SIXTH DAY.
Tuesday, Oct. 29th, 1861.
Mr. Brady resumed his address, and said:
In the same general line of discussion which I adopted yesterday, I will refer you to a striking passage from a distinguished gentleman, and, when I have read the extract, will state from whom it emanated:
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have a right to rise up and shake off the existing Government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a right which, we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing Government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this: a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize—putting down a minority intermingled with or near about them who may oppose their movements. it is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones."—Appendix Con. Globe, 1st Session 35th Congress, p. 94.
Would you suppose, gentlemen, that it was an ardent South Carolina secessionist who declared that any people may revolutionize and hold mastery of any territory which they occupy? Would you suppose that was from Jefferson Davis, in the Senate of the United States? No, gentlemen; it is from Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, when he was a member of Congress, and was delivered on the 12th of January, 1848.
Now, gentlemen, I do not think that an intelligent gentleman born in South Carolina, Kentucky, or Virginia, and educated by his parents in a certain political faith, has not as much right to adhere to it as he has to the religious faith in which he is brought up; and if he should happen to say all that is substantially claimed by these seceding States, he would be sustained by authority quoted here, and have the express sanction of the distinguished and excellent gentleman now at the head of this nation.
Let me now cite to you Wheaton's International Law, page 30, in which he says, that "sovereignty is acquired by a State, either at the origin of the civil society of which it is composed, or when it separates itself from the community of which it previously formed a part, and on which it was dependent." Then he says, that "civil war between the members of the same society is, by the general usages of nations, such a war as entitles both the contending parties to all the rights of war as against each other, and as against neutral nations."
This, if your honors please, seems to me an answer to the doctrine put forward in this case, that the Judges are to treat this question in reference to the seceding States as it has been viewed by the executive and legislative branches of the Government. If it be true that when a state of civil war exists, as stated by Wheaton, both the contending parties have all the rights of war as against each other, as well as against neutral nations, then it follows very clearly that the seceding States, as well as our own, have all the rights of war; and there is no such rule as that they must have those rights determined only by the executive or legislative branches of the Government, or by both.