The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1870-10-22

% y " sts " Il y g y ~
.sATunD,AY. OCTOBER %. 1879.
t,enera, Lee and the Question % y
I jury. IN,
The wing discusses this qae :. = c',ss.
sss usus, winch we have heretofore VIII
aoh s - ,,non which we have said nothihg
80 s., I1sy- IsE's Gecease, only because We
.s,ss,ssd at such q time 10 couple his name
s,s such word as Sc perjury" ~
The charge that those persons VINO Us
]. ,,s.sy.s or otherwise had sworn to support
j .ha constitution of the United States and
who afterwards engaged in rebellion against
the Federal Government were guilty OF
ners,sry is as absurd as SO serious charge
could be. The person who takes such On
oath takes it with the distinct understand
ing that 1t Ia obligatory upon him only 30
long as he is living and acting under that
Constitution. The oath to support any
given constitution Is an oath to support it
rust as It is. So that IL Gen. LEE, Mr.. DA.
wa, and others. were guilty Of perjury in
falling 10 continue to support the Federal
Constitution, every public man in the
North who voted TO alter that Constitution
is equally guilty Of perjury. The oath was
to support the Constitution as 1t stood say
in 1s6l-exactly as it stood-to the very
letter-without adding aught to it, or sub
tracing aught from it.
The reply to this will be that the Constitu-
tion was altered in the manner prescribed
In that Instrument for its alteration. No
southern man will admit this plea to be
true. In fact, it is so VIGOROUSLY untrue
that 1t is not necessary to do more than re-
mind the reader of its falsity. But, con-
cede it to be true, and we enter the same
plea for ourselves. The remedy Of seces-
sion we believed to be the very remedy con-
tempiated by the trainers of the Constitu-
ton for the wrongs of which the South
complained in 1861. We did not assume
this to be the remedy when we found we
had no other. On the contrary, we had
always been taught to believe that this was
the constitutional mode of redress. So far
rs General LEE and all other Virginians are,
concerned, it is sufficient to say that the
Virginia convention which ratified the Fed
eral Constitution took the precaution to
claim this right for them. The ratifying
ordinance began with these words: Ia
SO We, the delegates of the people Of Vir-
pinia, duly elected p &C., "do, in the name
and in behalf Of the people of Virginia, de-
clare and make known that the powers
granted under the Constitution, being de-
rived from the people of the United States,
may be resumed by them echensoeuer the
same shall be perverted to their injury On,
oppression"
This was the doctrine in Virginia from
the 18th Of June, 17sS, to the day when, in
a like convention of the delegates of the
people of Virginia, duly elected" &C., it
was resolved that 'the powers granted
under the Federal Constitution !" had been
" perverted to their injury and oppres-
sion," and that those powers should be re-
sumed by the people who had granted !
them.
But if Virginia had made no such reser- |
walton, no one of her sons would have been /
guilty of perjury in engaging in rebellion.
Every officer in Illinois swore in 1858 to
support the Constitution of that State rs 1t /
then stood. In 1870 every officer in the
same State is acting under another Constl-
tuition, and has repudiated, "spit upon,
as GREELEY would say, and utterly destroy
ed that very Constitution which only tWo
years ago they were under oath to support.
Are they guilty of perjury? No. Why
not? Because they and everybody else I'M
derstood the oath to mean that they would
support the then Constitution so long as
they were living and acting under it. So it
was with US of the South. We took the |
oath to support the Federal Constitution SO
long as we were living and acting under it
no longer. There is no question of perjury
involved in the case at all. Every natural
lied citizen has sworn to renounce his ale
glance to his former sovereign; yet, what |
ever oaths he may have previously taken,
we have never heard any such citizen
charged with perjury. "Perury" is the
crime of ,oifusly swearing to lie. The
man who is guilty of perjury knoacs that he
is guilty. We have no such knowledge.
On the contrary, we went into "rebellion,"
as it is unjustly and foolishly styled, with
clear consciences and an unshakcn faith as
wen I'm The rectitude of our motives as in
the Justice of our cause. The Wing truly
says that our revolutionary fathers were
guilty of the kind of perjury" spoken OF
by our northern "brethren." WASHING
TON was the same kind Of "perjured trail
tori that LEE was but can be called So
with much greater -plausibility than LEE,
because the colonies had no reserved rights:
-e-sAlzindred.snbject to this Is the education
Of General LEE sat the public expense
Virginia paid ten thousand times over for
all the education that any of her sons ever
az West Point. We disdain to say
more on this point.
CoNYLloT OF AUTHoRITY.-A Washington
telegram says:
So A short time since the Mayor of the