DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. BY JOEL PARKER. " CAMBRIDGE: WELCH, BIGELOW, AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. MEMORANDUM. The substance of the first part of the following Tract was contained in a Lecture delivered to the students in the Law School of Harvard College, by the author, as Royall Professor of Law in that Institution, on the 25th of June, 1861. Subsequent events have led to an enlargement of it, and to its publication in the January number of the North American Review. It is now issued as a separate Article, a single paragraph being omitted because it was little more than a repetition of what was expressed elsewhere, and some Notes being added in an Appendix. CAMBRIDGE, January 1,1862. THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. Ir may be stated as a result of our examination of the alleged Right of Secession, that the people of the several States composing the United States, under the Constitution, -whether that instrument be regarded as an organic law, or as a compact,-form an entire Nation, for the purposes for which they are thus united; while under their State organizations they exercise many powers of sovereignty, of a political and municipal character, some of which are subordinate to the powers of the General government, and others independent of that government because they do not fall within the scope of the purposes for which it was organized, and all "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This nation has, for the accomplishment of the objects of its existence, all the attributes of sovereignty. The Constitutionproviding that itself shall be the supreme law of the land, and binding upon all the judges of the several States, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwith standing; requiring all the legislators, and executive and judicial officers of the United States, and of the several States, to take an oath or affirmation to support it; and defining what shall constitute treason against the United States-shows that, so far as the objects and purposes of the national government extend, an allegiance is due to that government from all the citizens within its limits, paramount to and exclusive of any allegiance due to the several States; because the allegiance to the State arises under the State organization and constitution, which, to the extent covered by the Constitution of the United States, are subordinate to the authority of the United States, under that Constitution. There can be, therefore, no right on the part of any State, or of the people of any State, through or by any State authority or action, or by any popular vote, to terminate this allegiance to the United States. The Union under the Constitution being perpetual and indissoluble, it is to be subverted only by the exercise of the right of revolution, for sufficient cause. And this right of revolution is a personal, and not a State right, and of an imperfect character; for an attempt at revolution is legally, in its inception, and until it is attended with success, neither more nor less than rebellion against the existing government, which of course has at least an equal right to resist the attempt by all the forces at its command. It follows, therefore, that those persons who have been active in the attempted secession of the several States have, as respects the United States, no authority derived from any State organization; nor any exemption, through the color of any exercise of State authority, from the ordinary consequences which attach to an insurrection or rebellion. No convention of the people of a State could confer any authority to resist the government of the United States, in the full exercise of its functions, in all of its departments, legislative, executive, and judicial; and still less could any act of a State legislature give any color of legal authority for such resistance, whether such legislature assumed to act under the State constitution as it existed before the attempted secession, or under the authority of a convention which, having declared the secession, assumed, to confer new legislative powers, or to adopt a new constitution. All persons who have placed themselves in hostility to the United States by acts of war, are of course responsible personally for those acts, as rebels and traitors. The State which they assume to represent is not responsible, because the State, as a State, did not, and could not, in any mode, give authority to commit acts of rebellion and treason. There is no war between any State, admitted into the Union, and the United States; because the State itself the legal, constitutionally organized State-is not in rebellion; and there is therefore no authority to confiscate the property of any State, as State property, for any such State offence. The persons who have seized upon the State organization for the purposes of rebellion, and who wield an apparent State authority for such purposes, who have, moreover, created a confederation under this usurpation, and style themselves governors and senators, generals and captains, president and secretaries, - are in no manner shielded by their titles or offices from the punishment due to their acts of treason, which are, in fact, in more senses than one, committed on private account. This serves to show that the proclamation of President Lincoln, treating the seizure of forts, arsenals, and dock-yards, and the bombardment of Fort Sumter, as acts of insurrection, and requiring those concerned in them to retire peaceably to their respective abodes, was not only in precise accordance with the requisition of the statute of 1795, but was founded upon the only correct legal view of the existing state of things which called it forth. The acts of hostility against the government had, perhaps, assumed such formidable proportions as to be appropriately designated as war; but it was a war of persons owing allegiance to the general or national government, and not a war of governments. Those acts were not more than acts of treason because millions were engaged in them, and they were not less than acts of treason because of the assumed titles, military and civil, or of the assumption of |