DANVILLE REVIEW.

No. III.

SEPTEMBER, 1863.

ART. I.-The Union and the Constitution.

In what sense and to what extent the people of the United States are one, has heretofore been the subject merely of speculation among political theorists, and of the declamations of party leaders. But amid the throes of a convulsion which has shaken our Union to its center, and threatens to rend it asunder, and prostrate in ruin the temple of liberty which our fathers founded, in the presence of a gigantic conspiracy, avowedly resting on and sanctioned by the assumption that we are not one people, but many, leagued together in a confederacy of independent sovereignties-the question becomes one of the profoundest practical importance. "Let it never be forgotten," says a recent political writer of eminence,* "that we are one people and one nation only so far as the Constitution makes us one. Outside of that bond we are thirty-four people and thirty-four nations, none of which have any more right to interfere with the local laws and institutions of the rest than with the local laws and institutions of China and Brazil. The people of the States have a right, under the Constitution to defend their local laws and institutions by arms, if necessary, and it is the duty of the United States to uphold and aid them in the attempt. A war confined to such an object would not be rebellion, even though the United States were the aggressor."

• Amos Kendall, in the National Intelligencer, February 21, 1862.

That a war against the constitutional rights of any part of the Union would be treasonable, and that in such a case, resistance could not justly be stigmatized as rebellion, is certain; not because the Union is a confederated league of distinct nations, but because any violation of the Constitution, by whomsoever committed, is treason to the sovereignty of "the people of the United States" by whom the Constitution was "ordained and established;" while they who, loyally and in good faith, should maintain the integrity of the Constitution, and oppose its assailants, would occupy the position of faithful lieges and guardians of that sovereignty. But that the American people are a society composed of thirty-four distinct people and nations, is so far from being unquestionably true, that it would rather seem to be without support, whether by appeal to the common sense of men, to sound theoretical principles, or to the criterion of historical facts, the only decisive test on such a question.

In looking into the original sources of our national history, nothing is more manifest, nothing stands out with more distinctness upon the whole face of the record, than the fact that the Union existed prior alike to Constitution and Confederation; that, from the first movement of the colonies in the controversies which resulted in their independence, they all recognized that Union, and their duty of allegiance to it, as already existent realities, not by virtue of any act of voluntary league or confederacy on their part, but from the very manner of their origin and native relations to each other, and to the British crown and people. The Constitution did not create the Union. It only gave it organization and defined relations to the people and to the State governments.

Originally, the American colonies were integral parts of the British nation-the fountain of their blood, the land of their fathers and home of their brethren. They were identified in the common nationality, and subject, in all external relations and general interests, to the paramount authority of the king and parliament. In their migration to America they retained all the rights and privileges of native-born English freemen, and were organized in subordinate colonial governments for the protection and exercise of those rights, and management of local and municipal affairs. While thus re

lated to Great Britain, the colonies, when first called together in council by the usurpations of parliament, found themselves united to each other, not only by the same ties of blood and nationality which bound them to Britain, but by the common sympathies, privations, and privileges of colonial life, by the joint inheritance of one common country, by the same experience of British aggressions, and by the united purpose to vindicate their native liberties, at every hazard.

When, in October, 1765, upon occasion of the stamp act, the first Continental Congress assembled in New York, the question arose, "Upon what ground shall we vindicate our liberties?" On the faith of our charters, or on the principles of natural rights?" "A confirmation of our essential and common rights as Englishmen," said Christopher Gadsden, of South Carolina, "may be pleaded from our charters safely enough. But any further dependence upon them may be fatal. We should stand upon the broad common ground of those natural rights that we all feel and know as men, and as descendants of Englishmen. I wish the charters may not ensnare us, at last, by drawing different colonies to act differently in this great cause. Whenever that is the case, all will be over with the whole. There ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on the continent, but all of us Americans.”* These views were universally accepted, and the Congress, without any act of union, or even a resolve of mutual fidelity, proceeded as "Americans" to vindicate their violated rights, upon the general principles of English liberty.

To the king they "most respectfully shew," "that these colonies were originally planted by subjects of the British crown, who, animated with the spirit of liberty, encouraged by your majesty's royal predecessors, and confiding in the public faith for the enjoyment of all the rights and liberties essential to freedom, emigrated from their native country to this continent, and by their successful perseverance in the midst of innumerable dangers and difficulties, together with a profusion of their blood and treasure, have happily added these vast and valuable dominions to the empire of Great Britain; that, for the enjoyment of these rights and liberties, several

Gadsden, in Bancroft, Vol. V, p. 335.

governments were early formed in the said colonies with full power of legislation, agreeable to the principles of the English Constitution." *

To the House of Lords they represent, "that his majesty's liege subjects in his American colonies, though they acknowledge a due subordination to that august body, the British Parliament, are entitled, in the opinion of your memorialists, to all the inherent rights and liberties of the natives of Great Britain; and have, ever since the settlement of the said colo ́nies, exercised those rights and liberties, as far as their local circumstances would permit."

Addressing the House of Commons they state that they "most sincerely recognize their allegiance to the crown, and acknowledge all due subordination to the Parliament of Great Britain, and should always retain the most grateful sense of their assistance and protection." Yet they submit, "whether there be not a material distinction, in reason and sound policy, at least, between the necessary exercise of parliamentary jurisdiction, in general acts for the amendment of the common law, and the regulation of trade and commerce through the whole empire, and the exercise of that jurisdiction by imposing taxes on the colonies."+

To the same effect, the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay, writing to Lord Camden, Jan. 29, 1768, state that "such are the local circumstances of the colonies, at the distance of a thousand leagues from the metropolis, and separated by a wide ocean, as will forever render a just and equal representation in the supreme legislature utterly impracticable. Upon this consideration it is conceived that his majesty's royal predecessors thought it equitable to form legislative bodies in America, as perfectly free as a subordination to the supreme legislation would admit of; that the inestimable right of being taxed only by representatives of their own free election, might be preserved and secured to their subjects here." I

Such was the constitution of the colonies and their relation

• Almon's "Prior Documents," London, 1777, pp. 32, 33.

Ibid, pp. 82, 83.

† Ibid., p. 186.

to the paramount sovereignty of the British king and parliament. Organized under colonial governments, the jurisdiction of which, over all local and internal interests, was exclusive and sovereign, they were cheerfully subordinate to the supreme legislature and crown, in all matters of more general and national concern. The causes of grievance which separated them from Great Britain were not several and diverse, in the several different colonies, but one and the same, common to all, and as such recognized and met by them; not with independent counsels and separate actions, but with perfect unity and accord, by common counsels and the united energies of all, controlled and guided by "the Continental Congress."

The king and parliament properly represented a sovereignty which was not essentially in them, but in the people. Their colonial policy, sustained as it was by the British people, excluded the Americans from the rights and privileges of freemen and equals, and treated them as outcasts and aliens. In pursuing such a course the British authorities forfeited the prerogatives of sovereignty over the colonists, whom they thus constrained to discover, in that government and nation, strangers and enemies. The throne thus vacated was occupied by Congress, at first, as a provisional organ of the common expostulations of America and guardian of her liberties, and at length, as the rightful successor of the derelict monarch, the true and chosen representative of the sovereignty of the American people. The result, therefore, of that convulsion which rent asunder the British empire, was not a disintegration of the American portion. On the contrary, it induced in the colonists a more distinct appreciation of the fact and the value of their unity of origin, of nationality and of interests, and a cordial acquiescence in the necessary and essential conditions of continued union.

CONGRESS OF 1774.

These general ideas have been illustrated in the proceedings of the Congress of 1765. The repeal of the stamp act seemed to promise the return of harmony, but new and oppressive measures of arbitrary power soon revealed the design of the administration to reduce the colonists to a condition of abject vassalage. Again, a Congress was called together, and again