The state rights democrat. [volume] (Albany, Linn County, Oregon) 1865-1900, 1865-10-28
PRESIDENT JOHNSON AND RE
CONSTRUCTION.

The appended letter is copied from that
sterling Democratic organ the Ohio Crisis,
to which it was contributed by a sound
and sensible correspondent. We heartily
endorse the sentiments and views of the
writer:
SIDNEY, August %, 1865.
ToTHE EDTToR OF THE CRIsIs: | have
no confidence in Andy. He is striving to
float on the current with a foot on each
slab, and will either be cngulphed in the
angry whirlpool of contending forces, or
be east on some island barren of aught
but n~oxious weeds and poisoned air, alike
dcleterious to State or Federal prosperity
or peace. Reconstruction !! What is there
to reconstruct +? If, as he says, the eleven
States could not and did not go out of the
Union. but are States in the Union, why
humbug the people with the idea of ire
construction ?" Ifthey are in the Union,
then they are in it stdtu quo ante 5eiium
with all their rights, sovereignty and in
dependence unimpaired. But as recon-
struction implies destruction ofsomething
anteriorly constructed, who can, or whose
business is it, to reconstruct the thing or
fragments Of the thing destroyed? If it
means a restoration of the Union-a thing
constructed by the States for their w
proper use. benefit and behoof-is it not
an absurdity to talk of the thing recon
structing or restoring itself? No power
short of that power which constructed or
created the Union can re-create or restore
it if it be torn into fragments. This is too
plain to require any argument. Well, who
made the Union-it did not make itself,
it being a n%onentity; non-existing without
life, form or substance, and when made
was, and is, but a corporation with limited
and dependent powers, subject to the pow
ers creating it, to modification by any
measures or DEGREES of the corporate pow
ers granted, and ever to abrogation or an
Inhalation. 1t is at best but IA tenant at
will, located for the transaction of its cor
porate powers ON land owned BY its land
lord and per sc owns nothing, only SO far
as it is made by its letters of incorpora-
ton the custodian of that which is the
property of the sovereign power creatingit
Whereas the States are absolute enti-
ties, things substantive, possessing person.
life, property, political power, sovereign
ty, freedom and in~depence. They, in
their sovereign capacity, created or franz
ed this Union as an agency for the trans
action of such business as they had agreed
upon and clearly set forth in their sover-
eign act, Incorporating this agency and
expressly prohibiting it from exercising
any power but that which they had plain
ly written down and in the act creating
this agency gave it the corporate cogno-
men of Government of the United
States" Not that it should govern, con-
troll or interfere in the States or any of
them as States, but simply to do and per-
form for them, Jointly, as a confederacy.
that and that alone which had relation to
their general affairs as a unity. Hence
their motto IL Pitri6us IMAM"
The States, then. are the creator, (for
they acted as a unit). the Government of
the United States the creature. They the
antecedent, It consequent; for a creature
to assume to control the creator, to govern
or interfere with the government, laws,
rights, property or institutions, whether
civil. social, educational or religious, in a
State, is moral treason. For in all these
respects they reserved to themselves the
right to control them exclusively conse-
quently any attempt to interfere with one
or more of these rights in one State is an
infringement of the same right in every
State, as these States are all one so far as
the agency is concerned. Now, if this
Union has been Jared, shocked. or even
disjointed, shall the President, Congress
or the judiciary presume, with unhallow-
ed hands, to touch the ark of the cove
nant of our fathers? What presumption
what b~razen-faced audacityi Why, if
either or all of these departments united,
could in this condition of things interfere
with State Rights and institutions, and
~enfranchise negroes and disfranchise white
men, occasion would not be wanting when
some rail5splitter," or other ambitious
and ignorant demagogue elected to the
Presidency, would get the States at enmi-
ty, bring on a conflict of arms, and, in a
disjointed condition of the States. he would
claim the right to " reconstruct !"
No. no; the States as States in their
sovereign capacity IN convention have the
power, and they alone have it, to restore,
reconstruct, modify or dissolve the Union.
They created it, and they can re-create it,
and no other power can. Any attempt on
the part of the ~sub-agents of tho States
or of the people, viz: the President OF
the United States, or his military satraps,
to undertake to govern, control or dictate
to a State in matters pertaining to its own
jurisdiction, is an act of war against that
State and is fraught with consequences as
diabolical as was Lucifer's attempt to sup.
plant and. overthrow the government and
laws Of Heaven, and win ultimately meet
with his merited reward and be hurled
from power by an indignant and Cypress
ed people as he was cast out and accursed
WHAT THE FENIANs INTEND.-At a meet.
inc of the Fenians. held In New York re.