The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1861-07-15
BALTIMORE.
MONDAY, JULY IS, 1861.

his late message 10 congress- " iS"'s ~
who doubt his integrity and mistrust his inten-
lions To that end he used the following Ian
guage:
.sLe there he some uneasiness the minds of candid
mon % to what is be the of the Government TO-
aris The southern States, the rebellion shall have
been suppressed Executive deems it proper to say "
soiH be las purpose hea TO be g'dd ty the Con
- t1oa an the qUs and he probably will have no
different understanding of the powers and duties OF the
FEDERAL Government relatively to the rights of the States
ard the people under Constitution, than that eX'
pressed in the Inaugural address lie desires to preserve
the Government that it may be Tor all as II
was administered by the men who made It,"
A more lamentable failure than this effort TO
pacify the people of the South has not been re-
corded since the day when three worthless "made
t'an appointment together to go and comfort
jon. He must be a credulous and sanguine man
indeed who could derive encouragement or con-
ISOLATION from the matter Of this proclamation by
Mr.. LINCOLN to his "dssatisfed fellow country
s'men" But 10 say that this portion of his mes
SAGE will not prove satisfactory to those for whom
it was more especially intended is 10 express our
selves altogether too ftebly. The feeling which it
will inevitably excite in the people Of that section
will be one of disgust and indignation, and 1t
ought TO produce precisely the same effect upon
every candid mind, even from Maine to Wisconsin.
Surely Mr. LINCOLN presumes overmuch upon the
patience or the stupidity of the nation when he
pravely addresses it in the language Of the extract
we have quoted. How he could have venured
thus TO speak, in view of the acts which he has
done or sanctioned within the past three months,
can only be explained upon the theory that he
imagines himself to be dealing with an ''artiicia
ttcriss, and therefore privileged 10 treat ii as
fippantly rs he pleases. On no other hypothesis
can we comprehend what Mr.. LINCOLN means
when he says that upon the suppression of
'the rebellion" it will 'be his purpose
"then, as evcr, to be guided by the ConstiG-
stton and the laws II his proceedings hereto
fore had been simply of an equivocal character,
and such as even in his view were warranted by
the Constitution and the laws, we could under
stand this sentence. But it will be remembered
that he himself comedies that he has done what
he was wholly unauthorized TO do. In this iden-
teal message he announces that he has called out
volunteers to serve for three years, and has in
creased the regular army and navy; and he does
not pretend TO assert the legality of these acts,
but states, merely by way of excuse, that they
"were ventured upon under what appeared to be
ia popular demand and public necessity" He
admits that be has deliberately violated the Con-
Btitutiou. What, therefore, does he mean by
cooy Informing the people that upon the suppress
sion of the rebellion he will ''theu, erer," be
guided by 'the Constitution and the laws"
Does he intend TO assert now, 81 the fundamental
principle of his Administration, that he Will al
ways disregard both whenever, ia his Judgment
ga popular demand or "a public necessity" rem
der the reputation Of the Constitution and the
laws advisable? If be can offer no better guaran-
tee for his future observance of his obligations
than his past conduct in this respect, it is high
time that the North, as we'll as the South, was up
in arms against him. But whatever the former
may do, Mr.. IdECoLN may rest satisfied that the
South Will never permit him TO exercise jurisdic-
ton over one of the seeded States until she has
some far stronger assurances of his integrity than
he has as yet given her. Nothing short of suhju-
CATION will now bring her people back to this
Confederacy, until they have such guarantees as
will render ali arbitrary violation of the Consti'u-
ton, in obedience to "a popular demand in the
North, an improbable, if not an impossible thing.
If the South had no other reason for taking such
a position, she might refer to the transactions OF
the past three months, and to the fact that the
President not only jusfes them, but cites
them as illustrations Of the mode in which he is
prepared to discharge the duties Of his office, and
no further argument would be needed TO prove
the righteousness of revolution.
But it is not because of this sentence alone that
we infer the above paragraph from the late Mes
sage will be anything but satisfactory to such
s'Union'' men may be yet left in the South
If Mr.. LINCOLN had made no allusion to his past
proceedings and had pledged himself simply TO
she guided by the Constitution and the laws"
the people of the slave States would still have
required further guarantees They would not,
under any circumstances, have been content to
rely upon his promise to abide by that instrument
and by the statutes Of the land while he asserted
the right to repudate any other Interpretation Of
these than his own. They remember that they
submitted most important constitutional ques-
ton TO the arbitrament of the tribunal whose duty
it was TO determine it, and that, though it has
been solen.nly adjadicated in favor of the South,
Mr.. LINCOLN has announced his purpose to disre-
gard that decision. They know the Courts have
said that the writ of habeas corpus may not be
suspended by the President, aud that Mr.. LINCOLN
has nevertheless suspended or abrogated it. They
recoect that it is the fundamental law of the
land that no man shall be arbitrarily imprisoned
and they are aware of the atrocous violations Ct
the law which Mr. LINCOLN has, in this particular,
sanctioned. They recollect that the statutes of
every State on the continent prohibit the seizure,
without warrant, of the arms or papers of the
citizen, and they have seen the soldiers of Mr..
LINCOLN sent into mems dwellings in the dead
hour OF the night, TO search for their weapons
and TO secure their private letters They
know that every Judge who has ever sat upon any
bench has held the civil to be paramount to the
military authority, and they have heard that the
municipal officers of one of the chief cities of the
Union have been deposed and imprisoned and
that one Of the States of the Union has been SUBJ
jugated by Mr.. LIYCoLN's army But why multi
ply instances TO show that the South can have no
security under the Constitution since Mr.. LINCOLN
has constituted himself its sole interpreter. When
he assumed to differ from the Courts and insisted
upon the right TO act upon his own construction of
the Constitution and The laws, he rendered these as
valueless TO the South as if they did not exist
His ignorance and fanaticism have led
him into manifest and manifold absurdi-
ties already and it is impossible TO say to what
lengths he may not go. If be has refused to obey
the decision Of the Supreme Court in the DRED
SCoTT case and has satisfied himself that he may
lawfully suspend the writ Of haJeas corpus, he may
tomorrow be found advocating Mr. TRUMBULL's
proposition to abolish slavery in the coded
States. 1t is safa then, to presume that the South
will never consent to live under a Constitution
which Mr.. LINCOLN and his party are determined
poth to expound and TO enforce
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