ing black men, as well as white men, as belonging to the human family, in a word, as men created with rational and immortal souls and redeemed by the Passion and Death of our Lord;-because, in fact, we include them in the great brotherhood of humanity. This is their grievance for which they have seen proper to rebel against the Federal government, and attempt to efface from the map of the world the great Republic of the United States.

The Federal government is manifestly in the right; for whether the Federal government derives its powers by delegation from sovereign States, or directly from the people politically divided into States, it is, within its constitutional sphere, a government with all the rights and immunities of government, and, like every government, must have that first of all rights, the right of self-preservation. The question as to the source of its powers is and can be of no practical importance, when once its powers are ascertained and defined. The people of the United States, in forming the Federal Union, did not form a mere league or confederacy of sovereigns; they formed a government, a government with limited powers indeed, but still a government, supreme, sovereign within its constitutional limits. They formed a union and not a confederacy. From this union no State, any more than an individual, has the right to secede; for they expressly ordain that the "Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." There is no getting over this: the Federal govern-" ment, within its constitutional limits, is the supreme government of the land, and paramount to all State constitutions, authorities, or laws. Any act of secession by a State is an act of rebellion, and therefore null and void, not only as against the Union, but in relation to its own citizens; and the attempt of the people, or any portion of the people of any State by force of arms to carry such an act into effect, is manifestly a levying of war against the United States, and therefore an act of treason. Even if it were conceded that the sovereignty theoretically still vests in the States, its exercise within certain limits is delegated to the Union and incapable of being revoked without a mani

fest breach of faith. Say that the Union is a "constitutional compact," it is one of those compacts in which all the parties are bound to each and each to all. Such a compact can be dissolved only by the unanimous consent of all the contracting parties, while from its very nature the parties remaining faithful to it must necessarily have the right to enforce its observance upon any party seeking to evade its provisions. So, whether we take the Northern or the Southern view of the Federal Union, secession is illegal, is in violation of the Constitution, nothing more or less than an act of rebellion, and as such the Federal government has not only the constitutional right, but the constitutional duty, to put it down, if it has or can command the means to do it.

The Federal government, in the present war, is not warring against any State, or seeking to coerce any State as such, into submission; for no State, as a State, has withdrawn or could withdraw from the Union, since any action of the people of any State to withdraw itself would exceed the constitutional right of the State, and be a simple usur'pation of power. No States have seceded, for no State, by the Constitution of the United States or by its own Constitution, could secede. The so-called Confederate States of America have, therefore, no legitimate authority either within the States themselves or as against the Union. This Southern Confederacy is simply a league of conspirators and rebels. The Federal government in making war against them, therefore, only makes war in its own defence and in vindication of the constitutional rights of the seve ral States; and in doing it, it is only performing its own imperious and constitutional duties. The war is not a war between the North and South, between the Free and the Slaveholding States, for or against slavery, but is, on the part of the Government, simply a war against traitors and rebels to the States and the Union.

The fact that the Rebellion is confined principally to one section of the Union, or the fact that a considerable portion of the Union are involved in it, makes no difference as to its character. The right of the Government and the essential character of the war remain the same, whether the Rebels are few or many, whether they are Northern or Southern, slaveholders, or non-slaveholders. If it be the right and duty of a government to maintain itself and to put down armed conspirators and traitors against it, there can be no question that the Government has the right and

the duty to put down this Southern Rebellion, and that all loyal citizens are bound to aid it in doing so with their property and with their lives. There never was a more causeless rebellion, one more unprovoked, more unjustifiable, or more guilty. There is not one word to be said in defence or in extenuation of the actors in this foul conspiracy. Consequently no war on the part of a government to put down a conspiracy against its own rights and existence, to vindicate itself and maintain the supremacy of the laws, ever was or ever could be, more just and deserving of the support of all loyal subjects and good citizens.

The Rebel forces are not only forces arrayed against legitimate authority, but they are forces so arrayed under circumstances of peculiar aggravation. The government they seek to cast off or to overthrow is a free government, under a constitution that provides for its own amendment. If the people of the Slaveholding States had wished to separate from the Union, and to form themselves into a separate and independent government, or to become a nation by themselves, there was a legal and constitutional way by which they could have been gratified. If they had felt that their interests, their peculiar institutions, their sentiments and convictions made a longer connection with the non-Slaveholding States undesirable, they might easily have obtained a Convention of all the States, which, no doubt, would have authorized their separation, and enabled them, in a legal and peaceful way, to have established themselves as a separate nation. If they had made their request known in a legal way, and had made it manifest that a separation was their unanimous, or very general desire, we are confident that the majority of the non-Slaveholding States would have permitted their separation, and consented to a proper boundary line and to a just and equitable division of the public property and of the public debt.

But they did nothing of this. They first attempted to gain the supremacy of the Union, and, failing in that, they attempt violently its dissolution. They respect no oath of allegiance which they had taken to the Union, and begin by taking possession of the public property, the forts, arsenals, and mints, and trampling the laws of the Union, as well as the rights of property, under foot. Their first acts are acts of plunder and robbery; their second proceeding is, in the most open and avowed manner, a levying of war on the Union and threatening its destruction. No attempt

ers.

at a peaceful separation was made till after they had committed gross acts of aggression, violence, and plunder, and they had trampled on the Federal laws, and broken all their obligations as loyal citizens to the Federal government, as well as to their own State governments. These are aggravating circumstances, and mark the character of the chief actors in the Conspiracy with a degree of atrocity that does not attach to ordinary rebels. They might have had all they wished, without violence or wrong done. But their acts show clearly that their object was not so much separation from the Union and the formation of a new government for themselves, as the subjection by force, or humiliation of the Federal government and its loyal supportEvidently their animus was bad, not so much to form a Southern confederacy as to subject the Union to their domination and to force their policy and respect for their institution of slavery upon the people of the nonSlaveholding States. It was not so much a new government they proposed to themselves, as the possession of the administration of the existing government, which they had failed to secure at the ballot-box, or a reconstruction of the Union under their dictation on the basis of negro slavery. They counted, but vainly counted, as the event has proved, on being able by aid of their Democratic friends at the North, to bring into their scheme all the States of the Union, with, perhaps, the exception of the New-England States. Could any government that had the least consciousness of its duty or the least respect for itself stand still, look quietly on, and suffer this nefarious plan to be carried into execution without offering the least opposition? Would it not have been to fail in its most imperious duty, to abdicate itself, or to commit suicide?

The fault of the Government is not that it has called loyal people to the support of their own government which they themselves have constituted, but in suffering the Conspirators to work so long without any serious attempt to arrest them. During the four years of Mr. Buchanan's administration, they not only worked without opposition from the Government, but even made use of its authority, its offices, and its patronage, to further their purposes. We will not say Mr. Buchanan was himself a rebel, we will not say that he favored the plans of the Conspirators, but we will say that, down to nearly the close of his administration, he gave them free scope for their operations, and proVOL. II.-No. III.

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tected them by his authority. He kept their chief instruments in his Cabinet and suffered in their interest their agents to deplete the Treasury and bankrupt the Government; to deprive the forts in the Slaveholding Section of the Union of all sufficient garrisons; to leave the arsenals, mints, and public property in the same Section, for the most part, under the command of officers of doubtful attachment to the Union, and exposed to easy capture by a handful of rebels; to transfer arms, ordnance, and military stores very unnecessarily from the Northern to the Southern States, thereby depriving the loyal Section of arms and munitions of war, and furnishing them to the disloyal populations; to scatter the small Federal army at the most distant points, whence many months must elapse before they could be collected in defence of the Government; to disperse our few war ships to the most distant quarters of the globe, or to place them within reach of the intended Rebels. He used all the patronage of the Government and all his personal influence to prevent the selection of a Union candidate to succeed him; and, when pretended secession broke out, though he feebly remonstrated against it, he declared officially that no coercion must be used. No one man in the country is so responsible for the present war as the late President of the United States, for it was his duty and it was in his power to have dismissed at an early day the traitors from his Cabinet, to have supplied their places by loyal and honest men, to have foreseen the coming danger, and to have effectually guarded the government against it. He might and he should have suppressed the Conspiracy before it came to a head, or been ready to have crushed the rebellion at the very instant of its breaking out. Unhappily he did no such thing, and his name must go down in our annals branded with infamy, or with imbecility.

The fault of the present Administration, if any is to be laid to its charge, is not in the resistance it offers to rebellion, but in its having too long followed the do-nothing policy of its predecessor, or in having been too timid, hesi tating, or uncertain, during the first weeks of its existence. Yet, if it were so, something can be said in its excuse, perhaps in its justification. It came into power under all the embarrassments which the previous Administration had created for it, without an army or navy, with an exhausted treasury, with a majority of the people on a popular vote