Thbee is Dotliing of political pliilosoiDliy more plainly tauglit in history
than the limited value of the Federal principle. It had been experi-
mented upon in various ages of the world — in the Amphictyonic Council,
in the Ach^an league, in the United Provinces of Holland, in Mexico, in
Central America, in Columbia, and in the Argentine republic ; in all
these instances the form of government established upon it had become
extinct, or had passed into the alternative of consolidation or anarchy and
disintegration. Indeed, it is plain enough that such a form of government
iii the resource only of small and weak communities ; that it is essentially
temporary in its nature ; and that it has never been adopted by States
which had apjoroached a mature condition, and had passed the period of
])upillage. It is not to be denied that the Federal principle is valuable in
j^eculiar circumstances and for temporary ends. But it is essentially not
3
84: THE LOST CAUSE.
permanent ; and all attempts to make it so, though marked for certain
periods by fictitious prosperity and sudden evidences of material activity
and progi-ess, have ultimately resulted in intestine commotions and the
extinction of the form of government. "What, indeed, can he more natural
than that the members of a confederation, after they have advanced in
political life and become mature and powerful, should desire for tliem-
eelves independence and free action, and be impatient of a system founded
on their early and past necessities !
Coleridge, the acute English scholar and philosopher, once said that he
looked upon the American States as " splendid masses to be used by and
by in the composition of two or three great governments." For more
than a generation past it was considered by a party in America, as well as
by intelligent men in other parts of the world, that the American Union,
as a confederation of States, had performed its mission, and that the coun-
try was called to the fulfilment of another political destiny.
And here it is especially to be remarked that those statesmen of the
South, who for more than thirty years before the war of 1861 despaired
of the continuation of the Union, w^ere yet prompt to acknowledge its
benefits in the past. There could be no dispute about the success of its
early mission ; and no intelligent man in America dared to refer to the
Union without acknowledging the country's indebtedness to it in the past.
It had peopled and fertilized a continent ; it had enriched the world's com-
merce with a new trade ; it had developed population, and it was steadily
training to manhood the States which composed it, and fitting them for
the responsibility of a new political life. The party that insisted at a (!er-
tain period that the interests of the Southern States demanded a separate
and independent government, simply held the doctrine that the country
had outlived the necessities of the Union, and had become involved in
the abuses of a system, admirable enough in its early conception, but
diverted from its original objects and now existing only as the parent of
intolerable rivalries, and the source of constant intestine commotions.
With reference to these abuses, it must be remarked here that although
the Federal principle was the governing one of the American Union, yet
such Union was not purely a confederation of States ; it was mixed with
parts of another system of government ; and that the subordination of the
Federal principle to these produced many additional causes of disruption,
which plainly hurried the catastrophe of separation and war.
But before coming to the subject of these abuses, it will be necessary
to determine the true nature and value of the Union. We must go back
to an early period of American history ; we must explore the sources of
the great political parties in the country ; and we must enumerate among
the causes of disunion not only the inherent weakness of the Federal prin-
ciple, but those many controversies wliich aided and expedited the result,
THE LOST CAUSE. 35
and in which the true idea of the Union was violated, the government dis-
torted to the ends of part}^, and faction put in the place of a statesmanship
that sought lono; but iu vain to check its vile ambition and avert the final
result.
"When the thirteen colonies in ITorth America resolved to throw off the
yoke of Great Britain, committees of correspondence were established in
each colony. In May, 1774, after Lord Dunmore dissolved a patriotic
Virginia House of Burgesses, eighty-nine of its members met at the
Raleigh Tavern, in "Williamsburg, and, among other acts, recommended
that all the colonies should send deputies to a General Congress, to watch
over tlie united interests of all, and deliberate upon and ascertain the
measures best adapted to promote them.
On the 4th of July, 1776, the Congress published a Declaration of
Independence. It declared that the colonies were " free and independent
States," thus asserting their separate State sovereignty, and expressly
negativing the idea of consolidation, held by 'New Hampshire, who on the
15th of June, 1776, voted that tlie Thirteen United Colonies ought to be
declared " a free and independent State,"
At this time the only common agent of the States was a Congress
which really had no legislative power. Its action was generally wise, and
therefore cheerfully acquiesced in and made eflicient by the principals.
But as the war continued, its pressure became heavier ; men, money, and
supplies were needed ; and often the resolutions of Congress were either
wholly neglected or positively repudiated by the States. It became ap-
parent that the common agent must be clothed with actual power, and
this could only be done by an express agreement between the States,
whereby each should bind itself to observe certain rules, and obey certain
regulationa^dopted to secure the common safety.
It was thus that the first Confederation of the American States — the
articles ibf which were adopted by the several States in 1777 — originated
in the necessities of the war waged by them against Great Britain for their
independence, A common danger impelled them to a close alliance, and
to the formation of a confederation, by the terms of which the colonies,
styling themselves States, entered " severally into a firm league of friend-
ship with each other for their common defence, the security of their liberties,
and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each
other against all force ofl'ered to or attacks made upon tliem or any of them,
on account of religion, sovereignty, trade or any other pretence whatever."
In order to guard against any misconstruction of their compact, the
several States made explicit declaration, in a distinct article, that " ea<;h
State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power,
jurisdiction, and right which is not by this confederation expressly ddc-
gated to the United States in Congress assembled."
36 THE LOST CAUSE.
Tlie objects and character of tliis confederation or union were thus dis-
tinctly defined. Under its terms the war of the lievolution was success-
fully waged, and resulted in the treaty of peace with Great Britain in
1783, by the terms of which the several States were, each hy name, recog-
nized to be independent.
As the Confederation originated in the necessities of the war against
Great Britain, it was these necessities which determined its character and
measured its powers. It was something more than a military alliance ;
for it was intended to unite the resources of the States, to make a common
financial fund, and to " secure the public credit at home and abroad.''
Partial and imperfect as was the union it established, it accomplished a
great historical work, and dated an important era ; it supplied what
scarcely anything else could have supplied — a political bond between colo-
nies suddenly erected into sovereign States ; it was the stepping stone to
a firmer association of the States, and a more perfect union. In this sense
are to be found its true oflices and value. Lines of exasperated division
had been drawn between the colonies ; the sharp points of religious antag-
onism had kept them at a distance ; the natural difficulties of intercourse
and the legislative obstructions of trade had separated them ; differences
of government, contrast of manners, diversity of habits had contributed to
the estrangement ; and in these circumstances a bond of union, however
slightly it held theip, was important as the initial of their political asso-
ciation, and was educating them for the new and enlarged destiny dated
with their independence.
We have implied that the Confederation was a bond of very partial
and imperfect efi'ect. It practically existed not more than two years ;
although its nominal term in history is eight years. It was debated for
nearly five years. It was not consummated until 1781. It was full of
glaring defects ; it had no power to enforce the common will of the
States ; it had no jurisdiction of individuals ; it had but a mixed and con-
fused power over foreign relations, and the treaties it might make were
dependent on commercial regulations of the different States. Having out-
lived the prime necessity that originated it during the war, its cohesive
powers gradually gave way ; it yielded to the impressions of new events :
and it is remarkable that the association formed under it and entitled a
" Perpetual Union " was practically terminated by the uninterrupted free
will of the States which composed it.
A convention of delegates assembled from the diflerent States at Phila-
delphia in May, 1787. It had been called by Congress " for the sole and
express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting
to Congress and the several legislatm'es such alterations and provisions
therein, as shall, when agreed to in Congress, and confirmed by the States,
vender the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies and the preser-
THE LOST CAUSE. 37
oration of the Union." This was the Convention that erected the two
famous political idols in America : the Constitution of 1789 and the Union
formed under it, and entitled itself to the extravagant adulation of three
generations as the wisest and best of men.
This adulation is simply absurd. The language in the call of the Con-
vention was singulai'ly confused. The men who composed it were com-
mon flesh and blood, very ignorant, very much embaiTassed, many of
them unlettered, and many educated just to that point where men are
silly, visionary, dogmatic and impracticable.
Ilildreth, the American historian, has made a very just remark, which
describes the cause of the unpopularity of his own compositions. He says :
" In dealing with our revolutionary annals, a great difficulty had to be en-
countered in the mythic, heroic character above, beyond, often wholly apart
from the truth of historj^, with which, in the popular idea, the fathers and
founders of our American Republic have been invested. American litera-
ture having been mainly of the rhetorical cast, and the Kevolution and
the old times of the forefathers forming standing subjects for periodical
eulogies, in which every new orator strives to outvie his predecessors, the
true history of those times, in spite of ample records, illustrated by the
labors of many diligent and conscientious inquirers, has yet been almost
obliterated by declamations which confound all discrimination and just
appreciation in one confused glare of patriotic eulogium." *
* We find in 1866, even after the experience of the war, President Johnson declaring that the
autliours of the Constitution were diimiely inspired ; that " they needed and obtained a wisdom
superiour to experience." This is silly extravagance, if not worse. We shall see that there was
one element of originality and of great virtue in the Constitution ; but apart from this, the sober
student of history, looking over three generations of fierce political conflict in America, must be
struck by the enormous defects and omissions of an instrument that has shared so much the undue
admiration of mankind.
In anotlier work the authour has enumerated in the paragraphs quoted below the defective texts
of the Constitution :
" It is impossible to resist the thought, that the framers of the Constitution were so much occu-
pied with the controversy of jealousy between the large and the small States that they overlooked
many great and obvious questions of government, which have since been fearfully developed in the
political history of America. Beyond the results and compromises of that jealousy, the debates and
the work of the Convention show one of the most wonderful blanks that has, perhaps, ever occurred
it the political inventions of civilized mankind. They left behind them a list of imperfections in
political prescience, a want of provision for the exigencies of their country, such as has seldom been
known in the history of mankind."
" A system of negro servitude existed in some of the States. It was an object of no solicitude
in the Convention. The only references in the Constitution to it are to be found in a provision in
relatLon to the rendition of fugitives ' held to service or labour,' and in a mixed and empirical rule of
»opular representation. However these provisions may imply the true status of slavery, how much
is it to be regretted that the Convention did not make (what might have been made so easily) an ex-
plicit declaration on the subject, that would have put it beyond the possil)ility of dispute, and re-
moved it from even the plausibility of party controversy ! "
3b THE LOST CAUSE.
The Constitution formed by this Convention, although singularly defi-
cient — and so far from being esteemed by American demagogueism as
" almost of Divine authority," actually one of the loosest political instru-
ments in the world — contained one admirable and novel principle, which
grew out of the combination of circumstances in the debate. One party
in the Convention plausibly contended that its power was limited to a
mere revision and amendment of the existing Articles of Confederation,
and that it was authorized to add nothing to the Federal principle.
Another j)arty favoured the annihilation of the State governments. A
third party stood between these extremes, and recommended a " national "
government in the sense of a supreme power with respect to certain objects
common between the States and committed to it. But when on this third
plan the question of representation arose, it was found that the large States
insisted upon a preponderating influence in both houses of the JSTational
Legislature, while the small States insisted on an equality of representa-
tion in each house ; and out of this conflict came the mixed representation
" For many years the very obvious question of the power of the General Government to make
' internal improvements ' has agitated the councils of America : and yet there is no text in the Con-
Btitution to regulate a matter which should have stared its authours in the face, but what may be
derived, by the most forced and distant construction, from the powers of Congress ' to regulate com-
merce,' and to ' declare war,' and ' raise and support armies.' "
"For a longer period, and with a fierceness once almost fatal to the Union, has figured in the poli-
tics of America ' the tariff question,' a contest between a party for revenue and a party for protective
prohibitions. Both parties have fought over that vague platitude of the Constitution, the power of
Congress ' to regulate commerce ; ' and in the want of a more distinct language on a subject of such
vast concern, there has been engendered a controversy which has progressed from the threshold of
the history of the Union up to the period of its dissolution."
" With the territorial possessions of America, even at the date of the Convention, and with all
that the future promised in the expansion of a system that yet scarcely occupied more than the
water-slopes of a continent, it might be supposed that the men who formed the Constitution would
have prepared a full and expUcit article for the government of the territories. That vast and intri-
cate subject — the power of the General Government over the territories, the true nature of these
establishments, the status and poUtical privileges of their inhabitants — is absolutely dismissed with
this bald provision in the Constitution of the United States :
*' ' New States may be admitted by Congress into this Union.' — Aet. iv., Sec. 3."
In addition to these flagrant omissions of the Coustitution may be observed a fault, which it was
Bought to correct in the Constitution of the Confederate States, and which has latterly grown much
upon pubUc attention. It is that defective construction of the Cabinet, which excludes all the min-
isters of the government from any participation in the legislative councils. The practical conse-
quences of this defective organization of the government is, that the relations between the Execu-
tive and Congress have gradually descended to a back-door communication, in which the Execu-
tive has lost its dignity, and American pohtics been severely scandalized. The relations of
the British ministry to Parhament are such that a vote of censure, any night, may change the
administration of public affairs. There is no such faculty of adaptation in the American sys-
tem. If tliere is a variance between the Executive and Congress, the former communicates
with its partisans in that body through the back-door and lobby, and the practical consequences
are bribery, corruption, and all sorts of devious and unworthy appliances to the legislation of tha
country.
THE CONSTITUTION A COMPKOMISE.
39
of the jyeojple and the States, each in a different house of Congress ; and on
this basis of agreement was reared- the Constitution of the United States
of America.
The great novelty of this Constitution — the association of the principle
of State sovereignty with a common government of delegated powers act-
ing on individuals under specifications of authority, and thus, therefore,
nou merely a Federal league — is scarcely to be esteemed as an a 2yriori dis-
covery, and to be ascribed, as American vanity would have it, to the wis-
dom of our forefathers. The mixed representation of the people and the
States originated, as we have seen, in a jealousy sprung in the Convention,
and is better described as the fruit of an accident than the elaborate pro-
duction of human wisdom. It was a compromise. It simply extricated
the Convention from a dead-lock of votes between the large and the small
States as to the rule of representation. But it was of immense import-
ance as the initial and necessary measure of the combination of State
Bovereignty with the simple republic. There is reason to suppose that the
framers of the Constitution did not fully comprehend the importance of
the great political principle on which they had stumbled, with its long
train of consequences, and that, as often happens to simple men, they had
fallen upon a discovery, of the value of which. they had but a dim appre-
hension.
The principle involved in the measure of the Convention referred to
was more fully and perfectly developed in the Amendments, which were the
fruit of the legislative wisdom of the States, not of that of the Convention,
and were designed to give a full development and a proper accuracy to
what was certainly ill-performed work in it. The following Amendments
were embodied in the official declarations of at least six of the States,
coupled with their ratification of the Constitution, and made by them the
conditions precedent to such ratification.
" The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to
deny or disparage others retained by the people.
" The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited
by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The Union, thus constituted, was not a consolidated nationality. It
was not a* simple republic, with an appendage of provinces. It was not,
on the other hand, a mere league of States with no power to reach indi-
viduals. It was an association of sovereign States with a common author-
ity qualified to reach individuals within the scope of the powers delegated
to it by the States, and employed with subjects sufficient to give it for cer-
tain purposes the eS'ect of an American and national identity.
At the separation from the British Empire, the people of America pre
ferred the establishment of themselves into thirteen separate sovereignties
40 THE LOST CAUSE.
instead of incorporating themselves into one. To these they looked up foi
the security of their lives, liberties, and properties. ^The Federal govern-
ment they formed to defend the whole against foreign nations in time ot
war, and to defend the lesser States against the ambition of the largerT?
They were afraid of granting power unnecessarily, lest they should defeat
the original end of the Union ; lest the powers should prove dangerous to
the sovereignties of the particular States which the Union was meant tc
support, and exj^ose the lesser to being swallowed up by the larger.
The articles of the first Confederation had provided that " the Union
shall be perj)etual." Notwithstanding this, as we have seen, another con-
vention subsequently assembled which adopted the present Constitution of
the United States. Article VII. provided that " the ratifications of nine
States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution, between
the States ratifying the same." In effect, this Constitution was ratified at
first by only a portion of the States composing the previous Union, each
at diflerent dates and in its sovereign capacity as a State, so that the
second Union was created by States which " seceded " from the first
Union, three of which., in their acts of ratification, expressly reserved the
right to secede again. Virginia, in giving her assent to the Constitution,
said : " We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected, etc., etc.,
do, in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make
known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from
the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whenever the
same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." The State of 'New
York said that " the powers of Government may be re-assumed by the
people whenever it shall become necessary to their happiness." And the
State of Rhode Island adopted the same language.
The reader of American history must guard his mind against the errour
that the Union was, in any sense, a constitutional revolution, or a procla-
mation of a new civil polity. The civil institutions of the States were
already perfect and satisfactory. The Union â– \\'as nothing more than a
convenience of the States, and had no mission apart from them. It had
no value as an additional guaranty of personal liberty, nor yet for its prO'
hibitions of invasion of individual rights. These had been declared with
equal clearness and vigour five centuries before in the Great Charter at
Runnymede, had been engrafted upon the Colonial Governments, and were
the recognized muniments of American liberty.
The novelty and value of the Federal Constitution was the nice adjust-
ment of the relations of the State and Federal Governments, by which they
both became co-ordiBiate and essential parts of one harmonious system ;
the nice arrangement of the powers of the State and Federal Governments,
by which was left to the States the exclusive guardianship of their domestic
affairs, and of the interests of tlieir citizens, and was granted to the Federal
THE DOCTKINE OF STATE EIGHTS. 4:1
Government the exclusive control of their interncitional and inter-State rela*
lions; the economy of the powers of the States with which the Federal
Government was endowed ; the paucity of subjects and of powers, with-
drawn from the States, and committed to the Federal Government. It
was the recognition of the idea of Confederation — the appreciation of the
value of local self-government. It was the recognition that the States
were the creators and their powers were inherent, and that the Federal
Government was the creature and its powers were delegated.
The two great political schools of America — that of Consolidation and
that of State Eights — were founded on different estimates of the relations