It will now be shown what the true principles are, and then that the President of the United States perverted them, misstated them, and sought to reach his ends by groundless fabrications—as if he would enforce a fiction or establish a fallacy to be as good as truth. It might be still farther shown, if it had not already become self-evident, that this method was pursued with such a perversity and wickedness as to render it a characteristic feature of that war administration on whose skirts is the blood of more than a million of human beings.
The whole science of a republican government is to be found in this sentence of the Declaration of Independence, made by the representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, on July 4, 1776. It says:
"That, to secure these rights [certain unalienable rights], governments are instituted among men—deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
Thus it will be seen that civil and political sovereignty was held to be implanted by our Creator in the individual, and no human government has any original, inherent, just sovereignty whatever, and no acquired sovereignty either, beyond that which may be granted to it by the individuals as "most likely to effect their safety and happiness." "Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," says the Declaration of Independence. All other powers than those thus derived are not "just powers." Any government exercising powers "not just" has no right to survive. "It is the right of the people to alter or abolish it," says the Declaration of Independence, "and to institute a new government."
Who, then, had a right to "institute" a republican government for Louisiana? No human beings whatever but the people of Louisiana; not the strangers, not the slaves, but the manhood that knew its rights and dared to maintain them. Under what principles, then, could a citizen of Massachusetts, whether clothed in regimentals or a civilian's dress, come into Louisiana and attempt to set up a State government? Under no principles, but only by the power of the invader and the usurper. If the true principles of a republican government had prevailed and could have been enforced when Major-General Butler appeared at New Orleans, he would have been hanged on the first lamp-post, and his successor, Major-General Banks, would have been hanged on the second.
Under what principles, then, could the Government of the United States appear in Louisiana and attempt to institute a State government? As has been said above, it was the act of an invader and a usurper. Yet it proposed to "institute" a republican State government. The absurdity of such intention is too manifest to need argument. How could an invader attempt to "institute" a republican State government? an act which can be done only by the free and unconstrained action of the people themselves. It has been charged that this and every similar act of the President of the United States was in violation of his duty to maintain and observe the requirements and restrictions of the Constitution, and to uphold in each State a republican form of government. To specify, the following is offered as an example. He did "proclaim, declare, and make known—
that, whenever any number of persons, not less than one tenth of the number of voters at the last Presidential election, shall reestablish a State government, which shall be republican [!] and in no wise contravening said oath, such shall be recognized as the true government of the State."
One tenth of the voters can not establish a republican State government, which requires the consent of the people of the State to make its powers just, as has been shown above. Therefore, such a government had not one element of republicanism in it. But what is astonishingly remarkable is the stultification of requiring the one tenth of the people to "reestablish a State government, which shall be republican and in no wise contravening said oath." Either he did not know how a republican State government was "instituted," or, if he knew, then he was a participant in that perversity and wickedness, which was above charged to be the characteristic of his war Administration.
It will now be shown how he sought "to enforce a fiction or establish a fallacy to be as good as truth." Of the government thus established by one tenth of the voters, he says:
"Such shall be recognized as the true government of the State, and the State shall receive thereunder the benefits of the constitutional provision which declares that 'the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.'"