Year: 1875

CON6RESS.


With q Democratic and Conserva.
| tive majority in the House of Repre-.
sentatiyes at Washington next winter
we may expect to have the doctrine oI
| State rights ventilated freely, for the
reason that almost every movement ol
the Radical party in Federal affairs
touches and trenches upon the consti.
tutional limitations which were design
| ed by the original authors of the or
ganic law of the Union to protect the
several States, whether in the North OF
in the South, from the encroaehmeats
of that centralizing power whose &C
cretiveness hes always required to be
watched and warded lest it may lead to
usurpations and abuses of the soyer-
eighty of the people.


The Radical party is essentially a
party of aggressiveness toward the
States. The first principle of its exis-
tence is in antagonism to those teach
ings of the founders of the Govern
ment which discountenanced all Fed
eral interference with the domestic
matters of any and every common
wealth in the Union, except so far as
the Constitution, recognized as the su-
preme law. prescribed the bounds be-
yond which no State could go in legis-
lating for her own people. And this
first principle of that party has been
carefully cherished by it. The war be-
tween the North and South afforded
the Radical revolutionists most IA
vorable opportunity to enter upon a
bold crusade against the rights of the
States. The plea of military necessi-
ty," the life of the Government" at
stake, and the preservation of the
Union, was a plausible and specious
plea, and amid the excitement of the
strife, the clash of arms, and the co.,
flict of sectional passion, the most dar-
ing inroads upon all precedent, all law,
and all tradition, were made, not only
with impunity, but with the applause
of the northern people who were
throwing away their liberties without
knowing it. If that course of the
Government had stopped when the war
stopped the consequences would not
have been so serious. But it was not
so. Whenpeaee was proclaimed, when
the Union was restored, when civil law
was announced to be reinstated all over
the land, it was reasonable to suppose
that all the extreme measures Of the
Federal Government which had been
operative during the war would at
once be discarded as in conflict with
the free institutions of the country
that the storm having ceased the wa
ters that had washed beyond the boun-
daries of the sea and the rivers would
recede and subside into their natural
channels. On the contrary the lessons
Of the war seemed to be but beginning
to be put into practice by the party in
power. The people of the North had
bent their necks to the yoke when they
thought it was demanded by the neces-
sites of the time, and the Radical des-
pots, taking advantage Of their confid-
ing patriotism, seemed now determined
to hold them as they had them. And
then and there the rights of the States
in every section, and the liberties of
thepeop!e of the whole country were at
once endangered as they had never
been endangered before.


The Northern masses have to some
extent been awakened to these facts of
late, but it has been an indirect awak-
ening. They have felt the effects Of
the mismanagement of the Govern
ment, without being altogether aware
Of the alarming means by which those
effects have been brought about as the
inseparable sequences of principles
they had previously approved and ac-
eepted. They have not been in the
habit of regarding the doctrine of
State rights as the South regards it,
They have been taught to shrink from
the theory and to shudder at the
thought of any State of the Union not
being obedient to the acts of Congress
or the will Of the Administration.
They have been educated to look upon
States rights as but another name for
the right of secession. The time has
come when they can be and should be
disabused of that error. But the way
to do it is not for Southern men to ar
que the question In Congress as they
have heretofore argued it mot to
maintain that each State is sovereign
within herself, and that all uncoustitu-
tional laws enacted by the Federal
Government may be rightly resisted
by any Commonwealth that may dare
to resist them, but to show to the North
that while the South unquali6edly and
unreservedly admits that the Union is
now indissoluble, she at the same time
contends for fair, free, and full en-
foreement of the Constitution, that she
claims under the Constitutiouthe right
of local self-government for every
State in the Union but willingly ac-
knOwledges that in the exercise of
that right she is bound by the Federal
compact TO observe the amendments
that have been recently added to the
organic law of the country, and that
her people are as true to the Union
now as If they had never made an ef-
fort to cut loose from it. This is what
the Southern people feel, and it is
what their representatives in Congress
must not fail to make the Northern
people appreciate and understand. On
this line we can win. On any other
we shall lose in the Presidential elec-
tioa. The Northern minG must be
convinced that State rights 10 the
South does not mean foreIble resist
ance to the Government. Aud South
ern members are the men to remove