The life and times of William Lowndes Yancey. A history of political parties in the United States, from 1834-1864; especially as to the origin of the Confederate States

Front matter

Cornell University Library

The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library.

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Table Of Contents

Page INTRODUCTION.

Climate and productions, and a sufficient area, indicated two nations; two rival political parties, respectively, colonized the two natural divisions of area: the attempt was made to offset natural causes by the application of modern Constitutional principles; the thirteen free and independent States in social compact; the new industrial factor, African labor, assisted the experiment; William Lowndes Yancey lead in the federal reorganization movement, of 1861; the history of the movement of 1861 to ,be traced through the territorial expansion of the federation of States; this history begins when Mr. Jefferson established the fundamental principle of federation of sovereign States in the Ordinance of 1784; Mr. Jefferson founds a party; the purchase of Louisiana; the surrender of Texas; the Missouri question; the relation of Mr. Clay to that question; the principle that Congress may incorporate new political communities urder its Constitutional right to "admit new States" ; Mr. Jefferson's opinions on African citizenship.

CHAPTER I. A Young Orator and Editor 21

1834-1838— The Welch origin^of the Yanceys of Virginia; the Welch influence in American government; the character of the Yancey family in America; Benjamin Cudworth Yancey in the navy, at the bar, in politics; the tears of a State fall on his early grave; the Bird family; Miss Anne Pamela Cunningham; the birth and infancy of William Lowndes Yancey; the character of his mother; his education; his early development and high influence in his non-age; the nullification movement in South Carolina; Dr. Thomas Cooper and the South Carolina College; the Ordinance of Nullification; Governor Hayne and President Jackson; the advice of Mr. Calhoun; the protest of Mr. Rhett; the test oath; W. L. Yancey's opposition; the compromise of the question; Yancey's protest; Calhoun's influence; the marriage of Yancey; his removal to Alabama; his difficulty with Dr. Earle.

TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix.

CHAPTER 2. Page

1840— Yancey's private life in Dallas County; the social features of Alabama immigration; Dixon H. Lewis and Henry Goldthwaite debate; W. L. and B. C. Yancey establish the Wetumpka Argus; W. L. Yancey's fortune sacrificed; he goes to the bar; the Harrisburg Convention; the slave and free States at Harrisburg; the Campaign, of 1840; its decisive character; Yancey's oratory; Fitzpatrick elected Governor; the extravagant course of the Alabama Legislature; Governor Bagby and the general ticket.

Chapter 3

1841-1844 — John C. Calhoun at Montgomery; Yancey's remarkable success at the polls; his speeches in the Lower House of the Legislature; his refusal to be re-elected; his election to the State Senate; his course on bank reform; his argument for the " white basis" ; his argument for woman's statutory estate; his debate with Dougherty.

Chapter 4

1841-1845 — The State Banks involve the State educational fund ; the Wetumpka Argus leads for Bank reform and free schools; the Democratic party avoids the issue; Governor Fitzpatrick and the result of his administration on the question of the Banks; the Democratic State Convention of 1845; the candidature of Chancellor Martin; Martin elected Governor; his course toward the Banks; the endorsement of his policy by the Legislature; Commissioner Lyon executes the Governor's plan; the work of the Bank Commissioner redeems the honor of the State.

Chapter 5

1844-1847 — Congress repudiates the settlement with South Carolina; Mr. Adams' activity; Clay and Calhoun retire to their farms; Clay a candidate; he visits Alabama; Yancey answers the question "Who is James K. Polk?"; Dixon H. Lewis promoted; Yancey's memorable canvass for Congress; his great triumph at the polls; his first speech in Congress; its effect; he accepts the challenge of Clingman; the duel; the Course of Preston King in Congress on the duel; the action of the Alabama Legislature on the duel; Yancey elected to Congress a second time; he resigns; his ominous utterances; the Cottrel Beman canvass; Yancey's conduct; he moves to Montgomery

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Chapter 6. Page . 157

The discovery of a new muscular force, quasi-mechanical; the plantation the forerunner of the factory system; African servitude and its normal relations to the age of mechanics and political economy; various failures of Southern colonies followed by distinguished successes, and the causes; the political results of Southern prosperity in the colonial times; the anti-slavery movement and its philosophy; incidents of insurrections, North and South; Slade and Adams; Ehett's view of a remedy; Calhoun's view of the power of Congress over the mails; the Twenty-first Rule.

CHAPTER 7. Yancey and Hilliabd , 185

A debate prolonged through twenty years, which makes of Montgomery, Alabama, the centre of Southern political thought; the oratory of Yancey and of Hilliard.

Second Division.

Chapter 8

1848 —Yancey begins his career; the Mount Meigs barbecue ; three conventions in Alabama; the conflict of the King and Lewis wings of the Democratic party ; Yancey writes a party Address ; the historic convention of February, 1848; the Alabama Platform written by Yancey; its unanimous adoption; its speedy repudiation; Yancey before the people; his course at Baltimore.

Chapter 9

1848 — Yancey speaks at Charleston; the character of his speech; ^ the people demand^to hear him in Alabama; public resolutions in regard to him; he denounces the Baltimore Convention; exciting scenes attend his public addresses; he publishes a parn~w. . phlet; he refuses to return to his party, but awaits the return of his party to him.

TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xi.

CHAPTER 10. Page Some Preparatory Steps 230

1849 — The meaning of the election speedily reveals itself; Mr. Calhoun's Address; President Taylor arrogates to the Executive the ancient privileges of the Congress; California, a military creation, demands admission; Yancey declines to stand for Congress; the campaign of Hilliard and Pugh; revolutionary proceedings in the federal House; the Alabama Legislature and a Southern policy; Yancey is thus vindicated; Mr. Clay the Vernier resort.

Chapter 11. *

1850 — Mr. Clay and his part; Calhoun speaks and retires; Seward speaks and formulates the doctrine of revolution; the Nashville Convention; Sharkey, Campbell and Rhett; the Montgomery meeting; Goldthwaite, Bagby, Mays, Watts, Yancey, Noble; the two greatest slave counties endorse the "compromise;" agitation in Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi ; the Georgia Platform; Howell Cobb founds a party; Jefferson Davis .in Mississippi.

Chapter 12

1851 — The Abolitionists repudiate the "compromise;" Mr. Clay and the Boston riot; agitation in Congress restored; Governor Collier a candidate and his reply to Shields; South Carolina and Mississippi fail to secede ; Abercrombie a candidate ; Yancey declines a nomination ; debate between Yancey and Hilliard ; Secessionists defeated in Alabama.

CHAPTER 13. The Delusive Success 265

1852 — Yancey retires from political debate; he devotes himself to the law, science and literature; he counsels moderation; the election of Pierce and King; the candidature of Troup and Quitman; the phenomenal success of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the political importance of the fiction.

CHAPTER 14. The Nehkask a-Kans as Bill 273

1854 — Senator Douglas, seeing the failure of the ' ' Compromise " to restore the harmony of the sections, attempts to build up a party uniting the West and the South; the constituency of

XII. TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PACE

Douglas; his arraignment of Chase and Sumner; the clergy attack Douglas; the Abolitionists hang him in effigy; the violence of the Abolition petitions; the Lopez expedition; John A. Quitman and the federal court; Douglas condemned in the free States and disappointed in the slave States; what the Nebraska-Kansas ant was; why the South accepted it.

Chapter 15

1855 — Kansas the seat of war; Emigrant Aid Societies and Border Ruffians; riots in the free States; the American party organized

* at Philadelphia; the Twelfth Section; a letter from Yancey; Yancey speaks at Columbus, Georgia; the American council repudiates the Twelfth Section; Fillmore and Donelson nominated; the Alabama Americans repudiate the Philadelphia platform.

Chapter 16

1856 — Birth of the Republican party; the Convention at Montgomery, January 8; Yancey's speech before it; he is restored to the leadership of his party; the Alabama Platform re-enacted ; Buchanan and Douglas; the Cincinnati platform; Fremont and the Republican platform; Yancey's canvass of Alabama; his speeches at Talladega and Union Town.

Chapter 17

1857-1858 — The Dred Scott decree; the LeCompton Constitution; revolution triumphs in Kansas.

Chapter 18

1858-1859 — Yancey's activity; the Secessionists gain ground in Alabama; General William Walker at Montgomery; Colonel Seibles calls a Democratic meeting, at which Mr. Yancey appears, uninvited; memorable example of invective; Yancey's labor for the Mount Vernon Association; unveiling the statue of Washington at Richmond; Yancey and Everett speak; the African slave trade revived; the Southern Commercial Convention meets at Montgomery; the character of the meeting; Yancey's contest with Pryor, Preston and Hilliard; Yancey's letter to Orme; the Slaughter, or "scarlet," letter; the League of United Southerners; the Lincoln-Douglas campaign; Yancey's letter to Meadows; John Brown's raid; Lincoln's speech

TABLE OF CONTENTS. xm.

Page on the raid ; Fitzpatrick, Yancey and Winston before the Legislature.

Chapter 19

Yancey at home; his culture and amusements; his personal industry; riding the circuit; law and politics; Yancey before the jury; he never failed in oratory; the new firm of Chilton and Yancey.

Chapter 20

I860 — The adjudicated rights of slavery; the status of bondage gradually preparing the African for the status of contract; evidence going to prove the relative prosperity of the sections; the fiscal action of the federal government and its favoritism tends to retard the progress of the African; education in the sections.

Chapter 21

1860 — The promise of Tuomey's labors in the mineral region of Alabama; the promised competition of free with slave labor; the work of Milner; Yancey favors progress; ready cash awaiting investment;* the price of slaves too high for the price of cotton; Miss Amelia Murray in the South.

Chapter 22

1860 — Yancey visits South Carolina to advise the people; the six propositions of the Charleston Mercury; the early meeting at Montgomery; the resolution of Sanford and the speech of Yancey; the Alabama State Democratic Convention ; the State in the lead; the Alabama Platform, of 1848, reaffirmed; John Forsyth; the resolutions of the Alabama Legislature support the Democratic Convention; the first Secession Convention provided for; Douglas preparing for the Charleston Convention; proceedings of the Convention; a trick; Yancey and Pugh debate; Richard Taylor and Winston; delegations withdraw; St. Andrew's Hall meeting; the Convention adjourns; the Democratic dissensions in Alabama; the Richmond meeting; the Convention re-assembles at Baltimore; the Convention dissolves; the two divisions nominate candidates; Yancey's speech at Baltimore; Jefferson Davis and, Stephen A. Douglas.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER 28.

1860 — Preparing for war; Sumner and Chesnut; Yancey's oratorical tour of the South and North; the unparalleled ovations which attend him; the election of Lincoln not a result of the dismembered Democracy.

PiOE

. 487

Third Division.

Chapter 24

1861 — Yancey tried by events of his own creation; Yancey and Morgan.

Chapter 25

• 1861 — Yancey invited to office; B. C. Yancey and his counsel; a Cabinet and the members thereof; the Confederate Constitution; the Confederate foreign commission; Rhett's plan of foreign negotiation; the Commissioners in Europe; the plea for recognition; Yancey resigns; his letter to Sir Archibald Alison; the Trent affair; England vacillates."

Chapter 26

1861-1862— President Davis; McClellan; J. E. Johnston; the council at Fairfax; comparative energy in the government of two Republics; Secretary Benjamin and a destructive administration; the personal relation of President Davis to great men; a plan of war denied; the relative strength of the two belligerents; Miss Carroll furnishes a plan of war; Confederate successes; Watts chosen Governor.

Chapter 27

1862-1863 — Yancey at New Orleans; his depression of spirits; letters to the President; the burden of mal-administration; Caleb Huse's letter; Rost's letter; Earl Russell's opinion; Yancey's activity in the Senate; John A. Campbell and his strange career; three great armies removed from the field of conflict; Yancey and Hill debate ; death of Yancey.

LIST OF PORTRAITS.

Leader of the South

Lawyer

Pioneer Planter

Political Reformer

Educator

Industrial Developer

Plantation Home

Party Leader

Diplomat

Frontispiece Facing Page 33 Facing Page 81 Facing Page 129 Facing Page 401 Facing Page 433 Facing Page 513 Facing Page 545 Facing Page 641

Now, a living force that brings to itself all the resources of imagination, all the inspirations of feeling, all that is influential in body, in voice, in eye, in gesture, in posture, in the whole animated man, is in strict analogy with the divine arrangement; and there is no misconstruction more utterly untrue and fatal than this: that oratory is an artificial thing which deals with baubles and trifles for the sake of making bubbles of pleasure for transient effect on mercurial audiences.

— Henry Ward Beecher.

One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He is the living light fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near. The light which enlightens, which has enlightened the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary by the gift of Heaven; a flowing light fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness. ' * * On any terms whatever, you will not regret to wander in such neighborhood for awhile.

— Carlyle.

Introduction

The First Territories.

There was room in British America for two nations defined in their limits by the laws of climate and productions, which have ever determined the institutions of progressive peoples and endowed them with national characteristics. It is memorable that in the two climatic divisions of British America, respectively, two intensely rival political parties of England planted each a prosperous colony. The men of the older Cavalier colony soon cried out, " These Puritans are as bad as Papists and there are too many of them in Virginia ; " no pioneers of the wilderness ever accepted "the goods the gods gave " with sterner content than the Puritan settlers of New England and no more unrelaxing social polity was ever established than the Puritanical regulations set up by them over themselves. But, the surprise of the epoch came. The modern law of community interest revealed itself. The colonies brought with them the same spirit of English liberty ; they had a common grievance against the mother country ; all prospered in the new productive agent, African labor — some by the rich commerce engaged in importing it, others by the bountiful crops it produced. Concert of social action was the logical succession of mutuality of benefits flowing from a recognized source.

Thus instead of two nations the British American colonies ultimately framed a written compact as between thirteen free and independent States, in co-operation for specific objects. The principle sought to be established was the perpetuity of a federal union and social progress ; and this principle was

2 - iNTBdpUCTIOtf.

"based upon and was intended to secure abstract right in the individual and a democratic cast in the whole polity."*

It is just eulogiuni, therefore, of the beautiful and complex American federal system, that it was, in its origin, a convenience to pre-existing, healthful and sovereign States. When in the divine economy the wants of man first required a social polity — a code to condemn theft, slander, usury, uncleanliness, to ordain marriage and to recognize manhood as the source of political life — " every man by his own camp, and every man by his own standard throughout their hosts " — this first recorded social polity appeared as a national organism founded upon representative parts. Confessing affinity with the mind of nature to be the test of human endeavor, our federal system is vindicated in the prototype of government fixed by nature. The most intimate co-operation of atoms, productive of greatest results, proves the indistructibility of atoms. Hence, it may not be exaggeration to claim that the highest refinement of social polity which the experience of intellect has evolved, our federal system — maintaining the validity of its constituents and definiteness in their spheres — has its prototype in the eternal methods of organized nature.

To William Lowndes Yancey, more than any other individual, is due the responsibility of organizing Southern political opinion to undertake, in 1861, the erection of a reformed federal compact. An earnest man, deep-believing, he lead to action a whole people not less free from superstition than the Jews who followed Bar Cochba to the fall of Bethar, nor less controlled by reason than the Athenians who lost Chseronea.

The history of the wonderful extension of the empire of the Union, correlated to the decadence of the original theory of federal compact, demands, at the outset of this narrative, a fair statement, however brief.

By treaty, Great Britain obtained from France the east bank of the Mississippi. Between the French territory, Canada, and the Spanish territory, the Floridas, the Atlantic and the Mississippi, lay the thirteen British American coionies who declared themselves free and independent States. The royal charter of Virginia fixed the boundaries of that colony, to the

*Lieber's Civil Liberty and Self-government, p. 214.

south one hundred miles from the mouth of the river James, to the north one hundred miles from the starting point, and west, between southern and northern limits, to the " South Sea" — the extent of British territory. For more than an hundred years, the colonies had made unsuccessful efforts to form a confederacy, without any pre-conceived purpose of independence. The Continental Congress, in its origin, was a mere conference to combine the colonies upon certain measures of persuasion of the mother country. War broke out. Virginia insisted upon a Declaration of Independence. The Congress at length appointed two committees, one to prepare a Declaration, and the other to prepare Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union of the States. The former document was debated several days and, shorn of much of its original emphasis as presented by its author, was adopted, late in the day of July 4, 1776. All delegates present signed it, save Mr. Dickinson. The Articles of Confederation were debated two years. Dr. Witherspoon said the Union should be federal, each State preserving the weight of its own interest, thus securing civic freedom and personal liberty at the fountain head. John Adams contended for an incorporating union, where " a majority of the stock invested should control." Dr. Franklin followed Mr. Adams' view, and George Mason concurred with Dr. Witherspoon. While the debate progressedr Virginia opened a land office. So anxious was that State to foster her western interests, that her Legislature, in 1780,. instructed her delegates in the Congress to vote for a treaty with Spain for the free navigation of the Mississippi to its mouth and, the better to secure this treaty, to vote to surrender South Carolina and Georgia to Great Britain as a condition of immediate recognition of the independence of the United States. Maryland, who owned no wild land, refused to accede to the Confederation, unless States, who were claimants of such property, should consent to convert it into common estate. Virginia protested. New Jersey and Delaware demanded the surrender by each State of its unoccupied lands, held beyond reasonable and prescribed limits. Having taken this position in Congress, Maryland reinforced it by an act of her General Assembly, May 21, 1779, warning her deputies not to accede to the Articles, unless these wild lands, claimed by the several.

States, under more or less uncertain titles, but " wrested f rom the common enemy by the blood and treasure of the thirteen States, should be considered as a common property, subject to be parcelled out by Congress into free, convenient, and independent governments in such manner and at such times as the wisdom of that assembly shall hereafter direct."

The territorial acquisition and the territorial policy of administration of the United States originated in this resolution of instruction from Maryland. First, it involved the formation of the Union itself, and thus elevated the question of territorial acquisition to a position of supreme importance. Next, it advanced the comprehensive proposition, that the acquired territory should not remain the property of Congress, longer than it could be organized into " free and independent " States ; Congress controlling the process of State organization only in the particulars of "manner" and "time." Regardless of the dates of the acts of the different Legislatures, assenting to the cession, the deeds themselves bear remarkable internal evidence of a common purpose. New York executed the first deed, bearing date March 1, 1781, relinquishing "to and for the only use and benefit of such of the States as are or shall become parties to the Articles of Confederation * * to be granted, disposed of, and appropriated in such manner only as tbe Congress of the United, or Confederated States shall order and direct." In this first deed it is plain that a common estate had been created, the beneficiaries named and the trustee appointed. March 1, 1784, the deed of Virginia was executed. The document gave notice of certain exemptions from the general terms of cession, such as bounties or reservations, but, as to the remainder, it " shall be considered as a common fund for the use and benefit of such of the United States as have become, or shall become members of the Confederation or Federal Alliance of said States, Virginia inclusive." The other deeds bore date as follows: Massachusetts, April 19, 1785; Connecticut, September 14, 1786; South Carolina, August 9, 1787 ; North Carolina, February 26, 1790 ; Georgia, April 25, 1802 — each and all, in essentially the same legal phraseology, creating a trust fund, naming the beneficiaries, appointing the trustee, and declaring the purpose of authority conferred .

THE FIBST TERRITORIES. 5

The act of cession of Virginia forbid domestic slavery in the ceded land ; the acts of North Carolina and Georgia prohibited the interference of Congress with domestic slavery in the ceded land. But, these States joined the others in creating that " common fund " whose just administration could not fail to be inconsistent with exactions of individual donors. The duty of Congress had been happily expressed by Maryland at the outset, to parcel out the public land, as soon as possible, into "free, convenient, and independent governments" — co-equal States, in their relations to a common federal system.

In quick succession Mr. Jefferson appeared in three decisive acis of political leadership. First, as author of the Declaration of Independence, founded on the American idea of local self government first set forth in the resolutions of Patrick Henry, before the Virginia House of Burgesses, May, 1765 ; next, as author of the Ordinance of 1784; and lastly, in order, as founder of the States Rights party, in 1798. There was a remarkable Americanism throughout all this history, with its source in the last of the five resolutions of Mr. Henry, " that every attempt to vest such power (of rule) in any person or persons whatsoever, other than the General Assembly aforesaid (Virginia), has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom."

On the very day on which Virginia executed her deed of cession, a committee, previously appointed by Congress, reported a plan of government for the ceded lands. The committee was composed of Jefferson,' Chase, of Maryland, and Howell, of Rhode Island. Limits were defined to the following Territories to be governed by the rules prescribed : Sylvania, Michagania, Cheronesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illinoia, Saratoga, Washington, and Pelisipia. Each should have delegates on the floors of Congress, with the right to debate but not to vote. Whenever any one should attain to twenty thousand inhabitants, on petition, Congress should appoint time and place to call a convention to frame a permanent constitution for admission of the Territory as a State to the Union "on an equal footing wjth said original States. * That all the preceding articles shall be formed into a charter of compact * and shall stand as fundamental conditions between the thirteen original States and those newly described, unalterable, but by the consent of the United States in Congress assembled and the particular State within which such alteration is proposed to be made." Thus distinctly was the fundamental theory of State Rights promulgated as the basis of the national organization in its proposed enlargement. The propositions in this " charter of compact " between the original and newStates were five in number, the substance of the first four being, that the compact should be perpetual; that the people of the new States in their persons and property should be subject to the same constitutional authority of the Confederation "in which the original States shall be subject;" that the new States should pay their part of the federal revenues, and that the new governments should be republican in form, tolerating no hereditary titles. The " charter of compact" in the first four propositions satisfied all the States in Congress. There was a fifth and concluding proposition: "That after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States," etc.

There was no doubt of the hand of Mr. Jefferson in the anti-slavery proposition. He had resigned his seat in Congress immediately after the publication of the Declaration of Independence to enter the Legislature of Virginia to urge certain reforms, among them the prohibition of African importation into that State. He was a disciple of the most philosophic of all modern writers on Republican theories, Montesquieu, who had said : " Where excess of heat enervates the body and renders men slothful and dispirited, that nothing but chastisement can oblige them to perform any laborious duty," slavery was not averse to natural reason, but "as all men are born free and equal, slavery must be accounted unnatural, though in some countries it be founded on natural reason." The question of slavery in the Territories had this beginning. The relation of the Ordinance to States inchoate, in- all else save the slavery restriction, was expository of the federal system. The slavery restriction, more administrative than doctrinal, was' of first impression, so far as it involved Mr. Jefferson's political faith, and was repudiated by him at its first application under the more perfect Union, as will presently appear.

Mr. Speight of North Carolina, objected to the anti-slavery proposition, number five, and the Ordinance went into effect without it, as " a temporary government of the Northwestern Territory." There had been little or no effect from this enactment when, on July 13, 1787, Congress, sitting at New York, and the Consitutional Convention sitting at Philadalphia, passed an ordinance, drawn by Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, to supersede the former. No votes were cast against Mr. Dane's bill, and it became known as the Ordinance of 1787. Mr. Jefferson was then absent as minister to France. The Ordinance of 1787 revived the original theory of States Rights in the exact phraseology of Mr. Jefferson's bill ; it provided additional securities for liberty of religion, for public education, for protection of the rights and property of the Indians, and for the equalization of the burdens of taxation. " It has ever since constituted the model, in most respects, of all our territorial government." Mr. Madison, being a' member of both the Congress and the Constitutional Convention, passing to and fro between the two, along with others who were members of both, declared the Ordinance of 1787 to be without the "least color " of Constitutional authority. The unanimity of the vote for it is readily explained. The proposition five of Mr. Jefferson's bill had -been rejected. It was universally known that slavery had failed north of the Potomac, and that the navigating States were all preparing to abolish it. There was no reason to suppose the institution would meet a better reception north of the Ohio, the only region touched by the Ordinance, than it had received north of the Potomac. The agricultural States were content.

The eighth law on the statute book of the First Congress, of the Constitution, is the act re-affirming the Ordinance of 1787. A few years later the settlers of the Indiana Territory, then including Illinois, rejoicing in the fertility of their lands, sent a petition to Congress, endorsed by G.overnor William Henry Harrison, praying the suspension of the anti-slavery provision of the Ordinance, for ten years, that negro slaves might be introduced to clear the forests, produce crops, and promote, in their toil, the general prosperity of the settlements, while the white males fought the Indians. John Randolph, the most devoted of the disciples of Mr. Jefferson's States Rights theory, from a special committee of the House, reported g INTBODUCTION.

its unanimous rejection of the petition. The report of Mr. Randolph assured the petitioners of their error of judgment: the convenience expected from introducing slaves would be over weighed by the trouble of abandoning slavery. Yet, for ten successive years, the same petition reappeared to meet the

same fate.

The American political theory had now reached the crucial test of permanency — ability to maintain a political party to defend it. Mr. Jefferson having become its exponent in the origin of the movement for Independence, came forward to found the party required to perpetuate it. The Alien and Sedition laws of John Adams' administration presented the opportunity. In order to establish a party to overthrow the administration or consolidation party, Mr. Jefferson, in conference with a few of his supporters, laid down certain fundamental propositions. First among these was, that the Union of States was made more perfect than the Confederation of States, inasmuch as the Confederation was a league between the governments of the several States, but the Union was a compact entered into between the people of the several States in their sovereign capacities. The Articles of Confederation had been prepared by the general Congress and ratified by the State Legislatures, but the Constitution had been prepared by a special general convention and ratified by the people of the several States in their separate conventions ; that the federal government and the State government derived their power from the same source, the people, and were co-equal in that respect; that the federal government was not created by the American people in the aggregate, but by the several States, and in none of its departments did it represent the American people in the aggregate, but in all of its departments represented the several States of America in compact. Farther, that the government of the Constitution was a government in lieu of a single legislative body or council, as by the Articles of Confederation; that the government of the Constitution consisted of three equal or co-ordinate departments, Legisaltive, Executive, and Judicial; that the co-ordinate theory of the departments did not permit one to impair the influence of the other in the operation of the government ; that the