A Treatise on Lincoln's message.
A friend has laid before us a copy of the
Metropolitan Record, of New York, December 19th. It contains a scathing review of
Lincoln's late message, and for the amusement of our readers we copy some of its passages.
It is singularly hold talk, and singularly sound, Southern, and State Rights in its doctrines.
Where a public journal holds such sentiments, and is
supported, it is clear that there are many more in the community who agree with them:
But there is, perhaps, nothing in the document that is marked by more brazen audacity than the manner in which he refers to the pardoning power with which he claims to be constitutionally invested.
It is the despot's claim; it is put forth in the spirit of a man who is so used to the exercise of arbitrary power that he acts and speaks upon the presumption that he is addressing a nation of slaves.
He, who entered upon the duties of his office "with bated breath and whispering humbleness"--he, the fourth or fifth rate lawyer — and if there was a lower rate than that, he might find place under it — he, the hack politician of a sectional, factious party, pretends to tell the freemen of this country that he will pardon them if they bind themselves by an oath that no American citizen could take without thereby ignoring his own manhood and sinking himself to the lowest level of political degradation and debasement. "I have," he says, "
thought fit to issue a proclamation, a copy of which is herewith transmitted," and then he adds:
"On examination of this proclamation it will appear (as is believed) that nothing is attempted beyond what is amply justified by the
Constitution.-- True, the form of an oath is given, but no man is coerced to take it. The man is only promised a pardon in case he voluntarily takes it."
The low cunning by which a prerogative of the
Presidential office is converted into the means of enslaving the free white men of this country, and forcing them to submit to constitutional violations, is worthy of the dexterous jugglery of the political mountebank who, if justice has notified the land, will yet receive his deserts at its outraged and insulted tribunal.
The American citizen is told that "nothing is attempted by
Mr. Lincoln beyond what is amply justified by the
Constitution;" and after the conditions of the oath are proposed, he is informed that no man is coerced to take it. But mark what follows: "The man is only promised a pardon in case he voluntarily takes the oath." A pardon from what?
From the penalties incurred by the
crime of exercising his right, as an American citizen, of criticising, and censuring, and denouncing the unconstitutional and despotic course of the Administration
We have said that the policy of the Administration is the policy of the factious minority, of the men who have denounced the
Constitution as "a league with death and a covenant with hell," and one of the propositions presented in the proclamation appended to the message is another added to the many proofs of this fact which are contained in that document.
This proposition is to the effect that wherever a number of persons, not less than one-tenth in number of the votes cast, in
Arkansas,
Texas,
Louisiana,
Mississippi,
Tennessee,
Alabama,
Georgia,
Florida,
South Carolina, and
North Carolina, at the Presidential election in the year of our Lord 1864, each having taken the oath afore said, and not having once violated it, &c., &c., shall re-establish a State Government, which shall be republican, and in no wise contravening said oath, shall be recognized as the true Government of the
State, and the
State shall receive thereunder the benefit of the constitutional provision which declares that "the
United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion on application of the Legislature, or of the
Executive when the Legislature cannot be convened, against domestic violence."
Here, then, we have the minority principle asserted to the fullest extent.
Here we have one- tenth of the voting population empowered and authorized by an irresponsible dictator, by a man who has usurped power to create new State Governments and to overthrow those already existing.
And this is, according to
Mr. Lincoln, in consonance with that article of the
Constitution which provides that every State in the
Union shall be guaranteed a republican form of government.
A republican form of government, in which one-tenth of the voting population are empowered to change the
Constitution and organization of the
State Government!
What though the other none-tenths are opposed to the policy and measures of the remaining tenth!
Are not minorities all powerful, and is not this the reign of a minority
President, of the man who is really treating the
Constitution in accordance with the wishes of those political incendiaries,
Weadell Phillips,
Lloyd Garrison,
Beecher,
Cheever, and their Abolition
confreres?
By means of this minority policy, what is to prevent the mere creatures of the Administration from carrying into effect the nefarious designs of the
Executive against State rights?. The history of the recent elections shows how easy it is for a despotic power to override and overrule the wishes of the people as expressed through the ballot box. Five thousand Government officials sent into any of the
Southern States, with the aid of the soldiers' vote, would be sufficient to accomplish any change contemplated by the powers that be; in fact, military occupation of any Southern State is all that is necessary to the success of this infamous conspiracy against its sovereignty and right.
And this scheme is to be carried into operation for the special benefit of the negro, and to the prejudice of the white owner of the soil, for it must not be forgotten that the negro is the chief object of the solicitude and affection of the
Washington despotism.
White men have no rights in this country whenever and wherever those rights conflict with the plans of the
Washington autocracy.
What matters it that seven or eight hundred thousand have been killed or maimed in this Abolition war?
What matters it that destitution and mourning have been brought into thousands of once happy homes?--What matters it that labor is oppressed and ground to the earth by excessive taxation?
What matters it that the commerce of the country is paralyzed; that a large portion of its surface is laid waste by the ravages of war?
What matters it that ruin and desolation have fallen upon thriving towns and villages?
Of what account are all these items in comparison with the one great object — the freedom of the negro?
Let commerce suffer, let labor stagger under the burden of taxes, let the widows and the orphans go homeless and starving through our streets, let white men be conscripted into the ranks of death, is not this a war for the enfranchisement of a race that
Mr. Lincoln once told a certain
Chicago delegation could not exist in a state of free society without injury to the white man, and must in consequence be sent off to some Utopia for the colored people, which is to be found in
Central America, "or elsewhere." Oh!
what a grand, what a successful hit was made for Puritanism in polities and religion, and for the whole tribe of shoddy when the negro got astride of the white man — what a grand thing it was that the people were so easily gulled by those tricksters, those gamblers in human life, who are now riding roughshod over the prostrate form of popular freedom, sweeping away the bulwarks raised by the great men of the revolution around the
Temple of Liberty.
But we have already dwelt too long on this last decide of the
American Autocrat, and must hasten to a conclusion, with the intention, however, of referring to it again at some future time.
The amnesty which is offered to the
Confederates under a certain rank, in official and military life, is too absurd to be worthy of even a passing notice.
To offer a pardon to men who have shown their ability to maintain their position, who are thoroughly united, who are urged by every consideration to persevere in the determination with which they set out, is preposterous in the highest degree.
The Southern people are fighting in a just cause, as they are fighting against usurpation, and confiscation, and for freedom and State rights.
They are fighting to preserve their land against the fate of
Ireland and
Poland.
They are fighting against a power that has trampled every principle of law and constitutional authority under foot.
They are fighting for their homes, for their dearest rights.
They are now fighting the battles of the Revolution over again; and if they fail, then the history of
Ireland will be repeated on their own soil, and the future will have another chapter of wrongs and outrages to place upon record.
But so long as they are united and actuated by the spirit which they have thus far exhibited, they cannot be subjugated, and we trust they never will be. Whatever doubts might be entertained in regard to the justice of their cause, there can be none now. Others may hesitate to say this; but there is no man possessing a sense of justice, and who is not impelled to silence by the dread of a penalty which has fallen upon many for exercising the right of free speech, who will not acknowledge that the cause of the
South is to-day the cause of Liberty against Despotism.
If any man wants a proof of this, he will find it in the last message of the
Washington Autocrat.
