The New Opposition Party

IN the rapid alternations of opinion produced by the varying incidents of the present war, a few days effect the work of centuries. We may therefore be pardoned for giving an antique coloring to an event of recent occurrence. Accordingly we say, once upon a time, (Tuesday, July 1, 1862,) a great popular convention of all who loved the Constitution and the Union, and all who hated “ niggers,” was called in the city of New York. The place of meeting was the Cooper Institute, and among the signers to the call were prominent business and professional men of that great metropolis. At this meeting, that eminently calm and learned jurist, the Honorable W. A. Duer, interrupted the course of an elaborate argument for the constitutional rights of the Southern rebels by a melodramatic exclamation, that, if we hanged the traitors of the country in the order of their guilt, “ the next man who marched upon the scaffold after Jefferson Davis would be Charles Sumner.”

The professed object of the meeting was to form a party devoted to the support of “ the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was.” Its practical effect was to give the Confederates and foreign powers a broad hint that the North was no longer a unit. The coincidence of the meeting with the Federal reverses before Richmond made its professed object all the more ridiculous. The babbling and bawling of the speakers about “ the rights of the South,” and “ the infamous Abolitionists who disgraced Congress,” were but faint echoes of the Confederate cannon which had just ceased to carry death into the Union ranks. Both the speeches and the cannon spoke hostility to the National Cause. The number of the dead, wounded, “ missing,” and demoralized members of the great Army of the Potomac exceeded, on that Tuesday evening, any army which the United States had ever, before the present war, arrayed on any battle-field. Jefferson Davis, on that evening, was safer at Richmond than Abraham Lincoln was at Washington. A well-grounded apprehension, not only for the “Union,” but for the safety of loyal States, was felt on that evening all over the North and West. It was, in fact, the darkest hour in the whole annals of the Republic. Even the authorities at Washington feared that the Army of the Potomac was destroyed. This was exactly the time for the Honorable Mr. Wiekliffe and the Honorable Mr. Brooks, for the Honorable W. A. Duer and the Honorable Fernando Wood, to delight the citizens of New York with their peculiar eloquence. This was the appropriate occasion to stand up for the persecuted and down - trodden South ! This was the grand opportunity to assert the noble principle, that, by the Constitution, every traitor had the right to be tried by a jury of traitors! This was the time to dishonor all the New England dead ! This was the time to denounce the living worthies of New England! Hang Jeff. Davis? Oh, yes ! We all know that he is secure behind his triumphant slayers of the real defenders of the Constitution and the Union. Neither hangman nor Major-General can get near him. But Charles Sumner is in our power. We can hang him easily. He has not two or four hundred thousand men at his back. He travels alone and unattended. Do we want a constitutional principle for combining the two men in one act of treason ? Here is a calm jurist, — here, gentlemen of the party of the Constitution and the Laws, is the Honorable W. A. Duer. What does he say ? Simply this : “ Hang Jeff. Davis and Charles Sumner.” Davis we cannot hang, but Sumner we can. Let us take onehalf of his advice ; circumstances prevent us from availing ourselves of the whole. There is, to be sure, no possibility of hanging Charles Sumner under any law known to us, the especial champions of the laws. But what then ? Don’t you see the Honorable W. A. Duer appeals, in this especial case, to “ the higher law ” of the mob ? Don’t you see that he desires to shield Jeff. Davis by weaving around his august person all the fine cobwebs of the Law, while he proposes to have Sumner hanged on “ irregular” principles, unknown to the jurisprudence of Marshall and Kent?

But enough for the New York meeting. It was of no importance, except as indicating the existence, and giving a blundering expression to the objects, of one of the most malignant and unpatriotic factions which this country has ever seen. The faction is led by a few coldblooded politicians universally known as the meanest sycophants of the South and the most impudent bullies of the North ; but they have contrived to array on their side a considerable number of honest and well-meaning dupes by a dexterous appeal to conservative prejudice and conservative passion, so that hundreds serve their ends who would feel contaminated by their companionship. Never before has Respectability so blandly consented to become the mere instrument and tool of Rascality. The rogues trust to inaugurate treason and anarchy under the pretence of being the special champions of the Constitution and the Laws. Their real adherents are culled from the most desperate and dishonest portions of our population. They can hardly indite a leading article, or make a stump speech, without showing their proclivities to moblaw. To be sure, if a known traitor is informally arrested, they rave about the violation of the rights of the citizen; but they think Lynch-law is good enough for “Abolitionists.” If a General is assailed as being over prudent and cautious in his operations against the common enemy, they immediately laud him as a Hannibal, a Cæsar, and a Napoleon ; they assume to be his special friends and admirers; they adjure him to persevere in what they conceive to he his policy of inaction ; and, as he is a great master in strategy, they hint that his best strategic movement would be a movement, à la Cromwell, on the Abolitionized Congress of the United States. Disunion, anarchy, the violation of all law, the appeal to the lowest and fiercest impulses of the most ignorant portions of the Northern people, — these constitute the real stock-in-trade of “the Hang-Jeff.-Davis-and-CharlesSumner ” party ; but the thing is so managed; that, formally, this party appears as the special champion of the Union, the Constitution, and the Laws.

Those politicians who personally dislike the present holders of political power, those politicians who think that the measures of confiscation and emancipation passed by the Congress which has just adjourned are both unjust and impolitic, unconsciously slide into the aiders and abettors of the knaves they individually despise and distrust. The “radicals” must, they say, at all events, be checked ; and they lazily follow the lead of the rascals. The rascals inlend to ruin the country. But then they propose to do it in a constitutional way. The only thing, it seems, that a lawyer and a jurist can consider is Form. If the country is dismembered, if all its defenders are slain, if the Southern Confederacy is triumphant, not only at Richmond, but at Washington and New York, if eight millions of people beat twenty millions, and the greatest of all democracies ignominiously succumbs to the basest of all aristocracies, the true patriots will still have the consolation, that the defeat, the “ damned defeat,” occurred under the strictest forms of Law. Better that ten Massachusetts soldiers should be killed than that one negro should be illegally freed ! Better that Massachusetts should be governed by Jeff. Davis than that it should be represented by such men as Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson, notoriously hostile to the constitutional rights of the South ! Subjection, in itself, is bad; but the great American idea of local governments for local purposes, and a general government for general purposes, still, thank God ! may survive it. To be sure, we may be beaten and enslaved. The rascals, renegades, and liberticides may gain their object. This object we shall ever contemn. But if they gain it fairly, under the forms of the Constitution, it is the duty of all good citizens to submit. Our Southern opponents, we acknowledge, committed some “irregularities”; but nobody can assert, that, in dealing with them, we deviated, by a hair’s-breadth, from the powers intrusted to the Government by the Fathers of the Republic. While the country is convulsed by a rebellion unprecedented in the whole history of the world, we are compelled by our principles to look upon it as lawyers, and not as statesmen, We apply to it the same principles which our venerated forefathers applied to Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts and the Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania. To be sure, the “ circumstances ” are different ; but we need not remind the philanthropic inhabitants of our section of the country, that “ principles are eternal.” We judge the existing case by these eternal principles. We may fail, and fail ignominiously; but, in our failure, nobody can say that we violated any sacred form of the ever-glorious Constitution of the United States. The Constitution has in it no provisions to secure its own existence by unconstitutional means. It is therefore our duty, as lawyers as well as legislators, to allow the gentlemen who have repudiated it, because they were defeated in an election, to enjoy all its benefits. That they do not seem to appreciate these benefits, but shoot, in a shockingly “irregular” manner, all who insist on imposing on them its blessings, furnishes no reason why we should partake in their guilt by violating its provisions. It is true that the Government established by the Constitution may fall by a strict adherence to our notions of the Constitution ; but even in that event we shall have the delicious satisfaction of contemplating it in memory as a beautiful idea, after it has ceased to exist as a palpable fact. As the best constitution ever devised by human wisdom, we shall always find a more exquisite delight in meditating on the mental image of its perfect features than in enjoying the practical blessings of any other Government which may be established after it is dead and gone ; and our feeling regarding it can be best expressed in the words in which the lyric poet celebrates his loyalty to the soul of the departed object of his affection : —

It is fortunate both for our safety and the safety of the Constitution, that these politico-sentimental gentlemen represent only a certain theory of the Constitution, and not the Constitution itself. Their leading defect is an incapacity to adjust their profound legal intellects to the altered circumstances of the country. Any child in political knowledge is competent to give them this important item of political information, —that by no constitution of government ever devised by human morality and intelligence were the rights of rascals so secured as to give them the privilege of trampling on the rights of honest men. Any child in political knowledge is competent to inform them of this fundamental fact, underlying all laws and constitutions,—that, if a miscreant attempts to cut your throat, you may resist him by all the means which your strength and his weakness place in your power. Any child in political knowledge is further competent to furnish them with this additional bit of wisdom,—that every constitution of government provides, under the war-power it confers, against its own overthrow by rebels and by enemies. If rebels rise to the dignity and exert the power of enemies, they can be proceeded against both as rebels and as enemies. As rebels, the Government is bound to give them all the securities which the Constitution may guaranty to traitors. As enemies, the Government is restricted only by the vast and vague “rights of war,” of which its own military necessities must be the final judge.

“ But,” say the serene thinkers and scholars whom the rogues use as mouthpieces, “ our object is simply to defend the Constitution. We do not believe that the Government has any of the so-called ‘rights of war’ against the rebels. If Jefferson Davis has committed the crime of treason, he has the same right to be tried by a jury of the district in which his alleged crime was committed that a murderer has to be tried by a similar jury. We know that Mr. Davis, in case the rebellion is crushed, will not only be triumphantly acquitted, but will be sent to Congress as Senator from Mississippi. This is mortifying in itself, but it still is a beautiful illustration of the merits of our admirable system of government. It enables the South to play successfully the transparent game of ' Heads I win, tails you lose,’ and so far must be reckoned bad. But this evil is counterbalanced by so many blessings, that nobody but a miserable Abolitionist will think of objecting to the arrangement. We, on the whole, agree with the traitors, whose designs we lazily aid, in thinking that Jeff. Davis and Charles Sumner are equally guilty, in a fair estimate of the causes of our present misfortunes. Hang both, we say; and we say it with an inward confidence that neither will be hanged, if the true principles of the Constitution be carried out.”

The political rogues and the class of honest men we have referred to are, therefore, practically associated in one party to oppose the present Government. The rogues lead ; the honest men follow. If this new party succeeds, we shall have the worst party in power that the country has ever known. Buchanan as President, and Floyd as Secretary of War, were bad enough. But Buchanan and Floyd had no large army to command, no immense material of war to direct. As far as they could, they worked mischief, and mischief only. But their means were limited. The Administration which will succeed that of Abraham Lincoln will have under its control one of the largest and ablest armies and navies in the world. Every general and every admiral will be compelled to obey the orders of the Administration. If the Administration be in the hands of secret traitors, the immense military and naval power of the country will be used for its own destruction. A compromise will be patched up with the Rebel States. The leaders of the rebellion will be invited back to their old seats of power. A united South combined with a Pro - slavery faction in the North will rule the nation. And all this enormous evil will be caused by the simplicity of honest men in falling into the trap set for them by traitors and rogues.