not a solitary man on that side of the chamber came over here, even to extend the civilities and courtesies of life; nor did any of us go over there. Here are two hostile bodies on this floor, and it is but a type of the feeling that exists in the two sections. We are enemies as much as if we were hostile states. I believe the northern people hate the south worse than ever the English people hated France; and I can tell my brethren over there that there is no love lost on the part of the south." From this picture, the fact is carefully eliminated that the southern senators represented, not the southern people, but its slaveholding class; but, even barring this defect, the picture is well worthy of study. With such a tightly strained tension of international relations between the governments of the two sections, the real feeling of the people was a matter of but secondary importance, and there was but little need of open threats of secession in case of Lincoln's election. Such threats were undoubtedly made, but unofficially; and the question of secession played no formal part in the campaign of 1860. The whole congress of 1859-61 was inundated by threats of secession in the event of the election of Seward as president in 1860, the object seeming to be to commit the southern people to that policy beyond the possibility of an honorable withdrawal. It has been asserted that the disruption of the democratic party, in 1860, was contrived by the secessionist class for the purpose of insuring Lincoln's election, and thus obtaining an excuse for secession; but such a design is very doubtful. (See DEMOCRATIC PARTY, V.) The more natural explanation of their course is in their hope that the electoral vote would be so divided up as to give no candidate a majority; that the choice of the president would thus go to the house of representatives; and that they would there be able to obtain the election of either Breckinridge or Bell. That their hopes had some foundation, may be seen from the facts that the opposition to Lincoln, after his election, still controlled both houses of congress; and that the republicans, throughout the whole rebellion, were indebted for their majority in congress to the voluntary absence of the southern delegations. — As it resulted, however, Lincoln obtained the electoral votes of all the northern and western states, with the exception of a part of New Jersey's vote, and was elected beyond cavil. What was to be the next step in the political game? Were the southern states to go on debating about co-operation, without taking any practical steps toward secession, until the popular impression caused by Lincoln's election had worn off, and his administration was found to be nothing out of the ordinary? In that case, the idea of secession might as well be laid permanently on the shelf, with other worn-out political stage thunder. The southern politician class felt, that, rather than give up what they had grown accustomed to consider the only life-preserver of their section, or rather of slavery, they would prefer to go over the cataract with it. Nevertheless, there remained that dread of the practical attempt to secede by a

| single state, which was always the surest internal condemnation of the whole theory of secession. Gov. Gist, of South Carolina, had already sent a circular letter to the other southern governors, Oct. 5, 1860, asking their advice and plans. His state, he said, would secede with any other state, if Lincoln should be elected; or she would secede alone, if she should receive assurances that any other state would follow her; "otherwise, it is doubtful." Not one governor answered that his state would secede alone. Florida, Alabama and Mississippi would secede with any other state; North Carolina and Louisiana would probably not secede at all; Georgia would wait for some overt act. At first sight, these answers seem discouraging; but there was hope in them. If three states were only waiting for a leader, South Carolina would take the plunge, though the gallantry of the act is considerably diminished by this preliminary probing for assurances of support. A movement begun even by four states, would probably swing the other gulf states; any attempt at “ COercion" by the federal government would bring the border states; and the confederacy of the slave states would then be complete. - The South Carolina legislature, which chose presidential electors until 1868, was in session to choose them, Nov. 6, 1860, and remained in session until Lincoln's election was assured. It then called a state convention, made appropriations for the purchase of arms, and adjourned. The convention met at Columbia, Dec. 17, adjourned to Charleston, on account of an epidemic in Columbia, and there unanimously passed the following ordinance, Dec. 20: “We, the people of the state of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the ordinance adopted by us in convention, on the 23d day of May, in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the constitution of the United States was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the general assembly of this state ratifying amendments of the said constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved." On the 24th a declaration of causes for secession was adopted. It recapitulated the arguments in favor of state sovereignty and the right of secession, and assigned as a cause for immediate secession the general hostility of the northern states to the south, as shown in their union under a sectional party organization, and in their refusal to execute the fugitive slave laws (see PERSONAL LIBERTY Laws); and it concluded with an imitation of the closing paragraph of the declaration of independence. On the same day the governor by proclamation announced the fact of secession. Having adopted ordinances to enforce the existing laws of the United States for the present under state authority, to transfer to the legislature the powers hitherto exercised by the federal government, to make the state ready for war, and to appoint commissioners to form, if possible, a permanent government for

others in the convention wished to give the federal government an absolute veto on the legislation of state governments, to remove the necessity | for any forcible " coercion." Either of these plans would have been hazardous. Madison him self said that "the use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound." This expression, justified as it is by common sense, has often been quoted as a condemnation of "coercion." But it must be noted that no such “use of force against a state" was ever authorized by the constitution. That instrument gave an indirect and far safer power of coercion, 1, in the case of states, by extending the power of the federal judiciary to state laws involving the construction of the constitution (see JUDICIARY, I.); and 2, by giving the power to compel individuals to obey the federal government in any conflict with the state. Nevertheless the opinion was strangely prevalent in 1860-61, that, because congress had no power to “coerce” a state, secession could not be interfered with. The simplest argument for this view can be found in President Buchanan's message of Dec. 3, 1860. It was the main encouragement to secession by a single state; it was announced again and again by the border states during the winter of 1860-61; and the consciousness of its general existence threw the Lincoln administration at first altogether upon the defensive. (See BORDER STATES, and the names of their states in detail.) It was not until the popular uprising in the north had taught the administration what states it could rely upon, that the federal government was encouraged to begin the work of coercion by exercising its power to execute the laws and suppress insurrection by means of the armed militia. From that time coercion took the form of repression of individual resistance, the federal government ignoring the action of the state as entirely ultra vires. This is the form which coercion took in its first operation in our history, the "force bill" of 1833 (see NULLIFICATION), and which it must always take. If a state should see fit to form a treaty with a foreign power, the federal government would ignore such action, and would compel individuals to ignore it also, by the use of the courts in cases of mild resistance, and of the army and navy in case of resistance by force. This process of "coercion" could hardly be better stated than in a pamphlet cited below, by Gov. H. A. Wise, of Virginia, published in 1859, though aimed at a very different object. He supposes the state of Vermont gradually coming to forcible resistance against the execution of the fugitive slave laws, her state convention making the arrest of a slave felony, and her magistrates and officers resisting the federal writs of habeas corpus by force. "The president must then command a sufficient force of the army or navy or militia of the United States to overcome the rebellion and treason; and

that would not be all. The jailor and judges and governor of Vermont, and all persons guilty with them of rebellion against the faithful execution of the laws of the United States, would have to be arrested and tried according to law, or, if their resistance was serious enough to require it, to be slain in battle of rebellion against the laws of the Union. And I am sure, that, if civil war should thus be brought on to battle and carnage, every patriot and lover of the laws would march to the order of coercing a state, to compel her authorities and her people to obey the supreme laws, to lay down their weapons, and to renounce the state laws and ordinances commanding their rebellion.". Voluntary secession had really spent its force in carrying Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas with it; but it relied on carrying the other slave states with it on the plea of resistance to coercion, when President Lincoln should call for troops to enforce the laws. In two of them it succeeded fairly: Arkansas passed an ordinance of secession May 6, and North Carolina May 20. (See those states.) In Virginia and Tennessee, another plan had to be adopted. The convention, while nominally submitting the ordinance of secession to popular vote, first formed "military leagues” with the confederate states; confederate troops at once swarmed over their territory; and under their auspices the popular vote became a farce. In this way Virginia's ordinance was ratified May 23, and Tennessee's June 18. Here the current stopped: in Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri much the same plan was tried as in Texas, but it was a failure. (See those states.) In Delaware alone of the slave states, secession seems to have had no advocates. The United States supreme court has finally decided that the ordinances of secession were entirely void, and that a state government steps out of its sphere when it undertakes to organize armed resistance to the federal government. Reconstruction by congress does not seem to have been founded on the notion that the ordinances of secession had so far taken the states out of the Union as to require their readmission, but on the theory that the state governments had either been vacated by the fault of the individual citizens of the state, or had been seized upon by usurpers; that in either case the reconstruction must be under the authority of the federal government; and that individuals who had been guilty of treason were estopped from objecting to the methods which congress might see fit to employ. (See RECONSTRUCTION, I.) — Finally, the suppression of the doctrine of secession by force has established the political existence of the nation, as distinguished even from all the states. It has done so, not by the facts that all the seceding states, in their new constitutions, expressly disavowed any right of secession, and declared the primary allegiance of the individual citizen to be due to the United States; but by the higher fact that the nation has plainly expressed and successfully enforced its will in the matter. For the future, all men are bound to take notice that it is the nation

that wills that there should be state governments, and not states which will that there should be a national government. The ultimate results of secession in this way no man can foresee. (See NATION, III.)—The theory of the right of secession will be found in Centz's Republic of Republics; Fowler's Sectional Controversy; 1 Calhoun's Works, 300; 1 Tucker's Blackstone, Appendix, 187; 1 Stephens' War Between the States, 495; Rawle's Commentaries on the Constitution, 302; Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 1861, 614 (Davis' Message of April 29). The study of Mr. Fisher's theory of "constitutional secession," by amicable agreement between the federal government and a seceding state, will also be found interesting and profitable: see Fisher's Trial of the Constitution, 160, 167. (See STATE SOVEREIGNTY, III.) See also (I.) authorities under NEW ENGLAND UNION, and ALBANY PLAN OF UNION; 5 Elliot's Debates, 276, 278; 1 Benton's Debates of Congress, 172; 4 Jefferson's Works, edit. 1853, 111; 1 von Holst's United States, 196; authorities under KENTUCKY RESOLUTIONS; 3 Jefferson's Works, edit. 1830, 394; 2 Schouler's United States, 192; Quincy's Life of Quincy, 206, 210; Adams' Documents Relating to New England Federalism (see, under index, Northern Confederacy"); 4 Upham's Life of Pickering, 53; 3 Sparks' Writings of Gouverneur Morris, 319; 1 Story's Life of Story, 182; 8 Niles' Weekly Register, 262; Carey's Olive Branch, 7th edit., 416, 449; Hunt's Life of Livingston, 346; authorities under CONVENTION, HARTFORD, and NULLIFICATION; (II.) 1 Greeley's American Conflict, 359; May's Anti-Slavery Conflict, 320; 2 Benton's Thirty Years' View, 613, 698, 733; Cox's Eight Years in Congress, 188; 16 Benton's Debates of Congress, 403, 415 (Calhoun's and Webster's speeches, March 4 and 7, 1850); 2 Olmsted's Cotton Kingdom, 158; (III.) Nicolay's Outbreak of Rebellion; 1 Draper's Civil War, 438, and 2 ibid.; Buchanan's Administration, 108; Greeley's Political Text Book of 1860, 170; McPherson's Political History of the Rebellion, 2; 2 Stephens' War Between The States, 312; ibid., 671 (South Carolina declaration of 1861); 2 Jefferson's Works, edit. 1830, 43, 203; H. A. Wise's Territorial Government, 103; Botts' Great Rebellion, 205, 209; Brownson's American Republic, 277; Story's Commentaries on the Constitution, edit. 1833, § 359; Mulford's The Nation, 334; Goodwin's Natural History of Secession; Hurd's Theory of Our National Existence.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

of the confederation there was but one house, and each state had an equal vote in it. (See CONFEDERATION, ARTICLES OF.) There was some effort in the convention of 1787 to continue the arrangement of a single house, but it found no influential support, except from Franklin and the "Jersey plan," and was abandoned. The greatest difficul ty, which seems very slight now, but was almost insuperable in the beginning of the convention's work, was to find a different basis of existence for the two houses. It was comparatively easy to fix the membership of the house of representatives by fair proportions of the whole population of the country. (See APPORTIONMENT.) But it was then very difficult to hit on any radically different basis for the senate, which should be satisfactory to all concerned. There was no different class, as in Great Britain, from which to select a house of lords (see that title); and the formation of a smaller house, on the same basis as the other, would have ended in the establishment of two houses, both controlled by precisely the same ideas, and the loss of all the advantages of two houses. — The same difficulty has attended the formation of state senates, and has been met there by the division of the state into different territorial units for the two houses. (See ASSEMBLY.) The convention of 1787 hit upon a simple and natural basis for the senate, and formed a body as efficient in practice as it is apt to strike the imagination of an observer favorably. The senate is certainly the most dignified and impressive part of the American constitutional system, unless we except the supreme court. But this brilliant success of the convention must not blind us to the fact that the convention itself gained it blindly, or was forced into it; that it was the product of no single clear design or desire; and that it was due to the gradual and unwilling compromise of conflicting purposes. (See CONVENTION OF 1787; COMPROMISES, I.) If the scheme of the senate, as we admire it in its final form, had been offered to the convention in the first place, it would almost certainly not have received a single vote. — The Virginia plan, when first introduced, provided that the senate, without as yet giving it a name or defining its powers or term of office, should be chosen by the house of representatives out of a proper number of persons nominated by the state legislatures. Pinckney's plan proposed that it should be chosen by the house from residents of the various states to serve for three years; that the senators from New England, the middle and the southern states,

on successive years; and that the senate should have sole power to declare war, make treaties, appoint foreign ministers and judges of the supreme court, and decide territorial disputes between the states. Hamilton's plan proposed that senators should be chosen by electors chosen by the people of each state in election districts; that they should serve during good behavior; and that the senate should have the power to declare war and approve treaties and appointments. The New Jersey plan