Confederate Military History. Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry

restrictions, to prevent, so that constructive powers have been as seed-bearing of mischief and usurpation as the doctrine of constructive treason. Alexander Hamilton believed honestly that nothing short of monarchical institutions would prove adequate to the wants of the country, and in the convention of 1787 he sought to conform the new government, while in process of construction, to the model of the British, which he regarded as the best ever devised by the wit of man. He had not a single supporter, and afterward, ably and effectively, with marked patriotism, he threw his pen and voice in favor of ratification. But this he did avowedly as a temporary bond of union and as the only avenue of escape from anarchy. Appointed to assist in carrying the government into effect and sincerely believing that with no other powers than those he so well knew it was intended to authorize, it must prove a failure, and the government must go to pieces, he decided unhesitatingly to do under it whatever he, in good faith, might think would promote the general welfare, without reference to the intention of the authors of the Constitution. The discussions to show that his principal measures were authorized by the instrument, were in deference to the prejudices and ideas of the people—nothing more. The principle of construction he espoused was to make good all laws which Congress might deem conducive to the general welfare, and which were not expressly prohibited, a power similar to that contained in the plan he proposed in the convention. He desired, in short, to make the Constitution a tablet of wax upon which each successive administration would be at liberty to impress its rescripts to be promulgated as constitutional edicts. （Van Buren's Pol. Parties in U. S., 211, 213.) Hamilton laid the foundation of his policy so deep and with so much skill that it has been impossible to reverse especially under conditions so favorable to centralization. He invoked in support of his measures the selfishness, the cupidity, the ambition of classes, and sought to make the strength of the government depend, as in England, on the interested support of an intelligent and combined few. An impulse in accordance with his theory was impressed, and has since been constantly strengthened. It is not uncommon to hear the Constitution ridiculed as an abstraction, or an effete formula. The government has grievously departed from its federal character, and reserved powers are so far removed from possible application in case of controversy, that State rights, when seriously mentioned, provoke contempt or ridicule. In 1824 Jefferson wrote to Van Buren: ‘General Washington was himself sincerely a friend to the republican principles of our Constitution. His faith might not, perhaps, have been as confident as mine, but he repeatedly declared to me that he was determined it should have a fair chance of success, and that he would lose the last drop of his blood in its support against any attempt which might be made to change it from its republican form.’

       Why the South resisted Federal encroachments.

      It can now be clearly seen why the South, being a minority section, with agriculture as the chief occupation and with the peculiar institution of African slavery fastened on her by Old England and New England, adhered to the State rights or Jeffersonian school of politics. Those doctrines contain the only principles or policy truly conservative of the Constitution. Apart from them, checks and limitations are of little avail, and the Federal government can increase its powers indefinitely. Without some adequate restraint or interposition, the whole character of the government is changed, and forms, if retained, will be, as they have been in other countries, merely the disguises for accomplishing what selfishness or ambition may dictate. The truest friends of the republic have been those who have insisted upon obedience to constitutional requirements. The real enemies, the true disunionists, have been those who, under the disguise of a deceptive name, have perverted the name and true functions of the government and have usurped, for selfish or partisan ends, or at the demand of crazy fanaticism, powers which States never surrendered. Those who contend most strenuously for the rights of the States and for a strict construction of the Constitution are the genuine lovers and friends of the Union. Their principles conserve law, good order, justice, established authority; and their unselfish purpose has been to preserve and transmit our free institutions as they came from the fathers, sincerely believing that their course and doctrines were necessary to preserve for them and posterity the blessings of good government. The States have no motive to encroach on the Federal government and no power to do so, if so inclined, while the Federal government has always the inclination and always the means to go beyond what has been granted to it. No higher encomium could be rendered to the South than the fact, sustained by her whole history, that she never violated the Constitution, that she committed no aggression upon the rights or property of the North, and that she simply asked equality in the Union and the enforcement and maintenance of her clearest rights and guarantees. The latitudinous construction, contended for by one party and one section, has been the open door through which the people have complained. A strict construction gives to the general government all the powers it can beneficially exert, all that is necessary for it to have, and all that the States ever purposed to grant.

      Passion, revenge, cupidity, ignorance and fanaticism have created an incurable misunderstanding of secession, its source and object. In its simplest form and logically it meant a peaceable and orderly withdrawal from the compact of union, a dissolution of the civil partnership, a claim of the paramount allegiance of citizens, a declension to continue under the obligations due to or from the Federal government or the other States. The authority of the Constitution remains intact and unimpaired over the States remaining in the Union and ceases only as to the seceding State. The remaining or continuing States had no right of coercion nor of placing the ‘wayward sister’ in the attitude of an enemy. The history of the Union does not show any eagerness on the part of any State to interpose its sovereign power for protection. During the first quarter of our existence as a confederate union, New England showed much impatience at remaining under the bonds, made angry and repeated threats of dissolution, but did not execute her menaces. The truth is that the Union is so strong, has so many advantages, so many patriotic associations, that the motives and reasons for continuance in it, for patient forbearance, for submission even to injustice and wrong, are well-nigh overwhelming.

      The Southern States through many years showed the strength of their attachment to the Union by immeasurable sacrifices, illustrated their patriotism by acts of heroic devotion, and got their reluctant consent to a separation only after a series of unendurable wrongs, and the most indisputable demonstration of the purpose of a united North to deprive them of solemn guarantees of equality in the Union. From the ‘Missouri compromise’—prohibiting Southern extension north of the line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes—substituting a new confederation for the old, drawing a geographical line, south of which was to be equality, north of which the Southern States were proscribed, dishonored, stigmatized, establishing the policy of an interference by Congress with an interest not common among all the States and thus creating two great combinations of States, between which mutual provocations were manufactured, down to the war between the States, the Congress and the government repeatedly and offensively declared that the Southern States were not the equals of the Northern States in the benefits of the Union, that property recognized and guaranteed in the Constitution must be restricted within narrow lines, and that ‘territory of the United States,’ obtained at the cost of common blood and common treasure, was not to be equally enjoyed, but was to be for the exclusive possession of the Northern States with their civilization and property.

      The Northern States, not in the regular and prescribed form, but in most irregular, illegal and contemptuous manner, by ecclesiastical action and influence, by legislative and judicial annulment, by public meetings, by pulpit and press, by mobs and conspiracies and secret associations, made null and void a clear mandate of the Constitution, protective of Southern property and adopted as an indispensable means for securing the entrance of the Southern States into the Union. To use the language of President Harrison: ‘Government of the mob was given preference over government of the law enforced by the court decrees and by executive orders.’ The highest Northern judicial and historical authorities concede that the Union would never have been formed without these compacts of guarantee and protection. This constitutional provision was sustained by the Supreme court and by every Congress and President up to 1861. Ten Northern States, with impunity, with the approval of such men as Governor Chase, afterward secretary of the treasury under Mr. Lincoln and chief justice of the Supreme court, nullified the Constitution, declared that its stipulation in reference to the reclamation of fugitives from labor was ‘a dead letter,’ and to that extent