The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-08-15

The ten states having been ruled out of thc Union, restored at Appomattox; the long session of Congress having been moved back to March 4, 1867, from De- cember of that year; command of the five military districts. into which those states had been divided, having been re. rnoxed from the constitutional comman- der-in-chief, the President, to the five major generals respectively, the revolu- tiorists in high spirits sat in fragmen- tary congress to await developments
 The French revolution carried with its demonstrations the French character The movement was generated from the conditions within France. Here in Ala bama we suffered a revolution thrown upon us from without. How we acquitted s ourselves, posterity should know and be- lieve.
 A strangely ignored or perverted fea- turc of American political history it is, the failures and repeated dissolutions of the federal compacts of the states, or na- tions, before a century of time had closed upon the first.
 All of the changes and alterations were intended to readjust the relations of the separate states or nations to their fed ersl government. The most intelligent and comprehensive of the original idea of federal government was the consti- tuition of the Confederate States.
 The Declaration of Independence, two years, the Articles of Confederation and years of this latter organic federal life, then the Philadelphia constitution.
 The Philadelphia convention by au- thority of Congress met, deliberated long Ply authority of Congress the constitu- ton was submitted to the several states not to the legislatures of those states. If each state acting for itself alone fa- vcred the instrument. it might secede and incorporate itself in a new confeder- alton.
 The proposition sent out from this per petual Union as from Philadelphia, was, if nine states would secede the Congress would adjourn sine die and the new government would succeed the old.
 All of these changes were effected by the action of the separate states. None was made by any federal capacity.
 In 1861 Mir Yancey advised that the cotton states set up a Confederacy by the exact process that General Washing ton recommended to nine states in 17s7, lOT creating the union.
 The Articles of Confederation and Per retual Union had been sufficient to carry the states through seven years war and final success. Conditions of peace gen erated the necessity for new organic law. The new organic law provided for union made up of states not less than arIne, who had by ordinances of secession withdrawn themselves from the existing confederation.
 There is this difference noticeable be- tween the process of forming the United States under the Philadelphia constitu- ton of 17S7 and the process of forming goinery Constitution of 1861, namely: The sitting congress at New York in 17S7 gave authority to the several states to meet in convention at Philadelphia; the sitting Congress at Washington in 1861 refused anu had refused persistently for years, against the spirit and intent of the con- stitution, to allow the states to meet in convention. The end to be attained in both periods Of time was a moving for ward of the organic law of federation of states to the limit of adaptation
 We leave behind us the three distinct acts of dissolution of bona fide confed- eration of American states. or nations, in the order here cited. for the purpose of improving, strengthening and advancing the germinal idea of American liberty
 Our narrative brings us to the fourth dissolution of the union, the result of the two acts of Congress of March and iLarch 23. 1867. We have evidences di-