The southern press., 1850-10-01
TIL L SOUTHERN PRESS,
WASHINGTON CITY.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER /. 1850.
The Union and the States.

The Union and the states
Congress has adjourned to the States
The time has at length come to determine
whether this is fl ftderatiye or consolidated Gov
ernment The question is no longer specula-
tive--it is the most solemn and terrible OF the
realities of life. If this is consolidated Gov
ernment the sole Judge in its several depart
ments of its own powers, then there is no reme-
dy for any act of aggression or oppression which
majority may attempt but evoution-forcible
resistance. If it is federative Government,
then the powers of the States may be resorted
to, in order to repel usurpation and redress vio-
atons of their rights.
The late acts of Congress affect in vital
manner the people of one half the States OF the
Union. These people prefer certain institutions
which the Federal Government undertakes to
prescribe and limit to certain geographical boun-
acquisitions of territory.
If the Federal Government has the right to
prevent the territorial extension of such institu-
tions as fifteen States prefer, then these States
Union-but are subordinate and subject. And
if one of the rights of equals, and that essential
in the rivalry for property and power, be denied
at the will of numerical majority, then any
other or all other rights are held by the same
tenure. If the prescribed fifteen States submit
to this aggression on their territorial rights, the
enemy is at the door of their domicis. If they
cannot resist effectuay this assault on their from
tier they can make no resistance to an act of
universal emancipation. which immediately en-
lists and arms three millions of people in their
midst against them.
The Institution Of slavery, as one of property
and society, is the most delicate, the most vital,
the greatest in money value the deepest in social
value, of any that has ever been attacked or de-
Tended. We have now in Congress majority
opposed to it-and u majority which asserts
that all its acts are law, and cannot be resisted
except by a successful rebellion. Now if this
is true, the slavery institution of the South ex-
lists by precisely the same tenure as that OF the
British and French West Indies lately did. So
far as the question of legal right is concerned,
we are ut the will and power of the North, which
at any day may convert three millions of slaves
at the South into citizens, and their owners, if
they persist in pretending to be such, into rebels.
For the doctrine is distinctly asserted by this
very minority, that the Federal Government, in
one or the other Of its branches, is the sole
| Judge of the extent of It's own powers And
although there are some who are willing to sub
NIT to The recent acts of Congress, that yet pre-
tend they will oppose future aggressions, yet
the very arguments they advance against any
Constitutional resistance to these acts, apply
with tenfold force to resistance to the very meas
ures which they avow a readiness to oppose
They tell us of the power of the North, and OF
the Government, and of our own weakness.
That is their main argument. Well if we can
not resist a usurpation now, which does not di-
! rectly enlist in its favor three millions Of per-
sons in the South, how can we resist an act
| which would 2
| Let us now see then whether the States have
any right or power under the present Constitu-
ton to protect themselves, against any act Of
the Federal Government. 1fthey have, then the
next question is whether we had better resist an
aggression on the territorial rights of the South,
or wait until other rights are attacked, with more
power, to support the assault and less to resist
| it,
We are in a new era. All the great questions
of Government and society are raised. And
they are given not to the student in the closet not
to speculative philosophers, but to men and citi-
zens whose property, whose honor, whose safety
are at stake. Let us address ourselves to the
great argument with minds undisturbed by pas
sion by fear, by prejudice, by party, and looking
only for truth, for right, for liberty for safety,
let us reason and act like men who have stu
pendous responsibility to the present ard future
generations
More Of Billy Patterson"