February 11, 1861; The Charleston Mercury
‘The United States of North America,’ as the great Central Government of all the Republican States of this continent, no longer exists. It is now a dwarfed and factional authority. It was a confederation or union of thirty six States for common purposes of defence, and the benefits of reciprocal free trade and free intercourse. The United States’ Constitution was the fundamental law on the terms of which it was organized and established. Strictly construed and observed in its limitations, the Government would have continued to last as it was intended. But that instrument has, by degrees, under the constructive ingenuity and higher law unscrupulousness of Northern rapacity, ambition, and fanaticism, become a dead letter. A party, springing up upon principles and a policy avowedly hostile to the interests, the equality and the institutions of the Southern half of the confederated States, has been elected, by a strictly sectional vote of the Northern half, to the power of the Government. To avoid the consequences, seven Southern States have withdrawn from the Union, formally resuming all those powers, which, by the adoption of the Constitution, they had ceded to it for specified purposes. They have organized at Montgomery another Central Government for the obtainment of the objects, which, so far as they are concerned, the Washington Government has failed to secure. Seven or eight other Southern States stand ready to follow the first into the new Confederacy, so soon as their demands, for new guaranties and a satisfactory reconstruction of the old Government, shall have been rejected by the States of the North. The Government at Washington is, therefore, disintegrated, and fast lapsing and subsiding into a Government of only those States whose principles and policy are represented by the dominant party in power – that is, into a Government of the Northern States.
In this condition of affairs, it is a matter of interest and of duty on the part of every man to know his precise status as a citizen; where he belongs, and what part he is to play in the events in progress. And to no class are these questions so important to have satisfactorily answered, as to those who, by profession, are expected to occupy the chief place in the picture in case of collision of arms, or war, between the two sections. To military and naval officers they may constitute issues of duty or guilt – patriotism or treason – – fame or infamy. For, whether active or passive, the obligations of citizenship are upon them. To shrink from those obligations in a time of difficulty and danger – obligations upon the official performance of which, at such periods, the profession of arms exists – is a dereliction of duty so gross as to receive the award of disloyalty and certain obloquy. Officers each and all have duties as citizens; and this is the time, above all other times, when, as soldiers, it becomes them to perform those duties, because their performance is now of consequence.
It is our endeavor, this morning, to show the status of each, as a citizen, in order that there may be no doubt as to the proper course for each to pursue at this juncture.
The obligations of each citizen are due to the sovereignty to which he belongs. The prime obligation of the citizen is to defend that sovereignty. The first step, therefore, is to ascertain and determine where, in our complex system of government, the supreme ultimate authority to which allegiance is due resides. A clear idea on this subject will go a great way towards removing any doubts as to the proper course to be pursued. Does the sovereignty of the United States reside in the people of the United States as a whole, or does it attach to the peoples of the several States in their organized capacity, as States, each sovereign? Is sovereignty exercised by the General Government at Washington, according to the will of the people as a whole, or is it exercised by the respective State Governments, according to the will of their peoples legally expressed? There can be no doubt that the Central Government has been invested with certain sovereign powers – such as war, imposts, coinage, etc. But the powers are not unlimited, they are carefully enumerated, and the authority to exercise them is not inherent; it is derived. It is not normal; it is specifically delegated, under an express grant, made by superior parties, for certain definite purposes. The United States Constitution is that grant, delegating the exercise of certain powers to the General Government; and the peoples of the several States, as independent sovereign States, were the superior parties who established it. They are still superior to it, and in them the sovereignty adheres.
But is not sovereignty also partially invested in the whole country, and is not allegiance also due to the General Government – the United States flag? Sovereignty is the supreme ultimate authority in a country. Two authorities in a country over the same people cannot be supreme. This is an absurdity. Supreme authority cannot be divided. This is also an absurdity. The supreme ultimate authority – sovereignty – in a State must be single, and cannot be subordinate. Subordinate authority is agency. Supreme authority is sovereignty. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, written by JEFFERSON and MADISON, and adopted by those States affirm that the supreme ultimate authority – sovereignty – in the United States Government, is in the States – the States which were sovereign before the Constitution of the United States was made – sovereign in adopting this Constitution, each for itself – and sovereign in the power of altering or amending it. This being the true position of the States, the Government set up by the Constitution of the United States is a mere agency of the States. It has not a particle of sovereignty, because it is subordinate, and neither created nor can alter or change its powers. To talk of a power in a country being sovereign, which has been created, and can be altered, changed or abolished, by another power in the same country, is sheer nonsense. If words are to have any meaning, the subordinate subject power, created by the higher power, must be the agency of the higher power. The States are therefore sovereign, and they alone. Allegiance is then due to the State authorities by their citizens, and to them alone, so far as the States by agreement make the Central Government a part of their own system, obedience is due to it.
It may here be worthwhile considering the right of secession, which has been exercised by seven States. The Government of the United States, being an agency of the sovereign States which established it, the first corollary which follows this principle, is that (which the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions mainly endeavored to prove) each State has a right to judge of infractions of the Constitution by the General Government; and in case of a palpable and dangerous violation of the Constitution by its agency, the General Government, interfere and arrest the progress of the evil. And it follows also, that if they cannot or do not choose arrest the progress of the evil under the Constitution, they may withdraw from the compact made by its terms with their sister States. They may secede from the Union. Having made a compact with other sovereign States – having set up a common agency with them in the General Government, having the power to judge the enforcement of this compact, and the fidelity of the agency it establishes, to the limitations it prescribes and follows, irresistibly, that if, in the opinion of a State, the sovereign arbiter, the agency becomes false and the compact is violated, she may withdraw from the association it establishes.
We have thus got to the point of determining where the allegiance of citizens, in a general way, is due to States, and not the country at large.
An officer in the army or navy of the United States is a citizen of some one State. He was appointed under the General Agent of all the States (the Government of the United States), to an office, to assist in carrying on this agency to protect and defend his State and her confederates as agreed by her. He is not a citizen of the agency. He is a citizen of one of the sovereign parties to the agency, having all the privileges of citizens of the other parties, by an express proviso in their agreement – the Constitution of the United States – which stipulates that citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and when he takes an office, civil or military, in the service of the Government of the United States, he does not by that act in the slightest degree alter his relation towards his own State. He is still the citizen of a State – nothing more and nothing else – by her permission and agreement, in the employment of her joint and common agency – the Government of the United States. To her his allegiance is due; his first obligation is to defend her. When, therefore, the State to which an officer belongs, withdraws from the Union established by the Constitution of the United States, and thus puts an end to the agency of the Government of the United States so far as she is concerned, what course should a citizen of a State, in the employment of the Government of the United States, pursue? Most assuredly he should leave the employment of the Government of the United States, unless he has already changed his domicile and expatriated himself, or intends to expatriate himself. If he has already permanently removed from his native State, made connections and a home elsewhere as a citizen of another State, and does not leave the employment of this Government, he will be like a citizen who emigrates to France and enlists in her army or navy. He is no longer a citizen of the State to which he once belonged. He is in the pay and employment of a Government agency to which his native State is not a party, but to which the State of his adoption is. He chooses to transfer his citizenship and allegiance to another power. And this may not be objectionable, where he is not called upon to bear arms against his native State. The least he can do, however, consistently with honor or right feeling, in case of a collision between the authority of the two, is to take no part. But whether now, and at this state of affairs, between North and South, a transfer of citizenship and allegiance from a Southern to a Northern State shall be morally right or honorable, will depend upon the relations which shall exist between his State and her late associates in a common Union and Government after their connection shall be dissolved. If relations of peace and amity continued to exist, there is no obligation of duty which will forbid him to change his country and allegiance. If he thinks that his personal interests require the change, let him do it. But if, on the contrary, on the dissolution of the connection between his State and her late associates in a common Government, these associates attempt to use the agency of the Government, of which he is an officer, to invade his State and to overthrow her liberties and independence – what course ought he then to pursue? Most clearly every dictate of social duty, gratitude, or of honor, will require him to leave the employment of the Government which is to be used against his State, and to go to her aid and assistance. He became an officer in this Government only because he was a citizen of his State. It was her patronage and her power which gave him his office. To hold on to it, and to use it, at the bidding and in the employment of a Government which she has cast off, to invade or oppress her, is an act of hideous moral delinquency, ingratitude, dishonor and treachery – a crime striking at the root of society itself. In a time of peril no man should desert his country; but not only to desert her, but to join her enemies to subdue or destroy her, is a crime of so deep a dye that history in all ages has marked it as amongst the most flagrant in its infamy, degradation and wickedness.