Head-quarters,
Department of the East, New York City, August 8,1863.
His Excellency Horatio Seymour, Governor of the State of
New York:
Sir, — I had the honor to receive on the evening of the 5th
instant your letter
of the 3d, in reply to mine
of the 30th ultimo, informing me that you had made a communication to the
President of the United States in relation to the draft in this State, and
expressing your belief that his answer would relieve you and me from the
painful questions growing out of an armed enforcement of the Conscription Act,
etc.
Your Excellency promises to write me again on the subject
when you shall have received the President's answer. It will afford me great
pleasure to hear from you, and to receive an affirmative answer to the inquiry
contained in my letter. But I owe it to my position as commander of this
Military Department to anticipate his reply by some suggestions arising out of
your answer to me.
You are, no doubt, aware that the draft has been nearly
completed in the nine Western Districts, and that it has also been completed in
several districts and is in successful progress in others in the central part
of the State, under the orders of the Provost-marshal General. It is my duty
now, as commanding officer of the troops in the service of the United States in
the Department, if called on by the enrolling officers, to aid them in
resisting forcible opposition to the execution of the law; and it was from an
earnest desire to avoid the necessity of employing for the purpose any of my
forces which have been placed here to garrison the forts and protect the public
property, that I wished to see the draft enforced by the military power of the
State in case of armed and organized resistance to it. But, holding such
resistance to the paramount law of Congress to be disorganizing and
revolutionary — leading, unless effectually suppressed, to the overthrow of the
Government itself, to the success of the insurgents in the seceded States, and
to universal anarchy — I designed, if your co-operation could not be relied on,
to ask the general Government for a force which should be adequate to insure
the execution of the law, and to meet any emergency growing out of it.
The act under which the draft is in progress was, as your
Excellency is aware, passed to meet the difficulty of keeping up the army,
through the system of volunteering, to the standard of force deemed necessary
to suppress the insurrection. The service of every man capable of bearing arms
is, in all countries — those specially in which power is responsible to the
people—due to the Government when its existence is in peril. This service is
the price of the protection which he receives, and of the safeguards with which
the law surrounds him in the enjoyment of his property and life. The act authorizing
the draft is entitled “An act for enrolling and calling out the national
forces.” I regret that your Excellency should have characterized it as “the
conscription act” — a phrase borrowed from a foreign system of enrolment, with
odious features from which ours is wholly free, and originally applied to the
law in question by those who desired to bring it into reproach and defeat its
execution. I impute to your Excellency no such purpose. On the contrary, I
assume it to have been altogether inadvertent. But I regret it, because there
is danger that, in thus designating it and deprecating “an armed enforcement”
of it, you may be understood to regard it as an obnoxious law, which ought not
to be carried into execution, thus throwing the influence of your high position
against the Government in a conflict for its existence.
The call which has been made for service is for one-fifth
part of the arms-bearing population between twenty and thirty-five years of
age, and of the unmarried between thirty-five and forty-five.
The insurgent authorities at Richmond have not only called
into service heretofore the entire class between eighteen and thirty-five, but
are now extending the enrolment to classes more advanced in age. The burden
which the loyal States are called on to sustain is not, in proportion to
population, one-tenth part as onerous as that which has been assumed by the
seceded States. Shall not we, if necessary, be ready to do as much for the
preservation of our political institutions as they are doing to overthrow and
destroy them — as much for the cause of stable government as they for the cause
of treason and for the disorganization of society on this continent? I say the
disorganization of society, for no man of reflection can doubt where secession
would end if a Southern Confederacy should be successfully established.
I cannot doubt that the people of this patriotic State,
which you justly say has done so much for the country during the existing war,
will respond to the call now made upon them. The alacrity and enthusiasm with
which they have repeatedly rushed to arms for the support of the Government and
the defence of the National flag from insult and degradation have exalted the
character and given new vigor to the moral power of the State, and will inspire
our descendants with magnanimous resolution for generations to come. This
example of fidelity to all that is honorable and elevated in public duty must
not be tarnished. The recent riots in this city, coupled as they were with the
most atrocious and revolting crimes, have cast a shadow over it for the moment.
But the promptitude with which the majesty of the law was vindicated, and the
fearlessness with which a high judicial functionary is pronouncing judgment
upon the guilty, have done and are doing much to efface what, under a different
course of action, might have been an indelible stain upon the reputation of the
city. It remains only for the people to vindicate themselves from reproach in
the eyes of the country and the world by a cheerful acquiescence in the law.
That it has defects is generally conceded. That it will involve cases of
personal hardship is not disputed. War, when waged for self-defence, for the
maintenance of great principles, and for the national life, is not exempt from
the suffering inseparable from all conflicts which are decided by the shock of
armies; and it is by our firmness and our patriotism in meeting all the calls
of the country upon us that we achieve the victory, and prove ourselves worthy
of it and the cause in which we toil and suffer.
Whatever defects the act authorizing the enrolment and draft
may have, it is the law of the land, framed in good faith by the
representatives of the people; and it must be presumed to be consistent with
the provisions of the Constitution until pronounced to be in conflict with them
by competent judicial tribunals. Those, therefore, who array themselves against
it arc obnoxious to far severer censure than the ambitious and misguided men
who are striving to subvert our Government, for the latter are acting by color
of sanction under Legislatures and conventions of the people in the States they
represent. Among us resistance to the law by those who claim and enjoy the
protection of the Government has no semblance of justification, and becomes the
very blackest of political crimes, not only because it is revolt against the
constituted authorities of the country, but because it would be practically
striking a blow for treason, and arousing to renewed efforts and new crimes
those who are staggering to their fall under the resistless power of our recent
victories.
In conclusion, I renew the expression of my anxiety to be
assured by your Excellency at the earliest day practicable that the military
power of the State will, in case of need, be employed to enforce the draft. I
desire to receive the assurance because, under a mixed system of government
like ours, it is best that resistance to the law should be put down by the
authority of the State in which it occurs. I desire it also because I shall otherwise
deem it my duty to call on the general Government for a force which shall not
only be adequate to insure the execution of the law, but which shall enable me
to carry out such decisive measures as shall leave their impress upon the mind
of the country for years to come.
I have the honor to
be, very respectfully, yours,
John A. Dix, Major-general.
SOURCE: Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John Adams Dix,
Volume 2, p. 78-81
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