Presenting regards, very formal
indeed, sick at heart, indignant, and anxious, we left the house of the
traitor.
The historical conclusions to be drawn from the above slight sketches
are important in several respects. Mr. Davis, Mr. Toombs, and Mr. Hunter
are among the strongest leaders of the Rebellion. Representing the
Northern, Southeastern, and Southwestern populations of the disaffected
regions, their testimony had a wide application, and was perhaps as
characteristic and pointed in these brief conversations, occurring just
upon the eve of the bursting of the storm, as we should have heard in a
hundred interviews. That they spoke frankly was not only evidenced to
us by their entire manner, but, as it is not unimportant to repeat,
has been proved by subsequent events. The conversations, therefore,
indicate,--
1. That the grand, fundamental, legal ground for the Rebellion was a
view of Constitutional rights by which property in human beings claimed
equal protection under the General Government with the products of Free
Labor, and to be admitted, therefore, at will, to all places under the
jurisdiction of the Federal power, and not simply to be protected under
local or municipal law,--rights which the South proposed to vindicate,
constitutionally, by Secession, or, in other words, by the domination of
State over National sovereignty: an entire view of the true intent of
the Federal compacts and powers, which, in the great debates between Mr.
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