The American Crisis. No. 4 · Isaac Leeser Digital Repository · Legacy Projects from Judaica DH at Penn Libraries

Title

The American Crisis. No. 4

Author

M. R. M.

Location(s)

Philadelphia

Format

Letter. 8 page(s) on 8 sheet(s).

Type

Letter

Language(s)

English

Physical Characteristics

Unlined Paper

Manuscript

Is Part Of

http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q125097480

content

The American Crisis. No. 4
Concluding Reflections.
The Talmud gives us strong peculiar oriental expressions touching the importance of civil government and the obligation resting on every man to support the government of the coun-try, when it says, “Just as the fish which are in the sea, every one greater than its companion devours its comparison, so the sons of man, if there were not the fear of the government, every one greater than his companion would devour his companion: and this is what R. Chanania, dep=uty of priests, has taught, saying, Pray for the peace of the government, because if there were not the fear of the government, every man would devour his neighbor alive.”
If we would fairly examine how the Federal Government of the U. S. fulfills the highest purposes of civil government, what are the rights which it guaranties to all its citizens, how much it deserves the support of all citizens and how prayer ought to be made for it, we must take the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution together as two inseparable parts of the one political structure. The Declaration is the foundation, it clears the ground, and the Constitution is the frame, the edifice, that has been erected over this ground. These two documents must be placed together, the Declaration below and the Constitution close above it, to obtain

the true picture of the U. S. government.
Here now is the people's government. This must be the first impression as we survey the Declaration and Constitution, that the Federal government has been called into existence by the voice of the people. It was not the State Legislatures that made this government, but the people of all the States made it. Each State government rests on the shoulders of the people; and it is just as true that the Federal government rests on the shoulders of the people so that it can say to the most humble citizen, I am your government, depending on your vote just as much as your own State government is yours. It has been asserted that when the Americans cut themselves loose from the British government they traveled back on a path which had never been so trodden before in all the Christian Era; they did not stop at the Colonial government or the State government but they traveled back to the people themselves as the original source of all power in government. It was the act of the people to dissolve the bonds which had connected them with the mother country. The principles of the Declaration are that government is organized for the people to secure them the rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that when it fails to serve the people they have the right to dissolve it; that laws derive their authority from the consent of the governed; and that as the people make the government in their own name and for their own rights they hold

it accountable to themselves. The Constitution utters its first words in the name of the people and in the first person: it does not begin, We the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Va. but its beginning is “We, the People of the United States”—for such and such purposes—“do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” It leaves organized power to one side and travels back to natural right: it leaves State government to one side and travels back to the people as the original source of all government whether State or Federal.
All this being true, still it is not the government of a people who are atheists. The people most distinctly acknowledge their own responsibility to God. In the act of demolishing their government they acknowledge themselves responsible to God and not to man for this act. They speak of those unalienable rights with which their Creator has endowed them. They place themselves on that platform of of independence to which they say “the laws of nature and of nature's God” give them a title. When they declare themselves separated from all the authority of the British King they appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of their cause. The radical theory of the American government is, The government responsible to the people, and the people responsible to God.
It is a government consisting of the three

essential departments, the legislative, the executive and the judicial: each of these departments has its own separate place, yet like the prismatic colours of the rainbow they flow together so that no line can perfectly separate the edges. In the legislative department the lower house is elected for two years, the upper house or Senate for six years, the Executive is elected for an intermediate period, four years; the Judges are appointed for life. Each department reaches over into the others. The Judiciary can declare laws of Congress unconstitutional and void, the legislature possesses and occasionally exercises both judicial and executive powers, and the Executive has at all times a qualified negative upon legislation and a judicial power of remission.
It is a government which deserves to be considered one of the grandest institutions for the peace of the world. Here were thirty-four States, and, if Secession is not acknowledged, here are still thirty-four States, thirty-four Republics, each one delivering up its sword to the one Federal central government, and this general government does not spring from the States as such, but from the people of the States. No one of these States can make war with another or with a foreign nation, or can enter into any treaty among themselves or any treaty with foreigners, without breaking the Federal constitution. What a diminution of the chances of war! What a security for the peace of America!

It is a government one of the elements of the strength of which is the religious sacredness of the oath. It is not without religion inasmuch as it is not without the oath. The Senators and Representations, and the members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, must be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Federal Constitution. It binds the consciences of all these functionaries to loyalty. It admits occasionally an affirmation in the place of an oath, so that Quakers may not be excluded. But while it thus religiously binds by the oath, it allows no religious test ever to be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. It has no particular favors for either Jew or Catholic or Protestant or Deist. It gives to the professors of different religions an equal chance to spread spiritual blessings over the world.
The principles which underlie its relation to slavery appear to be these; first, that slavery is not a sin in itself, and, secondly, that it is decidedly better that slavery be not recognized in the Federal Constitution as a beneficent institution. The treatment of slavery in the Constitution embraces the following terms?; first, in the slave States the population which is the basis of representation in Congress must embrace three fifths of the slaves; this slave ele

ment in the population has at times given as many as twenty-five men their seats in Congress; secondly, the importation of slaves into slave-holding States was not to be prohibited prior to the year 1808; and, thirdly, slaves fleeing from one State to another, are not in any State free from the claim of their masters. The Constitution thus favors the Slave States and gives no countenance to the idea that to hold a slave is essentially a sin, but at the same time it is very careful to avoid every mention of slavery or of slave. The framers of the Constitution evidently felt that slavery could not be a good word to have in the Constitution. We must find slavery in one place immediately after the mention of Indians, in the language, “three fifths of all other persons;” or we must find it in another place, in the language, “The migration or importation of such persons, as any of the States, now existing, may think proper to admit;” or we must find it in another place, in the language, “No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due”, or we can find it in any place in all the length and breadth of the Constitution; and in each of these places the Constitution uses the term persons, and is most careful never to introduce the term slaves.

The framers of the Constitution were most careful that all the recognition of slavery in the Constitution should be a mere tacit recognition. It is a Constitution which most quietly secures slave States their rights, and most cordially gives universal freedom every chance in other States: it is the only Constitution for the union and peaceful development of both slave and free States. With one arm it checks the extreme of Anti-slavery, with the other arm the extreme of Pro-slavery, and it chooses its own ground between.
And now after all that has just been said on the Federal Government as being the people's government, called into existence by the people and for the people and accountable to the people; as a government acknowledging the immediate responsibility of the people to God; for their governments as a grand adjustment of the three powers the legislative the executive and the judicial; as a stupendous republican wheel with thirty-four republics within it, each of these republics being a wheel moving freely within the great wheel; as one great rainbow of peace spanning the heavens from ocean to ocean from the Atlantic to the Pacific; as giving every man his own vine and fig-tree where he with his neighbors may worship God as conscience dictates and discuss their rights with perfect liberty; and as a safe bond of perpetual union between both slave and free States, favoring on the one hand the right of all men to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and securing to slavery on the other hand its right to life and

its representation in Congress as long as any State wants it to live; we have only one thing to say in addition. Let the hand that would destroy this union first give good evidence that it is able to construct a better Union! Let the hand that would dare to cut down the flag of the stars and stripes, be sure that there is some better flag ready to ascend!
M. R. M.

Identifier

LSTCAT_item74