Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1867-03-05
PUBLIC LEDGER.
n1ssoLur1oN or TEE UNION.

II was, at one time, considered treason
to suggest the subject Of dissolution o
the Union. Webster did not wish t.
withdraw the veil that concealed the gul
beyond it. In his grand and graphic
manner he limited at the horrors that re
sided there. How we American repub
licans have changed Even the South
that attempted to overthrow the Govern
ment, had no fancy for the term disunion,
But not only in the South, but in the
North, it was maintained that the States
were the creators and masters of the
Federal Government, and possessed the
right to terminate the Union by with
drawing from it. The States we're re-
garded on all hands as understandable,
while the General Government existed
by the sufferance Of the States. No one
ever suggested, from the time of Wash
ington to that of Lincoln, the idea Of
States destruction. They were con-
cluded by general consent to be sove-
reign, and, in their nature, perpetual
The only legal bond between them is the
Federal Constitution, and that nowhere
authorizes q part of them to destroy
another.
Associated together with equal rights
under the Constitution, they cannot ere
ate State; they can only admit States
into the Union, and that only on condi-
ton of their governments possessing re-
publican forms. Whether true or false,
the theory OF secession is plausible, on
the ground, generally, that the creator is
superior to the creature, but there is no
possible reason to assume that, under
our system, the creature, or any number
of creatures, can annihilate the creator
But the States Of the North that deny
secession in one form, proclaim it an.
other. Twenty six States that waged
war of four years on ten, to hold them in
the Union, deliberately, after their re-
duetion to submission to the terms of the
Union, seeded from them by destroy
ing their State Governments and snbsti-
tuting the rule of the bayonet 1t must,
therefore, be confessed, that the Union
is not only not indissoluble, but that
it has actually been dissolved. The
authority that renders Virginia
military district, can exercise similar
power over New York-indeed, may re-
duce all the Northern States to the con-
dtion of the Southern States So far as
the power and the reason are concerned,
the military bill might have been ex-
tended over the whole Union. In that
state of the case, will any one maintain
that the Constitution would not be abro-
gated and the Union overthrow
But the time for argument has passed,
and the Government is an obsoletism
The military bill declares that no loyal
State governments exist" in the ten |
DlateS OF tue DOutu. Inc pEcSSut DldbS |
are usurpations, and the |
people who live under them have no
right to govern themselves. The Legis
latures are illegal, and the acts passed
by them are void. The courts have no
right to administer justice, because there
is no law defining crime, and no one
authorized to punish it Murder, arson,
rape, burglary, theft, are not crimes,
because there is no law defining and
rendering them such. Ten States, by
one single act of Congress, are hurled
into anarchy. The strong gives the law
to the feeble, the armed to the unsrmed,
the villain to the virtuous, the criminal
TO the christian The brute and the
beast are turned loose upon society, and
instructed that they may revel in crime
and glnt their appetites. All transfers
of property are illegal, and the children
born of mothers married since secession,
are bas,ards. All the transactions of six
years, of whatever character, are unau
thorized and void. No law is in force
but that of nature, and every man is at
liberty to interpret and execute that as
he may think proper. And this is the
point to which the republic OF Washing
ton has advanced. Patrick Henry said,
f" Give me liberty, or give me death
The statesmen of the American Con-
rress, speaking amidst the ruins Of the
republic, cry aloud, give us power, or
rive ms anarchy and destruction"