FALSE CHARGES BY THE SOUTH.

5

trol of the Government, and to the North eight years; and that, too, while the North had a large majority of the population of the country.

Besides thus wielding the power and shaping the policy of the Government from its origin, the party of which Mr. Stephens here speaks had control of every branch of the Government when the revolt began, and even the Executive was not to be changed for a period of four months. From this state of facts, it seems in a high degree probable, that, had this powerful party remained intact, and had its Southern leaders exercised only a modicum of that sagacity which had characterized them in its better days, it could have secured for the South all that the South had a right to demand under the Constitution, and saved the land from a deluge of blood. But the instigators of this rebellion wantonly threw away the power which they possessed, to grasp a shadow which their ambition had pictured.

FALSE CHARGES BY THE SOUTH.

3. While this is a rebellion against the Government proper, it was instigated against an incoming Adminis tration on false grounds.

It was charged at the outset throughout the South, that it was to be the policy of Mr. Lincoln's Administration to destroy slavery. This charge was known and proven to be false in every possible way which the case admitted. It was denied in the most formal manner in the platform of the party, adopted in the National Convention by which the present Executive was nominated. It was denied by many of the leading men of the party, in their numerous speeches during the canvass, and by the resolutions of many assemblages of the people; and if there were any contrary declarations they were wholly without authority, in the face of the formal announcement of the

National Convention. And finally, it was denied by the President in his Inaugural Address.* In short, it would seem to be impossible to meet such a charge in any way in which it was not met. And yet, the revolt began immediately upon the result of the Presidential election.

The following is an extract from the Inaugural Address of President Lincoln, in which is embodied the resolution above referred to from the platform of the National Convention: "I do not consider it necessary, at present, for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement. Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There never has been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches, when I declare that 'I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.' I believe I have no lawful right to do so; and I have no inclination to do so. Those who nominated and elected me, did so with the full knowledge that I had made this, and made similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And more than this, they placed in the platform, for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the grossest of crimes.' I now reiterate these sentiments; and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause, as cheerfully to one section as to another." The foregoing sentences completely disprove the charge under consideration. The President closed his Address as follows: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellowcountrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government; while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it.' I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our

nature."

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7

(Nov. 6, 1860) becoming known, and four months before the Administration was to assume power, in those acts of secret and open aggression upon the public authority and property throughout the Southern States, with which the world is so familiar.

The third item, therefore, which characterizes the rebellion, is, that it began with a most barefaced and palpable lie in its right hand, forged by the leaders against the sovereign people of the United States, in the face of the most public and indisputable facts to the contrary, and employed as a rallying cry to deceive the masses at the South and precipitate the States into secession.

It cannot be said, in answer to this, that the event has proved the charge true; that the present policy of the Administration towards slavery shows that it was from the first its design to destroy it. There is no shadow of evidence that the President, or the party that elected him, intended originally to interfere with it in the States, but overwhelming proof to the contrary. But when open war was made in the interest of slavery, to supplant the Government and dismember the Union, the whole case was changed; and as, on the one hand, the rebels did not enter upon the war to prove their prediction true, so, on the other, the Administration were not bound to abstain from touching slavery in order to prove the prediction false.

AGAINST ALL MEASURES FOR PEACE.

4. After the rebellion began, it was persistently adhered to and prosecuted, in spite of the most urgent means to preserve peace, made by the party which had triumphed in the Presidential election, and by many of the patriotic of all parties.

Among other important measures which were taken during the winter and prior to the fourth of March, 1881,

while President Buchanan was still in power, were three which deserve special notice: The Acts of the Peace Convention, as it was called; the proposed Amendment to the Constitution from the Committee of Thirty-Three of the House of Representatives; and the organization of the Territories.

The Peace Convention met in Washington in January, 1861, and continued in session several weeks. It was convened on the recommendation of the Legislature of Virginia, and composed of delegates from thirteen free States, and seven slave States; to devise measures which should be recommended to Congress for its adoption, in order to harmonize the views of the two sections of the country and prevent bloodshed. It embraced many of the ablest men of the country, of the different shades of political opinion in each State represented. Although it was a body of no legal authority, yet from the weight of character of the men composing it, presided over by one who had filled the office of President of the United States, and from its humane and patriotic objects, its proceedings were watched with intense interest.

As the result of its deliberations, this Convention presented to Congress the recommendation of an article for an amendment to the Constitution, consisting of seven sections. As the questions which divided the country related mainly to slavery, the provisions of this proposed article were framed with special reference to that subject. Among them were the following, some of which were made apparently to the demands and others to the fears of the party in revolt, and nearly all of which were most marked concessions to the whole South. The article restored the Missouri Compromise line, with very serious modifications, on the parallel of latitude of 36° 30'. It admitted slavery into "all the territory" south of that

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9

line, guaranteeing that the status of slaves then within it should not be changed," and prohibiting Congress and the Territorial Legislature from passing any law against taking slaves into such territory. It guaranteed the admission of States into the Union from "any Territory North or South of said line," either with or without slavery, as the Constitution of each State should provide. It prohibited such a construction of the Constitution as would give to Congress any power whatever over slavery in any of the States; or to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of Maryland, and without the consent or compensation of the owners; or to prevent any one from taking his slaves to and from the District of Columbia at pleasure; or to interfere with or abolish slavery in any place, either in State or Territory, "under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States;" or to interfere with the domestic slave-trade between the slave States. It also prohibited such a construction of the Constitution as would "prevent any of the States," so disposed, "from enforcing the delivery of fugitives from labor" to their owners; and made it obligatory upon Congress to "provide by law that the United States shall pay to the owner the full value of his fugitive from labor in all cases" where fugitive slaves should be prevented from arrest or rescued from the officers of the law "by violence or intimidation from mobs or riotous assemblages." And finally, it provided that the sections embodying these several guarantees and prohibitions (with two minor exceptions), together with the several parts of the Constitution which now relate to slavery, should "not be amended or abolished, WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF ALL THE STATES." A majority of "three-fourths" only of the States is now requisite for amending any part of the Constitution.

It is perceived at a glance that these propositions of the ]*