts, in 1839, repeat her belief il the great principle which she had for so many years upheld, Mr. Adams, inhis oration delivered in that year on the jubilee of the Constitution, plainly countenlanced the right of secession if, in the conscience of the people intending it, they should feel themselves to have grave and just causes for their action. In this oration lie said, " to the people alone is thus reserved the dcissolving as well as the constituent power, and that power can be exercised by them o(rly under the tie of conscience binding them to the retributive justice of heaven~. With these qu'alifications we may admidt the same rights vested in the people of every State in the Union with reference to the General Government." Here, take notice, he concedes the right of any State to secede for cause; for lhe speaks of the Si.tates disjunctivelyo Did the late Confederate States in their attempt at secession have justifying cause? Before answering this question, I must beg you as a reader of history to remember that well lknown fact, undisputed in any quarter, that the Union never would have been formed had not the stipulation for the surrender of fugitive slaves and the farther stipulation that any State might import slaves into her territory from abroad for twenty years, been inserted in the Constitution. To name nothing else, (but much more might be adduced,) let the great grievance, the deliberate, ctvowed and long continued infraction of the compact about to be specified, stand forth to the world, as it certainly does and did to the late Confederate States, as ample and justifying cause for their course in 1861. Remember that the abstract question of human freedom either in a state of nature or in organized civil society, the right or wrong of domestic slavery, could have nothing to do with the matter, as between the parties to the compact, after the colnpact was signed. The Northern States had signed the compact with their eyes open, and therefore their mouths, (whatever other and outside nations might justifiably or otherwise say or think of slavery,) were, by the rigid reauirements both of good morals and religion, or ought to have been shut. If I, as a private individual, voluntarily enter into a compact with even a notorious thief and utter scoundrel, in the provisions of which compact are some morally good and legal stipulations, but also others requiring me to act in collusion with him in the violation of good morals and law, all jurists and ethical writers as well as the plain dictates of common sense will tell me that I cannot rightfully hold him to any of his stipulations if I knowingly and deliberately infract one 15 single stipulation myself-and that my voluntary agreement to the,whole compact binds nme to perform every part of it, if I would hold him to any part; and vice vers,. If, at any time, after having entered into the bargain, my awakened conscience pricks my peace of mind, all that I, in the ey~e of good flith and good morals can do, is to retire from the whole thing, and of course leave himl equal freedom, unless he, uncoerced and of his own free will, agrees to eliminate frnm the compact the part or parts I object to, As a reader of history you must also remeember that Massachusetts, a, well as other Northern States, soon after acceding to the Union of 1789, passed a law to carry out in good faith that stipulation in the Federal Constitution which provided for the rendition of fugitive slaves. Fowler says, "The Legislature of Massachusetts, in aid of that provision of the Constitution intended to secure the restoration of fugitive slaves from their masters, passed a law by which negroes were prohibited, under the penalty of confinement, hard labour in the house of correction, and whipping not exceeding ten stripes, from tak2ing Lup thteir residence in, the State. Thus Massachusetts asserted her own State rights, and reegnized the rights of the Slave-holding States" We now come to that one justifying cause (out of many) before alluded to, for the secession of the Confederate States in 1861; and that is the deliberate, persistent, and avowed nui.llification of the laiws of Con.gress, in rela.tion to the rendition of fugitive slaves, by eleven of the Northen Stoates after 1850, and thereby the gross violation by these eleven States of their solemnly pledged faith to fulfill that provision of the Constitution which stipulates for such rendition. In despite of the Constitution and the la ws of Congress, and of the remonstrances of Virginia and other Southern States, these Northern nullifying States kept for many years tle objectionable laws upon their statute books until the secession in 1861 of the Southern States. The names of the eleven States referred to are Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvani a, Wisconsin, Vermont, New York, Michigfan, Connecticutt, New HIa.apshire, New Jersey, and Rlhode Island. [See Report of the Committee of thle Legislactre of l'irygi'iia inZ 1860.] And in relation to such action, and more simila r to it, on the part of the Northern States, what did another great son of Massachusetts, Daniel Webster, (boasted of by the entire North as the great, efxpotndcr of the Constitution,) say in his speech at Capon Springs, in 1851? Why this, " I do not hesitate to say and repeat, that if the Northern States refuse wilfully and deliberately to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, tlhe South would nzo longer be '16 -bound'to keep thle cormpactit. A bargain broken on one side, is brokeni on1 all sides " in other words, the Northern States, by their Personal Liberty bills, ("wilfully and deliberately " persisted in,) had virtually abrogated and abolished the Constittion! and as their only connection with the Southernt States existed by and through thl Constitution, the compact, hence, when that catastrophe took place, they had no more claim for political connection with the slave States tlhan IRussia or China had; and therefore no cause whatever for war against those States because the latter proposed and endeavoulred to set up a separate confederacy for themseles without lifting or threatening to lift a finger against the Northern States; which latter act they would have been fully justified in doing, had they chosen to initiate the war, by that great feature or rule of the Laws of N ations, the Lex Tcalonis.. To show the spiteful animus of Massachusetts and her deliberate determination to execute her nullification law as to the rendition of fugitive slaves, it is only necessary to cite certain action on her part in 1857. In that year she ignomniniouily turnel ou' of the office of Judge of her own Probate Court, Edward G. Loring, a U. S. Commissioner and a citizen of Massachusetts, because he refused to obey her own nullification law.-[,Fowler.] Now if slhe tid not consider herself a complete and independent sovereignty of of riginal and inherent powers alnd a member only of a. mire Confilderaci y of equals havina g no supreme ruler over them, how could she pretend to justify for her enactment of the law in question and the enforcemnent of one of its provisions in the case of Judge Loriino? But we have another and the fifteenth assertion by her of the doctrine of State Sovereignty, whlen, referring in April, 185:6, to the provisions of the Federal Constitution relative to the powersC granted to tlhe TUnited States respecting the writ of HEab-as Corpus and the great right of the Trial by Jury, she made the following utterance through Governor Briogs, then a member of the Housdc!f and Chairmnan of the Committee renorting to the Legislature. "It was not that tl e States rel'inqished these rights to the keeping and protection of the Federal. Government, * *. It was a amutuacl agreement among the States, to prevent any State so disposed from abrogating the cardinal principles of a free government by depriving the citizens of those riights." And he added, "with his excellency, [Goverinor Gardiner of Maiss.] we believe that of the State rights retained by eac sovereign member of the confederacy, the two cardinal ones are the habeas corpus and the trial by jury." And in the Committee's report he further added as follows: "State sovereignty on all subjects and in all things where the 17 exercise of that sovereignty " [mark, lhe does not say the sovereignty of the one " People of the United States," but of the States,] htas niot been delegated to the United States, is the langzcage of the Constitutit'ol and the safety of the States. This principle has always been regarded as vital to the existence and perpetuity of the States, a distinct and independeznt power. It was so claimed by the fa:tthers and fo'unders (f our institutiowns." The Committee was reporting on the propriety or expediency of repealing Massachusetts' law nullify ing thit provision of the Constitution and those laws of the United States which requireed the surrender of fugitive slaves. Although the highest judicial authority in the State had declared this nullification law to be'unconstitutional, yet the Committee, solely on the ground of the independent sovereignity of the Scate, recomnluded the retention of this nullification law on the statute book. If the State was a mere political or municipal department of, and deriving its powers from, that imaginary sovereignty, that myth, " We the People of the United States," as asserted and contended for by Motley, then the Committee had not a shred of ground to stand on in their recomlmendation, but in this recommendation were sim ply traitors themselves inciting the members of the Legislature to commit treason. Here we have an important Conmmittee of the Legislature of Massacthusetts preaching the most ultra, Jeffersonian, South Carolina, State Rights and State Sovereignty dorctrine that it was possible for them to do. The Commlittee say, and that too in strict accordance with the ewell known fciets of the case, (relating not only to the writ of Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury, butto all the provisions of the Constitution,) that those two g-reat rights were stipulated for and secured, [Sect. 9, Article 1, and S.ct. 2d, Article III,] under a "''dutd z. greeeemet,," (thorefore a Treaty,) beltween the States," whereby each of the great contracting parties englaged itself to:all the others and they to each that the two rights referred to sfhould )be secured to all the citizens of the several States. And why was this dlone? Why should Massachusetts or Connecticutt coi(ncern themselves about the riglhts and privileges of citizens of Virgini.t withli, Virginia, and be so very particular in requiring Virginia to plromise the preservatio(n of the privileges of these two cardinal rigllts to lher own citizens within her own borders, over whom neither MassaIchusetts or Colltecticuttt could have any pretense of jurisdiction or rights of any kind within Vi'irinia? Most plainly because of that other provvision of the Federal comipact, (the great Treaty between the States,) viz: Sect. 2d, Article IV, which says, " The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in 3 18 the several States;" for otherwise, a citizen of Massachusetts or Connecticutt, if apprehended and indicted il Virginia, for an infraction of the laws of Virginia, might possibly be tried and condemned to imprisonment or death without having had the benefits of those two great securities of human rights and freedom. If, as Massachusetts has authoritatively declared, Sec. 9, of Article T, and Sect. 2d, of Article III were not ordained by any one political community termed "We the People of the United States," then she declares, ipsissima voce, that not a single one of the provisions of the Federal Constitution was ordained and established by that political myth, " We the People of the United States;" for, surely it is hardly necessary to enter here into any argument t v to proveto any man of ordinary intelligence that whatever party or parties ordained any one Section or Article of the Federal Constitution ordained every word of it. It may seem superfluous, after what has been said, to add the two items bearing on this point which now follow; but as they may be new and of some interest to some of the readers of this letter I will now do so. To very few of the printed copies of tlhe Constitution is appended its concluding declaration, which occurs immediately prior to the signatures of the delegates who framed it. It is in these words: "Done in Convention, by the unanimous consent of the States present, the 17th day of September," &c., &c. This declaration conclusively shows that the representatives of no one people framed the Constitution. The other item is this: In January, 1830, in the celebrated debate in Congress on Foote's resolution, that eminent jurist, legislator and statesman, Edward Livingston, (afterward Secretary of State under President Jackson and a strong unionist,) said, " I place little reliance on the argument which has been most depenzded oni to show that this is a popI)ular go)vernment: I mean the preamble which begins with the words " we the people," It proves nothing more than the fact that the people of the several states" [that is, the highest power known in the state, instead of the Legislature,] " had been consulted and had given their consent to the instrument. To give these words any other construction would be to make them an assertion directly contrary to thefact. We know, and it has never been imagined or asserted," [he meant of course by intelligent and honzest men, for he had just before referred to the words as having been used as an argument "most depended on,"] "that the People of the United States collectively os a whole people gave their consent,, or were [even] consulted in that capacity." Had Mr. Livingston chosen to do so, he could have given from the 19 record the very interesting history of the preamble, (known now to but comparatively few people,) showing how the enumeration of the several states by 7name, (at first placed in it and voted for unanimously,) had, from a very peculiar and unexpected necessity of the case, arising in the later days of the Convention, been compelled to be eliminated from it in the last week of the four months' session, with the very clcarest anld most explicit understanding among all the framers that the original sense or meaning of the preamble. as indicated by the enumeration of the States by their names, was not to be in the slightest degree altered by this necessary elimination, and adoption of the present phraseology in the beginning of the preamble. He could have shown that so long as the enumeration of the States by name stood in the preamble, (viz: the entire period of the Convention except the last week,) the terminating words now in it, viz that the Constitution was ordained1 " for the United States of Amnerica" were not there; and that when the enumeration was from necessity left out, then, and not before, were the words "for the United States" appended; showing plainly that these words were added as a substitute for an aan equivalent to the enumeration, and to indicate that the Constitution was made not for one people but for the several " States." I can readily perceive why Mr. Livingston did not enter into the history referred to. He knew that he was addressing educated, intelligent statesmen well acquainted with the history of the Constitution, and that therefore a statement of the details of the history to them would be unnecessary. He consequently confined himself to giving only, in a few words, the inevitable deduction from that history. Omitting here the details of the proceedings of the Legislature of Massachusetts in May, 1856, when in a joint resolution she does not ask, but imperiously " demca'tnds " [that is the word she uses,] of Congress in "her character as a Sovereign Stcate" [what more could Great Britain call herself?] the institution of certain proceedings respecting the Brooks-Sumner affair; we will now take a hasty glance at some of her State Sovereignty utterances in 1855,'57 and'58. In 1855 her Legislature passed the following resolution in relation to the Kansas troubles: "This Commonwealth is ready if necessary to aid with her whole power the Governor of Kansas and the people of that Territory or of any other territory or state in support of Constitutional rights, by whomsoever infringed;"-the Commonwealth of course, from the very necessity of the case here presented, to be the judge as to what rights are constitutional or otherwise. It was well known at the time that, 20 by the word " whomsoever," she specially referred to the Government of the United States. If then Massachusetts, (herself being the judge of the grievances of Kansas,) could rightfully use her eitire military force or any portion thereof to right the grievances of that Territory, (not her own, mark you,) against any power or authority, how, in the name of consistency and common sense, could she condemn South Carolina for taking measures in 1832 to protect herself only (not outsiders,) from the effects of what that State judged, for herself, to be certain unconstitutional acts of Congress? Contrasting Massachusetts and South Carolina in this aspect of State action, we may with propriety say that while Massachusetts proposed to conduct the nullification business on a very extended wholesale scale, South Carolina could be regarded only as aimingr at a mere petty retail operation in that line. In connection with this very Kansas business, Mr. Wells, a leading member of the Legislature of Massachusetts, and acting with a majority of the House, said, in a speech on the Kansas resolution, " The sovereignty of Massachusetts is older than that of the Union, and was not conferred by the Union. [Very true.] The Declaration of Independence is an avowal of State Rights. [True again.] * * * * *. The powers of the United States are all granted by the several States." [True to the letter.] In all this he was of course perfectly correct, for there stand the facts on the record, which, (to the Massachusetts of 1861 and of to-day,) like the " damn'd spot" on Lady McBeth's hand, will not " out " at her bidding. Mr. Upham, in the Senate of Massachusetts, said in a speech on 7th May, 1857, " The American Union, as a body politic, consists ex.clusively of States separate and States confederated. Whate ver does not belong to a State, as one of the constituent parts of the system, is not properly embraced by or in accordance with the true theory of our Government." In the first of above sentences he indicates in as few words as the thing can possibly be expressed or that I ever saw it done, the fact of the total independence (of the States) of each other as to their own internal afflirs, and that, as to affairs in conmonl between them under the compact, their dependence on or connection with each other is that only of a mere confederation, and therefore that the several people of the several States do not in any sense compose a political community of one people. In the second sentence lie asserts the truth that nothing can belong to or be of the Union except as through the relationship to the Union of the State to which that thing belongs; and thus he explodes the idea that there can be any such political tling as 21 one " People of the United States," outside of and distinct from their status as the several, separate, pilitical bodies of people divided among and belonging to the several States. In his first sentence he also scouts the idea of there being one' People of the United States," in a political sense, by the use of the word "exclusivevly" in the connection in which it is found. Of course under such a Union as Mr. U)hamn describes, and as Massachusetts in her sovereign character as a State has often offircially asserted it to be, tlhe General Government can be nothinog more than the mere agent of the sovereign parties to the compact; and in accordance with this truth,, Franklin Pierce, (a New Englanl d Ian,1) wihen President of the Unitedl Stattes, termed the Government in one of his messages the "genveral, agent" of the States. Rlufus Choate, a Massachusetts statesman of eminent ability, and often honored in his own State by its electing him to high office, said, (in his 4th of fJly address, in 18,8.) of the S ta.tes, that while they exist like'lprimordial particles of nmatter i-ldesiructible and impenetrablcwhose natural condition is to repel each other, or at best to exist in their own independent identity, the Union is anl actificial aggregation," [not a, mc( rer, f "ocf such particles." He continued, "have vou ever considered that it was a federative system that we had to adopt? ^- i % *. There the states were when we became a nation. There they had been for one hundred and fifty years, for one hundred and seventy year. *'. In the scheme of every statesman they remained a component part, nIna.nihilated, indestructible. In the theories of all publicists and all speculators they were retained, and they were valued for it to hinder and disarm that centrailization which had been found to be the dang(tler and the weakntess of federal iiberty." The Supreme Court of the United States has declared that the States sustain towmards etach other " internaltional" relations.o [Fowler.] If so, the compact called tlie Constitution of the United States is a Treatya, a Governmental Treaty" embracing treaty stipulations as to inter-state and Iforoeign c!ommlerce; as to rendition of fuigitive slaves; as to fugitives fromn justice; as to traitors escaping from ainy state in which they had1 co(mmitted treason against such state; treaty stipulations as to laying anid collecting taxes, duties &c., for the common purposes of the States confederated; also as to declaring war and making peace in the name of the States; andc, in short, as to all the objects and purposes specified in the compact. -:As, in fact, are the constitutions of all confederacies to which the parties are sovereign, independent and politically equal States, confederating of their own free will and choice, and delegating powers to their General Government, 22 Did it ever specially strike you that in the enacting clause of all the laws of the United States not one word in it says that the laws are enacted in the name of, or by the representatives of the'Peopleof the United States," but by the Senate and Representatives of the "States "? Yet in many of the States you will find that the enacting clause of their State laws says the laws are enacted in the name of, or by the representatives of, " The People" of the State. And why so? Because the people in each State are a political entity and are indeed the supreme sovereign power over the State, the fountain and origin of all the acts of the State. Their enacting clauses do not say "Be it enacted by the Counties of Massachusetts," &c., or "by the representatives of the Counties of Massachusetts;'" for Massachusetts was not brought into existence by the fiat of her Counties. It was because of her first being Massachusetts, that they came into existence, and had their metes and bounds and powers set and defined by her fiat. In her own State Constitution of 1820, which is I think her present Constitution, Massachusetts proclaims to the world her ancient political creed, that there is politically no such thing as " The People of the United States," and that she herself is a sovereign and independent State. Here is the passage: "The people of this Commonwealth have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign and independent State; and do and forever hereafter shall exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, or may not hereafter be, by them delegated to the United States of America in Congress assembled." Observe particularly that in this last clause nothing is said about one people being assembled (by their representatives) in Congress, but "States assembled in Congress " and that nothing is by her surrendered up and forever alienated to that supposed one people, but that whatever is granted by her is only " delegated" to the "States" when assembled in Congress. I have in these pages given only a portion of the record of Massachusetts on State Sovereignty; but this portion is enough and more than enongh to sustain me in saying that if she was right in the position taken according to that record and held by her for so long a period of time as it shows, then when in 1861 and subsequently she voted men and money to oppress, slaughter and subjugate the people of her sister states at the South, she thus voted and acted (on the testimony of her own record,) simply to perpetrate murder, arson and rapine on an innocent people who had given her, (by her own prior admissions,) even as a member of the Union, no provocation or pretext whatever 23 for those horrible crimes against right, justice and humanity. I could produce a similar record of her Northern sisters in iniquity, but as the maxim, "e. unlo omnes disce," applies to those other States on the very best of foundations, viz: fcts, it thus will render the labour unnecessary. Before closing I will cite another Norther witness to the truth of the independent soveriegnty of the States. William Rawle, a Northern man, one of the most eminent jurists and publicists of his day, a high-toned Federalist, selected and appointed by Washington to be U. S. Attorney throughltut his entire administration of eight years, and continued in the same office throughout the administration of John Adams, published in 1826, an elementary work on the Constitution. It has been generally regarded as the most accurate and able exposition of the Constitution. Emianating fromn a Federalist of the old Haniltoilian school, it was not to be thought possible that any treason could lurk in it. On account of its high reputation and intrinsic merit, it was adopted as the text-book at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. There Lee, Davis, Johnston, Magruder, I-uger, Pendleton, Beaureguard, Jackson and others of the Confederate Captains were taught, under the sanction and authority of the U. S. Government, the true principles of the Constitution. The principles thus and there instilled into their minds were couched in the fellowing words of Rawile: At page 302 Mr. Rawle says, "The secession of a State from the Union depends entirely on the will of the people of such State. * i. In any manner by which a secession may take place, nothing is more certalin than that the act should be deliberate, clear and unequivocal." At page 287 Mr. Rawle says, " The States may wholly withdraw from the Union, but while they continue they must retain the character of representative republics." In chapter 32, page 297, Mr. Rawle says, "If a faction should attempt to subvert the government of a State for the purpose of destroying its republican form, the paternal power of the Union could be called forth to subdue it. Yet it is not to be understood that its interposition would be justifiable if the people of a State should determine to retire from the Union, whether they adopted another or retained the same form of government." These were the doctrines taught by the U. S. Governmenet to Lee, Davis, Beaureguard and others after them at West Point up to 1861. And yet, when those Southern heroes, in strict accordance with the doctrines which, under the sanctioln of the General Governm'ent, had 24 been instilled into their minds, retired fromn the service of the confederacy and (obeying each the call of his own sole sovereign, the State to which he belonged,) rallied to her d(efense in the armies of the new confederacy of her choice, tley were, forsooth, traitors! Traitors to whazt or to whom? How came any of them to owe obedience, (not alle-iance) to the laws of the confederacy knownl as the United States? Manifestly because of the fiat of his sovereign, his own. State, directing him to pay such obedience when she acceded to the comipact.. Her act of accession was an order to him to obey the laws of the confederacy; her act of secession a release from such injunction. In one contingency only could he comm-it treason against a cionfederacy of which his own sovereign was a member, viz: when without the orders or sanction of that sovereign, he should rise up against the authority and oppose the laws of the Confedleracy; and even in that case his acts would be treason:able only for the reason that in opposing those laws and resisting that authority, he would be opposing his own Sovereign,, in her character as one of the mlakers of those laws, and as a constituent membler of the partnership from which that authority emanated, and on which. it was based. As a well known axiom of political ethics, Independent, Sovereign States, whether members of a confederacy or not, can not by any )(ossible act commit treason agai nst an authority whatever. Hence it is that the treason clause in the Federal Constitution is applicable only and was intended to apply only to individuals. And hence it was that Seward and his unscrupulous confreres, (I say "Seward," for Lincoln was only a mere nose of wa\x in the hands of those usurpers,) knowing that Sovereign States, whlether in or out of a Confederacy, are still existent States, whaitever thav may do, (short of voluntary merger of tleir own nationality into that of some otlher nation,) affected to believe tlhat tlle seceding States had conmmitted nolitical suicide by their a(t;ts of secession, (an utter impo3sibility, and Seward well knew it,) and so converted their citizens into a nmob of insurrectionary indivilduals acting without any public authority and on tleir own sepalrate, individual responsibility only. Seward knew that the sta.tes adhering to the Union had the riglht ulder public law, (international law, or custolm,) but not (.as the United States of the Constitutioi,, to declare war against the Conifederate States as Independent, Sovereign States for any cause that in their own opinion might seeml just; and if they should choose to do so. to make the acts of secession this cause on the assigned ground (if they chose) of certain injury done to them the adhering states by such acts, 25 and by assigning also in their list of grievances, (of course without any truth,) that such acts had no provocation whatever from the adhering states. But Seward dared not take this position however nuch he nma have vwished to do so; for had hc done so, he would have thcrel)y recogajized the nattonclity of the seceding States andt their acts of secession as nationally authoritative acts, and he well knew the consequences of such a proceeding; viz that the powers of Europe would hlave at once recog:iized the Seced:lio States and would thereby have given no ca.u:e of complaint to the adhlering Status; and that, from such recognition by the powers of Europe, certain other consequences would have inevli tably followed, whlich would have rendered the subjutgation of the seceding States aln utter impossibility. Hence his affectation of believing the secelding States h ad committed that impossible thing, political suicide by their acts of secession. Had Seward made war on the seceding States as still existent and recognized States, and, had admitted that they were actually out of the Unionl, anld lhad he after this sullbjugated them, then there would have stood in his way no constitutional barriers, (the breaking through of which is yet to bring dire woe* to the Northern States,) against what, on Seward's theory, has been and is the utterly unjustifiable and unlaulthorized course which the General Government has taken (during a.nd since e t war,) towards the seceding States. It is well known that Northern orators (in Congress and elsewhere,) and Northern newspapers of ability have often boasted of the unheard of'magnanimity exhibited bv the General Government in refraining, after:Thle great historian, Froude, in a lecture recently delivered in New York, said. "In mv reading of historv one tremendous phli1eno7en01on forever forces itself on rmy observation, viz: that every plolitic.l crime is a debt ireisteErcd in HcIavrn: and the pa ym -elt to the very la.st fi'rthin.,?'ith inteorest and compoutd ilnterest is dcmanded of those who, when the bill" Lcompuctt "] is signed, repr.esented the person of the cri m i nal." Mfrssact hu.set.s at least, cannot ch'arge that the Southern States incurred any debt of the above nature when tlhev seceded in 1861, nor aver ti that ey paiid for it by their sfiifering' and losses (durimn and( since the late war. Time will vet reveal who "represented the person of the ciiminal whIen thle bill, [thle compact] was sign ed." In the same parairalphl and in continuance of the same subject Frolide says, "It wa s not tlho'e, [viz: lhe indentical individuals., who committed the crime, who generally suffired for it " as observed bv him in the teachings of history, but those Uwho came after them; and. as to this ftact lie adds, " this has been, from the beginning of time. one of tie mysteries of the providential government of the world." Ift then political crime was committed by one or the othler of the parties to the late war, the punishment is yet to come, according to the general operation of the phenomenon as observed by Froude. 4 26 the war ended, from bringing to trial, convicting and executing a single traitor (so-called) engaged in the late war. That men of general intelligence and erudition in public or illternational law, and well grounded in the history and provisions of the Constitution of 1789, should have the doubly brazen etfrontery to talk about magnanimity to traitors, wh(n speaking in referenec to citizeIls of the late Confederate States, wontld surpass belief, were it not for the well known fact, (charged on them by people of their own section,) that such men, leaders. in tlhe party now ruling the country, do not recognize the binding character of moral or religious restraint on their political actions or words. Do not these revolutionists know that among all.English-speaking people, inheritors of the great rights of Magn'a Charta, no man can be held to be guilty of crime until he shall first have been, under tlhe rules of law, convicted of the crime, and judicially pronounced to be guilty? To lay a foundation for their boast, to vindicate their claim to the virtue of magnanimity, this horde of revolutionists owed it to themselves, to'their cause, and to the world, to bring to trial and to convict of treason, (if they could,) some great leader of the people of the Confederate States. Had they, after a fair trial under the law, convicted such an one of treason and condemned him to the legal penalty of the crime; but, refraining from the infliction of the penalty, had thereupon pardoned and discharged him, then and not until then, could they, with any decency or propriety, have boasted of their magnanimity to the people of the South. Magnanimity indeeed! Was it magnanimous to torture, in the barbarous spirit of the me(di val ages, for many long, weary months in the stone case-mates of Fortress Monroe, a physically feeble old man, whom, (fearing to bring to trial,) they at last discharged, virtually sine die, untried and unconvicted? The great mass of their party do not know it, but nevertheless there can be no doubt of the fact that such leading, influential and thoughtful men among them, possessing brains, as were deeply versed in the lore of the law and the truths of the Constitution, ( men like their Chases, their Speeds, their Reverdy Johnsons and numerous others of similar calibre,) knew that to bring Jefferson Davis or any other aider and abettor of the Confederate States to trial for treason alleged to have been committed against the United States in the late war, was to obtain a judicial acquittal of the person charged with the crime; (or rather act, for no crime was commit.ted;) and hence the advice which they doubtless fgave and urged, (for Andrew Johnson hadn't the brains to comprehend the situation,) that Mr. Davis should be discharged from prison under bail 27 for his appearance in court whenever called upon to appear. They neeer vmean to call him; they dare not (d so; for they know in advance what the verdict, (if ever rendered,) must be, and that consequently it would be a condemnation in. their otwnr cou'ts of the entire proceedings of the Federal Government with reference to the war, and to their course towards the Southern States from March,. 1861, to the present day. Witlh this verdict before the country and t!he world, and to go down forever on the pages of history, ( backed up by the utterly overwhelming arguments and luminous exposition of the Constitution which would have been put forth by that giant in the law. Clharles O'Con1or,) where then would be their claim of being in the right in the late war? where would be their ground ( transparent pretext as it is, even now without the verdict,) for calling any citizen of the late Conifederate States a rebel-? Where would be their justification, (shallow as that is, even now,) for the seas of blood of their own people which they caused to be shed, and for the expenditure of the billions of that people's money which they poured out like water in their unholy efforts to subjugate, oppress, and humiliate an unoffending people? Until they shall have, by due process of law, convicted of treason some prominent and leading aider and abettor of the late Confederate States, common decency ought to close their mouths when they feel inclined to boast of' their magnanimity to the people of the South, and to use the terms "rebels and traitors "as applicable to the citizens of those States engaged in any mode in aiding those States to sever their connection, under the Constitution, with the Northern States. Thus without going farther than so much of the record of Massachusetts as I have here presented, (for, if I were to go beyond it in an elaborate essay on the subject, I could so pile a dozen Pelions on Massachusett's Ossa, as to bring out tlhe riglt of secession as clear as the noon-day sun in an unclouded sky,) I think that you or any unprejudiced reader of these pages, of whatever political opinions he may be, must admit that this record conclusively proves, (or at least ought so to prove to every citizen of Massachusetts,) that the right of secession did exist, and that it was no infraction of the Constitution, but a right independent of and outside of the Constitution, and inhering necessarily in every member of a political Confederacy constituted not by the fiat of any one sovereign, political community, but brought into existence only by the " mutual agreement " of indepen 28 dent, Sovereign States, already existing as such before the compact of union was entered into. I remain, dear sir, with much respect, Yours very truly, A SoN OF NoRFoLK. Since the foregoing was written, and now (December,) while passing through the press, the following extract from a late number of the N. 0. Picayune may be very appropriately appended as germain to the subject discussed in the preceding p)ages. IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY DEAD? (From, the New Orlecans Picayzne.) tNow, by the light of the experience in which we exist, all men can see the inevitable fate of every fiee Governnlent abandoning the principles of the Democratic party. Men may change in upholding them. Men may abandon them and draw the sword to extinguish tlhem; but they live in the breasts of the people as the true and only principles of liberty. Despotism and tyranny only concentrate a purer vitalily. The fiercer the despotism-the stronger the money oligarchy which holds them down-the ligher in all probability will be the spirit which worships them.n And it is for such reasons as these that THE WORLD can rightly affirm that the Demrocratic party is not dead. Its principles are undying-its adherents are millionsand whether the party which shall bring these principles again undefiled into the politics of the United States shall call itself Democratic or any other name, it must rise up to the restora tion of the Government of the United States to a free Government, or revolutionary darlceness, the sure sequence of central despotism, must spread over the land.