state or territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."

As far as this resolution goes, legitimately construed according to the obvious meaning of its words, it is a partial statement of the true doctrine of state rights, copied from the Democratic records. But it is only a part of that doctrine, as will be seen by referring back to our own exposition of it. A most important feature of it is left out of this Republican platform of 1860, which was a party trick, wilfully perpetrated for the accomplishment of an unconstitutional partisan purpose. The feature ignored and condemned by its omission in this platform of 1860, is that the Supreme Court of the Union is to be the final arbiter of the rights of the states and of the General Government, subject only to the ultimate constitutional power of amendment by conventions of the states. This principle, thus omitted, then, because denied by the Republican party and its leader, strange to say, is to be found inserted in their platform of 1880, in these words: Some powers are denied to the nation, while others are denied to the states; but the boundary between the powers delegated and those reserved is to be determined by the national, and not by the state tribunals." The reason of this is, that in 1860 the Supreme Court had decided an important question against the opinion of that party, and, therefore, its authority was denied. Now, the court has a majority of Republicans, made so by the party act of increasing the number of the judges, in order that the majority might manufacture opinions, as they have done, to order; and, therefore, the authority of the court is recognized in their platform of 1880. Before the Republican party obtained possession of the Federal Government, they not only advocated all the existing constitutional rights of the states, but claimed and exercised many others which were unconstitutional and did not exist. Since they have acquired federal power, they have reversed their policy. Now they have not only abandoned their claim for illegitimate state sovereignty, which they had so long exercised, but striking from their platform of 1880 the resolution for constitutional State Rights, which they had borrowed from the Democratic party, and inserted in its place, not only that judicial federal authority which in 1860 they denied, but claims for Federal power unauthorized by the Constitution.

The Republican party, before the war, was organized and

trained in a school hostile to the Federal Government. Its state legislators commenced their work, as has been seen, by the advocacy and passage of "Personal Liberty bills," to defeat the enforcement by the Federal Government of a plain constitutional provision, which each one had taken a solemn oath to support. A specimen of these has been given in citing the rebellious and nullifying act of Vermont. Others of a like kind might have been cited, such as the act of Massachusetts, which provided penalties and imprisonment, against her own citizens, for aiding in the execution of that same clause of the federal Constitution. Another instance has been given where the Republican party in Ohio, through their distinguished leader, Gov. Chase, in 1857, pledged the whole power of that state to resist the process of the Federal court. Another, is the abrogation and disregard, by that party, of the decision of the Supreme Court, rendered in the Dred Scott case in 1857. The following resolution was passed by the Legislature of Wisconsin, in 1859, the Republican members unanimously voting for it: "Resolved, That the principle and construction contended for by the party which now' rules in the councils of the nation (i. e. the Democratic party), that the General Government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism, since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers; that the several states which framed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infractions, and that a positive defiance of the sovereignties of all unauthorized acts done, or attempted to be done, under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy." The Democrats in the Wisconsin Legislature, of course, unanimously voted against this resolution; as no such had ever been adopted by their party; nor was it like, either in letter or spirit, the Virginia proceedings of 1798-99, which we have reviewed; but under a profession of state rights and state sovereignty, the above resolution, adopted with entire unanimity by the Republican party in Wisconsin, was treasonable and rebellious against the Federal Government. This resolution stood undisturbed until 1863, when the following repealing act was passed by the Wisconsin Legislature: "That joint resolutions No. 4, adopted by the Legislature in 1859, being substantially the same as the Kentucky resolutions of 1798, which have been endorsed by the

Democratic party in national and state conventions, and explained and construed in aid of secession and rebellion, in the opinion of this Legislature, ought to be, and the same are hereby, disavowed and rescinded." The Democrats, of course, voted against such a repealing act, because its statement that the Wisconsin and Kentucky resolutions were substantially the same, was false, and its imputation against their party was a slander. So it was passed alone by Republican votes. Before this repeal, during the election contests of 1859-60, the Republicans used these treasonable resolutions in a spirit of " defiance" against the Federal Government, and as the states rights' doctrine of their party. After, however, they came into possession of that Government, and commenced their career of centralization, the order came in 1863 for their repeal, and so these, like the resolution of 1860, which has been noticed, are also omitted in the Republican platforms of 1880.

Mr. Wade, the Republican Senator of Ohio, afterwards the Republican Vice President, in the Senate of the United States, uttered these words: "Who is to be the judge, in the last resort, of the violations of the Constitution of the United States by the enactment of a law? Who, sir, is the final arbiter? The General Government, or the states in their sovereignty? Why, sir, to yield that point, is to yield up all the rights of the states to protect their citizens, and to consolidate this Government into a miserable despotism. I tell you, sir, whatever you may think of it, if this bill pass, collisions will arise between the federal and state jurisdictions, conflicts more dangerous than all the wordy wars which are got up in Congress; conflicts in which the states will never yield. My state believed it unconstitutional, and that under the old resolutions of 1798 and 1799 a state must not only be the judge of that, but of the remedy in such a case." Here, again, we see that misconstruction of the resolutions of 1798, which we have heretofore noticed, and that treasonable heresy proclaimed and supported by the Republicans before the war, that a single state has the right to judge of the unconstitutionality of an act of Congress, and of the mode and measure of redress." It was shortly after these utterances that Mr. Chase, the Republican Governor of Ohio, gave an order to enforce this doctrine of state resistance against the General Government, to which we have referred, all proving a concert of action between the most distinguished leaders of the Republican party, in advocating

and practicing a state sovereignty wholly unknown to the Constitution. In the presence of such a record, how false to truth-how lost to all shame-must be the Republican, who can denounce a Democrat as a disunionist for maintaining the reserved rights of the states and the union of the Constitution, as defined by Jefferson and Madison in the resolutions of 1798; a union which Republicans but yesterday sought to sever,-rights which they seek to-day to destroy.

In their effort to centralize and consolidate the Government, the Republicans contend, that the war was a decision against the Democratic doctrine of State Rights. The equivalent of such a declaration is, that it was the destruction of the Government itself, which is an absurdity. We have stated the principles assumed by the Republican party which resulted in the conflict between the South and the North. For their reunion, the North fought the South, and for that alone, as proclaimed over and over again from the beginning to the end of the war. Those principles were briefly:

1st. The avowed refusal of the Republican party, on coming into power, to allow the Southerners to go into any of the common territories of the United States with their slave property, and to regard the decision of the Supreme Court in favor of their constitutional right to do so, as the law of the land until reversed, and, as such, binding on all the departments of the Government.

2d. The avowed refusal of the Republican party to allow the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution to be executed.

These conclusions, therefore, necessarily follow:

First. The war decided that the grounds on which the South acted were not sufficient to authorize a separation.

Secondly. That an attempted separation on such grounds was cause for war to reunite the two sections.

The peaceful results which followed after the close of the war, by the consent of the Southern states, under the pressure of circumstances, were the three amendments to the Constitution, which have been noticed. By one of these, slavery was abolished; which being the only subject on which the constitutional questions producing the war were based, those questions can never again arise, nor can their settlement form a precedent for the settlement of other issues having no relation whatever to slavery.

Before leaving this subject of the war, let us recall to mind a

few significant and weighty words, uttered in the midst of its closing scenes, by him who had the right to speak, as the oracle of his party. Mr. Lincoln said: 'Slavery had in some way been the cause of the war." "He believed the people of the North were as responsible for slavery as the people of the South." On another occasion he said: "If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the Providence of God must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discover therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him?" It is said by those nearest him and who knew him best, that at this time Mr. Lincoln had a presentiment of his death, then near at hand. Under the solemnities of such a premonition, and of his second Presidential oath fresh upon his lips, he proclaimed it as a truth, of which he had the profoundest conviction, that for all the wrongs of American slavery, the North and South were equally guilty; and addressing himself to the former, said: "And to you of the North, triumphant over the South, I say, 'Judge not that ye be not judged.' application of the precept from Holy Writ was as true as the precept itself was divine. The utter desecration of it by the Republican party of the North, in their vilification of the South, has been as marked as was the blasphemy of the Scribes and Pharisees against Him who gave it!

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