"To prevent the evils of such a policy, was one of the motives which drove them on to Revolution, yet this British policy has been fully realized towards the Southern States, by the Northern States. The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected, three fourths of them are expended at the North. This cause, with others, connected with the operation of the General Government, has made the cities of the South provincial. Their growth is paralyzed; they are mere suburbs of Northern cities. The agricultural productions of the South are the basis of the foreign commerce of the United States; yet Southern cities do not carry it on. Our foreign trade is almost annihilated. * * *
"No man can for a moment believe, that our ancestors intended to establish over their posterity, exactly the same sort of Government they had overthrown. * * * Yet by gradual and steady encroachments on the part of the people of the North, and acquiescence on the part of the South, the limitations in the Constitution have been swept away; and the Government of the United States has become consolidated, with a claim of limitless powers in its operations. * * *
"A majority in Congress, according to their interested and perverted views, is omnipotent. * * * Numbers with them, is the great element of free Government. A majority is infallible and omnipotent. 'The right divine to rule in Kings,' is only transferred to their majority. The very object of all Constitutions, in free popular Government, is to restrain the majority. Constitutions, therefore, according to their theory, must be most unrighteous inventions, restricting liberty. None ought to exist; but the body politic ought simply to have a political organization, to bring out and enforce the will of the majority. This theory is a remorseless despotism. In resisting it, as applicable to ourselves, we are vindicating the great cause of free Government, more important, perhaps, to the World, than the existence of all the United States."
In his Special Message to the Confederate Congress at Montgomery, April 29, 1861, Mr. Jefferson Davis said:
"From a period as early as 1798, there had existed in all the States a Party, almost uninterruptedly in the majority, based upon the creed that each State was, in the last resort, the sole judge, as well of its wrongs as of the mode and measure of redress. * * * The Democratic Party of the United States repeated, in its successful canvas of 1836, the declaration, made in numerous previous political contests, that it would faithfully abide by and uphold the principles laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia Legislatures of [1798 and] 1799, and that it adopts those principles as constituting one of the main foundations of its political creed."
In a letter addressed by the Rebel Commissioners in London (Yancey, Rost and Mann), August 14, 1861, to Lord John Russell, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, it appears that they said: "It was from no fear that the Slaves would be liberated, that Secession took place. The very Party in power has proposed to guarantee Slavery forever in the States, if the South would but remain in the Union." On the 4th of May preceding, Lord John had received these Commissioners at his house; and in a letter of May 11, 1861, wrote, from the Foreign Office, to Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Washington, a letter, in which, alluding to his informal communication with them, he said: "One of these gentlemen, speaking for the others, dilated on the causes which had induced the Southern States to Secede from the Northern. The principal of these causes, he said, was not Slavery, but the very high price which, for the sake of Protecting the Northern manufacturers, the South were obliged to pay for the manufactured goods which they required. One of the first acts of the Southern Congress was to reduce these duties, and to prove their sincerity he gave as an instance that Louisiana had given up altogether that Protection on her sugar which she enjoyed by the legislation of the United States. As a proof of the riches of the South. He stated that of $350,000,000 of exports of produce to foreign countries $270,000,000 were furnished by the Southern States." * * * They pointed to the new Tariff of the United States as a proof that British manufactures would be nearly excluded from the North, and freely admitted in the South.
This may be as good a place as any other to say a few words touching another alleged "cause" of Secession. During the exciting period just prior to the breaking out of the great War of the Rebellion, the Slave-holding and Secession-nursing States of the South, made a terrible hubbub over the Personal Liberty Bills of the Northern States. And when Secession came, many people of the North supposed these Bills to be the prime, if not the only real cause of it. Not so. They constituted, as we now know, only a part of the mere pretext. But, none the less, they constituted a portion of the history of that eventful time, and cannot be altogether ignored.
In order then, that the reader may quickly grasp, not only the general nature, but also the most important details of the Personal Liberty Bills (in force, in 1860, in many of the Free States) so frequently alluded to in the Debates of Congress, in speeches on the stump, and in the fulminations of Seceding States and their authorized agents, commissioners, and representatives, it may be well now, briefly to refer to them, and to state that no such laws existed in California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, Ohio and Oregon.
Those of Maine provided that no officer of the State should in any way assist in the arrest or detention of a Fugitive Slave, and made it the duty of county attorneys to defend the Fugitive Slave against the claim of his master. A Bill to repeal these laws passed the Maine Senate, but failed in the House.
That of Massachusetts provided for commissioners in each county to defend alleged Fugitives from Service or Labor; for payment by the Commonwealth of all expenses of defense; prohibited the issue or service of process by State officers for arrest of alleged Fugitives, or the use of any prisons in the State for their detention, or that of any person aiding their escape; prohibited the kidnapping or removal of alleged Fugitive Slaves by any person; prohibited all officers within the State, down to Town officers, from arresting, imprisoning, detaining or returning to Service "any Person for the reason that he is claimed or adjudged to be a Fugitive from Service or Labor"—all such prohibitions being enforced by heavy fines and imprisonment. The Act of March 25, 1861, materially modified and softened the above provisions.