Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/414

 408 Southern Historical Society Papers.

Letter from President Davis on States' Rights.

The yackson (Miss.) Clarioji prints the following letter:

"Beauvoir, Mississippi, June 20, 1885.

" Colonel J. L. Power, Clarion Office :

"Dear Sir. — Among the less-inlormed persons at the North there exists an opinion that the negro slave at the South was a mere chattel, having neither rights nor immunities protected by law or public opinion. Southern men knew such was not the case, and others desiring to know could readily learn the fact. On that error the lauded story of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was ipunded, but it is strange that a utilitarian and shrewd people did not ask why a slave, especiallv valuable, was the object of privation and abuse? Had it been a horse they would have been better able to judge, and would most probably have rejected the story for its improbability. Many attempts have been made to evade and misrepresent the exhaustive opinion of Chief-Justice Taney in the ' Dred Scott' case, but it re- mains unanswered.

"From the statement in regard to Fort Sumter, a child might sup- pose that a foreign army had attacked the United States— certainly could not learn that the State of .South Carolina was merely seeking possession of a fort on her own soil, and claiming that her grant of the site had become void.

"The tyrant's plea of necessity to excuse despotic usurpation is offered for the unconstitutional act of emancipation, and the poor resort to prejudice is invoked in the use of the epithet ' rebellion' —a word inapplicable to States generally, and most especially so to the sovereio;n members of a voluntary union. But, alas for their ancient prestige, they have even lost the plural reference they had in the Con.stitution, and seem so small to this utilizing tuition as to be de- scribed by the neutral pronoun ' it !' Such language would be ap- propriate to an imperial Government, which in absorbing territories required the subjected inhabitants to swear allegiance to it.

" Ignorance and artifice have combined so to misrepresent the matter of official oaths in the United .States that it may be well to give the question more than a passing notice. When the 'sove- reign, independent .States of America,' formed a constitutional com- pact of union it was provided in the sixth article thereof that the officers ' of the United .States and of the several States shall be bound