Volume 8 — STATE SUICIDE AND EMANCIPATION.

Letter to a Public Meeting at the Cooper Institute, New York, March 6, 1862.

This meeting was in pursuance of the following call.

“All citizens of New York who rejoice in the downfall of treason, and are in favor of sustaining the National Government in the most energetic exercise of all the rights and powers of war, in the prosecution of its purpose to destroy the cause of such treason, and to recover the territories heretofore occupied by certain States recently overturned and wholly subverted as members of the Federal Union by a hostile and traitorous power calling itself ‘The Confederate States,’ and all who concur in the conviction that said traitorous power, instead of achieving the destruction of the Nation, has thereby only destroyed Slavery, and that it is now the sacred duty of the National Government, as the only means of securing permanent peace, national unity and well-being, to provide against its restoration, and to establish in said territories Democratic Institutions founded upon the principles of the Great Declaration, ‘That all Men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,’ are requested to meet at the Cooper Institute, on the sixth day of March, at eight o’clock, p. m., to express to the President and Congress their views as to the measures proper to be adopted in the existing emergency.”

On the day of this great meeting the President communicated to Congress his Message on Compensated Emancipation, which was his first public step in the transcendent cause.

The President of the meeting was Hon. James A. Hamilton, the venerable son of Alexander Hamilton, who agreed with Mr. Sumner in regard to the death of Slavery and the power of Congress. There was also a distinguished list of Vice-Presidents, with George Bancroft at the head. There were letters from Preston King, Senator of New York, Henry Wilson, Senator of Massachusetts, David Wilmot, Senator of Pennsylvania, George W. Julian, Representative in Congress from Indiana, and from Mr. Sumner. Among the orators were the President of the meeting, Mr. Martin F. Conway, Representative in Congress from Kansas, and Carl Schurz, who had recently returned from his Spanish mission.

The report in the New York Tribune has the caption, “The Suicide of Slavery.—New York for a Free Republic.”

Mr. Sumner’s letter was a vindication of his Resolutions.

Senate Chamber, March 5, 1862.

DEAR SIR,—Never, except when suffering from positive disability, have I allowed myself to be absent from my seat in the Senate for a single day, and now, amid the extraordinary duties of the present session, I am more than ever bound by this inflexible rule. If anything could tempt me to depart from it, I should find apology in the invitation with which you honor me.

The meeting called under such distinguished auspices is needed at this moment as a rally to those true principles by which alone this great Rebellion can be permanently suppressed. I should be truly happy to take part in it, and try to impart something of the strength of my own convictions.

It is only necessary that people should see things as they are, and they will easily see how to deal with them. This is the obvious condition of practical action. Now, beyond all question, Slavery is the great original malefactor and omnipresent traitor,—more deadly to the Union than all Rebel leaders, civil or military. Therefore, as you are in earnest against the Rebellion, you will not spare Slavery. And happily the way is plain, so that it cannot be mistaken.

Look throughout the whole Rebel territory, and you do not find a single officer legally qualified to discharge any function of Government. By the Constitution of the United States, “members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution.” But these functionaries have all renounced allegiance to the United States, and taken a new oath to support the Rebel Government, so that at this moment they cannot be recognized as constitutionally empowered to act. But a State is known only through its functionaries, constitutionally empowered to act; and since all these have ceased to exist, the State, with its unnatural institutions, has ceased to exist also, or it exists only in the lifeless parchments by which its Government was originally established. The action of these functionaries was impotent to transfer its territory to a pretended confederation. To destroy the State was all they could do.

In the absence of any legitimate authority in this territory, Congress must assume the necessary jurisdiction. Not to do so is abandonment of urgent duty. Some propose a temporary military government; others propose a temporary provisional government, with limited powers. These all concede to Congress jurisdiction over the territory; nor can such jurisdiction be justly questioned. But I cannot doubt that it is better to follow the authoritative precedents of our history, and proceed as Congress is accustomed to proceed in the organization and government of other territories. This is simple.

And as to Slavery, if there be any doubt that it died constitutionally and legally with the State from which it drew its malignant breath, it might be prohibited by the enactment of that same Jeffersonian ordinance which originally established Freedom throughout the great Northwest.

Accept my thanks for the honor you have done me, and believe me, dear Sir,

Faithfully yours,

Charles Sumner.

Among the resolutions adopted at the meeting was one calling for the overthrow of Slavery,—“because the supreme jurisdiction of the National Constitution over all the territories now occupied by the Rebel States must be held to be exclusive of the traitorous Rebel authorities therein established, by virtue of which alone Slavery now therein exists, and that wherever the Constitution has exclusive jurisdiction it ordains Liberty and not Slavery.”

These were forwarded to Mr. Sumner by one of the secretaries, with the following letter.

“I hand herewith a copy of Resolutions adopted, amid the wildest enthusiasm, and without a breath of dissent, by an assembly of some three thousand of our prominent citizens, last evening, at the Cooper Institute Mass Meeting. No such audience has been convened in this city (except only the Union Square meeting of last April) since your address in July, 1860. Nor has so demonstrative a gathering been seen here since that time. I say this to give you an idea of the character and popularity of the affair. I hand the Resolutions to you for personal presentation to the President (and to Congress, if your views are not opposed to such a course), preferring to secure their reaching the President through you as a medium of communication.”

Mr. Sumner had pleasure in presenting them to the President.