The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
kinds, the legal mind and the human mind, and to doubt if there is any
possible connection in reason between the two. To the human mind it
appears that the Federal government has spent thirty-five hundred
millions of dollars, and sacrificed three hundred thousand lives, in a
contest which the legal mind dissolves into a mere mist of unsubstantial
phrases; and by skill in the trick of substituting words for things, and
definitions for events, the legal mind proceeds to show that these words
and definitions, though scrupulously shielded from any contact with
realities, are sufficient to prevent the nation from taking ordinary
precautions against the recurrence of calamities fresh in its bitter
experience. The phrase "State Rights," translated from legal into human
language, is found to mean, the power to commit wrongs on individuals
whom States may desire to oppress, or the power to protect the
inhabitants of States from the consequences of their own crimes. The
minority of the committee, indeed, seem to have forgotten that there has
been any real war, and bring to mind the converted Australian savage,
whom the missionary could not make penitent for a murder committed the
day before, because the trifling occurrence had altogether passed from
his recollection.
In fact, all attempts to discriminate between Rebels and Rebel States,
to the advantage of the latter, are done in defiance of notorious facts.
If the Rebellion had been merely a rising of individual citizens of
States, it would have been an insurrection against the States, as well
as against the Federal government, and might have been easily put down.
In that case, there would have been no withdrawal of Southern Senators
and Representatives from Congress, and therefore no question as to their
inherent right to return. In Missouri and Kentucky, for example, there
was civil war, waged by inhabitants of those States against their local
governments, as well as against the United States; and nobody contends
that the rights and privileges of those States were forfeited by the
criminal acts of their citizens. But the real strength of the Rebellion
consisted in this, that it was not a rebellion _against_ States, but a
rebellion _by_ States. No loose assemblage of individuals, though
numbering hundreds of thousands, could long have resisted the pressure
of the Federal power and the power of the State governments. They would
have had no means of subsistence except those derived from plunder and
voluntary contributions, and they would have lacked the military
organization by which mobs are transformed into formidable armies. But
the Rebellion being one of States, being virtually decreed by the people
of States assembled in convention, was sustained by the two tremendous
governmental powers of taxation and conscription. The willing and the
unwilling were thus equally placed at the disposition of a strong
government. The population and wealth of the whole immense region of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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