Read Ebook: Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States by Semmes Raphael

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The Alabama again in Cape Town--The Seizure of the Tuscaloosa, and the Discussion which grew out of it--Correspondence between the Author and Admiral Walker--Action of the Home Government, and Release of the Tuscaloosa 738

The Alabama at the Cape of Good Hope--Leaves on her Return to Europe--Capture of the Rockingham, and of the Tycoon--She crosses the Equator into the Northern Hemisphere, and arrives at Cherbourg on the 11th of June, 1864--The Engagement between the Alabama and the Kearsarge 744

Other Incidents of the Battle between the Alabama and the Kearsarge--The Rescue of a Portion of the Crew of the Alabama by the English Steam-Yacht Deerhound--The United States Government demands that they be given up--The British Government refuses Compliance--The rescued Persons not Prisoners--The Inconsistency of the Federal Secretary of the Navy 761

The Federal Government and the English Steam-Yacht Deerhound-- Mr. Seward's Despatch--Mr. Lancaster's Letter to the "Daily News"--Lord Russell's Reply to Mr. Adams, on the Subject of his Complaint against Mr. Lancaster--Presentation of a Sword to the Author by the Clubs of England; of a Flag by a Lady 774

Author makes a Short Visit to the Continent--Returns to London, and embarks on his Return to the Confederate States--Lands at Bagdad, near the Mouth of the Rio Grande--Journey through Texas--Reaches Louisiana; crosses the Mississippi, and reaches his Home after an Absence of four Years 789

Author sets out for Richmond--Is two Weeks in making the Journey--Interview with President Davis; with General Lee-- Author is appointed a Rear-Admiral, and ordered to command the James River Squadron--Assumes Command--Condition of the Fleet-- Great Demoralization--The Enemy's Armies gradually increasing in Numbers--Lee's Lines broken 799

The Evacuation of Richmond by the Army--The Destruction of the James River Fleet--The Sailors of the Fleet converted into Soldiers--Their helpless Condition without any Means of Transportation--The Conflagration of Richmond, and the Entry of the Enemy into the Confederate Capital--The Author improvises a Railroad Train, and escapes in it, with his Command, to Danville, Va. 807

Interview with President Davis and Secretary Mallory--Author's Command organized as a Brigade of Artillery--The Brigade marches to Greensboro', N. C.--Capitulation between General Joseph E. Johnston and General Sherman--Dispersion of Johnston's Command in Consequence--Author returns Home, and is arrested--Conclusion 817

MEMOIRS OF SERVICE AFLOAT.

A BRIEF HISTORICAL RETROSPECT.

The disruption of the American Union by the war of 1861 was not an unforeseen event. Patrick Henry, and other patriots who struggled against the adoption of the Federal Constitution by the Southern States, foretold it in burning words of prophecy; and when that instrument was adopted, when the great name and great eloquence of James Madison had borne down all opposition, Henry and his compatriots seemed particularly anxious that posterity should be informed of the manly struggle which they had made. Henry said, "The voice of tradition, I trust, will inform posterity of our struggles for freedom. If our descendants be worthy of the name of Americans, they will preserve, and hand down to the latest posterity, the transactions of the present times; and though I confess my explanations are not worth the hearing, they will see I have done my utmost to preserve their liberty."

The wish of these patriotic men has been gratified. The record of their noble deeds, and all but inspired eloquence, has come down to posterity, and some, at least, of their descendants, "worthy of the name of Americans," will accord to them the foremost rank in the long list of patriots and sages who illustrated and adorned our early annals.

But posterity, too, has a history to record and hand down. We, too, have struggled to preserve our liberties, and the liberties of those who are to come after us; and the history of that struggle must not perish. The one struggle is but the complement of the other, and history would be incomplete if either were omitted. Events have vindicated the wisdom of Henry, and those who struggled with him against the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Events will equally vindicate the wisdom of Jefferson Davis, and other Confederate patriots, who endeavored to preserve that Constitution, and hand it down, unimpaired, to their posterity.

The North, even at that early day, was in a majority in both houses of Congress; it would be for the advantage of that majority to infringe the rights of the South; and Henry, with much more knowledge of human nature than most of the Southern statesmen of his era, refused to trust that majority. This was substantially the case with Jefferson Davis and those of us who followed his lead. We had verified the distrust of Henry. What had been prophecy with him, had become history with us. We had had experience of the fact, that our partner-States of the North, who were in a majority, had trampled upon the rights of the Southern minority, and we desired, as the only remedy, to dissolve the partnership into which Henry had objected to entering--not so much because of any defect in the articles of copartnership, as for want of faith in our copartners.

This was the wisdom of Jefferson Davis and his compatriots, which, I say, will be vindicated by events. A final separation of these States must come, or the South will be permanently enslaved. We endeavored to bring about the separation, and we sacrificed our fortunes, and risked our lives to accomplish it. Like Patrick Henry, we have done our "utmost to preserve our liberties;" like him, we have failed, and like him, we desire that our record shall go down to such of our posterity as may be "worthy of the name of Americans."

The following memoirs are designed to commemorate a few of the less important events of our late struggle; but before I enter upon them, I deem it appropriate to give some "reason for the faith" that was in us, of the South, who undertook the struggle. The judgment which posterity will form upon our actions will depend, mainly, upon the answers which we may be able to give to two questions: First, Had the South the right to dissolve the compact of government under which it had lived with the North? and, secondly, Was there sufficient reason for such dissolution? I do not speak here of the right of revolution--this is inherent in all peoples, whatever may be their form of government. The very term "revolution" implies a forcible disruption of government, war, and all the evils that follow in the train of war. The thirteen original Colonies, the germ from which have sprung these States, exercised the right of revolution when they withdrew their allegiance from the parent country. Not so with the Southern States when they withdrew from their copartnership with the Northern States. They exercised a higher right. They did not form a part of a consolidated government, as the Colonies did of the British Government. They were sovereign, equally with the Northern States, from which they withdrew, and exercised, as they believed, a peaceful right, instead of a right of revolution.

Had, then, the Southern States the peaceful right to dissolve the compact of government under which they had lived with the North? A volume might be written in reply to this question, but I shall merely glance at it in these memoirs, referring the student to the history of the formation of the old Confederacy, prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States; to the "Journal and Debates of the Convention of 1787," that formed this latter instrument; to the debates of the several State Conventions which adopted it, to the "Madison Papers," to the "Federalist," and to the late very able work of Dr. Bledsoe, entitled "Is Davis a Traitor?" It will be sufficient for the purpose which I have in view--that of giving the reader a general outline of the course of reasoning, by which Southern men justify their conduct in the late war--to state the leading features of the compact of government which was dissolved, and a few of its historical surroundings, about which there can be no dispute.

So far from the movement being unanimous, it was a long time before all the States came into the new government. Rhode Island, one of the Northern States, which hounded on the war against the Southern States, retained her separate sovereignty for two years before she joined the new government, not uttering one word of complaint, during all that time, that the old government, of which she had been a member, had been unduly broken up, and that she had been left to shift for herself. Why was this disruption of the old government regarded as a matter of course? Simply because it was a league, or treaty, between sovereign States, from which any one of the States had the right to withdraw at any time, without consulting the interest or advantage of the others.

But, say the Northern States, the Constitution of the United States is a very different thing from the Articles of Confederation. It was formed, not by the States, but by the people of the United States in the aggregate, and made all the States one people, one government. It is not a compact, or league between the States, but an instrument under which they have surrendered irrevocably their sovereignty. Under it, the Federal Government has become the paramount authority, and the States are subordinate to it. We will examine this doctrine, briefly, in another chapter.

THE NATURE OF THE AMERICAN COMPACT.

There might, undoubtedly, be such a thing as State merger; that is, that two States, for instance, might agree that the sovereign existence of one of them should be merged in the other. In which case, the State parting with its sovereignty could never reclaim it by peaceable means. But where a State shows no intention of parting with its sovereignty, and, in connection with other States, all equally jealous of their sovereignty with herself, only delegates a part of it--never so large a part, if you please--to a common agent, for the benefit of the whole, there can have been no merger. This was eminently the case with regard to these United States. No one can read the "Journal and Debates of the Philadelphia Convention," or those of the several State Conventions to which the Constitution was submitted for adoption, without being struck with the scrupulous care with which all the States guarded their sovereignty. The Northern States were quite as jealous, in this respect, as the Southern States. Next to Massachusetts, New Hampshire has been, perhaps, the most fanatical and bitter of the former States, in the prosecution of the late war against the South. That State, in her Constitution, adopted in 1792, three years after the Federal Constitution went into operation, inserted the following provision, among others, in her declaration of principles: "The people of this Commonwealth have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State; and do, and forever hereafter shall exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not, or may not hereafter be, by them, expressly delegated to the United States."

Although it was quite clear that the States, when they adopted the Constitution of the United States, reserved, by implication, all the sovereign power, rights, and privileges that had not been granted away--as a power not given is necessarily withheld--yet so jealous were they of the new government they were forming, that several of them insisted, in their acts of ratification, that the Constitution should be so amended as explicitly to declare this truth, and thus put it beyond cavil in the future. Massachusetts expressed herself as follows, in connection with her ratification of the Constitution: "As it is the opinion of this Convention, that certain amendments and alterations in said Constitution would remove the fears, and quiet the apprehensions of the good people of the Commonwealth, and more effectually guard against an undue administration of the Federal Government, the Convention do, therefore, recommend that the following alteration and provisions be introduced in said Constitution: First, that it be explicitly declared, that all powers not delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are reserved to the several States, to be by them exercised."

Virginia fought long and sturdily against adopting the Constitution at all. Henry, Mason, Tyler, and a host of other giants raised their powerful voices against it, warning their people, in thunder tones, that they were rushing upon destruction. Tyler even went so far as to say that "British tyranny would have been more tolerable." So distasteful to her was the foul embrace that was tendered her, that she not only recommended an amendment of the Constitution, similar to that which was recommended by Massachusetts, making explicit reservation of her sovereignty, but she annexed a condition to her ratification, to the effect that she retained the right to withdraw the powers which she had granted, "whenever the same shall be perverted to her injury or oppression."

North Carolina urged the following amendment--the same, substantially, as that urged by Virginia and Massachusetts: "That each State in the Union shall respectively retain every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this Constitution delegated to the Congress of the United States, or to the departments of the Federal Government."

Pennsylvania guarded her sovereignty by insisting upon the following amendment: "All the rights of sovereignty which are not, by the said Constitution, expressly and plainly vested in the Congress, shall be deemed to remain with, and shall be exercised by the several States in the Union." The result of this jealousy on the part of the States was the adoption of the 10th amendment to the Constitution of the United States as follows: "The powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, or to the people."

It is thus clear beyond doubt, that the States not only had no intention of merging their sovereignty in the new government they were forming, but that they took special pains to notify each other, as well as their common agent, of the fact. The language which I have quoted, as used by the States, in urging the amendments to the Constitution proposed by them, was the common language of that day. The new government was a federal or confederate government--in the "Federalist," it is frequently called a "Confederation"--which had been created by the States for their common use and benefit; each State taking special pains, as we have seen, to declare that it retained all the sovereignty which it had not expressly granted away. And yet, in face of these facts, the doctrine has been boldly declared, in our day, that the Constitution was formed by the people of the United States in the aggregate, as one nation, and that it has a force and vitality independent of the States, which the States are incompetent to destroy! The perversion is one not so much of doctrine as of history. It is an issue of fact which we are to try.

It is admitted, that if the fact be as stated by our Northern brethren, the conclusion follows: It is, indeed, quite plain, that if the States did not create the Federal Constitution, they cannot destroy it. But it is admitted, on the other hand, by both Webster and Story, as we have seen, that if they did create it, they may destroy it; nay, that any one of them may destroy it as to herself; that is, may withdraw from the compact at pleasure, with or without reason. It is fortunate for us of the South that the issue is so plain, as that it may be tried by the record. Sophistry will sometimes overlie reason and blind men's judgment for generations; but sophistry, with all its ingenuity, cannot hide a fact. The speeches of Webster and the commentaries of Story have been unable to hide the fact of which I speak; it stands emblazoned on every page of our constitutional history.

Every step that was taken toward the formation of the Constitution of the United States, from its inception to its adoption, was taken by the States, and not by the people of the United States in the aggregate. There was no such people known as the people of the United States, in the aggregate, at the time of the formation of the Constitution. If there is any such people now, it was formed by the Constitution. But this is not the question. The question now is, who formed the Constitution, not what was formed by it? If it was formed by the States, admit our adversaries, it may be broken by the States.

The delegates who met at Annapolis were sent thither by the States, and not by the people of the United States. The Convention of 1787, which formed the Constitution, was equally composed of members sent to Philadelphia by the States. James Madison was chosen by the people of Virginia, and not by the people of New York; and Alexander Hamilton was chosen by the people of New York, and not by the people of Virginia. Every article, section, and paragraph of the Constitution was voted for, or against, by States; the little State of Delaware, not much larger than a single county of New York, off-setting the vote of that great State.

"But," say those who are opposed to us in this argument, "look at the instrument itself, and you will see that it was framed by the people of the United States, and not by the States. Does not its Preamble read thus: 'We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, &c., do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America'?" Perhaps there has never been a greater literary and historical fraud practised upon any people, than has been attempted in the use to which these words have been put. And, perhaps, no equal number of reading and intelligent men has ever before submitted so blindly and docilely to be imposed upon by literary quackery and the legerdemain of words, as our fellow-citizens of the North have in accepting Webster's and Story's version of the preamble of the Constitution.

A brief history of the manner, in which the words, "We, the people," &c., came to be adopted by the Convention which framed the Constitution, will sufficiently expose the baldness of the cheat. The only wonder is, that such men as Webster and Story should have risked their reputations with posterity, on a construction which may so easily be shown to be a falsification of the facts of history. Mr. Webster, in his celebrated speech in the Senate, in 1833, in reply to Mr. Calhoun, made this bold declaration: "The Constitution itself, in its very front, declares, that it was ordained and established by the people of the United States in the aggregate!" From that day to this, this declaration of Mr. Webster has been the chief foundation on which all the constitutional lawyers of the North have built their arguments against the rights of the States as sovereign copartners.

Having been framed by the States, was it afterward adopted, or "ordained and established," to use the words of Mr. Webster, by the people of the United States, in the aggregate, and was this the reason why the words were changed? There were in the Convention several members in favor of submitting the instrument to the people of the United States in the aggregate, and thereby accomplishing their favorite object of establishing a consolidated government--Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris among the number. On the "Journal of the Convention," the following record is found: "Gouverneur Morris moved that the reference of the plan be made to one General Convention, chosen and authorized by the people, to consider, amend, and establish the same." Thus the question, as to who should "ordain and establish" the Constitution, whether it should be the people in the aggregate, or the people of the States, was clearly presented to the Convention. How did the Convention vote on this proposition? The reader will perhaps be surprised to learn, that the question was not even brought to a vote, for want of a second; and yet this is the fact recorded by the Convention.

The reader who has read Mr. Madison's articles in the "Federalist," and his speeches before the Virginia Convention, in favor of the ratification of the Constitution, will perhaps be surprised to learn that he, too, made a somewhat similar motion. He was not in favor, it is true, of referring the instrument for adoption to a General Convention of the whole people, alone, but he was in favor of referring it to such a Convention, in connection with Conventions to be called by the States, thus securing a joint or double ratification, by the people of the United States in the aggregate, and by the States; the effect of which would have been to make the new government a still more complex affair, and to muddle still further the brains of Mr. Webster and Mr. Justice Story. But this motion failed also, and the Constitution was referred to the States for adoption.

But now a new question arose, which was, whether the Constitution was to be "ordained and established" by the legislatures of the States, or by the people of the States in Convention. All were agreed, as we have seen, that the instrument should be referred to the States. This had been settled; but there were differences of opinion as to how the States should act upon it. Some were in favor of permitting each of the States to choose, for itself, how it would ratify it; others were in favor of referring it to the legislatures, and others, again, to the people of the States in Convention. It was finally decided that it should be referred to Conventions of the people, in the different States.

This being done, their work was completed, and it only remained to refer the rough draft of the instrument to the "Committee on Style," to prune and polish it a little--to lop off a word here, and change or add a word there, the better to conform the language to the sense, and to the proprieties of grammar and rhetoric. The Preamble, as it stood, at once presented a difficulty. All the thirteen States were named in it as adopting the instrument, but it had been provided, in the course of its deliberations by the Convention, that the new government should go into effect if nine States adopted it. Who could tell which these nine States would be? It was plainly impossible to enumerate all the States--for all of them might not adopt it--or any particular number of them, as adopting the instrument.

Further, it having been determined, as we have seen, that the Constitution should be adopted by the people of the several States, as contra-distinguished from the legislatures of the States, the phraseology of the Preamble must be made to express this idea also. To meet these two new demands upon the phraseology of the instrument, the Committee on Style adopted the expression, "We, the people of the United States,"--meaning, as every one must see, "We, the people of the several States united by this instrument." And this is the foundation that the Northern advocates of a consolidated government build upon, when they declare that the people of the United States in the aggregate, as one nation, adopted the Constitution, and thus gave the fundamental law to the States, instead of the States giving it to the Federal Government.

Madison has been called the Father of the Constitution. Next to him, Alexander Hamilton bore the most conspicuous part in procuring it to be adopted by the people. Hamilton, as is well known, did not believe much in republics; and least of all did he believe in federal republics. His great object was to establish a consolidated republic, if we must have a republic at all. He labored zealously for this purpose, but failed. The States, without an exception, were in favor of the federal form; and no one knew better than Hamilton the kind of government which had been established.

Now let us hear what Hamilton, an unwilling, but an honest witness, says on this subject. Of the eighty-five articles in the "Federalist," Hamilton wrote no less than fifty. Having failed to procure the establishment of a consolidated government, his next great object was, to procure the adoption by the States of the present Constitution, and to this task, accordingly, he now addressed his great intellect and powerful energies. In turning over the pages of the "Federalist," we can scarcely go amiss in quoting Hamilton, to the point that the Constitution is a compact between the States, and not an emanation from the people of the United States in the aggregate. Let us take up the final article, for instance, the 85th. In this article we find the following expressions: "The compacts which are to embrace thirteen distinct States in a common bond of amity and Union, must necessarily be compromises of as many dissimilar interests and inclinations." Again: "The moment an alteration is made in the present plan, it becomes, to the purpose of adoption, a new one, and must undergo a new decision of each State. To its complete establishment throughout the Union, it will, therefore, require the concurrence of thirteen States."

With all due deference, then, to others who have written upon this vexed question, and who have differed from me in opinion, I must insist that the proof is conclusive that the Constitution is a compact between the States; and this being so, we have the admission of both Mr. Webster and Justice Story that any one of the States may withdraw from it at pleasure.

FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DOWN TO 1830, BOTH THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH HELD THE CONSTITUTION TO BE A COMPACT BETWEEN THE STATES.

One of the great difficulties in arguing the question of the relative power of the States and of the Federal Government, consists in the fact that the present generation has grown up under the shadow of the great Federal monster, and has been blinded by its giant proportions. They see around them all the paraphernalia and power of a great government--its splendid capital, its armies, its fleets, its Chief Magistrate, its legislature, and its judiciary--and they find it difficult to realize the fact, that all this grandeur is not self-created, but the offspring of the States.

When our late troubles were culminating, men were heard frequently to exclaim, with plaintive energy, "What! have we no government capable of preserving itself? Is our Government a mere rope of sand, that may be destroyed at the will of the States?" These men seemed to think that there was but one government to be preserved, and that that was the Government of the United States. Less than a century had elapsed since the adoption of the Constitution, and the generation now on the theatre of events had seemingly forgotten, that the magnificent structure, which they contemplated with so much admiration, was but a creature of the States; that it had been made by them for their convenience, and necessarily held the tenure of its life at sufferance. They lost sight of the fact that the State governments, who were the creators of the Federal Government, were the governments to be preserved, if there should be any antagonism between them and the Federal Government; and that their services, as well as their sympathies, belonged to the former in preference to the latter. What with the teachings of Webster and Story, and a host of satellites, the dazzling splendor of the Federal Government, and the overshadowing and corrupting influences of its power, nearly a whole generation in the North had grown up in ignorance of the true nature of the institutions, under which they lived.

This change in the education of the people had taken place since about the year 1830; for, up to that time, both of the great political parties of the country, the Whigs as well as the Democrats, had been State-Rights in doctrine. A very common error has prevailed on this subject. It has been said, that the North and the South have always been widely separated in their views of the Constitution; that the men of the North have always been consolidationists, whilst the men of the South have been secessionists. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Whilst the North and the South, from the very commencement of the Government, have been at swords' points, on many questions of mere construction and policy,--the North claiming that more ample powers had been granted the Federal Government, than the South was willing to concede,--there never was any material difference between them down to the year 1830, as to the true nature of their Government. They all held it to be a federal compact, and the Northern people were as jealous of the rights of their States under it, as the Southern people.

The New England people were largely imbued with the Puritan element. Their religious doctrines gave them a gloomy asceticism of character, and an intolerance of other men's opinions quite remarkable. In their earlier history as colonists, there is much in the way of uncharitableness and persecution, which a liberal mind could wish to see blotted out. True to these characteristics, which I may almost call instincts, the New England States have always been the most refractory States of the Union. As long as they were in a minority, and hopeless of the control of the Government, they stood strictly on their State rights, in resisting such measures as were unpalatable to them, even to the extremity of threatening secession; and it was only when they saw that the tables were turned, and that it was possible for them to seize the reins of the Government, that they abandoned their State-Rights doctrines, and became consolidationists.

This purchase of Louisiana rankled, for a long time, in the breast of New England. It was made, as we have seen, in 1803, and in 1811 the subject again came up for consideration; this time, in the shape of a bill before Congress for the admission of Louisiana as a State. One of the most able and influential members of Congress of that day from Massachusetts was Mr. Josiah Quincy. In a speech on this bill, that gentlemen uttered the following declaration: "If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation, and as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some definitely to prepare for separation, amicably if they can, violently if they must."

Mr. John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, himself, as is well known, a Massachusetts man, speaking of this dissatisfaction of the New England States with the Federal Government, says: "That their object was, and had been, for several years, a dissolution of the Union and the establishment of a separate Confederation, he knew from unequivocal evidence, although not provable in a court of law; and that in case of a civil war, the aid of Great Britain, to effect that purpose, would be assuredly resorted to, as it would be indispensably necessary to their design." See Mr. Adams' letter of Dec. 30th, 1828, in reply to Harrison Gray Otis and others.

We have thus seen, that for forty years, or from the foundation of the Federal Government, to 1830, there was no material difference of opinion between the sections, as to the nature of the league or compact of government which they had formed. There was this difference between the sections, however. The South, during this entire period of forty years, had substantially controlled the Government; not by force, it is true, of her own majorities, but with the aid of a few of the Northern States. She was the dominant or ruling power in the Government. During all this time, she conscientiously adhered to her convictions, and respected the rights of the minority, though she might have wielded her power, if she had been so inclined, to her own advantage.

Constitutions are made for the protection of minorities, and she scrupulously adhered to this idea. Minorities naturally cling to the guarantees and defences provided for them in the fundamental law; it is only when they become strong, when they throw off their pupilage, and become majorities, that their principles and their virtues are really tested. It is in politics, as in religion--the weaker party is always the tolerant party. Did the North follow this example set her by the South? No; the moment she became strong enough, she recanted all the doctrines under which she had sought shelter, tore the Constitution into fragments, scattered it to the winds; and finally, when the South threw herself on the defensive, as Massachusetts had threatened to do, in 1803 and 1815, she subjugated her.

What was the powerful motive which thus induced the North to overthrow the government which it had labored so assiduously with the South to establish, and which it had construed in common with the South, for the period of forty years? It was the motive which generally influences human conduct; it was the same motive which Patrick Henry had so clearly foreseen, when he warned the people of Virginia against entering into the federal compact; telling them, that interested majorities never had, in the history of the world, and never would respect the rights of minorities.

The great "American System," as it has been called, had in the meantime arisen, championed by no less a personage than Henry Clay of Kentucky. In 1824, and again in 1828, oppressive tariffs had been enacted for the protection of New England manufacturers. The North was manufacturing, the South non-manufacturing. The effect of these tariffs was to shut out all foreign competition, and compel the Southern consumer to pay two prices for all the textile fabrics he consumed, from the clothing of his negroes to his own broadcloth coats. So oppressive, unjust, and unconstitutional were these acts considered, that South Carolina nullified them in 1830. Immediately all New England was arrayed against South Carolina. An entire and rapid change took place in the political creed of that section. New England orators and jurists rose up to proclaim that the Constitution was not a compact between the States. Webster thundered in the Senate, and Story wrote his "Commentaries on the Constitution." These giants had a herculean task before them; nothing less than the falsifying of the whole political history of the country, for the previous forty years; but their barren and inhospitable section of the country had been touched by the enchanter's wand, and its rocky hills, and sterile fields, incapable of yielding even a scanty subsistence to its numerous population, were to become glad with the music of the spindle and the shuttle; and the giants undertook the task! How well they have accomplished it, the reader will see, in the course of these pages, when, toward the conclusion of my narrative, he will be called upon to view the fragments of the grand old Constitution, which has been shattered, and which will lie in such mournful profusion around him; the monuments at once of the folly and crimes of a people, who have broken up a government--a free government--which might else have endured for centuries.

WAS SECESSION TREASON?

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