The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1866-10-20
Precedents without Power.


and other men who were then among the
leaders ofthe Republican party, are brought
forward by our conservatives with great
gusto as authoritative upon the pracncal
questions now before the country for discus
sion and settlement. Thus we have just now
letter from ex-Attorney General Bates in
regard to the erection and admission OF the
State of West Virginia, in which we are
assured that Mr.. Lincoln's Cabinet all "con-
sidered an ordinance OF secession a mere null
lity in law and politics, and rebellion per-
sonal crime, punishable by law"
Now, it may as well be admitted at once,
that at the outbreak of the Rebellion neither
Mr.. Lincoln, nor any of his advisers, nor in
deed the country at large, had any just idea
of the character of the struggle upon which
we were entering. Mr.. Seward pronounced
it an affair OF ninety days; Mr.. Lincoln
thought seventy five thousand soldiers suffi-
Cient for the emergency; while people gene
rally imagined that the war would be of
brief duration. 1t is also fact that the war
was not conducted on any consistent and
well-maintained theory. At first we refused
to regard the Rebels captured in arms as
prisoners of war. The army was theoreti-
cally regarded as sort of huge posse CONT
tatus, and the captured Confederates as
civil prisoners, 10 be tried by the courts of
law. But this idea had to be abandoned
long before the war was over. at first, and
for long time, we refused to exchange pri-
soners with the enemy, lest some theory
ohr ho h,,A, l. 30
come to it at last. At first it was proposed
to close the ports in the Rebel States by
simple proclamation that they were no longer
ports of entry; but we found that that
scheme would not work, and were obliged to
resort to a regular blockade. So, too, it NAV
be quite true that in 1861 Mr.. Lincoln's
Cabinet were all agreed upon the theory set
forth by Mr.. Bates; but we find that as soon
as this theory began to be pressed into the
service of the Rebels-just as it is to-day-the
Supreme Court ofthe United States overthrew
it. In the prize cases decided in 1852, this
very theory OF the nullity of secession in law,
and the mere personal character of the crime
OF rebellion, was brought forward to save
some property captured in North Carolina
from professedly loyal man, from confsca.
ton. But the court held that in organizing
the Rebellion the States had acted as States,
and had made all their inhabitants public
enemies, 80 that their property was liable to
capture and confscation. 1t was a sound,
common-seDse decision, and is the law to day.
@It was quite natural, perhaps, in the outset,
to say that secession was nullity; but when
we saw the seeded States banded together
n a hostile confederacy, raising mighty
armies, holding undisputed sway of al
most the entire South, threatening
Washington, invading the North and
menacng the very existence of the
Government, then these fne-spun theories
of secession being mere nullity, and none of
the States being out of the Union, had to be
given up. Facts were too strong for theories.
1t was seen that secession had done some
thing, that the Rebel States had not only
taken themselves as civil corporations out of
the Union, but that they had actually ex
PEELED the United States from nearly the
entire territory of the South, so that only the
most strenuous exertions would enable us to
regain what we had lost. For four years we
fought to restore the power and authority of
the United States over the territory which
had been violently wrenched from us at the
outset by the forces of the Rebellion. Seces-
sion was unlawful, but it was actual. If it
was null in law, it was potent in effects. The
Rebellion was unconstitutional but it was
real. The Southern Confederacy, though
unrecognized at the Courts Of the established
nationalities of the earth, was still mighty
power within its own limits. 1t raised vast
armies and kept them in the field, armed them
with effective weapons, supplied them with
food and clothing, and made them power
in the day of battle. 1t took us four years to
overthrow it, and cost us a half million of
lives and tour thousand millions of dollars to
accomplish the work. These are rather won
derful effects to be ascribed to nulLities as
their cause.
The truth is, that in dealing with such
questions as are now before the people. we
must not shut our eyes to facts. Theories
are good enough in their way, but the idea
of bringing up theory long since exploded,
overthrown by the Supreme Court, and
hastily adopted, if at all, at the very begin
ming of terrible struggle, whose character
and extent were but dimly apprehended, to
control our action now, is unstatesmanlike
and absurd to the last degree SO far as
West Virginia is concerned, we believe there
was sort of mimic conformance to what
would have been the constitutional method,
in time OF peace, of erecting q new State