Whittier, in the calm of New England righteousness, fastened the name Ichabod on Webster, for his speech of March 7, without any leniency toward him, or consideration for the fact that Webster had been crowded out of his former logic by the giant strength of Calhoun, in whom he found no mere orator, as he had found in Hayne. Webster crossed swords with Calhoun in February of 1833. Calhoun referred to what Webster had said in 1830 in the Hayne debate: "But I am resolved not to submit in silence to accusations either against myself individually, or against the North, wholly unfounded and unjust -- accusations which impute to us a disposition to evade the Constitutional compact." There, said Calhoun, he used the word compact, which he now has rejected. And he has flouted the word accede to the Constitution which Washington and Jefferson employed. Then he referred to what Webster had said in the instant debate: "The Constitution means a government, not a compact ; not a constitutional compact, but a government. If compact, it rests on plighted faith, and the mode of redress would be to declare the whole void. States may secede if a league or a compact." "I thank the Senator for these admissions," said Calhoun. "It does not call itself a compact, but a constitution," said Webster. "The Constitution rests on a compact, but it is no longer a compact." Calhoun rejoined, "I would ask to what compact does the Senator refer, as that on which the Constitution rests? Before the adoption of the present Constitution, the states had formed but one compact, and that was the old Confederation; and certainly the gentleman does not intend to assert that the present Constitution rests upon that. What, then is his meaning? What can it be but that the Constitution itself is a compact? And how will his language read when fairly interpreted, but that the Constitution was a compact, but is no longer a compact? . . . He next states that 'a man is almost untrue to his country who calls the Constitution a compact.' I fear the Senator, in calling it a 'compact, a bargain,' has called down the heavy denunciation on his own head. He finally states that 'It is founded on compact, but not a compact.' 'It is the result of a compact.'"Not only was it a compact, but it was an executory compact. The sovereign states had covenanted with each other that the general government should guarantee to every state a republican form of government; that full faith and credit should be given in each state to the public acts and records and judicial proceedings of every other state; that slaves and apprentices should be returned, when escaping, by the state into which they escaped, and without further detailment the Constitution required continual performance of its agreements. It was money and power on the one side which wanted what it called a sovereign nation; it was fear of money and power which wanted a confederated republic. This was the issue from the days of Hamilton on the one hand, with his bank report, and Jefferson, on the other, with his Kentucky Resolutions; and from the time when Chancellor Kent in 1826 published his Commentaries, and was the first man of note to deny that a state had the right to withdraw from the Union. It is not what Whittier wrote about Webster that has dimmed his reputation; it is that Webster, like Lincoln after him, had a divided mind, and that he clothed logical solecisms and false historical interpretations in sonorous rhetoric which became harsh when thoroughly digested. When debating with the watchful and remorseless Calhoun, Webster dared to deny the states sovereignty, because, he exclaimed, whoever heard of a sovereignty being suable as the states were made in the Constitution. How easy for Calhoun to reply that from time immemorial states were suable when they submitted themselves to be sued. What is an arbitration between France and England but a submission on the part of both to be sued, and to abide by the adjudication? In like manner Webster could spend his logic-chopping powers to the demonstration that the Constitution was not a compact; and yet at another time he spoke with such perspicacity as this: "Where sovereign communities are parties, there is no essential difference between a compact, a confederation and a league. They all equally rest on the plighted faith of the sovereign party. A league or confederacy, is but a subsisting or continuing treaty. If in the opinion of either party it be violated, such party may say that he will no longer fulfill its obligations on his part, but will consider the whole league or compact at an end, although it might be one of its stipulations that it should be perpetual." Reserved sovereignty includes the power to break the league whether the reason be good or bad, or none. The other party to the league can do nothing about it except to kill men for breaking it.
All confederated republics are both federal and national: federal with each other and national with the rest of the world. The Constitution was framed under the inspiration of Montesquieu more than any other authority. He had written of a government formed of several small republics bound together in such a way as to be a nation to the world, while each retained its own nationality and sovereignty. Montesquieu also treated of the division of powers in a government between the executive, the legislative and the judicial, each independent of the other. What the framers of the Constitution did was to federate the republics of the states so that the motto of the United States, E Pluribus Unum, would fittingly describe what was done; and then to divide the powers of the artificial nation into legislative, executive and judicial, making the general government their joint agent for the exercise of those powers.
A passing glance may be given to the charges flung by Southern statesmen against the North, that the North had on occasion advocated secession, and even taken steps toward it. There was Massachusetts, which in 1803 was reported to have resolved that the annexation of Louisiana was unconstitutional, and, as it created a new confederation, Massachusetts, as a party to the old compact, was absolved from adhering to the latter. There was the action of Massachusetts, whose legislature in 1844-45 resolved that the annexation of Texas would have no binding effect upon Massachusetts -another case of nullification. There was the Hartford convention of 1814, which resolved in the very language of the Kentucky resolutions of Jefferson, that a state, both in duty and in right, might interpose to protect its sovereignty, and that "states which have no common umpire must be their own judges, and execute their own decisions." Nathan Dane signed his name to this resolution, he who had drawn the Ordinance of 1787, for the government of the Northwest Territory.
If this were a work devoted only to this subject more time might be spent on the Resolutions of the Senate of December 28, 1837, the first of which was, that, "in the adoption of the Constitution, the states adopting the same acted, severally, as free, independent and sovereign states," which passed that body by a vote of 32 to 13, with 18 states voting for it and 6 against it. This was high legislative interpretation of the Constitution and by juridical rules must be respected. This review may end with the words of Montesquieu: "Several sovereign and independent states may unite themselves together by a perpetual confederacy, without ceasing to be, each, individually, a perfect state. They will together constitute a federal republic; their joint deliberations will not impair the sovereignty of each member, though they may, in certain respects, put some restraint on the exercise of it in virtue of voluntary engagements."
The recognition of these principles would have saved tens of thousands of lives and great treasure. That is desirable, if there be not something more desirable, like the triumph of God's truth as divined by fanatics and abetted by money and power. It was among the workable solutions of the strife between the North and the South for Lincoln to have accepted the Crittenden Compromise. He might have recognized the independence of the seceding states, as George III recognized the independence of the original thirteen states. If the South had won the war, he would have been compelled to have done so. What then would have become of his doctrine that "in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the union of these states is perpetual"?
SOURCE: Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln: The Man, Copr 1931, Reprint 1997, pp. 341-4.
Nothing new here.