. . . although anxious, as are nearly all loyal men in the Free
States, to see slavery damaged in every justifiable way, is decided in its
disapproval of the scheme of reducing the insurgent States to a territorial
condition, in order to bring the bad institution within the reach of the
General Government. It states the real
position of the matter very clearly as follows:
“The relations of States to each other and to the Federal
Government are created by that instrument, and until that is destroyed those
relations remain the same, whatever course any single State may see fit to
pursue. If a state could by an act of
its own, annul its own existence, then the doctrine of secession is right, and we
of the North have been warring against a correct principle. The State Governments which have confirmed
the rebellion are held to be in suspense, but not annulled. As organizations they have been perverted
from their purposes, but not annihilated.
They still exist de pure. As soon as enough people loyal to the Federal
Constitution are gathered to put their machinery in operation they will be
revived. – They are as much factors of the Union now as they ever were; because
the Constitution which creates and defines them is in full vigor, although
their own local constitutions are for a time paralyzed. It would be a departure, then from sound
theory to treat those States as Territories; it would be doing by legislation
precisely what they people wished to do by arms but which would not suffer them
to do; and it disfranchises abruptly all their loyal inhabitants because of
offences committed by the disloyal. In
either phase the scheme is likely to awaken hostility, not at the South alone,
but the North. Our present unanimous
prosecution of the war against rebellion would be complicated with an intricate
and doubtful political question, which would eventually lead to serious party
divisions, and greatly embarrass the energetic action of the Government. All the zealous adherents of the doctrine of
State rights – ourselves among them, would feel compelled to oppose the new
doctrine, or any other which involves the legal dismemberment of the nation.”
These conclusions, we doubt not, will be sustained by the
great mass of the people, not because they desire to spare slavery – not, as
has sometimes been vehemently charged, because they had rather see the Union
perish than to see slavery destroyed – but because they are unwilling to risk
the Union in order to strike a doubtful blow at slavery, and because they have
sufficient faith in the progress of Christian civilization to expect the
decline and fall of slavery, without any necessity for setting aside the
Constitution to accomplish so desirable a result. And they naturally and justly suspect the soundness
of any political theory ingeniously and laboriously got up in order to justify
an attempt to abrogate State institutions – like Mr. Sumner’s theory of
political felo de se.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye,
Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 15, 1862, p. 2
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