Service of the Militia (Classic Reprint)
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| Partner: | buecher.de |
| Hersteller: | Forgotten Books (Harlan, James) |
| Stand: | 2015-08-04 03:50:33 |
Produktbeschreibung
Excerpt from Service of the Militia I understood the Senator to lay down the same premises. He said that when this war broke out, everybody supposed that a large part of the people of the rebellious districts were loyal; that the war was prosecuted on our part to enable these loyal people to organize and maintain their State governments under the Constitution, as heretofore; but that if there were no loyal people in any one of these States, it was the end of the controversy; that all just Governments derived their powers from the consent of the governed. Now, Mr. President, as it seems to me, the only conclusion that can be derived from this process of reasoning is, that if the people of a State, with substantial unanimity, desire to secede, they have the right to do so. Nor do I understand the Senator to have opposed this doctrine this morning. He would not have advised the people of any State to secede; he does not think it was best for them to secede; be thinks it a great calamity that they should attempt to secede; he did not, and perhaps does not still, believe that the people of any one of these States did, with anything like unanimity, give their voluntary assent to any act of secession; but, nevertheless, if they did, in fact, with ordinary unanimity, desire to dissolve the Union, and are still disloyal, and deliberately resist the authority of the Government of the United States, I understand him to maintain that we have no constitutional authority to put them down. I disagree with him. If every inhabitant of any one of the States of the Union desired to secede, I do not admit they have the right to dissolve the Union. I maintain that the provision in the Constitution which says, "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States," is in direct conflict with that assumption. I claim, as a citizen of the United States from the State of Iowa, that I have a right to the protection of the United States in South Carolina, in Georgia, in Louisiana, and that it is the duty of this Government to afford me the same protection in any other State of the Union that I can claim of this Government in the State in which I happen to reside. Whenever interest, pleasure, or curiosity induces me to enter another State of the Union, the National Government has pledged me its protection. This is an unconditional obligation. It does not depend on the people of the particular locality. I am no less a citizen of the United States in South Carolina than in Iowa, and my right to claim protection of person and property, and redress of grievances, is as complete in any other State as in that of my domicil. This view, however, pertains not alone to the individual rights of each citizen. It is equally applicable to the people of the nation in the aggregate. The people of the whole country have the right, in common, to navigate the waters of every part, to carry on commerce, and to use either land or water in making a common defence against a foreign enemy. The rivers, harbors, inlets, bays, and forts in Louisiana, Georgia, or in South Carolina, are as much the property of the people of Iowa as of the people of the States named. We are taxed to improve the one and to construct the other, and have a right to demand that they shall be held for the common good. The harbors at New Orleans, Charleston, or New York have not been improved and fortified for the people of those localities alone; they are seaports for the people of the interior as much as for those of the coast. And in practice it may be quite as important for the welfare of the people whom I represent in part that a foreign enemy should be met and repelled at New Orleans as at Keokuk or Dubuque. Nor do I admit the truth of the Senator´s corollary that harmonious opposition to the authority of the United States by the people of the rebel States would render it impossible for
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