Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/70

42 the Union, that property recognized and guaranteed in the Constitution must be restricted within narrow lines, and that &quot;territory of the United States,&quot; obtained at the cost of common blood and common treasure, was not to be equally enjoyed, but was to be for the exclusive possession of the Northern States with their civilization and property.

The Northern States, not in the regular and prescribed form, but in most irregular, illegal and contemptuous manner, by ecclesiastical action and influence, by legislative and judicial annulment, by public meetings, by pulpit and press, by mobs and conspiracies and secret associations, made null and void a clear mandate of the Constitution, protective of Southern property and adopted as an indispensable means for securing the entrance of the Southern States into the Union. To use the language of President Harrison: &quot;Government of the mob was given preference over government of the law enforced by the court decrees and by executive orders.&quot; The highest Northern judicial and historical authorities concede that the Union would never have been formed without these compacts of guarantee and protection. This constitutional provision was sustained by the Supreme court and by every Congress and President up to 1861. Ten Northern States, with impunity, with the approval of such men as Governor Chase, afterward secretary of the treasury under Mr. Lincoln and chief justice of the Supreme court, nullified the Constitution, declared that its stipulation in reference to the reclamation of fugitives from labor was &quot;a dead letter,&quot; and to that extent they dissolved the Union, or made an ex parte change of the terms upon which it was formed. These States did not formally secede, but of themselves, without assent of those Mr. Jefferson described as &quot;co-parties with them selves to the compact, &quot; changed the conditions of union and altered the articles of agreement. Releasing themselves by their own motion, in most arbitrary, extra-judicial, extra-