to make it similar to any other people in the
world as an organized existence, is higher
than any moral obligation to preserve any
State Government.
I say that what makes me a citizen of a
nation among the nations of the earth, is the
highest privilege I can claim, the assertion of
which is my highest duty except my duty to
save my soul. I say that the people, by the
mode in which they re-distributed that power,
imposed upon the people of the United States
agreater obligation to maintain the General
Government than they had to maintain the
State. This is perfectly consistent with the
very well distributed and regulated powers
given to each. I do not argue that the States
are rendered unnecessary by this General
Government. I believe that the division into
States, is, as far as we can see, necessary to
promote happiness, convenience, and perhaps
the liberty of the people. But I believe that
the want of the existence of a National Gov-
ernment is absolutely incompatible with the
preservation of any kind of liberty either per-
sonal or political.
The gentlemen upon the other side, not of
this House but of this war, have themselves
recognized the very theory that they have de-
nied. While they have separated from this
Government under motives and feelings I
think it unnecessary to allude to, they have
not formed a parcel of separate States, but
have gone together into a government which
endeavors to carry out through its written
Constitution the States' rights theory, but yet
a government with 'the same genera] powers
given to this government, and having a form.
which, whether it is the action of Mr. Jeffer-
son Davis, or the action of the whole power
of the Government, they call their country,
The president of the confederation constantly
appeals to the people to defend their country.
He does not mean that Virginia is their
country. It is a consciousness which no man
who lives can get rid of, that he must have
some country. It is an exemplication of this
doctrine that Jefferson Davis, speaking of the
Confederate States, calls it their country.
There is not a man who crosses the line of
bayonets that bounds the limits of his do-
minion, that is not asked to take the oath of
allegiance, not to the proud old mother of
States and Presidents, but to the Confederate
States of America. They have too much
sense down there in the practical exigencies
of this war, to carry out States' rights
theories. They seceded with States' rights
theories in their mouths as the apology for
their secession; ana the very moment they
accomplished the fact of their secession, they
uprooted their secession theories as dangerous
and fatal, until throughout the whole country,
swayed by their power, there is not to-day
remaining a vestige of State rights. Does
not everybody know that some obstropolous
individuals, like the Governor of Georgia, |
have remonstrated at and talked against the
interpretation placed practically upon their
Constitution? And the Governor of North
Carolina very wisely and sagely said to his
people a short time ago, that although they
had seceded because they claimed a right to
secede, and although it was generally under-
stood that the confederacy of the States
amounted to that. practically it amounted to
no such thing. It was a right which it was
absolutely impossible to exercise in that con-
dition of things. If it did exist, North Car-
olina could not exercise the right and declare
herself independent of Virginia, because if she
did so, Virginia would fight her and destroy
her right of secession.
There is no refuge from the Government.
You have either got to have one nation on
this continent, or you have got to have several
nations; not several nations with distinct
and separate delegated powers, not several
nations with separate State lines and definite
State powers, but separate nations distinct
by their numbers, lout each of them consoli-
dated in its own individual existence. If this
war terminates in the separation of this coun-
try into two; the government of those States
which had been the Federal Government, or
the Northern States, if gentlemen choose so
to call them, will become vastly more consol-
idated than it ever was before; and the States
represented by the South will become a con-
solidated government exceeding any consoli-
dated government which ever existed on the
face of the earth, unless destroyed by that
fatal institution which remains under its cor-
ner-stone like a powder magazine at the bot-
tom of the most massive edifices that have
distinguished the genius and the labor of the
world.
Gentlemen have asked what is the proprie-
ty of placing this article in the bill of rights.
In the first place, it is said that it is no part
of the bill of rights, that it is not the decla-
ration of the rights of the people of Mary-
land. As I have just said, I consider the
right of the people of Maryland to the exist-
ence of the National Government, to the
preservation of the Union, and to the perpet-
uation of the Supreme Court of the United
States to be not only one of their rights, but
so far as government can be a political right,
the very dearest right that they possess,
Gentlemen have also asked if it was not
necessary to exclude from this article any
reference to any allegiance at all, why is it
necessary to put in the word paramount ?
My friend from Prince George's referred to
the Constitutions of the different States, and
said that no one went further than to require
an oath to support the Constitution of the
United States. I admit it. I admit that the
language of this article is novel, although
its principle is old. Its necessity results
from the fact that in the transmutations of
time, a question has grown up as to the |
