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PAGE TWO
little Notes on the Great War.
(continued from page one.)
teer, and the volunteer did not fail his coun
try in its hour of need.
Even as Daniel Webster spoke in the Sen
ate. with the ruins of the British invasion all
around him, the Southern volunteers, led by
Andrew Jackson, were marshalling their rifles
for the bloody victory of New Orleans, icon
SO days after Congress killed conscription.
Why are the papers belittling the heroic
volunteer, who used to be.the subject of song
and story, of the artist’s brush and the sculp
tor's chisel?
Look at your great historic paintings, com
memorating the triumphs of our War of In
dependence—who are the heroic figures
painted there, for the admiration of all future
generations ?
They are volunteers!
Nobody conscripted George Washington,
and Nathaniel Greene.
No act of Congress infused patriotic valor
into Francis Marion, Israel Putnam, Dr.
B arren. Molly Stark's husband, Harry Lee,
Daniel Morgan, John Eagar Howard, John
Sevier, Elijah Clark, David Twiggs, and
sturdy old General Lincoln.
They were all volunteers.
How can we now sneer at the volunteer,
ridicule him, and cartoon him. without de
filing the monuments of Nathan Hale, of Paid
Revere, of Paul Jones, of Commodore Perry,
of the heroes of Lexington, of the patriots of
King’s Mountain?
God in Heaven! Some secret, subtle, sinis
ter influence seems to be systematically at
work, with diabolical art. to change the ichole-
A met icon mind.
The very things that used to be held in
highest reverence, are now being defamed.
The papers and cartoonists demean the very
men and things that used to inspire the ora
tor. the artist, the poet, and the historian.
How do you explain it?
The fact, is patent: what is the hidden
motive?
General Lee was not a conscript: he was
the volunteer commander of the finest army
the world ever saw — the volunteer Army of
Northern Virginia !
General Grant was not a conscript, nor were
his best soldiers forced into the ranks: they
were volunteers.
The Union troops conscripted in New York.
Philadelphia. Boston, and Chicago did not
compare in heroic earnestness with the volun
teers of the West, and the volunteers who left
the Southern mountains to fight for the old
flag.
Why should the Prussian militarists of to
day desecrate the graves of the volunteer pa
triots, of both sides, who gave their lives at
Manassas, at Shiloh, and in the Battles around
Richmond ?
It will be the worst of bad days, when the
concealed movers of the puppet editors and
puppet Congressmen succeed in convincing
the American people, that the only respectable
government is based upon the idea that
the people have no intelligence, no patriotism,
no spontaneous courage, but must be driven,
by acts of legislation, into blind obedience to
the united powers of Capitallism and Cath
olicism.
For you must be stone blind, if you do not
see that the blackest agencies of the Roman
church are desperately co-operating with in
corporated. privileged, and aggressive Capi
tallism.
My words may carry no weight: I am only
one little editor, of a small interior town,
discredited by the Great, because I advocated,
too soon, the measures they afterwards had to
appropriate.
But while my word- carry no weight, per-
THE JEFFERSONIAN
haps those of Daniel Webster may; and I
will lay before you the gist of what he said
against conscription, at a time when British
troops were lighting us on our own soil, when
British ships were bombarding our forts, and
when British wreckage strewed the public
places of Washington City:
But, Sir, there is another consideration. The
services of the men to be raised under this act
are not limited to those cases in which alone this
government is entitled to the aid of the militia of
the States* These cases are particularly stated
in the Constitution —“to repel invasion, suppress
insurrection, or execute the laws.” But this bill
has no limitation in this respect.
This, then, Sir, is a bill for calling out the
Militia not according to its existing organization,
but by draft from new created classes —not merely
lor the purpose of repelling invasion, suppressing
insurrection, or executing the laws, but for the
general objects of war.
What is this Sir, but raising a standing army
out of the Militia by draft, and to be recruited
by draft, in like manner, as often as occasions
require?
This bill, then, is not different in principle
from the other bills, plans, and resolutions which
I have mentioned. The present discussion is
properly and necessarily common to them ail.
It is a discussion, Sir, of the last importance.
That measures of this nature should he debated
at all, in the councils of a free government, is a
cause of dismay. The question is nothing less
than whether the most essential rights of personal
liberty shall be surrendered, and despotism em
braced in its worst form.
I have risen, on this occasion, with anxious and
painful emotions, to add my admonitions to what
has been said by others. Admonition and remon
strance, I am aware, are not acceptable strains.
They are duties of unpleasant performance.
1 am anxious above ail things, to stand ac
quitted before God, and my conscience, and in
the public judgments, of all participation in the
Counsels, which have brought us to our present
condition and which now threaten the dissolution
of the government. When the present generation
of men shall be swept away and that this govern
ment ever existed shall be a matter of history
only, I desire that it may then be known that
you have not proceeded in your course unad
monished and unforewarned. Let it then be
known that there were, those, who would have
stopped you, in the career of your measures, and
hold you back, as by the skirts of your garments,
from the precipice, over which you are plunging,
and drawing after the government of your
Country,
Let us examine the nature and extent of the
power which is assumed by the various military
measures before us. In the present want of men
and money, the Secretary of War has proposed
to Congress a Military Conscription. For the
conquest of Canada the people will not enlist,
and if they would the treasury is exhausted and
they could not be paid. Conscription is chosen
as the most promising instrument, both of over
coming the reluctance to the Service, and of sub
duing the difficulties which arise from the defi
ciencies of the exchequer. The administration
asserts the right to fill the ranks of the Regular
Army by compulsion. It contends that it may
now take one out of every twenty-five men, and
any part or whole of the rest, whenever its oc
casions require. Persons thus taken by force and
put into an army may be compelled to serve there,
during the war, or for life. They may be put on
any service, at home or abroad, for defense or for
invasion, according to the will and pleasure of the
government.
Is this, Sir, consistent with the character of a
free government? Is this civil liberty? is this
the real character of our constitution? No, Sir,
indeed it is not. The Constitution is libelled,
foully libelled. The people of this country have
not established for themsojves such a fabric of
despotism. They have not purchased at a vast
expense of their own treasures and their own
blood a Magna Charta to be slaves..
Where is it written in the Constitution, in what
article or section is it contained that you may
take children from their parents ami parents from
heir children and compel them to fight the battles
of any war which the folly or the wickedness of
government may engage in? Under what conceal
ment has this power lain hidden which now for
the first time comes forth, with a tremendous
and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy
the dearest rights of personal liberty? Who will
Show me >any constitutional injunct|ion which
makes it the duty of the American people to
surrender everything valuable in life, and even
life itself, not when the safety of their country
and its liberties may demand the sacrifice, but
whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mis
chievous government may require it?
♦Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and
references to prove that such an adominable do<M
trine has no foundation in the Constitution of the
country. It is enough to know that that instru
ment was intended as the basis of a free govern
ment, and that the power contended for is in
compatible with any notion of personal liberty.
An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the
provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of
perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from the
substance of a free government. It is an attempt
to show, by proof and argument, that we our
selves are subjects of despotism and that we have
a right to chains and bondage, firmly secured to
us and our children by the provisions of our gov
ernment. It has been the labor of other men at
other times, to mitigate and reform the powers
of government by construction,’ to support the
rights of personal security by every species of
favorable and benign interpretation, and thus to
infuse a free spirit into governments not friendly
in their general structure and formation to pub
lic liberty. ;
The supporters of rhe measures before us act
on the opposite principle. It is their task to raise
arbitrary powers, by construction, out of a plain
written charter of National Liberty. It is their
pleasing duty to free us of the delusion, which
wc have fondly cherished, that, we are the sub
jects of a mild, free, and limited government, and
to demonstrate by a regular chain of premises
and conclusions, that government possesses over
us a power more tyrannical, more arbitrary, more
dangerous, more allied to blood and murder. more
full of every form of mischief, more productive of
every sort of misery, than has been exercised by
any civilized government, vith one exception, in
modern times.
Congress' having, by the Constitution, a power
to raise armies, the Secretary contends that no
restraint is to be imposed on the exercise of thia
power, except such as is expressly stated in the
written letter of the instrument. In other words,
that Congress may execute its powers by any
means it chooses, unless such means are par
ticularly prohibited. But the general nature and
object of the Constitution impose, as rigid re
striction on the means of exercising power as
could be done by the most explicit injunctions. It
is the first principle applicable to such a case,
that no construction shall be admitted which im
pairs the general nature and character of the
instrument. A free Constitution or government
is to be construed upon free principles, and every
branch of its provisions is to receive such an
interpretation as is full of its general spirit. No
means are to be taken by implication, which would
strike us absurdly if expressed. And what would
have been more absurd, than for this constitution
to have said, that to secure the great blessings of
liberty it gave to government an uncontrolled
power of military conscription? Yet such is the
absurdity which it is made to exhibit under the
commentary of the Secretary of 'War.
A compulsory loan is not to be compared, in
point of enormity, with a compulsory military
service.
If the Secretary of War has proved the right
of Congress to enact a law enforcing a draft of
men out of the Militia into the regular Army, he
will at any time be able to prove quite as clearly
that Congress has power to create a Dictator.
The arguments which have helped him in one
case, will equally help him in the other. The
same reason of a supposed or possible state
necessity which is urged now, may be repeated
then with equal pertinency and effect.
Sir, in granting Congress the power to raise
armies, the People nave granted all the means
which ar° ordinary and usual, and which are con
sistent with the liberties and security of the
People themselves, and they have granted no
others. To talk about the unlimited power of the
government over the means to execute its au
thority, is to hold a language which is true only
in regard to despotisms. The tyranny of Arbi
trary Government consists as much in* its means
as in its ends, and it. would be a ridiculous and
absurd constitution which should be less cautious
to guard against abuses in the one case than in
the other. All the means and instruments which
a free government exercises, as well as the ends
and objects it pursues, are to partake of its own
essential character, and to be conformed to its
genuine spirit. A free government, with arbitrary
means to administer it, is a contradiction: a free
government, without adequate provisions for per
sonal security, is an absurdity: a free government
with an un< ontrolled power of military conscrip
tion is a solecism, at once the most ridiculous and
abominable that ever entered into the head of
man.
Who shall describe to you the horror which
your orders of Conscription shall create in the
once happy villages of this country? Who shall
describe the anguish and distress which they will
spread over those hills and valleys, where men
have, heretofore, been accustomed to labor and
to rest, in security and happiness. Anticipate the
scene, Sir, when the class shall assemble to stand
it.s draft and to throw the dice for blood. What a
Tiiursday, May 24, 191 ?<