in 1811.
2 ‘In the great historic debate in the Senate in 1830, Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, said that they assumed the name of Democratic Republicans in 1812. True to their political faith they have always been in favor of limitations of power, they have insisted that all powers not delegated to the Federal government are reserved, and have been constantly struggling to preserve the rights of the States and to prevent them from being drawn into the vortex and swallowed up by one great consolidated government. As confirmatory of the statement that the South has been misrepresented and vilified through ignorance, it may be said that, while school boys are familiar with Webster's eloquent periods, few writers and politicians have read the more logical and unanswerable argument of Hayne.’
3 Some of these principles are ably discussed by the Hon. Thomas F Bayard in an address, 7th of November, 1895, before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, the same paper which excited the partisan ire of the House of Representatives in 1896.
4 Whether the North had any purpose to uphold the Constitution and give equality in the Union may be judged from the appended opinions:
There is a higher law than the Constitution which regulates our authority over the domain. Slavery must be abolished, and we must do it. Wm. H. Seward.
The time is fast approaching when the cry will become too overpowering to resist. Rather than tolerate national slavery as it now exists, let the Union be dissolved at once, and then the sin of slavery will rest where it belongs. N. Y. Tribune.
The Union is a lie. The American Union is an imposture, a covenant with death and an agreement with hell. We are for its overthrow! Up with the flag of disunion, that we may have a free and glorious republic of our own. William Lloyd Garrison.
I look forward to the day when there shall be a servile insurrection in the South; when the black man, armed with British bayonets, and led on by British officers, shall assert his freedom and wage a war of extermination against his master. And, though we may not mock at their calamity nor laugh when their fear cometh, yet we will hail it as the dawn of a political millennium. Joshua R. Giddings.
In the alternative being presented of the continuance of slavery or a dissolution of the Union, we are for a dissolution, and we care not how quick it comes. Rufus P. Spaulding.
The fugitive-slave act is filled with horror—we are bound to disobey this act. Charles Sumner.
The Advertiser has no hesitation in saying that it does not hold to the faithful observance of the fugitive-slave law of 1850. Portland Advertiser.
I have no doubt but the free and slave states ought to be separated. ... The Union is not worth supporting in connection with the South. Horace Greeley.
The times demand and we must have an anti-slavery Constitution, an anti-slavery Bible, and an anti-slavery God. Anson P. Burlingame.
There is merit in the Republican party. It is this: It is the first sectional party ever organized in this country.... It is not national, it is sectional. It is the North arrayed against the South. . . . The first crack in the iceberg is visible; you will yet hear it go with a crack through the center. Wendell Phillips.
The cure for slavery prescribed by Redpath is the only infallible remedy, and men must foment insurrection among the slaves in order to cure the evils. It can never be done by concessions and compromises. It is a great evil, and must be extinguished by still greater ones. It is positive and imperious in its approaches, and must be overcome with equally positive forces. You must commit an assault to arrest a burglar, and slavery is not arrested without a violation of law and the cry of fire. Independent Democrat
The Southern States believed that the transfer of the government to pronounced hostility to their institutions involved a repudiation of the covenanted faith of their sister States, and released them from the burden of their own covenants when they were denied the benefit of the corresponding covenant of the other contracting states. Seeing the hopelessness of security from President, or Congress, or courts, or public opinion, all inflexibly averse to their constitutional rights, as understood by the patriot fathers, they felt constrained to withdraw from a government which had ceased to be what those fathers made it. Not to have done this would have been to leave the stronger section in entire and hostile control of the government and to consolidate the powers of our compound system in the central head. The last hope of preserving the Constitution of the Union being extinguished, nothing remained except to submit to a continuation of the violation of the compact of union, the perversion of the grants of power from their original and proper purposes, or to assert the sovereign right of reassuming the grants which the States had made.
Appendix
It is not within the scope of this article to detail incidents of the war; it is fitting, however, to animadvert upon an oft-repeated accusation and to furnish such proof of its falsity as to leave hereafter no loop to hang a doubt upon. It is a common excuse for early defeat and inability ‘to crush the rebellion in ninety days,’ that the Confederacy was better supplied than the government of the United States with the means and appliances of war. This explanation on its face is absurd, for how could an infant, suddenly improvised government, without a dollar, without a sailor, without a ship, without a manufactory of guns or powder, be better equipped than a strong, well established government, constantly engaged in Indian wars and having a regularly equipped army and navy and no inconsiderable plants for their maintenance? Mr. Goldwin Smith, of Canada, in his work on the United States, says that at the beginning of the war the South was able to draw upon the supplies stored in the arsenals, which had been ‘well stocked by the provident treason of Buchanan's minister of war.’ Senator Sherman, in his ‘Recollections,’ repeats the absurd story and says that in the early days of the war the Confederates, because of this surreptitious aid, had superior means of warfare. General Scott endorsed the accusation against Secretary Floyd in regard to what has been called ‘the stolen arms,’ and thus contributed to the belief of respectable people that the Confederate States fought with cannon, rifles and muskets treacherously placed in their hands. Mr. Buchanan says, and there can be no better authority, in the book on his administration, page 220: ‘This delusion presents a striking illustration of the extent to which public prejudice may credit a falsehood not only without foundation but against the clearest official evidence.’ Eighteen months before General Scott's endorsement of the charge it had been condemned as unfounded by the report of the committee on military affairs of the house of representatives. The disproved slander that arms had been fraudulently or otherwise sent to the South to aid the ‘approaching rebellion,’ is in accord with the concerted purpose of writers and politicians to falsify the record and make apology for Northern reverses. General Scott made specific charge that Secretary Floyd removed ‘115,000 extra muskets and rifles, with all their implements and ammunition, from Northern repositories to Southern arsenals, so that, on the breaking out of the maturing rebellion, they might be found without cost, except to the United States, in the most convenient positions for distribution among the insurgents.’ He also charged that 130 or 140 pieces of heavy artillery were ordered from Pittsburg to Ship Island and Galveston, forts not yet erected. The charge, vouched for by public rumor, underwent a searching official investigation by a committee authorized to send for persons and papers and to report at any time. It was most easy to establish the charge, if true, for these arms could not have been removed without the knowledge and active participation of the officers of the ordnance bureau, whose loyalty had never been impugned nor suspected. The accusation may be reduced to three indictments:
First. That arms were improperly distributed to the Southern States prior to and preparatory for premeditated rebellion. Tables furnished from the ordnance bureau show that these States received much less, in the aggregate, instead of more, than the quota of arms to which they were justly entitled under the law for arming the militia. It is a significant fact, utterly disproving the charge and the belligerent intent, that Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas did not receive any portion of army muskets of the very best quality to which they were entitled, and which would have been delivered to each on a simple application to the ordnance bureau. Of the muskets distributed the South received 2,091, and