April 7, 1863, The Charleston Mercury
The Richmond Enquirer very properly denounces the Government of the United States as a Despotism. Well – what constitutes it a Despotism? One thing, and one thing alone – the suspension of this writ of Habeas Corpus. By the suspension of this writ, President LINCOLN can arrest and cast into prison any citizen he pleases, and there is no power by which the citizen can be released, but his arbitrary will. This power makes President LINCOLN a Despot, and his Government a Despotism. Yet, strange to say, the Enquirer supports the proposition that the Congress of the Confederate States – President DAVIS to be empowered to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act: and, like President LINCOLN, to arrest and imprison whom he pleases, in the Confederate States, without any amenability or restraint from the Courts of the land. Does not the Enquirer support the establishment of a despotism in the Confederate States, exactly similar to that it denounces in the United States?
But the Enquirer alleges that President DAVIS will not abuse the power, if conferred upon him, by a law making him a Despot. This is exactly the plea of the Abolitionists of the United States, in making LINCOLN a Despot. It is ever the plea used in the establishment of all Despotisms. Admit the statement, however, to be true – the Government is nevertheless a Despotism. The right of personal liberty is gone. We have no right to be out of prison, if the President chooses we shall be in it. Suppose the Confederate States are conquered by the United States, will there be any worse form of Government over us? Can there be any worse, in its principles? It is to avoid just such a Government, with all its inevitable results of political ruin, slavery and death, that we are now fighting.
But the Enquirer argues that there are districts of disaffected country where the suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus ought to prevail. Admit this to be true, for argument sake – what then? Shall the Writ be suspended throughout the Confederacy where disaffection does not prevail? To give any effect to the argument, let the suspension be limited by law to the districts disaffected. To go further, is using the disaffection in a small part of the Confederacy to extend a Despotism over the whole. The Enquirer further says, in defence of this measure, that the power to imprison, and to keep in prison, will only extend to State prisoners – only to prisoners incarcerated by the Executive of the Confederate States! Why – it is only for the benefit of such prisoners that the Writ of Habeas Corpus is a bulwark of liberty. Who are those in whose behalf LINCOLN has defied and annulled the Writ of Habeas Corpus on the other side of the Potomac? State prisoners, and State prisoners only! They consist of those who have dared to speak or to write in defence of their constitutional rights against the military despotism set up over them. Those by thousands fill his dungeons and bastiles.
But President DAVIS, in the opinion of the Enquirer, can be safely entrusted with such power over our persons and liberties. If President DAVIS were a second WASHINGTON, or an angel upon earth, the degradation such a surrender of our rights implies, would still be abhorrent to every freeman. Those are fit to be slaves who voluntarily seek a master. IF we are to have a despotism over us, let it be the result of force. Let the country be conquered, and all the freemen in the land be slain or driven into exile. Then, and not until then, let a Despot rule, with the arbitrary power of casting whom he pleases into dungeons, and of reigning over us, ord-paramount by his will.
Never, since the foundation of the world, have any people, we believe, been more faithful to the great cause of civil and political liberty for which they are contending, or more strenuous in support of the Government they have established to achieve it, than the people of the Confederate States. And now they are told that they must surrender this glorious cause – not to victorious foes – rendering omnipotent the monster of villainy and tyranny who rules in Washington – but to our own Executive appointee in Richmond – our own President – in loving trust – in willing subserviency – in abject, voluntary slavery!
‘Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks;
The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets,
Is hushed within the hollow mine of earth,
And will not hear it.’