This question was calmly and logically discussed by Mr. Charles Francis Adams in a late speech delivered in Charleston, S. C., when he said:
When the Federal Constitution was framed and adopted, “an indestructible union of imperishable States,” what was the law of 262 treason, to what or to whom in case of final issue did the average citizen own allegiance? Was it to the Union or to his State? As a practical question, seeing things as they were then—sweeping aside all incontrovertible legal arguments and metaphysical disquisitions—I do not think the answer admits of doubt. If put in 1788, or indeed at any time anterior to 1825, the immediate reply of nine men out of ten in the Northern States, and ninety-nine out of a hundred in the Southern States, would have been that, as between the Union and the State, ultimate allegiance was due to the State.
THE CAUSE NOT LOST
[From Memorial Day, pages 30-31.]
A few weeks ago Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, president of Brown University, a leading institution of learning in a New England State, in a lecture delivered in the city of New Orleans upon the life and character of the General of the Confederate armies, uttered this language:
People are prone to allude to all Lee fought for as the “Lost Cause.” Yet, like Oliver Cromwell, Lee has accomplished what he fought for, and more than could have been accomplished had he been victorious. At the close of the war we find the Supreme Court of the United States deciding the status of individual States, and the result is found to be that while the Union is declared to be indestructible, each State is regarded as an indestructible unit of that nation. Who would dare to wipe out to-day a State’s individuality? And do we not find to-day, instead of centralized power in Congress adjudicating things pertaining to the States, the States themselves settling these matters?
Inasmuch as the war brought out these utterances with regard to the States of the Union upon matters then in question, who can say that Lee fought in vain?
SLAVERY AS THE SOUTH SAW IT
[Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens, in War Between the States, page 539.]