New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1861-05-20

ignal truths which may not be contested, can
question tho right to make that government, or
can bear arms to suppress it without laying crime
upon his soul? II secession were indeed heresy,
revolution is a fact; and the right of revolution
ought in this country at least, to be conceded to
the uuquestoned will of unanimous people. The
attempt to extingush, in blood, the liberty of a
circle of popuous, homogeneous and concurring
States, to choose their own form of government,
is more revolving in America than it would be in
the older countries where despotism has the pre-
scriptive rights of antiquity, of long usage, and
the necessities Of arbitrary power Here it is q
criminal apostacy from the faith whereby there is
anything encouraging to humanity in American
freedom.
We might rest our Southern cause here, on the
simple fact that independence is the declared will
Of such numerous people, and that they alone
are judges of the reasoaaheness of their decision.
There would be no value in the right of establish
ing new governments ii it were subordinate to the
judgment of these from whom we separate. 1t is
slavsh doctrine, that there are no rights entitled
to be respected which there is q hostile power
strong enough to overthrow: If you could, by the
mere power of brute numbers, overrun, 90 hold,
occupy and poSsRssn these States, or, as your
fercer patriots threatening at the head of your
mobs, if you could wipeh us " out of existence"
you would only obliterate the title deeds to your
own liberties and possessions, and enable the first
demagogue who can summon up the same mob spi-
rit to write himself your master in letters of blood
AS between government and government,
people and people, we may not permit our right
forum of conscience we can amply justify our
selves, and are content to abide the candid judg-
ment Of the world. ~
With this reservation against any right of iuris-
diction over US. will proceed toanotce the topics
included in your fourth, fifth and sixth Inquiries
They imply, with your comment, that the South
has no grievances for which the Constitution of
the United States, through the Congress and the
Courts, did not provide remedy, and that it is n
delusion to suppose the present Administration of
the Federal Government, or any considerable
portion Of the Northern people, unfriendly to the
South; and you want to know how we would be
better off out of the Union than in it.
Not to argue q case, but to state facts and con
cluSiOns the response to these views may be
found in these two propositions:
The Southern people have been brought to the
immoveable conviction, Qs) that their under
standing Of their rights within the Union under
the Constitution of the United States, is widely
different from the understanding of them by the
whole people of the North and cay that there
are no means within theirreaCh, as members of the
Union by which their understanding of their rights
can be established beyond dispute in the inter-
probation of the Constitution, or be made to
prevail in the administration of the Government.
The inevitable deduction from these propositions
is that the Government to which they were
party has failed, as to them, to answer the chief
ends for which governments are instituted: and
they are compelled by sense of duty to them.
selves and their posterity to seek safeguards for
emperiled liberty and property in new and better
forms.
1t is not within the scope of your inquiries, nor
the objects of this letter, to open so wide field as
the debate on the strength of the facts and reasons
which have brought the people of the South to
these conclusions. We should be arguing in a
circle, coming always to the same point OF ire.
concable difference, that we have two sorts of
civilization, of which ours is distasteful to you,
and treated by the best disposed among you as an
evil, to be tolerated only until some way can be
found, upon which you are not agreed, to get rid
of it, With US it is necessity and vitality. We
sustain and defend it: and we cannot tolerate the
assumption of supremacy accompanied by the
power, to make itself felt, in every form of dis
couragement, prescription and enmty. The end
Of and the only use Of such debates is to manifest
the incompatibility of these two civilizations to be
found together by the tie of u common govern
ment. When You aver that it is possible, you as
sumo much that we will never admit
And giving yOn full credit tor sincerity in your
belief that the people OF the North do not mean to
invade any of our rights, as they understand them
permit me to say, that the dstrust of the people
of the South isinot to be conquered by the assur-
ances of the credulously hodefu against the
mass of testimony which shows the North to be
embodied against them Your construction of the
Constitution denies us essential rights your theory
of its powers leave us entirely at your mercy and
your people have been trained up for a whole gen
GRAFTON to look upon as Interiors and culprits,
whom it is high moral duty to reclaim from the
damnng state of error in which they live, or to
punish for contumacy in sin. You give no rea-
son to believe that you yourselves think that
Constitution could be framed, under which, with
our convictions Of our necessities, we could live
with the sense of security. You insist on perpeu-
ating the bond which we complain of as CALLING.
1t is with your people, their own Constitution, for
themselves. They will have that and no other.
The power of amendment is absolutely IN your
own hands, and any change that would give us
even the paper promise OF justice must come from
your grace. There was chance, will not say
how good of retaining the border States, at least
by concessions from power to policy. The con-
strvatiVe power residing in the provision for
amendment when the exigences of new relations
should show them necessary to the safety Of the
State, was suppressed in your hands. You chose
to encounter the hostility of the border States in
addition to the declared separation of the Cotton
States, rather than even consider the point of
yielding anything to the universal sentiment of the
South. The war of opinion was thus proclaimed
by yourselves as BILE. The certainty of sepa-
ration and the risk of war were preferred to the
abatement of any portion of the Northern repug-
nance to Southern society. Against powers so
selishly clutched, and relentlessly held what re.
lief is there III the unmeanng promises to be mer-
cfu to the vauquished? These are not terms
which free men can live under II this be the SER
vice which Northern conservatism offers US. we
will have none of it, 1t was not powerful enough
to prevent the election OF Mr. Lincoln against the
unanimous protest of the South, supported by his
record that he was Offensive to them for his de-
clnred opinions and political utilization with their
bitterest enemies. He had avowed sentiments
which are abhorrent to them, and signifed pur.
poses which are destructive. He strengthened
their repuguance by taking into his counsels the
men who are notorious for unrelenting hostility to
Southern slavery and the most ultra schemers for
overthrowing it. His chief Cabinet officer is the
Senator from your own State, whose whole career
has been devoted to cultivation OF the most ran
cOrouS feelings against us; who rose to high sta
tons by virtue of his radical AhOtitionism, and
who is pledged, in every form by which the h0uor
of public man can be pledged, to work for the
abolition of slavery every where, with other in.
Permission than that imposed by his declared
policy to bide his time in order to make his ei,rts
more certainly successful. This arch enemy il
presented to us, of late, as the type of moderate
Republicanism and you yourself apparently
surprised that we do not trust these men, and that
we should even suspect them of meaning harm.
1t is p0rtent, to the significance of which the
people Of the South fully alive that there is an
Abotionism OF which Seward sun is offered a
compromise. and a Conservatism, of which Lincoln
| ism is proffered rs the embodiment
And when you refer rs to Congress and to the
Federal Courts, as sutfci mt bulwarkS for u.s. you
overlook Internationally without doubt, the fact
that Congress. under the influences which have
made the whole North one anti-savery cumhna-
ton, will in due time shape Congress, as it has
shaped the Executive. You forget that it is your
Presidents dpctriue that Congress is not bound 10
respect The Judgment of courts, and that he has
declared if he were in Congress he would not re.
spect them himself in q case Involving the equal
rights OF slavery. Besides, courts themselves are
transitory, and your Congress can remodel them
as threatened. and thus get decisions Of another
sort; or your Presidents can in due course, make
new judges, who will ace the same courts against
us. Such is on the programme and all within the
forms of the tpustit tim W IN rlain n ne