they were prepared to
abandon it or immolate it upon the altar of "expediency," when the
great clouds of treason burst upon them in the form of gigantic
rebellion. The politicians of that time, like the politicians of all times,
were incapable of appreciating the magnitude of the questions involved
in the conflict.
But the slave-power had been aroused. It was not to be appeased by
overtures; it wanted no compromise. It would brook no interference
inimical to its "peculiar institution." In the Congress of the nation, in
the high places of power, it had so long been permitted to dictate the
policy to be pursued towards slavery, it had so inoculated the
institutions of the government with the virus of its vicious opinions,
that, to be interfered with, to be dictated to, was out of the question. It
was Ephraim and his idol repeated.
The South forced the issue upon the people of the country. The
Southerners marched off under the banner of "States Rights"--a
doctrine they have always championed. They cared nothing for the
Union then; they care less for the Union now. The State to them is
sovereign; the nation a magnificent combination of nothingness. The
State has in its keeping all option over life, individual rights, and
property. The spirit of Hayne and Calhoun is still the star that lights the
pathway of the Southern man in his duty to the government. He
recognizes no sovereignty more potential than that of his State.
Long years of agitation and bloody war have failed to decide the rights
of States, or the measure of protection which the National government
owes to the individual members of States. We still grope in the sinuous
by-ways of uncertainty. The State still defies the National authority;
and the individual citizens of the Nation still appeal in vain for
protection from oppressive laws of States or the violent methods of
their citizens. The question, "Which is the greater, the State or the
Sisterhood of States?" is still undecided, and may have to be
adjudicated in some future stage of our history by another appeal to
arms.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and
Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby
proclaim and declare * * * that, on the first day of January, in the year
of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons
held as slaves within any State, or designated part of the State, the
people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be
then, and thenceforward, and forever free; * * * That the Executive will,
on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the
States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof
respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States.--"
President Lincoln's "Conditional" Emancipation Proclamation.
CHAPTER III
The Negro and the Nation
The war of the Rebellion settled only one question: It forever settled
the question of chattel slavery[3] in this country. It forever choked the
life out of the infamy of the Constitutional right of one man to rob
another, by purchase of his person, or of his honest share of the produce
of his own labor. But this was the only question permanently and
irrevocably settled. Nor was this the all-absorbing question involved.
The right of a State to secede from the so-called Union remains where
it was when the treasonable shot upon Fort Sumter aroused the people
to all the horrors of internecine war. And the measure of protection
which the National government owes the individual members of States,
a right imposed upon it by the adoption of the XIVth Amendment[4] to
the Constitution, remains still to be affirmed.
It was not sufficient that the Federal government should expend its
blood and treasure to unfetter the limbs of four millions of people.
There can be a slavery more odious, more galling, than mere chattel
slavery. It has been declared to be an act of charity to enforce ignorance
upon the slave, since to inform his intelligence would simply be to
make his unnatural lot all the more unbearable. Instance the miserable
existence of Æsop, the great black moralist. But this is just what the
manumission of the black people of this country has accomplished.
They are more absolutely under the control of the Southern whites;
they are more systematically robbed of their labor; they are more
poorly housed, clothed and fed, than under the slave régime; and they
enjoy, practically, less of the protection of the laws of the State or of
the Federal government. When they appeal to the Federal government
they are told by the Supreme Court to go to the State authorities--as if
they would have appealed to the one had the other
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