Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/99

 Annual Reunion of the Association of A. N. V, 91

country — was assailed in palpable violation of the first amendment to the Constitution under which it was guaranteed. It was then that Virginia, the great mother of States, followed by her eldest and fair- est daughter, Kentucky, sounded the note of alarm, denounced the usurpation of unwarranted powers by the general government, and appealed to the Constitution as the great charter of her rights and those of her sister States. Yet, such was the law-abiding, union - loving spirit of the *' Old Dominion/' that she permitted the peace- able execution of the law — in one notable instance in this very city of Richmond — leaving to the sober, second thought of the country the vindication of her position and the reversal of an unconstitu- tional act.

THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE.

From this time onward came thick and fast, occasions for the oppo- sition of the States to the acts of the general government, the assertion of what they conceived to be their rights and their construction of the Constitution. When the Louisiana territory was acquired from France in 1803, not only was the purchase denounced by the New England States, but threats of a withdrawal from the Union were heard on every hand. The Constitution was appealed to, to show that the United States had no right to the acquisition of foreign terri- tory either by purchase, by treaty, or by conquest. Surely " a most lame and impotent conclusion,*' to bind the strong limbs of the young giant of the West by the narrow territorial limits of the old colonial days. A conclusion which would have barred the entrance to the fairest portion of our present national domain — Louisiana territory, the gateway of the Mississippi ; Texas, an empire in itself, and Califor- nia, whose streams " roll down their golden sands " to the shores of the peaceful ocean, and unites them by a chain of mighty States to the cliffs of the rude Atlantic.

MASSACHUSETTS THE MOTHER OF SECESSION.

Sentiment or considerations of abstract right have usually little control over the actions of political communities, and even the plainest provisions of written law may be construed to meet the views of self- ish interest. The opposition to the acquisition of Louisiana was solely a matter of interest — a question of political preponderance and a con- trolling influence in the general government by the States of the North. They had been willing a few years before to accept from the princely generosity of Virginia the great Northwest territory, which