The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1858-02-03
d. OHIO, WEDNESDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 3, 1855 =

those who annually indorse the resolutions
If 179S against this last and boldest in
this courts long series of attacks upon
the sovereignty of the States. The pow
er of the States over citizenship, as clear
ly reserved, with the exception named
as any power can b.; and the rights of
those citizens to general citizenship, guar
anticd as plainly as language can do IT.,
are impudently denied, and by reason
ing that would disgrace freshman. And
yet these guardians Of State sovereignty,
men boisterous in defense of States
right TO oppress, clamoronsly echo the de-
nial. The people of seme of the States
are Believed wish there were no doubt
of the fact-to be as earnestly devoted to
justice, to the doctrines of the declaration
and the spirit of the Constitution, as 9TH
ers are supposed to bo to their opposite.
To render fruitiess that devotion, State
sovereignty, and with it the Constitution,
must be oyerthro8D Well may the col
ored American view with vengeful joy
the madness of his insane tormentors, as
he sees them in their eagerness to destroy
every refuge from their hate, pull down
upon their own heads the fair fabric of
their own constitutional freedom
But the doctrinal heresy of this opinion
does not exceed its gross. perversious of
history. [ do not propose now to wade
through the mass of those perversions +,
trace the garbled facts and false innueE-
does; the appeals to low prejudice and
despotie fears; tho ISLANDERS of the great
dead, and the miserable reasoning (?) that
pervade it. With sorrowful emotions
have been through them all and have
sometimes imagined the shades of Jay
and Marshall-men With whose national
doctrines have little sympathy, yet men
who loved law and revered justice-to be
sadly looking DER with me the dirty page,
wondering that they ever should have
looked to Irresponsible bodies as check
upon popular injustice.
The main historical claim alone have
time to notice. " When the Constitution
was adopted says the syllabus, 8. they
Gree negroes) were not regarded in any of
the States as members Of the community
which constituted the State, and were not
numbered amcng its "people or citizens.
IF this claim be true, it must be sus
ceptible of the most unequivocal proof
Upon so important question it will new
er do to admit doubt; and the rule ex
clear ana explicit yet such explicit ex
clusion is not pretended but the fact is
sought to be established by series of
strained inferences ard mere guesses.-
Resort is not had to the law and the tes-
timony. Statutes, constitutions, records,
are passed by as unworthy of attention !;
and the assumption of the exclusion is
founded upon the fact alons that the an
cestors of its subjects had been enslaved,
and they themselves were sometimes un
justly trea.ed-as though Governments
had done anything else, in this world of
ours, than oppress, directly or indirectly,
one class or another of their citizens or
subjects.
This, then, is tho proposition 8" that
no person whose ancestors had been cp-
pressed, aud who was himself i'll treated
by the colonists, could have been num-
bered among the citizens" l would ad-
wise caution to those who propose TO ac-
cept this proposition, close examination
of the genealogical tree, lest the conclu-
sion might apply where least expected.
But the great birth Act of the Repub-
lie is in the way of the court, and the au-
dacious sacrilege with which that act is
treated, confess, surprises me. The
great principles of justice and natural law
upon which it was founded-those princi-
pies that alone redeemed our fathers from
The charge of criminal rebcllion-arc linn
tied TO a race, to a mere fraction of the
human family and falling in argument
to prove this limitation, the court magis-
terially pronounces it q too clear for dis
pute" The idea, so sublime yet so sim
/ !. La IL Eo hos Of 1lyl ind
has endowed His children with rights
which cannot be taken from them-the
right to life and the right to liberty--this
diviro idea, the harmonic chain of human
society, before which our fathers bowed in
humble contrition for their own inconsist-
ency, yet in feryent hope for its full real
ization, because if this Inconsistency is
shorn' of its holiness, is made but the pro.
cept of tyranny. That sentence that has
commanded the homage of mankind, this
court would thus sneeringly render I" we
hold ;hese truths to be self evident, that
the superior races, if born of free moth
ers, are created equal; that they are en-
dowed by their Creator with certain inal-
lenable rights that among them are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness /;
that to secure these rights Governments
are instituted, deriving their just powers
from the consent of such races, if free and
white, among the governed.
But our fathers deserve not this tauut.
That they were not wholly consistent, is
too true-and what human Institutions
realize the ideal of those who are leading
US onward and upward ?-but none were
more keenly sensible than they of this in
consistency none could be more anxious
to be redeemed from its charge; and not
by apostacy to their sublime faith, but by
works meet for repentance" We ac-
cordingly ind the great and good among
them anziously laboring to carry out the
doctrines of the Declaration, and as un-
derstood by them, not by this COURT
Franklin, Jay, Hamilton. and others, be-
came officers of societies for the abolition
of slavery. and protection Of the free. And
to illustrate our own apostacy from these
truths, in contrast with their former ap-
probation, l ask attention to the fact that
recent officer of the same society of
which Franklin was president, for pursu-
ing its legitimate work-a work that wove
,Lo br;obtas& Ao.ars -, tho oho Mat ~, Aha