At the beginning of 1862 it became evident that it was the purpose of the United States Government to assail us in every manner, at every point, and with every engine of destruction. While the Executive was preparing immense armies, iron-clad fleets, and huge instruments of war with which to invade our territory and destroy our citizens, the aid of Congress was invoked by usurpation to legislate the subversion of our social institutions and to give the form of legality to the plunder of a frenzied soldiery.
Congress had no sooner assembled than it brought forward the doctrine that the Government of the United States was engaged in a struggle for its existence, and could therefore resort to any measure which a case of self-defence could justify. It next declared that our institution of slavery was the cause of all the troubles of the country, and that therefore the whole power of the Government must be so directed as to remove the cause.
The authors of the aggressions which had disturbed the harmony of the Union had lately acquired power on a sectional basis, and were eager for the spoils of their sectional victory. To conceal their real motive and artfully to appeal to the prejudice of foreigners, they declared that slavery was the cause of the troubles of the country and of the “rebellion” which they were engaged in suppressing. In his inaugural address President Lincoln said:
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
The leader of the Abolition party in Congress, Senator Sumner, in February, 1861, said:
“I take this occasion to declare most explicitly that I do not think that Congress has any right to interfere with slavery in a State.”
This principle had regulated all the legislation of Congress from the first session in 1789 down to the session of the 37th Congress, beginning July 4, 1861.
Yet, a few months after the inaugural address above quoted, Congress began to legislate for the abolition of slavery. No change had been made in the Constitution; not a word or letter of that instrument had been changed since the possession of the power was disclaimed; yet, after July 4, 1861, it was asserted by the majority in Congress that the Government had power to interfere with slavery in the States. Whence came the change? It was wrought by the same plea that tyranny has ever employed against liberty and justice, the time-worn excuse of usurpation — necessity; an excuse quite sure to be valid, as the usurper claims to be the sole judge of the necessity.
Under this plea a system of legislation was devised which embraced the following usurpations: confiscation of private property; prohibition of the extension of slavery in the Territories; emancipation of slaves in all places under the exclusive control of the Government of the United States; emancipation with compensation in the border States and in the District of Columbia; practical emancipation to follow the progress of the armies; all restraints to be removed from the slaves, so that they could go free whenever they pleased, and be fed and clothed, when destitute, at the expense of the United States — literally, to become the wards of the Government.
For none of these exercises of power was there the least warrant in the Constitution, while some of the laws passed were in direct violation of the explicit text of that instrument.
Perhaps it may be urged that the Confederate States were out of the Union and beyond the protection of the provisions of the Constitution. This objection cannot be admitted in extenuation of the usurpations of Congress and the Executive; for there was, thus far, no act of Congress or proclamation of the President in existence showing that either of them regarded the Confederate States in any other position than as States within the Union, whose citizens were subject to all the penalties contained in the Constitution, and therefore entitled to the benefit of all its provisions for their protection. Unhesitatingly it may be said that all the conduct of the Confederate States pertaining to the war consisted in just efforts to preserve to themselves and their posterity rights and protections guaranteed to them in the Constitution of the United States, and that the actions of the Federal Government consisted in efforts to suppress those rights, destroy those protections, and subjugate us into compliance with its arbitrary will; and that this conduct on their part involved the subversion of the Constitution and the destruction of the fundamental principles of liberty. Who is the criminal? Let posterity answer.