promulgated as embodying the doctrines of a new
age--an age in which the rights of man should at last be maintained as
against the rights of royalty and privilege. It is, therefore, the
soundest rule of interpretation to refer the ambiguities of the organic
law to the declaration that preceded and introduced it and made it
possible. And so interpreting, will any one say that slavery is
compatible with the principles of the Declaration of Independence?

In support, moreover, of the view here taken, may be cited the opinion
of many of our statesmen, as expressed on the question of admitting new
States into the Union: as, for instance, when Missouri applied for
admission with a slave constitution. Nor is it competent to offset this
with the opinion of such statesmen as have advocated the doctrine of the
Virginia Resolutions of State sovereignty; for they notoriously
disregarded the paramount supremacy of the Constitution. The
conscientious doubt of others as to making the exclusion of slavery a
condition precedent to admission into the Union, proves not the
incorrectness of this position, but strengthens it, by showing that only
a controlling love of the Union caused the doubt, which originated in a
policy that would not even seem to do injustice to any State.

But whatever may be true as to the opinions of the fathers and early
statesmen of the republic; whatever may be true as to the precise
meaning of the term 'republican form of government' in the Constitution;
surely, in the light of our rebellion, there cannot longer be a doubt as
to the inherent antagonism of slavery to the principles of republican
government. The Southern Confederacy sprang into existence as an
oligarchy of slaveholders, willing (if need be) to live under a military
despotism (as is the fact to-day, and will be hereafter if the world
should witness the dire misfortune of its success), rather than submit
to the searching scrutiny of republican ideas, with freedom of speech
and press and person. And so it is that we recur to the simple fact of
the Southern Confederacy for the vindication of the proposed amendment
in all its bearings, finding in that fact the full warrant and
justification of it.

5. There is still another reason for the proposed amendment, that may be
urged with great force, on the ground of expediency; namely, that it
would settle the whole question of reconstruction in a manner and with
an effect that could not be gainsaid. For,