272 



CONGRESS, CONFEDERATE. 



by dictionaries as the violation of one's " alle- 

 giance " that is the word. 



Mr. Oldham : I will explain the purport of 

 iny question. I hold that every citizen of a 

 political community owes allegiance to the 

 sovereign power. In this country the people 

 are the sovereign power, and every citizen 

 owes allegiance to the political community that 

 constitutes his State. He owes obedience to 

 the State Government which that community 

 may establish as the agency ; and, whenever 

 this sovereign directs him to change that 

 obedience to any other source, he is bound to 

 obey in consequence of his allegiance to his 

 sovereign. He owes precisely the same allegi- 

 ance to this sovereign as the people of Great 

 Britain owes to the English Crown. 



Mr. Hill : I do not quibble about words. I 

 do not care by what circumlocution you arrive 

 at the origin of allegiance. I do not care ho\v 

 a citizen owes allegiance, or by whose alle- 

 giance, or by whose agency he gets to owe 

 allegiance. All I say is that under the Consti- 

 tution every citizen of the Confederate States 

 owes allegiance to the Confederate States. You 

 may call it obedience. 



Mr. Oldham : I only desire the gentleman 

 not to confound terms. 



Mr. Hill : He confounds terms himself. He 

 gets up a word to define authority, and employs 

 the same to overturn authority. 



Mr. Oldham: Our Government overturned 

 authority. 



Mr. Hill : It did not say the treason we de- 

 fine is different from the treason that has been 

 settled for all time. One of the definitions is, 

 that treason shall consist in levying war against 

 the Government. It adjudicates upon cases 

 coming within the meaning of the word. What 

 is meant by the word ? A breach of one's al- 

 legiance. The gentleman says it is a breach 

 of one's obedience. Then, I suppose a viola- 

 tion of the law may be made treason for that 

 is disobedience. Desertion or any other viola- 

 tion of a penal statute may be made treason. 

 You may call it allegiance or obedience. I say 

 citizens of this Government owe that which 

 only citizens can owe they owe allegiance ; 

 and if they violated that allegiance they can be 

 hung. You need not go and read your subli- 

 mated theories to the man upon the gallows ; 

 you need not try to comfort him by saying it 

 is all wrong to hang a man for violation of his 

 allegiance, but ought first to decide his obe- 

 dience. I fear he would be hung before you 

 conclude your rhapsodies. 



There is no necessity for the introduction of 

 these theories to bring about a conflict between 

 the State Governments and the Confederate 

 Government. My idea I do not know whether 

 it is a national one or not ; certainly it does not 

 depend upon a change of words in the Consti- 

 tution, upon refined arguments and well spun 

 theories for its justification is this : the States 

 were originally sovereign, independent States 

 they are original and sovereign yet and as 



such they had a right to exercise absolute and 

 sovereign power. They have by their own free 

 will and consent delegated these sovereign 

 powers to a common Government. And they 

 made it a Government, not simply an agency, 

 for they call it a Government in the compact, and 

 they have said all citizens of the respective 

 States shall be citizens of the Confederate 

 States. They have established laws requiring 

 these citizens to obey that which the States have 

 agreed they shall obey the common compact. 



To the extent of the powers delegated, the 

 Confederate Government exercises the sov- 

 ereign power. I grant that it did not have 

 original, national sovereignty nor do I care 

 whether it has or not. It has the power to de- 

 clare war, the power to make money, to collect 

 duties, and these powers are sovereign powers ; 

 they are expressly delegated to the Confederate 

 Government. Violence done to the Govern- 

 ment, by a citizen, is treason, because it is a 

 violation of the citizen's allegiance. I admit 

 that the men who were originally citizens of 

 the States, and who are yet citizens of the 

 States, owe their first allegiance to the States, 

 but through the States they owe allegiance to 

 the Confederate Government. The State, of 

 course, under certain circumstances, has a right 

 to qualify that allegiance ; and I say when you 

 dissolve the compact the citizen has a right to 

 elect. If we, upon the part of the Govern- 

 ment, will exercise powers plainly delegated to 

 us, and exercise none that are not delegated, 

 there will never be any conflict between the 

 States and the Confederate Government. If the 

 States will exercise their reserved powers prop- 

 erly, and the Confederate Government exer- 

 cises its delegated powers properly, there will 

 never be any difficulty. 



I say to gentlemen here who make such a 

 clamor in defence of State sovereignty, for 

 which they say this war has been waged, that 

 if they will recur to history they will find that 

 the great cause of the disruption was the in- 

 terference, by States, with a compact into which 

 they had solemnly entered. No man found cauSe 

 for dissolution in anything the Federal Govern- 

 ment did ; for all declared they wanted to pre- 

 serve the Union until Lincoln was elected. Not 

 against the- Supreme Court that tribunal was 

 faithful to the last. Not against the Federal 

 Congress, for there you had a majority. Not 

 against Mr. Buchanan -par excellence the man 

 chosen by the South. What was the difficulty, 

 Mr. President ? The Northern States, sir, 

 passed their personal liberty bills and nullified 

 the acts of Congress. The State Governments 

 would not render up fugitives, declaring they 

 were not criminals because they stole negroes, 

 which were not property; and the State judges 

 took it upon themselves in their State courts, 

 to set aside the acts of Congress for carrying 

 out the fugitive slave law. These were the 

 enormities that drove the South to her condi- 

 tion of determined secession. I know that, 

 through my section of the country, these facts 



