Again, during the exciting contest in Arkansas, the Congress of the United States appointed a committee to investigate the affairs in that State, and "whether said State had now a government republican in form, the officers of which are duly elected, and, as now organized, ought to be recognized by the Government of the United States."
On December 24, 1874, the Congress of the United States appointed a committee to proceed to New Orleans, and investigate the state of affairs in Louisiana. This committee reported on January 14, 1875, that "they could not agree upon any recommendation; but, upon the situation in Louisiana, as it appeared before us, we are all agreed."
The same Congress, before its adjournment, appointed a committee to proceed to Mississippi and make an investigation of the state of affairs there. Thus committees were kept quite busy in traveling back and forth to these States, and much of the time of Congress was occupied in discussing their affairs, and in efforts to reconcile the quarreling factions of so-called Republicans in them, to the great detriment of the public interests.
Where now were the unalienable rights of man, and sovereignty of the people, with their safeguards; a Constitution with limited powers, the reserved rights of the States, and the supremacy of law equally over both rulers and ruled? All were gone.
It will be seen that, through all these proceedings, the Government of the United States controlled as the sovereign, and sovereignty of the people was extinct. The measures adopted were those prescribed by the Government of the United States; and, subordinate to these and subject to the conditions of these, such others were permitted as the necessities of the people required. Affairs were not in such disorder when the Constitution of the United States was adopted. The uppermost then had come to be the undermost now, and that which was nothing then had grown to be over all now. Will it always be thus? Was the inherent sovereignty of the people destroyed by shot and shell?
The intelligent reader must perceive that this invasion of the natural and unalienable rights of man, the subjugation of the sovereignty of the people, the monstrous usurpations of powers not granted in the Constitution, the trampling under foot of the reserved rights of the States, the disregard of the supremacy of law, and the assumption of the sovereignty of the Government of the United States as the corner-stone of our future political edifice, is a revolution in our system of Government, deep-seated, reaching to the foundations, and sending the poisonous waters of despotism throughout all the branches fed from this fountain. The Confederate States resisted it from the beginning. They drew their swords for the sovereignty of the people, and they fought for the maintenance of their State governments in all their reserved rights and powers, as the only true and natural guardians of the unalienable rights of their citizens, among which the most sacred is, that only the consent of the governed can give vitality and existence to any civil or political institution.
This overthrow of the rights of freemen and the establishment of such new relations required a complete revolution in the principle of the government of the United States, the subversion of the State governments, the subjugation of the people, and the destruction of the fraternal Union. The work has been done. Will it stand? Have the eternal principles of the Declaration of Independence been hid from our sight for ever? Or, will they again come forth, "redeemed, disenthralled, regenerated," and rally the reunited people to shout in thunder-tones for sovereignty of the people and the unalienable rights of man?
It has been shown in previous pages that the State governments were instituted to be the special guardians of these unalienable rights of man; but henceforth they must be the sworn defenders of the Government of the United States, not of the Constitution and laws enacted in pursuance thereof, but of such interpolations and perversions of them as, in cases of necessity, that Government should find it convenient to make. Whenever it pleases, it can set them aside; and, whenever it wills, it can destroy them. Unalienable rights are unknown to this war-begotten theory of the Constitution. The day has come in which mankind behold this Government founding its highest claims to greatness and glory upon deeds done in utter violation of those rights which belonged to its own citizens in every State, North and South. The palladium of the freeman, the Bills of Rights, the limitations of power, the written Constitutions, have all lost their sacred authority, and not a man or a State dare, single-handed, gainsay the will of the agency which, feeling power, has forgotten right. It has put its hand on the ballot-box, and the declaration is made that it is not safe to trust the people to vote, except under the inspection of its authority, after the example set by the Roman emperors. When the cause was lost, what cause was it? Not that of the South only, but the cause of constitutional government, of the supremacy of law, of the natural rights of man.
[Footnote 131: This incident in the conduct of the Judge recalls a like exhibition of judicial purity and independence which occurred in the colonial history of South Carolina, and which I present by extracts from the charge of Judge William Henry Drayton, delivered November, 1774. Referring to the nature of the civil liberties of the Carolina colonists, he said: "This is the distinguishing character: English people can not be taxed, nay, they can not be bound by any law unless by their consent, expressed by themselves or their representatives of their own election. This colony was settled by English subjects; by a people from England herself—a people who brought over with them, who planted in this colony, and who transmitted to posterity the invaluable rights of Englishmen—rights which no time, no contract, no climate can diminish. . . . By all the ties which mankind hold most dear and sacred; your reverence to your ancestors; your love to your own interests; your tenderness to your posterity; by the lawful obligations of your oath, I charge you to do your duty; to maintain the laws, the rights, the Constitution of your country, even at the hazard of your lives and fortunes.
"Some county judges style themselves the King's servants, a style which sounds harshly in my ears, inasmuch as the being a servant implies obedience to the orders of the master, and such judges might possibly think that, in the present situation of American affairs, my charge is inconsistent with my duty to the King. But for my part, in my judicial character, I know no master but the law; I am a servant, not to the King, but to the Constitution." . . . In the course of his charge, he quotes a "learned judge" as saying: "Every new tribunal erected for the decision of facts, without the intervention of a jury, is a step toward aristocracy, the most oppressive of absolute governments; and it is therefore a duty which every man owes to his country, his friends, his posterity, and himself, to maintain to the utmost of his power this valuable Constitution in all its rights, to restore it to its ancient dignity, if at all impaired; to amend it wherever it is defective, and, above all, to guard with the most jealous circumspection against the introduction of new and arbitrary methods of trial, which, under a variety of plausible pretenses, may in time perceptibly undermine this best preservative of English liberty."—("American Archives," Fourth Series, vol. i, pp. 959, 960.)]