That no such conclusion is warranted by the decision above referred to, will still further appear from the following considerations:—Our dealings with foreign nations are regulated by the principles of international law, and, according to that law, war abrogates all treaties between belligerents, as of course. But international law supposes the belligerents to be of equal and independent sovereignty. This is the very point in dispute in our contest with the rebellion. We deny to the rebellion the attribute of independent sovereignty, as we deny it to every one of the States included in the rebellion. Our Constitution is, in no sense, a treaty between sovereign States. It is an organic law, establishing a nation, ordained by the people of the whole country. Therefore, only such persons under it as voluntarily wage war upon it, can be strictly called enemies: only such persons, on the defeat of the rebellion, will be liable to be treated as enemies. As to all men who have not participated in the rebellion, it is not easy to see how war, rebellion, usurpation, or any power on earth can destroy their rights under the Constitution.
III. THEORY OF THE CONSTITUTION AND COMMON SENSE.
Reconstruction, then, must come, as the Union came, by the action of the people within the territorial limits of each recreant State. That it will so come is, in a manner, assured and made certain by the action of Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, and Tennessee. Surely, we cannot expect the political action of an oppressed minority, in any one of the rebel States, to anticipate the National forces sent for their deliverance. The armed combinations in those States have overborne all opposition, and, during the past two years, have wielded the complete powers of a military despotism. The Southern confederacy is a monstrous usurpation in each and every rebel State. The United States is intent on dethroning that usurpation, for the purpose of restoring, to every man who asks it, the rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution of his fathers; and for the equal purpose of asserting its rightful powers as the National Government under the Constitution. The present Administration, then, has taken the only course possible to be taken without open and flagrant violation of the Constitution, which is the sole and sufficient warrant for the war. For this course Abraham Lincoln is entitled to the gratitude of the people. His conscientious policy has been the salvation of the Republic, maintaining its integrity against armed rebellion, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, saving it from destructives whose zeal in a noble cause has often blinded their minds to the higher claims of the Nation: in whose existence, nevertheless, that cause alone has promise of success.
But, it is asked, does not rebellion affect the institution of slavery? Not as a State institution, so far as the municipal law of any State is concerned. That the slaves of rebels may properly be confiscated, as other property, seems not only reasonable and right, but also in accordance with well-settled decisions of the Supreme Court. Moreover, the Constitution gives to Congress the power to prescribe the punishment of treason, and undoubtedly the Supreme Court will hold the Confiscation Act under that power to be constitutional and valid.
But does not the Emancipation Proclamation operate to confer freedom on all slaves within the rebel States? This question must likewise be brought to the Supreme Court for adjudication. If the Proclamation can be shown to have the qualities of a legislative act, doubtless it will operate as a statute of freedom to all slaves within the districts named in it. But it must be remembered that the Executive cannot make law. The Proclamation, as an edict of the military commander, can only operate upon the condition of such slaves as are in a position to take advantage of its terms. As such military edict, therefore, it might be of no force outside of the actual military lines of the United States armies.
But the fact of freedom to many thousands of slaves by reason of this war, and the inevitable speedy breaking down of the institution of slavery as one of the consequences to slaveholders of their mad folly, are beyond dispute, and assure us of the wise Providence of Him who maketh even the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath He will restrain.
VIRGINIA.
One of the most curious and interesting results of that eclectic spirit which has brought into suggestive relations the different spheres of human knowledge and inquiry, is the application of geographical facts to historical interpretation. The comprehensive researches of Ritter and the scientific expositions of Humboldt enable us to recognize the vast influence of local conditions upon social development, and to account for the peculiar traits of special civilization by the distribution of land and water, and the agency of climate and position. In the calm retrospect of the present crisis of our national history, when the philosopher takes the place of the partisan and the exciting incidents of the present are viewed in the chastened light of the past, it will be seen and felt that a kind of poetical justice and moral necessity made Virginia the scene of civil and physical strife. Of all the States, she represents, both in her annals and her resources, her scenery, and her social character, the average national characteristics: natives of each section of the land find within her limits congenial facts of life and nature, of manners and industry: like her Southern sisters, she has known all the consequences of slavery—but at certain times and places, free labor has thriven; commerce and agriculture, the miner, the mariner, the tradesman, not less than the planter, found therein scope for their respective vocations; the life of the sea coast, of the mountains, and of the interior valleys—the life of the East, West, and Middle States was there reproduced in juxtaposition with that of the South. Nowhere in the land could the economist more distinctly trace the influence of free and slave labor upon local prosperity: nowhere has the aristocratic element been more intimately in contact with the democratic. Her colonial record indicates a greater variety in the original population than any other province: she has given birth to more eminent statesmen, has been the arena of more fierce conflicts of opinion, and is associated most directly with problems of government, of society, and of industrial experiment. On her soil were first landed African captives; and when the curse thus entailed was dying out, it was renewed and aggravated by the inducement to breed slaves for the cotton and sugar plantations. From Virginia flowed the earliest stream of immigration to the West, whereby a new and mighty political element was added to the Republic: there are some of the oldest local memorials of American civilization: for a long period she chiefly represented Southern life and manners to the North: placed between the extremes of climate—producing the staples of all the States, except those bordering on the Gulf—earlier colonized, prominent in legislation, fruitful in eminent men, she was more visited by travellers, more written about, better known, and therefore gathered to and grafted upon herself more of the rich and the reckless tendencies and traits of the country; and became thus a central point and a representative State—which destiny seems foreshadowed by her physical resources and her local situation. Except New England, no portion of our country has been more fully and faithfully illustrated as to its scenery, domestic life, and social traits, by popular literature, than Virginia. The original affinity of her colonial life with the ancestral traditions of England, found apt expression in Spenser's dedication of his peerless allegory to Elizabeth, wherein the baptism of her remote territory, in honor of her virginal fame, was recognized. The first purely literary work achieved within her borders was that of a classical scholar, foreshadowing the long dependence of her educated men upon the university culture of Great Britain; and those once admired sketches of scenery and character which gave to William Wirt, in his youth, the prestige of an elegant writer, found there both subjects and inspiration; while the American school of eloquence traces its early germs to the bar and legislature of the Old Dominion, where the Revolutionary appeals of Patrick Henry gave it a classic fame. The most prolific and kindhearted of English novelists, when he had made himself a home among us and looked round for a desirable theme on which to exercise his facile art, chose the Southampton Massacre as the nucleus for a graphic story of family life and negro character. The 'Swallow Barn' of Kennedy is a genuine and genial picture of that life in its peaceful and prosperous phase, which will conserve the salient traits thereof for posterity, and already has acquired a fresh significance from the contrast its pleasing and naive details afford to the tragic and troublous times which have since almost obliterated the traces of all that is characteristic, secure, and serene. The physical resources and amenities of the State were recorded with zest and intelligence by Jefferson before Clinton had performed a like service for New York, or Flint for the West, or any of the numerous scholars and writers of the Eastern States for New England. The very fallacy whereon treason based her machinations and the process whereby the poison of Secession was introduced into the nation's life-blood, found exposition in the insidious fiction of a Virginian—Mr. George Tucker—secretly printed years ago, and lately brought into renewed prominence by the rebellion. 'Our Cousin Veronica,' a graceful and authentic family history, from the pen of an accomplished lady akin to the people and familiar with their life, adds another vivid and suggestive delineation thereof to the memorable illustrations by Wirt, Kennedy, and James; while a score of young writers have, in verse and prose, made the early colonial and the modern plantation and waterplace life of the Old Dominion, its historical romance and social and scenic features, familiar and endeared; so that the annals and the aspects of no State in the Union are better known—even to the local peculiarities of life and language—to the general reader, than those of Virginia, from negro melody to picturesque landscape, from old manorial estates to field sports, and from improvident households to heroic beauties; and among the freshest touches to the historical and social picture are those bestowed by Irving in some of the most charming episodes of his 'Life of Washington.'
When the river on whose banks was destined to rise the capital of the State received the name of the English monarch in whose reign and under whose auspices the first settlers emigrated, and the Capes of the Chesapeake were baptized by Newport for his sons Charles and Henry, the storm that washed him beyond his proposed goal revealed a land of promise, which thenceforth beguiled adventure and misfortune to its shores. Captain John Smith magnified the scene of his romantic escape from the savages: 'Heaven and earth,' he wrote, 'seemed never to have agreed better to frame a place for man's commodious and delightful habitation.' To the wonderful reports of majestic forests, rare wild flowers, and strange creatures, such as the opossum, the hummingbird, the flying squirrel, and the rattlesnake—to the pleasures of the chase, and the curious traits of aboriginal life—were soon added the attractions of civic immunities and possibilities—free trade, popular legislative rule, and opportunities of profitable labor and social advancement. Ere long, George Sandys, a highly educated employée of the Government, was translating Ovid on the banks of the James river; industry changed the face of the land; a choice breed of horses, the tobacco culture, hunting, local politics, hospitality—churches after the old English model, manor houses with lawns, bricks, and portraits significant of ancestral models, justified the pioneer's declaration that Virginia 'was the poor man's best country in the world.' Beautiful, indeed, were the natural features of the country as described by the early travellers; auspicious of the future of the people as it expanded to the eye of hope, when the colony became part of a great and free nation. Connected at the north and east, by thoroughfare and watercourse, with the industrial and educated States of New England, the fertile and commercial resources of New York, and the rich coal lands and agricultural wealth of Pennsylvania; Maryland and the Atlantic providing every facility to foreign trade, and the vast and then partially explored domains of Kentucky and Ohio inviting the already swelling tide of immigration, and their prolific valleys destined to be the granary of the two hemispheres—all that surrounded Virginia seemed prophetic of growth and security within, the economist and the lover of nature found the most varied materials; with three hundred and fifty-five miles of extent, a breadth of one hundred and eighty-five, and a horizontal area of sixty-five thousand six hundred and twenty-four square miles—one district embracing the sea coast to the head of tidewater, another thence to the Blue Ridge, a third the valley region between the latter range and that of the Alleghanies, and a fourth the counties beyond them—every kind of soil and site, from ocean margin to river slope, from mountain to plain, are included within her limits: here, the roads stained with oxides, indicative of mineral wealth; there, the valleys plumed with grain and maize; the bays white with sails; the forest alive with game; lofty ridges, serene nooks, winding rivers, pine barrens, alluvial levels, sterile tracts, primeval woods—every phase and form of natural resource and beauty to invite productive labor, win domestic prosperity, and gratify the senses and the soul. Rivers, whose names were already historical—the James, the York, the Rappahannock, the Potomac, and the peaceful Shenandoah, flowing through its beautiful valley and connecting the base of the Blue Ridge with the Potomac; Chesapeake bay, a hundred and ninety miles from its entrance through Maryland and Virginia, on the one side, and the Roanoke, finding an outlet in Albemarle sound, while the Kanawha and Monongahela, as tributaries of the Ohio, on the other, keep up that communication and natural highway which links, in a vast silver chain, the separate political unities of the land. The hills ribbed with fine marble and pierced by salubrious springs; picturesque natural bridges, cliffs, and caves, described with graphic zeal by Jefferson, and the wild and mysterious Dismal Swamp, sung by Moore; the tobacco of the eastern counties, the hemp of lands above tidewater, the Indian corn, wheat, rye, red clover, barley, and oats, of the interior, and the fine breeds of cattle and horses raised beyond the Alleghany—are noted by foreign and native writers, before and immediately after the Revolution, as characteristic local attractions and permanent economical resources; and with them glimpses of manorial elegance, hospitality, and culture—which long made the life and manners of the State one of the most congenial social traditions of the New World.