doubtless, have been obtained, but for the fact that certain Southern senators, five in number (evidently by preconcert), when the motion to substitute the two resolutions of Mr. Clarke in lieu of them was voted upon, refused to vote at all; when, had they voted, as they ought to have done, Mr. Clarke's resolutions would have been defeated by a vote of 28 to 25, and Mr. Crittenden's have been afterward adopted.

5. When the last test-vote upon Clarke's substitute was taken in the Senate just before the session terminated, Crittenden's resolutions of compromise were defeated only by a vote of 20 to 19, a number of the Southern senators having, meanwhile, with equal want of true wisdom and of practical fidelity to the South, resigned their seats in Congress and returned to their own homes, to aid in consummating the work of secession then in such active progress.

6. The following proposition offered by Mr. Seward in the senatorial committee of 13, had it been accepted in behalf of the South, and incorporated into the Federal Constitution, would have given substantial security to the slaveholding rights of the South: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress any power to abolish or interfere in any state with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to service or labor by the laws of said state." To this proposition, strange to say (as is now well known), Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, and Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, refused to yield their support in said committee.

7. The resolutions reported to the House of Represent

these

atives by the grand committee of that body, and sustained in the house in which they originated, as they would doubtless have been in the Senate, had Southern senators been at their posts, and ready and willing to do their duty, would have given as much security to the slaveholding rights of the South as could in reason have been demanded.

8. The joint resolve reported by the grand committee of the House for the amendment of the Federal Constitution, which passed both houses, and which, on its ratification by a sufficient number of states, would have become part of the supreme law of the land, and have precluded forever all interference with slaveholding inter"ests in any state not consenting thereto, was indignantly uits for rejected by excited Southern senators, who preferred iny curring all the perils of disunion to accepting any of the hance? had the new securities now tendered to them.

What of proposes

or sis

new

's So Southern secession senators and representatives, Compromise of and the abandoning their seats in the two houses of Congress, Sett decision and thus leaving their Republican adversaries in control 1987 afforded of those bodies, and of all the resources and power of ? this gigantic republic, hurried on toward Montgomery, ・any neurity? Couls the Alabama, where, in the course of a few weeks of delibersemities have ation, with closed doors, they agreed upon and promulga ted to the world the most ill-digested, incongruous, and buen afficiently utterly impracticable Constitution of government that and consistently the "rash dexterity" of visionary theorists has ever been quaranteed under able to eliminate, under the nominal guidance and conLincola and the trol of which a new confederacy was to have its confused Black Republiemand anomalous action; an unnatural and bloody civil war was to be commenced and prosecuted; state-rights

wherein sand Const. differs from the U.S. 14 it is admitter to be superior to that us.

MADNESS IN HIGH PLACES.

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and popular freedom were to be speedily overthrown ; such gross mismanagement, both of civil and military af fairs, was to be practiced by a vain, prejudiced, and incompetent executive chief as the world had never before witnessed; under the authority of which government free-born American citizens were to be cruelly hunted down, plunged into filthy prison-houses, and even deprived in some instances of life itself, for daring to entertain and express Union sentiments, and to maintain a quiet and peaceable, but a stubborn and inflexible loyalty to the government of their fathers; under which government all rights of person and property were to be set at naught and trampled under foot, and even the boasted right of peaceable state secession to be formally and deliberately denied; and the long- venerated slaveholding rights, for the defense and maintenance of which this unwise and wasting war had been projected, were, in the fourth year of that very war, to be, upon the ground of military necessity, declared by a dogmatical executive rescript, subject to be violated, and even abrogated, at the pleasure of the great central agency in Richmond, which no longer held itself responsible to either God or man for its official acts.

CHAPTER XVI.

Speculative Views as to the self-defensive Powers of all Governments, and of the Government of the United States in particular.-View of the Circumstances existing, so far as the State of Tennessee is concerned, in the Outset of the War, and Vindication of the Conduct of that State.-View of the Condition of Things existing in Washington in particular, and of the non-action Policy of Mr. Buchanan.-Notice of this Gentleman's late Defense of himself.-View of Mr. Lincoln's moderate and patriotic Conduct after his Election, and Notice of Speeches made by him at Indianapolis, Pittsburg, and Philadelphia.— Mr. Lincoln's Inaugural Speech, and commendatory Remarks thereupon.-Admirably patriotic Speech of Mr. Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, demonstrating the gross Impolicy of Secession.-Some Allusions to the early Movements of the War, and a short Discussion of the Monroe Doctrine.Enforcement of that Doctrine the true Means of restoring the national Unity and Concord.

It would seem almost impossible to state a proposition more axiomatic in its character than the following one: Every government, being framed with a view to perpetuity, must needs possess the power of defending its own. existence and all its essential rights, as well against dangers from without as from perils which disclose themselves in the bosom of the body politic. And this selfevident proposition would seem to include, by necessary implication, another, viz.: That self-preservation, being the general law of Nature, and applicable alike to all conventional associations as to all living creatures in their original character, whenever it shall happen, amid the complex and critical emergencies which it is in the pow

A LEAGUE AND A GOVERNMENT.

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er of a long-continuing war to engender, to have become plainly necessary to resort to the use of expedients the need of which the most long-sighted and clear-visioned lawgiver could scarcely be supposed to have specially anticipated, all such expedients must be regarded as rightfully subject to be employed. The quality which chiefly distinguished the Constitution framed by our fathers in 1788 from the Articles of Confederation which it superseded, is, that whereas the power of the latter could only operate on states, as integral members of the confederative association, that of the former was intended, on the contrary, to act on individual citizens of those states. These states, after the essential change in their character and attributes which had been then wrought, were no longer entitled to recognize themselves as the sovereign members of a league, but as existing, though still retaining their corporate capacity, in a condition in which they were bound to do fealty and exercise true homage, in many interesting respects, to that which, by solemn conventional arrangement, had been entitled to claim respect and obedience as a government of supereminent authority.

The power to constrain individual citizens, whether few or many, who, enjoying the protection of the government, are bound to exercise toward this grand representative of the whole nation such a loyal and effective obedience as the organic law itself contemplates, is by no means inconsistent with the continued existence of the reserved rights of the states and people thereof, the due preservation and maintenance of which is, indeed, one of the most sacred duties of the government established by all, for the safety and liberty of all. Those who persist in