What Are We Fighting For? [pp. 73-77]

THE OLD GUARD,
A IONTHLY JOURNAL, DEVOTED TO THE PRINCIPLES OF 1776 AND 1787.
VOLUME II.-APRIL, 1864.-N$. IV.
WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?
TuHE Government of the United States
was made by white men, for them selves and their posterity, as declared
in the preamble to the Federal Consti tutionr, and had any member of the Con vention that made that Government
proposed a resolution including negroes in the citizenship, or as part and
parcel of the political society of the
United States, it would have been
voted down unanimously. This is a
truth that no one will venture to dispute, for at that time "slavery," or domestic subordination of negroes, was
common to all the States, save Massachusetts, and it is more than probable
that every member of the Convention
held "slaves." The labor of negroes
was not very profitable, and a foolish
notion prevailed that the relation or
status of the negro was at fault, or was
an evil; but this confounding of very
different things did not affect the great
fact of a white citizenship, or that the
Federal Union then created rested on
a white basis, and included only white
men. Such, too, had been the practice of the Government from Washington to Buchanan, and no negro had
been recognized as a citizen, or in
eluded in our political society; indeed
it may be said that no white man who
was disaffected to the Fedbral Union.
or who proposed to revolutionize it
and include negroes, had ever held of fice under it.
Finally, a few years since, the Su preme Court, called to act on this mat ter, defined and decided the status of
the negro within Federal jurisdiction,
and the duties and relations of citizenship, with clear and absolute certainty. An absurd decision of an English
Court had declared that "slavery"the domestic subordination of negroes
-was the result or creation of local
or municipal law, and in the absence
of this law, the negro was entitled to
the status of the white man-a decision that in this country would "free"
all the negroes, for, from the Columbia
River to Cape IIorn, there is no local
law establishing "slavery."
American lawyers, however, are apt
to follow English decisions, and this
absurd dictum of Lord Mansfield has
been regarded with respect by the
lawyers of the land, until Chief Justice Taney exploded it forever. A
citizen of Missouri, going over intQ,