A speech on this subject, especially vindicating the positions he had taken, was prepared by Mr. Sumner during this session; but the proper occasion for its delivery not occurring, it was handed over to the Atlantic Monthly, where it appeared as an article, October, 1863. Some of the points of the resolutions reappeared in the speech of the 19th May, on “Rights of Sovereignty and Rights of War”;[142] also in the resolutions of June 2 and 6, 1862, relating to the Provisional Government of North Carolina.[143]
APPENDIX.
These Resolutions became the occasion of controversy, and occupied public attention. They have been considered the starting-point of Reconstruction, although the primary object on their introduction was to strike at Slavery. The principle here enunciated, that Slavery, being without support in the Constitution or in natural right, fell with the local governments on which it depended, seemed to Mr. Sumner impregnable, and he never ceased to regret that it was not authoritatively announced at an early day, believing that such a juridical truth adopted by the Government would have smoothed the way, while it hastened the great result. The essential difficulty proceeded from the indisposition to Emancipation; for here was only another form of the perpetual question, “Shall the slaves be set free?”
Towards the close of the war, Mr. Everett, in an eloquent speech at Faneuil Hall, gave his valuable authority in favor of this principle.
“I will add, that it is very doubtful whether any act of the Government of the United States was necessary to liberate the slaves in a State which is in rebellion. There is much reason for the opinion, that, by the simple act of levying war against the United States, the relation of Slavery was terminated, certainly so far as concerns the duty of the United States to recognize it or to refrain from interfering with it. Not being founded on the Law of Nature, and resting solely on positive local law, and that not of the United States, as soon as it becomes either the motive or pretext of an unjust war against the Union, an efficient instrument in the hands of the Rebels for carrying on the war, a source of military strength to the Rebellion and of danger to the Government at home and abroad, with the additional certainty, that, in any event but its abandonment, it will continue in all future time to work these mischiefs, who can suppose it is the duty of the United States to continue to recognize it? To maintain this would be a contradiction in terms.… No such absurdity can be admitted; and any citizen of the United States, from the President down, who should by any overt act recognize the duty of a slave to obey a Rebel master in a hostile operation, would himself be giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”[144]
Dr. Brownson’s judgment was the same way, as appears in a citation on a subsequent page.