Reform or revolution?

Preface

To explain the chief defects of the government of the United States and to propose the best remedy for them, — these are the two main purposes of this book.

Our political evils have long been known to public opinion at home and abroad and most of them have often been mentioned in print, but they have never been explained in a connected and comprehensive manner so as to give a true idea of their magnitude and dangerous character; and because they have not been understood, they have been treated by American authors, journalists and officials generally, as relatively unimportant, and not inconsistent with the baseless claim that our national constitution is the best in the world in securing the welfare of the multitude.

I here present the compilation and explanation which others have neglected to make. By quotations from a multitude of high and undisputed authorities, I prove that our government is a disgrace to us a people. I show that no other en-

4 PREFACE.

lightened nation fails, so lamentably, to perform its duties of defining and protecting the rights of its citizens, in matters relating to person and property. I collect many predictions by wise and learned men that we are rapidly advancing toward bankruptcy and national collapse. Many intelligent Americans, after carefully considering the facts here presented, will say, "We must reform these evils without delay."

A list of the books, from which citations are made, is given in the last chapter.

JOHN S. HITTELL.

Pioneer Hall, San Francisco,

September 9th, 1900.

Chapter I. Divided Sovereignty

Section. Page.

1. Three Main Evils 11

2. Federal Weakness 11

3. Federal Treason 17

4. Nullification 19

5. Cherokee Expulsion 23

6. Double Citizenship 25

7. Unprotected Eights 26

8. Suffrage Denied 27

9. Strike-Rebellions 30

10. Missouri-Pacific 31

11. Pittsburg 31

12. Homestead 32

13. Pullman 33

14. Wardner. 36

16. Leadville 39

17. St. Louis 39

G CONTENTS.

Section. Page.

18. Griffin 40

19. Lynch Law 41

20. Koszta 44

21. Italians Mobbed «... 45

22. Vigilance 47

23. Federalism Reviewed 50

Chapter II. Conflict Of Departments

Section. Page.

24. Checks 56

25. Divided Responsibility 59

26. The Committee System 62

27. Bagehot and Maine 61

28. Schuyler 67

29. Log-Roiling 68

30. Lobby 69

31. Private Bills 71

32. Slip-Shod Laws 74

33. Discordant Laws 78

34. Federal Senate 79

35. Finances 83

36. Presidential Impeachment 89

37. Nullifying Courts 90

38. Military Discord 90

39. Conflict Review 93

CONTENTS. 7

Chapter III. The Spoils

Section. Page.

40. The Party 94

41. The Machine 100

42. The Boss 102

43. The Cinch 105

44. The Organ 109

45. The Club 110

46. The Convention Ill

47. Internal Improvements 115

48. Demagogism 117

49. Rotation 120

50. Office Begging 122

51. Inexperience 128

52. Corruption 131

53. Election Frauds 134

54. Broderick 135

56. War Frauds 138

57. Simon Cameron 141

58. Gideon Wells 143

59. Belknap. 146

60. Sanborn 147

61. New York Customs 148

8 CONTENTS.

Section. Page.

62. Senatorial Courtesy 152

63. Spoils Legislation 155

64. Judicial Abuses 155

65. Cities 158

68. San Francisco 166

69. Cincinnati 168

70. Scale of Infamy 170

71. Unfit Presidents 170

72. Presidential Candidates 175

73. Purity Promises 177^

74. Decline 181

Chapter IV. Peril

Section. Page.

75. Warnings 183

76. Kent and Webster 184

77. James Bryce 185

78. Harper 186

CONTENTS. 9

Section. Page.

83. McCracken 192

84. Bradford 192

85. Hyslop 193

87. Wright 195

88. Various Croakings 196

89. Tropical Colonies 200

90. Negro Demoralization 201

91. Parallel Predictions 202

Chapter V. Reform

Section. Page.

92. Remedies 203

93. My Plan 205

94. New Constitution 207

95. Remarks 211

96. Our Present Constitution 218

97. British Constitution 223

98. Comparisons,. 226

99. Other Plans 228

100. Suffrage Restriction 229

101. Burnett's Plan 231

10 CONTENTS,

Section. Page.

102. Stickney's Plan 232

103. Moffett's Plan 234

104. Hyslop's Plan 234

105. Ford's Plan 235

106. Seaman's Plan 235

107. Despair 236

108. Conclusion 238

Sectio 109.

CHAPTEE VI.

BIBLIOGRAPHY, n.

List of Books

Page. 241

REFORM OR REVOLUTION?

Chapter I. Divided Sovereignty

Section 1. Three Main Evils, — In several important points, the government of the United States is more defective than that of any other enlightened country and, as a whole, it is inferior to many others. It is so bad that it is not only disgraceful but highly dangerous to the American people, as the judicious reader will admit after reading a truthful statement of the facts, to be submitted to him in this book.

Its main defects are three; first, Divided Sovereignty, whereby many of the highest political powers, that should belong to a national government, are improperly distributed among forty-five provinces or so-called states; second, Strife between Branches, because of the lack of a proper subordination and responsibility in official authority; and third, the Spoils System which fills a large proportion of the governmental offices with dishonest or incompetent men.

Sec. 2. Federal Weakness. — The Constitution of the United States, as Madison said in the Fed-

(li)

eralist, when pleading for its adoption, is a federal not a national document. It does not apply the word national or sovereign, to any of its offices. While combining to employ federal officials to manage certain foreign and interstate affairs of subordinate importance, the states retain exclusive control over suffrage, education, marriage, inheritance, land titles, contracts, corporations and crime, and exclusive power to protect the most precious rights of person and property connected with these branches of law. A divided sovereignty implies an insecure allegiance, a questionable patriotism, and an unsatisfactory protection of the citizen. The constitution allows Congress to provide a uniform method of naturalizing aliens, but not to define the privileges of the citizenship thus created. It declares that "the citizens of each state shall 5 be entitled to all the privileges of citizens in the several states," as if the only citizenship were that of the state, but this promise is not supported by any proper sanction or method of enforcement and therefore never has been enforced. Before 1865, the slave states generally refused to recognize the citizenship and equal civil and political rights of the colored citizens of New England and North Carolina which latter state gave citizenship and suffrage to colored freemen owning a certain amount of property. The central government made no attempt to protect the rights of these citizens; by its inaction, it confessed its impotence and it continues the same conduct now.

The Federal Constitution declares that it shall be "the supreme law of the land" and orders that the members of Congress, "and of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers both of the United States and the several states shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this constitution." The federal power is "supreme" in foreign and interstate relations; but as these are not one-twentieth part in number and importance of the aggregate relations of life, the supremacy is limited to a narrow range. As to the oath of allegiance to the Union, that was long treated as a nullity. Vermont was admitted in 1793 and Kentucky in 1799 with constitutions which prescribed the precise form of the oath to be taken by their officials and the state constitution was mentioned as the only sovereignty to which they were bound. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Georgia and Maryland long preserved the same oath, thus refusing to recognize the federal supremacy.

In their constitutions for many years before the civil war, two of the states (Massachusetts and New Hampshire) declared that they were "free, sovereign and independent"; two others (Maine and Florida) that they were "free and independent" ; Ehode Island that its constitution was "the supreme law of the land" ; and Maryland asserted

14 REFORM OR REVOLUTI02>TV

that "the people of this state ought to have the sole and exclusive right of regulating the internal government and police thereof." All the state constitutions indicate, by their form, that they emanate from a power which has most of the attributes of sovereignty; everything, that they do not prohibit, may be done by the officials; whereas the federal government may do only the acts for which power is given. One is a limitation and the other is a grant of power; one defines a government, the other creates an agency.

The official name, given to the federation in the constitution, — "the United States of America" — ■ is objectionable on linguistic grounds. It is not good English. States may unite, but when they do, they become one state. By the act of union, they cease to be plural and become singular. The word state, (like its equivalents slaat, etat, stato, estado and so forth in other modern languages) means an independent nation, a separate people under a completely sovereign political organization. Some persons have said that "The United States" should be used as a singular noun as in the phrase "the United States is a nation"; but the framers of the constitution did not think so; they said "treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them and adhering to their enemies."

Our federal name is objectionable on geographical as well as on linguistic grounds. The states which form the Union are not the states "of America" but only of part of North America. When our country acquires a proper nationality, it should have a suitable name, a name in the singular number, a single word, conveying the idea of complete sovereignty as does France or Italy or Spain.

In 1798 the legislature of Kentucky adopted a series of resolutions drafted by Jefferson, declaring that the Union is a compact to which "each state acceded as a state," and that, "as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of the infractions, as of the mode of redress.*' The plain meaning of this language is that every state had a constitutional right to annul federal laws or to withdraw from the Union at any time without the consent of its associates. In the same year the legislature of Virginia adopted a series of similar resolutions drafted by Madison, asserting that "a spirit has been manifested by the federal government to enlarge its power by forced constructions of the constitutional charter which defines them . . . so as to consolidate the states by degrees into one sovereignty, the obvious tendency and inevitable result of which would be to transform the present republican system of the United States into an absolute or at best a mixed monarchy." The Congressional caucus of the Anti-federal party

(which elected Jefferson to the presidency) in its declaration of principles accused the Federalists of plotting to convert the presidency and the federal senatorships into hereditary offices. The elections of Jefferson in 1800 and 1804 and of Madison in 1808 and 1812 (as representatives of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions) and of Pierce in 1852 and of Buchanan in 1856, on platforms explicitly approving those resolutions, were partisan declarations that the right of secession was part of the law of the land.

By asserting that each state has full authority to decide whether the compact has been broken and to adopt its own remedy, these "Kentucky and Virginia resolutions," as they are called, plainly mean that every state may either prohibit the enforcement, within its limits, of any federal law which it dislikes or may secede without breaking its promise to the other states. This is the interpretation which was given, by many lawyers, to these resolutions when they were first published; and it will remain sound so long as the phrases about infraction and redress have any obvious signification. Jefferson so understood them, and with his knowledge and approval, about the time when the legislature of Virginia, under his influence, declared its hostility to the idea of an indissoluble Union, it provided for the construction of an armory and the purchase of arms, to be used against the national forces, in case of hostilities caused by a defiance of the federal authority. (Hoist. 1. 178).

Sec. 3. Federal Treason. — Those portions of the federal constitution relating to military affairs are disgracefully weak. Nothing forbids the states to maintain their own armies and navies, under their own officers, their own flags, their own uniforms, their own commissions and their own oaths of allegiance; nothing in the law prevents them from building their own /forts and fleets, or laying in unlimited supplies or acting in concert to prepare for resisting the federal government. Until a state has given its own permission, the President has no control over its militia, and the refusal of a Governor to call them out when ordered or requested by the President is not a punishable offense.

Under the influence of mean state jealousy, the federal constitution restricts treason to the levying of war against the Union. So long as there is no war there is no treason. "Without violating the federal constitution state officials may urge the most treasonable ideas and most hostile plans in speech or print, may denounce the President as a usurper, may assert that some defeated candidate is the true head of the nation, may make it a criminal offense to furnish any necessary of life to a federal officer, may adopt statutes that will effectually prevent the punishment of those who murder federal officials, and may adopt comnion plans for enlisting large armies, purchasing numerous ships of war, giving the command of their troops and vessels to the same general and the same admiral, and exacting oaths of allegiance to the state exclusively. And all this can be done without committing treason under the Federal Constitution.

The British Government has a better idea of its dignity and duty. It provides that the speech of citizens hostile to the nation shall be punished as treason. Two hundred years ago the Briton who said in writing or print that the Pretender was the lawful King, was hanged. The statute was enforced and the Jacobites treated it with punctilious civility. We need some legislation, based on the same principle, in these United States.

The assertion has been made frequently that there will never be another attempt at secession in this country, but such prophecies are cheap and worthless. Under the present political system, no confidence can be placed in the platform promises of the American people. They do not know today what they will do tomorrow. By electing Jefferson and Madison, they accepted the doctrines of nullification and secession, and yet they applauded Jackson when he threatened to hang Calhoun. After the lapse of some years, they again sanctioned those same principles of nullification and secession by electing Pierce and again by electing Buchanan and while these promises to let the South go in peace were yet fresh in their mouths, they overwhelmed the Secessionists with blood and fire of the Civil War. The Democratic leaders of the North were ready to make pretenses that would catch votes, but they could not control their followers when the Union was in danger of dissolution.

Today the people are ardently attached to the Union; tomorrow one-third or two-fifths of them may be its bitter enemies. If there should be another rebellion, its managers will profit by the mistakes of the last one. They will not be in so much haste to rush into hostilities, but will fortify their territory, arm and drill their people, buy ships, educate their officers, and abstain from the commission of Federal treason until they are ready to strike the decisive blow with success. They will rely for success on themselves; not on their allies in other states.

Sec. 4. Nullification. — The nation was dishonored by its failure to properly punish the gross defiance and insult given to it by the Nullification Ordinance of South Carolina, adopted November 24th, 1832, by a vote of one hundred and thirty-six ayes to twenty-six noes, in the State convention convened for the special purpose of taking such action. This ordinance declared that the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832, and all contracts made to secure the payment of duties under them, and all judicial proceedings to affirm their validity, should be "held utterly null and void." The ordinance provided further that no lawsuit involving the validity of this ordinance or of any act of the legislature for its enforcement should be appealed to the federal Supreme Court, and any person attempting to take such an appeal should be punished for contempt of the state court. It was provided further that every officer of the state should take an oath to obey and execute this ordinance. Finally the Convention declared that "we the people of South Carolina/' would not "submit to the application of force, on the part of the federal government, to reduce this state to obedience," but would "consider the passage by Congress of any act authorizing the employment of a military or naval force against the state of South Carolina" as inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union and would "forthwith proceed to organize a separate government."

President Jackson on December 10th 1832 issued a proclamation explaining the pretensions of South Carolina and warning the people of that state that he would enforce the laws. After having stated the facts and constitutional principles involved he said "This then is the position in which we stand. A small majority of the citizens of one State in the Union have elected delegates to a State convention; that Convention has ordained that all the revenue laws of the United

States must be repealed, or that they are no longer a member of the Union. The Governor of that State has recommended to the legislature the raising of an army to carry the secession into effect, and that he may be empowered to give clearances to vessels in the name of the State. No act of violent opposition to the laws has yet been committed, but such a state of things is hourly apprehended; and it is the intent of this instrument to proclaim, not only that the duty imposed on me by the Constitution 'to see that the laws be faithfully executed/ shall be performed to the extent of the powers already vested in me by law, or of such others as the wisdom of Congress shall devise and entrust to me for that purpose, but to warn the citizens of South Carolina who have been deluded into an opposition to the laws, of the danger they will incur by obedience to the illegal and disorganizing ordinance of the convention; to exhort those who have refused to support it to persevere in their determination to uphold the constitution and laws of their country; and to point out to all the perilous situation into which the good people of the State have been led, and that the course they are urged to pursue is one of ruin and disgrace to the very State whose rights they affect to support. . . .

"Fellow citizens of the United States! The threat of unhallowed disunion, — the names of those once respected, by whom it was uttered, the array of military force to support it, denote the approach of a crisis in our affairs, on which the continuance of our unexampled prosperity, our political existence, and perhaps that of all free governments, may depend. The conjuncture demanded a free, a full, and explicit enunciation, not only of my intentions, but of my principles of action; and, as the claim was asserted of a right by a State to annul the laws of the Union, and even to secede from it at pleasure, a frank exposition of my opinions in relation to the origin and form of our Government, and the construction I give to the instrument by which it was created, seemed to be proper. Having the fullest confidence in the justness of the legal and constitutional opinion of my duties, which has been expressed, I rely, with equal confidence, on your undivided support in my determination to execute the laws, to preserve the Union by all constitutional means, to arrest, if possible, by moderate but firm measures, the necessity of a recourse to force; and, if it be the will of Heaven, that the recurrence of its primeval curse on man for the shedding of a brother's blood should fall upon our land, that it be not called down by any offensive act on the part of the United States."

After all this brave talk, Congress adopted and Jackson signed a compromise bill reducing the import duties which 'provoked the defiance of South Carolina. She was the real victor in this controversy, and thus and otherwise was encouraged to secede thirty years later.

Sec. 5. Cherokee Expulsion. — The federal government was defeated humiliated and dishonored by the state of Georgia in a controversy about the Cherokee Indians between the years 1825 and 1830. Under all the administrations, Congress and the President recognized the larger Indian tribes within the territory of the United States as independent or semi-independent nationalities, and as such, treaties were made with them to purchase lands from them, to set aside other lands for their occupation, and to pay them annuities. One of the tribes with which such treaties had been made was that of the Cherokees, for whom a large reservation in Northern Georgia had been set apart, (with a promise that it should be theirs forever) by a treaty to which no objection was made by the state officials when it was formed, submitted to the Senate for ratification and ratified. About 1820 some of the people of that state became greedy for this land and in 1825 the state as a whole determined to have it, whether the treaty were violated or not and whether the federal authorities were willing or not. The legislature ordered a survey which the federal law and President Adams forbade. Gov. Troup announced that the survey should be made nevertheless and the President gave orders to the federal troops to protect the Cherokee reservation. The legislature appealed to all the states from Virginia and Missouri to the gulf to unite in resisting the federal power. The other states gave no military aid but their newspapers and politicians encouraged the rebellious spirit. A man who had committed murder in the Cherokee territory was arrested by state officials, tried and condemned to death by a state court in violation of the treaty which gave the Indians exclusive jurisdiction over all crimes committed within their reservation. The convicted man appealed to the Federal Supreme Court which issued a writ of review. Georgia defied the mandate of the federal tribunal and hanged the man. The state also imprisoned some missionaries who were living on the Cherokee reservation without a state license, which last was devised for the purpose of excluding white men who would advise the Indians how to protect their rights. One of these missionaries appealed to the Federal Supreme Court which decided that the license law was void and the imprisonment under it illegal. This judgment did not come till Jackson was President, and as he hated the Cherokees and John Adams and John Marshall the Chief Justice of the United States, and adapted his opinions to his passions, he refused to enforce the order of the Court. He said "John Marshall has made his decision, let him enforce it." The federal troops were withdrawn from the reservation, the Cherokees were given up to their enemies; their land was taken, and they were driven away to the region west of , the Mississippi, and the authority of the United States was defeated and disgraced.

Sec. 6. Double Citizenship. — If one citizen of California sues another, he must bring his action in a state court, before a judge elected, for a short term, by the people; but if he sues a citizen of Oregon he may take his case to a federal court before a judge appointed for life by the President. The difference of these jurisdictions is often of great pecuniary importance, and implies a serious inequality in the rights attached to residence. Double citizenship, double allegiances, double governmental protections and double jurisdictions in the same class of lawsuits, all imply political blundering. An alien also has the choice of beginning his suit in a federal or a state court, thus giving him a decided advantage over a citizen, who applies to a court in a civil case, in his own state.

The federal government not only fails to perform its highest duty, that of protecting its citizens, but it proclaims the fact that the exclusive power to protect them belongs to the states. Murder and arson and riot may rage publicly over extensive districts for week after week in its territory without the least obstruction by the forces of the United States. By its impotence in many places where it should be master, it exposes itself to hatred and contempt.

Sec. 7. Unprotected Rights.- — The highest duty of government is to protect the rights of its people; and in our country, this duty belongs, legally not to the nation but to the state which has exclusive jurisdiction over the relations of parent and child, husband and wife, master and servant, landlord and tenant, seller and buyer, and criminal and victim of crime. The nation has citizens but has not the constitutional power to guard them against oppression. It can talk much and do little.

More than a hundred American citizens are murdered, in the average year, by mobs, — in exceptional years more than three hundred, — without punishment, without serious prosecution and without violation of federal law. If a general of the United States, while marching at the head of a large national army through Chicago or any other American city, should find himself in the midst of a great riot, and should see a mob massacre a hundred men and set fire to a thousand houses, he would have no official right to interfere, though solicited to do so by the citizens by the mayor; or by the city council, and it may be doubted whether he could properly interfere at the request of the Governor, until after the latter had satisfied the President of the United States that he could not convene the legislature.

In a proclamation issued October 17th, 1876, President Grant said "It has been satisfactorily shown that insurrection and domestic violence exist in several counties in the state of South Carolina and that certain combinations of men against the law exist in many counties of the state, known as 'rifle clubs/ who ride up and down by day and night in arms, murdering some peaceful citizens and intimidating others." This complaint of a wide-spread, very serious and long-continuing wrong was not followed by any punishment of the offenders, nor by any respectable attempt to punish them.

After the officials of South Carolina, under the authority of a local law, had repeatedly imprisoned colored citizens of Massachusetts who as sailors or ship cooks entered the harbor of Charleston, and had kept them in jail till their vessels were about to sail away, in 1844, Samuel Hoar, a lawyer of Boston was sent by his state to plead the rights of these men in the courts, under the federal constitution; but his stay was very brief, for he was driven out by a mob, sanctioned by the leading men of the city and of the state government, and told that if he should return, the mob would promptly take his life. The Union did nothing in this case.

Sec. 8. Suffrage Denied. — Year after year for a quarter of a century, the federal government has violated its public promise to hundreds of thousands of its colored citizens that they should be allowed to have a share in the government as voters. It has the excuse that it has not power enough to keep its promise, but why should it continue to exist if it cannot perform the most important of its duties? Why not make way for another government that can protect its citizens? Why not revoke the promise which it cannot keep? The intelligent white men of South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia say that the exclusion of the negroes from the polls is absolutely necessary for the protection of life and property and public order; and that they are compelled to violate the law at every election for the purpose of preventing anarchy. They have a right to complain of being subjected to such a compulsion. The following table shows the population of some southern states in 1890, the number of votes which they cast at the Presidential election in 1896, and the percentage of votes as compared with the total population in each of these states and in all the states:

Per

States.

Population.

Vote.

cent.

Alabama

1,513,017

194,572

Arkansas

1,128,179

149,397

Florida

391,422

46,461

Georgia

1,837,353

163,061

Louisiana

1,118,587

101,045

Mississippi

1,289,600

70,566

S. Carolina

1,151,149

68,907

All States

61,908,906

14,073,285

Among a hundred people in the United States the average number who voted at the Presidential election in 1896 was twenty-one; but in two of the states, where the proportion of negroes is largest, the number was only six; in two others it was nine; in one it was eleven and in two thirteen. At least 800,000 negroes, who had a legal right to vote and who would have liked to vote, stayed away from the polls for fear of being beaten or killed if they insisted on voting.

This treatment of the negroes and whites in the cotton states suggests other interests besides those of the victims of the oppression. Though reason and justice are often grossly and persistently abused, they have a habit of occasionally squaring accounts with a rudeness proportioned to the magnitude of their wrongs. The conduct of our rulers towards its negro citizens has a queer counterpart in the quixotic enterprise of giving "a stable independent government," (so the purpose has been officially defined) to the inferior, alien, and ignorant tropical mulattoes and negroes of Cuba, — an enterprise undertaken at the demand and with the cooperation of both the great political parties of our country. The example that we have set, of interfering to give political power to people, unfit for it, is too foolish to stimulate European nations to meddle in our internal affairs with a similar motive.