The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-05-29
THE TRUTH OF HISTORY.

THE TRUTH OF HISTORY.
There will be sermons appropriate to the
memorial exercises of tomorrow preached
today. Let Us trust that the speakers will
preserve the truth of history; that they
will not relieve the North of its just share
Of responsibility for the social and politi-
cal sectionalism that finally exploded in
civil war; that they will not in their anx-
iety to be just to the South take refuge in
that cheap sentimentalism which cheers
with equal fervor the cause of the "blue"
and the cause of the gray" by murmur-
ing, GOD alone knows which was
right"
The responsibility for the legal exist
ence Of slavery under the constitution
rested upon the North as we'll as upon the
South. There is small doubt that if
slavery had proved as profitable north of
the Ohio and the Potomac as 1t did south
of it, it would have survived ut the North.
To the philanthropy of Jefferson, slave
holder, we owed the exclusion of slavery
from the Northwest Territory. But for its
exclusion by the ordinance of 1877 the
people of Indiana would have obtained the
slave constitution they desired when they
entered the Union. 1t is true that Jef1er-
son was responsible for the Kentucky
and Virginia resolutions of 1913,
which contained the seed of seces-
sion and disunion, and yet this
states Of the North. Pennsylvania af-
frmed as late as 1911 the Virginia and
Kentucky doctrine. In 1903 and for at
least six years afterwards the dominant
feelings of the educated and influential
classes in New England were detestation
of the Union and a determination to Sc
cure independence under British protec-
tian, the very sentiments which Webster
taught their descendants to abominate as
crimes against nature when the Southern
states expressed them in 1s6O-6l
In 1914 William Cullen Bryant, the poet,
then a young law student at Bridge
water, Mass, applied to Governor
Strong for commission in the
army to be raised for the
defense of Massachusetts, against the
United States. Young Bryant wrote to
his father: eff We create standing army
of our own, and take into our own hands
the public revenues these very things
were contemplated in the answer of the
Massachusetts, general court to the gov
ernor's messagel, we so far throw off all
our allegiance to the general government
and revert to an independent empire"
The designs then entertained by the New
England enemies of Jefferson were pre-
cisely those which, when taken by South
Carolina, provoked the occupation of Fort
Sumter by the Federal troops and brought
on the civil war. Bryant lived to denounce
bitterly in the New York Evening Post the
iniquity of secession.
In 1872 the call for troops was refused by
three New England states and two years
later came the Hartford convention. Ohio
in 1916 taxed two branches of the United
States bank, and when beaten in the su-
preme court she at once affirmed her be-
lief in state rights and notification, de-
MED that "the political rights of the
separate states that compose the Amer
lean Union and their powers as sovereign
states may be settled and de-
termined by the supreme court"
She approved the resolutions of
Kentucky and Virginia. Kentucky
followed her example in 1922. So did New
York in 1924, and so did South Carolina IN
1872. when the federal court declared un-
constitutional her state law under which
free negro sailors coming into her ports
were imprisoned until their ship sailed
again. The South Carolina legislature
declared that the ''law of self-preservation
was above all laws, all treaties, all consti-
tutions. and would never be shared with
any other power
In 1924 and 1S2S this kind of talk was not
only prevalent in Virginia, the Carolinas
and the Gulf states. but notification as a
sovereign right under the constitution was
even adopted by Massachusetts, in 1880 and
10y Maine in 1881. Up to the great struggle
between President Jackson and Calhoun
and the great debate between Webster and
Hayne the theory and practice of the
states had seemed to tluctuate with their
transient interests. Even Calhoun in 1916
advocated protection eloquentIy as stim-
ulating to the sentiment OF nationality
and devotion to the Union. When the de-
bate between Webster and Hayne was
over there was an end to any decent sup
port at the North of the heresy Of nullifca-
ton and secession as constitutional rights.
In practice it was revolution.
While Webster did not originate the
| doctrine of national supremacy, as op-
posed to state sovereignty, nevertheless
his impressive eloquence irs5 saturated
| the people with the idea that we are a ma
ton, and his celebrated speech in reply to
| Hayne furnished the North with the
whole argument with which we waged the
| great civil war and won the victory. 1t
| was Webster's logic and Webster's voice
| that really spoke from the thousand
tongues of flame at the great uprising
| when Sumter fell. Webster's speech of
| 1880 was IN 1851 the unanswered and I'M
answerable argument for the fight
We fought for the flag. Web
ster delivered the message Of
| Washington and Hamilton ana Marshall
the idea of indestructible nationality. with
such magnificent eloquence that the whole
nation heard it. Kentucky, led by Henry
| Clay, cheered it, and Calhoun grew serious
at the lofty spirit Of resistance Webster
had evoked from the deep bosom of the