Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1900-05-31

time III france, muSU nave Deen 1n1lu-
enced by it; and Thomas jefferson was
an avowed advocate of it. The result
of the Union under the Constitution
was generally understood at the time
to be confederation rather than a
nation. The peculiar name, or rather
designation, of our country-the Unit
ed States-seems to show this. When
in the preamble to the Constitution it
is stated that the Constitution is or
dained and established by the people
of the United States, it was generally
understood then as meaning, not the
people of the nation as q whole, but
the people Of the separate states.
There was thus from the time of the
adoption of the Constitution an appar-
ent presumption i'll favor of the doc
trine of state sovereignty, since the
states were the units which voluntarily
entered the Union and ratified the
Constitution. And the right to secede
was a corollary of the doctrine of state
sovereignty. If the Constitution did
not become binding upon a state until
it had of its own unforced choice rati-
fed and accepted it; surely, had not
that same state a right at any time to
give notice of dissolution of the COM
pact? This was the legal theory upon
which the secession movement Of1S6O-1
was based. 1t was a most plausible
theory; it appealed strongly to the hu
man love of liberty and independence;
and when the issue first arose, the
friends of the Union were at a hard
loss to answer the arguments of the
champions of secession and states
rights.
But time, and the spirit of progress,
l. .,.I ,t,,t,
ton not made with hands, were all
against the theory of the South. "The
very stars in their courses fought
against Sisera.n If human society
were but an artificial structure, if in
stitutions of law and government rest
upon no other foundation than the ar
bitrary will of men, if the states of the
Union were only so many lifeless sticks
held together in a bundle by an exter-
nal band; then, indeed, there would
have been no ground upon which to
resist the claims of secession. But the
Union, whatever may have been the
thought of those Immediately con-
cerned in the adoption OF the COnstitu-
ton, was not an artificial structure; it
was a living organism. 1t was not a
house built with hands, the stones and
timbers of which were put in place by
human hands, and which human hands
could therefore take apart at any time;
it was q living temple, the result of
living growth, and not of artificial con-
structiOn. Just as the rite Of marriage
is not the artificial creation of a rela-
tiOnship, but is the sOlemnization of a
union already made by the divine laws
of nature; so the adoption of the Con-
stitution was not the artificial creation
of 4 union between the states, but was
simply the formal consumation of a
union already existing in the nature of
things. The Constitution was no more
the effective bond between the states
than is the splint the effective bond
which holds grated branch to the
tree, or than is the surgeons thread
the effective bond which heals gap
ing wound. Had the states been mere
dead sticks, held together by an ex-
ternal band, the removal Of this band
could at any time let the sticks fall
apart; but the Union was of such a ma
ture that the members of it could no
more fall apart thus than could the
living branches of a tree fall away
when the splints which once held the
crafts in place are removed. To break
up the Union it would be necessary,
not merely to undo what man once
had done, but to undo also what the
forces of living growth had done; in
other words, what God had done. AL
though the marriage relationship is
one into which men and women may
enter voluntarily and unforced, yet it
is q relationship which God Himself,
and not man, has made, and from
which men and wOmenmay not Volun-
tarily depart when fancy may seize
them or convenience may dictate.
What God hath joined together let no
man put asunder. Equally sacred was
the union OF states, for it was the work
of God; those who sought to sever its
bonds We're seeking to put asunder
what God had joined together. Just
as the marriage relationship becomes
in time the foundation and center of
other relationships, relationships which
imperatively demand the sacred per-
manence of the marriage bond, out of
which they have grown; so out of the
Union of 1887 there had grown vast
and complex set of institutions and re-
lationships, new states, for instance,
not adopted into the Union from with
ont but born and brought up within
the bonds of the Union, just as children
are born and brought up within the
1a10lly, Il NdSG HeuWOEh Vi SOCIdl anu
industrial relations, binding the people
of the several states into one great
commonwealth-all of which implied
and demanded the sacred perpetuity of
the Union, and the permanence Of the
nation as nation. The fundamental
error Of secession lay in the failure to
recognize that the Union does not be-
long to that lower class OF cOmpacts,
like business partnerShiDS which NAV
be terminated and dissolved at the con-
venience of one of the parties to it; but
that it belongs to that higher class of
compacts like the marriage bond, which
man did not make and which he has no
right to unmake.
Thus, the cause OF the Union was the
cause Of Il sacred and divine inStitu-
ton. 1t was the principle that this
people is nation; and that the Union
has its root, not in the sufferance of
the units which compose it, but in the