"Slavery has changed. When Southern men consented to its prohibition, they hoped and believed that the time would come when it could be abolished altogether. They have as much right to these as to their former opinions, and to have them represented in the Government."
Here Mr. Fisher hints at, rather than fully states, the grand retort of the Southerners,—"Our fathers, you say, were opposed to slavery: very good; but we are not: why should we be bound by their opinions?" A mere misapprehension of the force of the argument. The Southerner of 1860 is not bound by the opinions of Madison and Jefferson; but the North may fairly adduce the opinions of those men, who were framers of the Constitution, not as binding upon their descendants, but as serving to explain the meaning of disputed provisions in that Constitution. The Constitution binds us all, North and South: then recurs the question, What is the meaning of its provisions? and then the contemporaneous opinions of its framers come legitimately into play as an argument.
Of the Missouri Compromise Mr. Fisher says,—
"It may be said that this law was a violation of the equal rights of the Southern people, by excluding them from a large portion of the national domain. The answer is, not merely that this was done with their consent, their representatives having approved the law, but that the law did recognize their rights, by dividing between them and the Northern people all the territory then possessed by the Government."
We are surprised that upon his own presentation of the case this simple question does not occur to Mr. Fisher: Supposing the South and the North to have had equal and conflicting rights in the national domain, and supposing that there was need of some arbiter, and remembering that Congress undertook the duties of arbiter and decided that the division under the Missouri Compromise gave each section its rightful share,—then, with what propriety can the South, after occupying its own share, call for a portion in the share allotted to the North?
The second essay, on "Popular Sovereignty in the Territories," presents comparatively few salient points. A very spirited and just history of the working of the Administration schemes in Kansas, a restating of some of the arguments against the Kansas-Nebraska Act set forth in the preceding essay, and a remonstrance against the headstrong course of Southern politicians are its most noticeable features.
"The Union, the Constitution, and the friendship of the North: these are the pillars on which rest the peace, the safety, the independence of the South. The extraordinary thing is, that for some years past the South has been, and now is, sedulously employed in undermining this triple foundation of its power and safety. Its extravagant pretensions, its excesses, its crimes, are rapidly cooling the friendship of the North,—converting it, indeed, into positive enmity. Its leading politicians are ever plotting and threatening disunion. disunion will he proffered to them from the North, not as a vague and passionate threat, but as a positive and well-considered plan, backed by a force of public opinion which nothing can resist. Ere long, the South is likely to be left with no other defence than the Union it has weakened and the Constitution it has mutilated and defaced.
"The makers of the Kansas and Nebraska law were clumsy workmen. They forgot to provide for the case of an anti-slavery President. They will, perhaps, learn wisdom by experience.
"'To wilful men
The injuries that they themselves procure
Must be their schoolmasters.'
"Those who framed the Constitution and laid the foundation of this Union understood their business better. That Constitution was intended to protect the South, and has protected it. Southern politicians cannot improve it. For their own sakes they had better let it alone."