PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



615 



m&xitn which he plainly deems to be undeniable, that 

 the theory of the Constitution requires, in all cases, 

 that the majority shall govern. And in another mem- 

 orable instance the same Chief Magistrate did not hi'S- 

 ' liken the relations betwoi-n States and the 

 United States to those which exist between the coun- 

 try and the State in which it is situated, and by which 

 it "was created. 



This is the lamentable and fundamental error in 

 which rests the policy that has culminated in his dec- 

 laration of war against these Confederate States. 



In addition to the long-continued and deep-seated 

 resentment felt by the Southern States at the persist- 

 ent abuse of the powers they had delegated to the 

 Congress for the purpose of enriching the manufactur- 

 ing and shipping classes of the North at the expense 

 of~the South, there has existed for nearly half a cen- 

 tury another subject of discord, involving interests of 

 such transcendent magnitude as at all times to create 

 the apprehension in the minds of many devoted lovers 

 of the Union that its permanence was impossible. 



When the several States delegated certain powers 

 to the United States Congress, a large portion of the 

 laboring population were^iuiported into the colonies 

 by the mother country. In twelve out of the fifteen 

 States, negro slavery existed, and the right of prop- 

 erty existing in slaves was protected by law; this 

 property was recognized in the Constitution, and pro- 

 vision was made against its loss by the escape of the 

 slave. 



The increase in the number of slaves by foreign im- 

 portation from Africa was also secured by a clause for- 

 bidding Congress to prohibit the slave trade anterior 

 to a certain date, and in no clause can there be found 

 any delegation of power to the Congress to authorize 

 it in any manner to legislate to the prejudice, detri- 

 ment, or* discouragement of the owners of that species 

 of property, or excluding it from the protection of the 

 Government. 



The climate and soil of the Northern States soon 

 proved unpropitious to the continuance of slave labor, 

 while the reverse being the case at the South, made 

 unrestricted free intercourse between the two sections 

 unfriendly. 



The Northern States consulted their own interests 

 by selling their slaves to the South and prohibiting 

 slavery between their limits. The South were willing 

 purchasers of property suitable to their wants, and 

 paid the price of the acquisition, without harboring 

 icion that their quiet possession was to be dis- 

 turbed by those who were not only in want of consti- 

 tutional authority, but by good faith as vendors, from 

 disquieting a title emanating from themselves. 



A* soon, however, as the Northern States, that pro- 

 hibited African slavery within their limits, had reached 

 a number sufficient to give their representation a con- 

 trolling vote in the Congress, a persistent and organ- 

 ized system of hostile measures against the rights of 

 the owners of slaves in the Southern States was in- 

 augurated and gradually extended. A series of meas- 

 ures was devised and" prosecuted for the purpose 

 of rendering insecure the tenure of property in 

 slaves. 



Fanatical organizations, supplied with money by 

 voluntary subscriptions, were assiduously engaged in 

 exciting amongst the slaves a spirit of discontent and 

 revolt. Means were furnished for their escape from 

 their owners, and agents secretly employed to entice 

 them to abscond. 



The constitutional provision for their rendition to 

 their owners was first evaded, then openly denounced 

 as a violation of conscientious obligations and religious 

 duty. Men were taught that it was a merit to elude, 

 disobey, and violently oppose the execution of the 

 laws enacted to secure the performance of the promise 

 contained in the constitutional compact. Often owners 

 of slaves were mobbed and even murdered in open 

 day solely for applying to a magistrate for the arrest 

 of a fugitive slave. 



The dogmas of the voluntary organization soon ob- 

 tained control of the Legislatures of many of the 



Northern States, and laws were passed for the punish- 

 ment, by ruinous lino, und long-continued imprison- 

 ment iii gaols and penitentiaries, of citizens of the 

 Southern States who should dare ask of the ollicers of 

 the law for the recovery of their property. Embold- 

 ened by success on the theatre of agitation :.: 



>n, against the clearly expressed constitutional 

 rights of the Congress, Senators and Representatives 

 were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose 

 chief title to this distinction consisted in the display 

 of a spirit of ultra fanaticism, and whose business wa<. 

 not to promote the general welfare, or ensure domestic 

 tranquillity but to awaken the bitterest hatred against 

 the citizens of sister States by violent denunciations 

 of their institutions. 



The transaction of public affairs was impeded by 

 repeated efforts to usurp powers not delegated by the 

 Constitution, for the purpose of impairing the security 

 of property in slaves, and reducing those States which 

 held slaves to a condition of inferiority. 



Finally, a great party was organized for the purpose 

 of obtaining the administration of the Government, 

 with the avowed object of using its power for the total 

 exclusion of the slave States from all participation in 

 the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the 

 States in common, whether by conquest or purchase, 

 surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery 

 should be prohibited, thus rendering the property in 

 slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, 

 and thereby annihilating in effect property worth 

 thousands of millions of dollars. 



This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month 

 of Novembe'r last in the election of its candidate for the 

 Presidency of the United States. 



In the mean time, under the mild and genial climate 

 of the Southern States, and the increasing care for the 

 well-being and comfort of the laboring classes, dic- 

 tated alike by interest and humanity, the African 

 slaves had augmented in number from about six hun- 

 dred thousand, at. the date of the adoption of the con- 

 stitutional compact, to upwards of four millions. 



In a moral and social condition they had been ele- 

 vated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and 

 civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only 

 with bodily comforts, but with careful religious in- 

 struction, under the supervision of a superior race. 

 Their labor had been so directed as not only to allow 

 a gradual and marked amelioration of their own con- 

 dition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square 

 miles of the wilderness into cultivated lands cov- 

 ered with a prosperous people. Towns and cities 

 had sprung into existence, and rapidly increased in 

 wealth and population under the social system of the 

 South. 



The white population of the Southern slave-hold- 

 ing States had augmented from about 1,250,000 at the 

 date of the adoption of the Constitution, to more than 

 8,500,000 in 1*60, and the productions of the South in 

 cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full develop- 

 ment and continuance of which the labor of African 

 slaves was and is indispensable, had swollen to an 

 amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the ex- 

 port of the whole United States, and had become ab- 

 solutely necessary to the wants of civilized man. 



With interests of such overwhelming magnitude 

 imperilled, the people of the Southern States were 

 driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of 

 some course of action to avoid the dangers with which 

 they were openly menaced. With this view, the Leg- 

 islatures of the" several States invited the people to 

 select delegates to conventions to be held for the pur- 

 pose of determining for themselves what measures 

 were best to be adopted to meet so alarming a crisis 

 in their history. 



Here it may be proper to observe that, from a period ( 

 as early as 17i ( S, there had existed in all of the btates ' 

 of the Union a party almost uninterruptedly in the 

 majority, based upon the creed that each State was, 

 in the last resort, the sole judge as well of its wrongs 

 as of the mode and measures of redress. Indeed, it is 

 obvious that under the law of nations this principle is 



