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Unfortunately, also, even the ablest of the Southern Union men were so tainted with the heretical doctrine of States-Rights, which taught the "paramount allegiance" of the citizen to the State, that their otherwise powerful appeals for the preservation of the Union were almost invariably handicapped by the added protestation that in any event and however they might deplore the necessity they would, if need be, go with their State, against their own convictions of duty to the National Union.
The change in Massachusetts and Connecticut from a defiant particularism and an uncompromising free-trade policy, during the short years of 1815 to 1830, to a positive nationalism and emphatic protective program parallels exactly the change at the same time in South Carolina from nationalism and a protective tariff to a strict states-rights and an unbending free-trade system.
This, however, did not satisfy the Republican or States-rights party; a large majority of whom always insisted upon its unconstitutionality.
"The States-Rights men should present in that convention their demands for a decision, and they will obtain an indorsement of their demands, or a denial of these demands. If indorsed, we shall have greater hope of triumph within the Union.
"A states-rights document," Susan called this decision and she scored it as inconsistent with the policies of a Republican administration which, through the Civil War amendments, had established federal control over the rights and privileges of citizens.
A contest between Congress and the executive was clearly imminent when the assassin's bullet removed the patient and conciliatory Lincoln. Lincoln's determination to leave control over their restoration as far as possible in the hands of the states was in line with Johnson's Democratic, states-rights theories.
Brady was a Democrat of the States-Rights school, yet he always maintained that it was the duty of the citizen to render the promptest obedience to the General Government. At the outset of the late war he gave his support to the Government in its war measures, though he did not separate himself from the Democratic party.
In the North and West, at least, the old States-rights formulas never carried a real vitality beyond the war of 1812. Men still spoke of "sovereign States," and prided themselves on the difference between the "voluntary union of States" and the effete despotisms of Europe; but the ghost of the Hartford Convention had laid very many more dangerous ghosts in the section in which it had appeared.
It will be sufficient to say, that as a States-Rights man, believing in the sovereignty and reserved powers of the States, I will conform my actions to the action of North Carolina, whatever that may be.
If the States-Rights men keep out of that convention, that decision must inevitably be against the South, and that either in direct favor of the Douglas doctrine, or by the indorsement of the Cincinnati platform, under which Douglas claims shelter for his principles."
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