The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-09-21

legislature OF the state claiming him.
n OF US has ever voted directly
for q president Of the United States.
He Is elected by the ELECTORAL college:
they falling to elect. by the house of
representatives Thus you see. clearly
and indisputably that at no period of
history has any freeman
been trusted with the full dis
charge of an uninterrupted ballot, ex-
cept in the house of representatives.
1t Is equally clear that In two of the
coordinate branches Of the govern
ment. to-wit. the executive and the
judicial. Mr.. Hamilton forced Mr.. JEFF
ferson to the employment Of an in
termediary process d. structiye OF the
most healthful form of the ballot. and
necessarily nurturing and developing
contralism. In the other branch Of the
government. to-wit. the election OF the
United States Senate by the state
legislatures, an intermediary process,
and necessarily productive Of centra-
lism In the long run, while Mr.. Jeffer-
son succeeded in securing only to the
people the exercise Of a direct fran
chise. in the election Of the members
of the house of representatives. 1t
will be clearly seen with whom lay the
victory when the bark of human liber-
ty, freighted with the hopes OF three
i u pcoPlS, was tduAGuSU upon
the ocean, whose waters could never
be smooth for any length Of time.
History attests the fact that the timbers
in the good old ship Of state have been
strained amid h angry surges of
many a tempest Of high debates in
the halls Of congress. They were Sc
verely strained in 1920 at he time Of
the Missouri compromise. and all cver
this broad land at that time patriots
were b~reathlessly fearful less wreckage
should ensue. Staggering along
through the compromise OF 1850,
this ship, On whose deck stood at the
time that great seer Of the south, Mr..
Calhoun. that wonder of wonders, Mr..
Clay Of Kentucy. that most majes-
tic OF all men who have ever trod
American soil; MI. Webster Of Massa-
chusetts, with Mr.. Benton Of Missouri,
and others equally devoted, il not fully
as illustrious, finally went to pieces
among the Q~uicksands of s~ectionalism
in 1860. It will finally be seen that
this was necessarily SO from the ma
ture OF its organism. and the DOM
NANCY centralism procured by the SUBJ
tile; genius Of Hamilton over the CON-
manding intellect of Thomas Jefferson.
And yet in this mighty wrestling be-
tween these two giants Mr.. Jefferson
secured he recognition Of the doc
trine Of state rights, the sovereignty
OF the states, upon the pleasing yet
delusive basis of a beautiful theory.
The republican party in its contests
with the federal party, and later on
the democratic with the whig and re-
publican parties, have always been
able to point to the 1T is written in
the constitution" in vindication Of
their doctrine of state sovereignty.
Vot tho cEi11f,1 irfo11oof,ol oorohof
Mr.. Hamilton, the Machiavellian mas
ter of statescraft, in the application of
these principles claimed by Mr.. JEFF
ferson, battered, hampered, and con-
trolled by the mode in which the bal
lot was exercised, always came out Of
the contest, if not in his lifetime, in
that Of his followers, more than sue
cessful. The election Of Mr.. Lincoln
in 1860, the first triumph of a success
full candidate for the presidency, has
been mistaken by many as the cause
Of the war. Slavery in that campaign,
in which it was the shibboleth, vas not
the cause Of the rupture Of the states,
and the ACKNOWLEDGMENT of the republic.
It was simply the occasion, n was
the medium only through which EN-
tralism asserted it's antagOnism to
state sovereignty. 1t nay be asked
then why did this rupture not occur
earlier in the history of the country
as threatened in 1920 and in 1850. The
easy answer is close at hand, and will
suggest itself at once to any mind en-
riched by the PHILOSOPHERS of history
The northern people, almost entirely
commercial, never knew the blessing
at any time in their history which
presented itself to the southern people
in their exemption from the %antagon-
ism between capital and labor. For
a long, long time the south was ex-
empt from the curse which attaches
to this irrepressible conflict between
these two mighty giants, because our
capital was u labor, and u labor
was our capital, and it was during
that blessed repose h a the conserva-
tism of an unfettered south was brought
to bear upon these two constitutional
organic antagonisms, which threaten
ed from time to time the dissolution Of
the reunion. When it vas swept away
it vas like cutting the dixie which
surrounds Holland! The angry waters
of the North sea swept over her fair
borders. The south recognized the fact
that in the carrying rad Of negroes
from the coasts Of Africa to the United
States, the trans-Susquehanna people
had added largely to the wealth which
had come to them in changing West
India sugar into New England rum.
They knew the fact, and know it to-
day, that, when climate and soil at
the north had declared against the
profitableness Of African slavery at
the north, in the closing years Of the
last, n in the early decades Of the
present centuries, with the same God
and with the same Bible instead Of
~liberating, they sold u their colcrej
slaves to the people of the south, oad
then posed as philanthropists. Hence
it was hat when Mr.. Lincoln issued
his coersion proclamation calling for
seventy thousand troops to coerce the
sovereign states and whip us back in
to abject submission to centralized
federalism (the Hamilton theory of
the government southern state after
southern state, clothed upon with all
the powers Of organic law, under the
constitution, one by one resumed their
former status occupied by them be-
fore the compact had been entered in
to, under h plain principal in law
and equity that a contract void in
part is void in whole. North Carolina,
whose people had been diverted some
what, on the Goth of May, 1861, the