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Date: 1864-09-29
By: The Montreal Herald
Citation: “State Rights and Confederation.”, The Montreal Herald (29 September, 1864)
Other formats: TBA

STATE RIGHTS AND CONFEDERATION.

—The tone of the discussion going on in the Southern papers and those Northern ones which sympathize with the Southern cause, upon the real or supposed separate negotiations for peace of the State of Georgia, indicates plainly enough the preposterous absurdity of the doctrine of State Rights, which lies at the root of the Southern Secession—a doctrine which, [illegible] enough [illegible] [words?], breaks down as soon as it is tested by the stern friction of facts. We yesterday printed an extract from a Richmond paper expressing the concern felt by the writer at the idea that Georgia might—though he could not bring himself to believe that she would—carry out the doctrine, in vindication of which the Southern Confederacy has professedly been formed, by acting as a separate sovereignty. We have now a review of the same possibility from the journal printed by the Hon. Ben Wood, in New York, which, though it has been loudly clamouring for peace since the outbreak of the war, and professes at the same time its devotion to the Union, is more savage than even the Southern journal at the prospect of a peace brought about by negotiations for reunion commenced by a single State. After showing the personal reasons which it supposes Mr. Brown, the Governor of Georgia, and Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Southern Confederation, may have for dissatisfaction with the Southern Government—reasons in consequence of which “Mr. Stephens felt it his duty, last winter, to assail, at a public meeting in Georgia, the Confederate administration, and, in doing so, was sustained by a considerable number of the legislators of that State, under the leading of Gov. Brown,” it proceeds to speak of these two gentlemen as men of too high a sense of honour to allow of the possibility of their acting in the manner supposed. It then makes this statement, especially of Mr. Stephens—certainly a remarkable one from an advocate of the extreme doctrine that the prerogative of each State is so extensive as to justify it in breaking off from and making war upon the others.—”His proud temper chafes under the leadership of a central executive. Working expediencies exasperate his crotchety judgment as harness does the shoulders of an unbroken horse. As liberty is mistaken by the unenlightened for licence, so are the sovereign rights of his State mistaken by Governor Brown, for an independence as unrestrained as that of the untutored savage.—In this way, and to this extent, has that honest believer in the sovereignty of Georgia, drifted into a temper more or less impracticable.” It would seem to impartial judgments that this was a very fair account of the character of the original mistake about Sovereign rights, which has led to all the existing trouble and bloodshed, and that if it were correct to believe in the absolute sovereignty of Georgia before secession had received the sad sanction of so many men slain and women widowed, it cannot be wrong now. If Georgia cannot secede with honour and legality from the modern Federal system founded by Mr. Jefferson Davis four years ago, it appears hard to understand how she could secede, justifiably and legally, from the more august and venerable fabric erected by Washington and his compeers in a time which for this Continent is one of remote antiquity. We do not, however, investigate the merits of a controversy which we believe has long since passed out of the sphere of mere dialectics. We only show how impossible the warmest advocates of this system of local sovereignties within a larger sovereignty find it to maintain, even for a few years, their favourite theory, in order that we may repeat more emphatically the warning, which we have already frequently endeavoured to draw from the bitter quarrel, whose progress we are witnessing. If even before the expiration of one Presidential term, in a Confederacy founded upon the extreme principle of State rights, we have already a dispute as to the faculty of a single State to use its sovereignty, how impossible it must be to maintain such a disjointed system anywhere in the World–how certain that any ambiguity about the supremacy of the Central Government must lead to a conflict of authority, and, perhaps in the end, to civil war. Viewed in this way every step in this great struggle has a most lively interest for ourselves, far more intimate than that arising out of our common humanity with the combatants. We see in it the tendencies of the very form of government, which, with more or less of modification, it seems likely that we shall adopt, and we can beforehand, and fortunately at the expense of others, study the dangers to which these tendencies give rise. If we were not sufficiently informed, by the events of 1861, of the fallaciousness and danger of the delusion that there can be small local governments with authority and power to resist the national power, we certainly cannot want any farther instruction than is now afforded us by the impracticability of single States continuing in the new Confederacy, and at the same time acting as if they possessed inherent and absolute powers, to be used in conjunction with or separately from the rest, at their own good pleasure. We hope that if our own Confederacy shall ever become un fait accompli, the supremacy of the Federal and general over the local and particular governments will be distinctly established. The powers of each ought to be laid down. But there must be no doubt about which party is to be the judge if ever these powers should seem to come in conflict; and that party must be the general government, having its decisions tempered and moderated by the good sense and patriotism of the entire people; not any one member of the body politic acting for itself in its particular interests, or to gratify the desire for wealth or power, or the whim and caprice of the men who may for the moment direct its councils. There must be no room, as the New York News expresses it, to mistake the sovereign rights of any one Province or State, “for an [independence?] [as?] [unrestrained?] [as?] [that?] [of?] [the?] [untutored?] savage”—no opportunity for such a controversy as that which has culminated in the present American war, or as is now in its verbal stage respecting the status of Georgia in the new Confederation.