Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 29.djvu/138

 122 Southern Historical Society Papers.

ingly said to Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Washington, on September 14, 1861, viz:

" My Lord " (he says), " I can touch a bell on my right hand and order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio. I can touch a bell again and order the arrest of a citizen of New York. Can the Queen of Eng- land in her dominions do as much ? "

The late Judge Jeremiah S. Black, of Pennsylvania, at one time President of the Supreme Court of that State, and afterwards Attor- ney-General of the United States under Mr. Buchanan, one of the most distinguished lawyers and writers of his day, thus writes of Mr. Seward and his little bell:

" Now as to the little bell. The same Higher Law which gave the Federal Government power to legislate against the States, in defiance of the Constitution, would logically justify any executive outrage that might be desired for party purposes, on the life, liberty and property of individuals. Such was Mr. Seward' s theory, and such was the practice of himself and his subordinates, and some of his colleagues."

He says further to Mr. Charles Francis Adams (to whom he was writing):

" I will not pain you by a recital of the wanton cruelties they in- flicted upon unoffending citizens. I have neither space nor skill nor time to paint them. A life-size picture of them would cover 'more canvas than there is on the earth." * * * "Since the fall of Robespierre" (he says), " nothing has occurred to cast so much dis- repute on republican institutions. When Mr. Seward went into the State Department he took a little bell to his office, in place of the statute book, and this piece of sounding brass came to be a symbol of the Higher Law. When he desired to kidnap a free citizen, to banish him, to despoil him of his property, or to kill him after the mockery of a military trial, he rang his little bell, and the deed was done."

(See Black's Essays, page 153.)

In speaking of the murder of Mrs. Surratt, he says:

"In 1865, months after the peace, at the political capitol of the nation, in full sight of the Executive mansion, the Capitol and the City Hall, where the courts were in session, a perfectly innocent and most respectable woman was lawlessly dragged from her family