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 THE LIBRARY 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 TJilliam Anderson Scott 
 Collection 
 
, 
 
 OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Columbia, S. C., Feb. 10/A, 1863. 
 HON. JOHN PERKINS: 
 
 My dear sir: The joint resolutions submitted by you on the 
 13th of January, for the consideration of Congress, "in commendation 
 of certain citizens of Louisiana, and other States within the lines of 
 the enemy, in refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the United 
 States/' have recently passed under my eye. The impulse cannot 
 be resisted of addressing to you some reflections which have long 
 been maturing in my own mind, and which you are at liberty to 
 use in any way you may think conducive to the public good. 
 
 Permit me in the outset, to express my approval not only of 
 the matter, but also of the form of your resolutions. It appears to 
 be eminently proper that Congress should signalize the fidelity of 
 our fellow citizens who have withstood all appeals to self-interest 
 and to fear, in their country's darkest trial. But I specially 
 commend the moderation which pretermits in the resolutions, any 
 mention of those, who have been caught in the snares of the enemy, 
 and duped into concessions which have filled the land with sorrow. 
 
 So long as these unfortunate parties are debarred the privilege 
 of a hearing, the Government, from paternal lenity, if not from a 
 sense of rigid justice, may well feel itself restrained from open 
 and direct censure. From the language of your paper, the world 
 is not to know that a solitary individual is excepted from the 
 encomium pronounced by Congress. Those familiar with the facts, 
 cannot fail, indeed, to perceive a discrimination in favor of some, 
 which, by implication, contains a censure of others. This, however, 
 is unavoidable, and those who may writhe beneath the torture of 
 this implied censure will yet be compelled to admire the generosity 
 which forbore to stigmatize them in the legislative records of the 
 country. 
 
 Nevertheless, from some quarter, and precisely at this juncture, 
 a protest should be uttered against the weakness of those who 
 have succumbed beneath the tyranny of Gen. Butler, and sworn 
 allegiance to the Government of the United States. 
 
 It may not be too late to rouse those who are involved in this 
 
dire calamity, to retrieve their lost position, and to wipe off the 
 dishonor which must else cleave to thorn forever. Or failing in 
 this, it is still a duty to attempt the arrest of principles which I 
 fear are secretly sapping' the foundations in Louisiana, of public 
 morality, and destroying the basis on which rest, at least, the 
 permanence and security of all government. I undertake, therefore, 
 in this letter, to present the reverse of your medal, and to assume 
 the painful responsibility of giving utterance to strictures, from 
 which, as a legislator, you have wisely refrained. 
 
 Should apology be needed for 'this obtrusion of private 
 criticism, let it be found in the relation I have long sustained as a 
 religious teacher of the people of Louisiana, and my common par- 
 ticipation as a citizen in any reproach which may tarnish the fame 
 of the gallant State. 
 
 We should clearly distinguish between two classes of our fellow 
 citizens, who have submitted to the oath exacted by Gen. Butler. 
 The first class, inconsiderable both as to numbers and influence, 
 embraces those who were never true to our cause. Some of them 
 from misconceptions of the relation between the States and Gene- 
 ral Government, secretly denied the right of secession, and simply 
 drifted with the popular current, which they deemed it idle to 
 oppose. Of course, upon the first appearance of the enemy they 
 ranged themselves, without solicitation, upon the side of the 
 Union, to which they were borne by their political affinities. Others, 
 destitute of all principle, alike political and moral, having no eye 
 but to present gain, and only intent upon opening the obstructed 
 channels of trade, chose to make interest with those who had 
 blockaded their ports. Both the.se are simply traitors to the South. 
 They went out from us because they were not of us, and it is to 
 be hoped, upon the recovery of our territory, they will find it con- 
 venient to leave with their new allies aud purge our society of 
 their presence. The other class embraces those who in their secret 
 hearts are still loyal to the Confederacy, and have taken the oath 
 under constraint, regarding it as one of the necessities of war. 
 The universal compassion felt for their distress has almost extin- 
 guished censure of the act, while the conviction entertained of 
 their substantial loyalty retains them within the embrace of our 
 affections. The general integrity of many in this class, affords a 
 guarantee that conscience has been snared through the sophistry 
 of the understanding; and that by subtlety of argument, they have 
 
5 
 
 been persuaded into the policy, that the oath could be taken 
 "salva fide." In adjudicating this question, I cannot but think 
 some considerations were overlooked, which should have formed 
 an important element in the decision to be rendered, and if enter- 
 tained, must have wholly changed its complexion. 
 
 Before canvassing, however, the grounds upon which this 
 oath-taking has been justified, that we may make due allowance 
 for human infirmity, let us look at the peculiar pressure under which 
 these parties were put: In the first place, the demand made upon 
 them was a novelty; arid we all know how men flounder in uncer- 
 tainty without acknowledged precedence for their guidance. I have 
 in vain searched the records of modern history for its parallel. The 
 famous contest between Philip of Spain, and the States of Holland, 
 presents some features of resemblance to the conflict now raging 
 between the North and ourselves. The Spanish power then, .as the 
 North does now, branded the attempts of a brave people to name 
 their own constitution and laws as flagrant rebellion; and conducted 
 a long and bitter war, to reduce, as they alleged, a revolted province 
 to allegiance. But in no instance did the cruel Alva, fighting tool 
 though he was of a treacherous and bigoted despot, force a 
 reluctant oath upon the cities which he conquered. They were 
 held, indeed, by military garrisons until such time as the state of 
 which they formed a constituent part, should in like manner be 
 reduced. No attempt was made to cancel their ties of allegiance, 
 but through the constituted authorities to whom that allegiance 
 had been sworn. It has been reserved to our time, and to our foes, 
 to invent the shameful and cowardly device of dealing with single 
 communities, and even with individual persons, as if they were 
 independent of higher authority. A magnanimous enemy might 
 have held New Orleans by right of capture, but would have 
 refrained from the imposition of oaths until the State of Louisiana 
 had been reduced to submission, and as an organic whole, had 
 carried over all the parts of which it is composed. But the refined 
 despotism of the Lincoln Government adopts the policy of grinding 
 individuals between conflicting jurisdictions, as between the upper 
 and nether mill stone. Conscious of its impotence to subjugate, 
 it has been satisfied with disgracing those whom it cannot conquer, 
 and with demoralizing those over whom it cannot rule. The 
 satanic boast of Gen. Butler has been in part achieved, of holding 
 up, what he is pleased to term a perjured people, to the derision 
 
of mankind. I shall recur to this thought in another connection, 
 and present it as a reason why the oath should have been sternly 
 refused. It is mentioned here only to show how our people were 
 surprised in the historic novelty of their position, and how they 
 were subjected to a rigor of treatment unknown to the worst 
 despotisms of the past. In the next place, the craft by which this 
 nefarious design was accomplished, does full credit to the subtlety 
 and malice in which it was conceived. 
 
 Butler's tyranny opened with a prohibition of more than three 
 persons speaking together on the streets, under the penalty of being 
 dispersed as a mob; the effect of which was to insulate individuals, 
 and to prevent the interchange of views necessary to concert of 
 action. A system of espionage most comprehensive in its sweep, 
 was moreover immediately instituted, so that you could not look 
 your fellow in the face, lest the flash of the eye should betray to 
 the paid informer the secret resentment of the soul. Even slaves 
 are suborned, under promises of personal freedom, to invent charges 
 against the master which subjected him to examination and search, 
 accompanied with brutal and insulting threats. With the poison 
 of suspicion thus universally diffused, many yielded to external 
 pressure, as single handed and alone they were" either bullied or 
 cajoled into a form of submission denied by the heart as often as 
 it was sworn by the lips. But the catalogue of wrongs is only 
 begun. Placing his mailed hands next upon the separate guilds 
 into which society is classified, and resorting at once to the arts of 
 special pleading, and to the display of irresponsible power, he 
 extorted union concessions from each of these; yielded in the 
 vain hope that this would be the end of their humiliation, but which, 
 though small, were sufficient to break the tone of a spirited people. 
 "C'est le premier pas que coute." When the veil of delusion was rent 
 by the imposition of further tests, they found themselves upon an 
 inclined plane which had no resting place but in abject submission. 
 Nothing was left but the consistency in error, and the melancholy 
 confession at the last: "Pas a pas on va bien loin" 'Thus craftily 
 were our unhappy fellow citizens decoyed into the oath from which, 
 at the beginning, they recoiled with the indignant .exclamation of 
 Hazeel, "What! is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great 
 wrong!" 
 
 The darkest feature, however, in 'this oppression is found in 
 the undefined terrors which hang like a portentous cloud over this 
 
devoted peuple terrors too of such a nature as gloomily to impress 
 the imagination and freeze the soul with horror. The infamous 
 order No. 28 was not, as usually interpreted, the outburst of a 
 brutal and savage nature in a moment of resentment, but part of 
 a premeditated system to strike universal terror into the hearts of 
 the community. The blow was threatened just where the affections 
 are most sensitive; and the violation of the sweetest sanctities of 
 home was set forth as the penalty of resistance to the tyrant's will. 
 Though directed in form against the women of Louisiana, its 
 evident design was to reach, through them, their intractable 
 guardians of the other sex. The husband and the father were 
 called to look upon their imprisoned household, and then to survey 
 the hounds of the desrjot by whom they were held at bay. A 
 licentious soldiery drawn from the scum of northern society, the 
 agrarian element always to be found in the mixed population of 
 a large city, and the drunken helots just emancipated from bondage, 
 and tricked out in the toggery of their new associates ; these were 
 held in the leash, to be let loose to sack and plunder at their will, 
 and to gratify the worst passions of the human heart. Doubtless, 
 these fears were to a large extent imaginary, for they were never 
 realized by those who openly defied the tyrant's power, who seemed 
 rather to amuse himself with playing upon the fears of men, and 
 imposing tests of their moral courage, and with mocking those 
 who faltered and trembled under his frown. But though imaginary, 
 they were nevertheless effective. Our people appeared to feel as 
 though the earth was heaving beneath their tread, and that in a 
 single moment they might go down together, through the parted 
 crust. These nameless, formless horrors presented by a morbid 
 fancy, together with a desire to preserve their property from con- 
 fiscation, combined to crush the spirit of a people as noble as any 
 beneath the sun. My heart, sir, alternately burns with anger, and 
 bleeds in sympathy, as I contemplate these accumulated wrongs, 
 which are recited with no design to apologize for the oath, but to 
 show that the censure levelled against it proceeds from no insensi- 
 bility to the distress by which it was coerced. The same tenderness 
 which weeps over the sorrows of our friends, pleads with them to 
 retrieve the still heavier disaster of a dishonored name. 
 
 It is not to be presumed that all were conducted to this fatal 
 step by precisely the same line of argument; accordingly, we find it 
 justified upon two grounds, which are not only distinct from, but even 
 
8 
 
 exclusive of each other, as the attention happened to be fixed upon 
 one or the other hour of a common deliverance. The difficulty was, 
 how to take the oath without surrendering on the one hand a 
 conscious loyalty to the Confederacy, and retaining on the other 
 hand, something like integrity of conscience. The path was too 
 * narrow to allow the slightest deflection, without plunging into one 
 or the other of these two quicksands. Some determined to preserve 
 their interest in the country which- they, loved, even at the expense 
 of truth. Others to maintain veracity at the hazard of clouding 
 with suspicion their civil fidelity. Let us examine both expedients 
 in detail: 
 
 It is alleged then, by the first of these two classes, that being 
 without liberty of choice, in the hands of an unscrupulous and 
 barbarous enemy, it was lawful to swear an oath with the lips, to 
 which the heart gave no response. That no faith was to be placed 
 in an oath exacted under compulsion, and accordingly, it might be 
 taken with a mental reservation to break it so soon as an oppor- 
 tunity should be afforded of doing it with safety. The case is 
 considered parallel with an oath of secrcsy exacted by a foot-pad 
 with his stiletto at our throat, which, it is alleged, might be given 
 with the firm but secret purpose of bringing the outlaw to justice, 
 as soon as we should be within the protection of society and law. 
 I believe I have here stated the argument in its utmost strength. 
 The oath, they say, was taken, but under circumstances which 
 gave the imposer no confidence in the fidelity of the party sworn, 
 and absolved the latter from all obligation to abide by his pledge. 
 It were far better to let this oath pass without defense, than to 
 justify it by a doctrine so desolating in its consequences. The 
 apparent, or even the real, apostacy of many thousands from our 
 ranks cannot inflict so severe or lasting a shock upon the Confede- 
 racy as the promulgation of principles like these. We are willing, 
 in a superabundant charity, to forgive the weakness of those who 
 have fallen, under the cruel oppressions which I have already 
 described. But we cannot permit that weakness to be extolled 
 into a virtue, nor to be extenuated upon grounds subversive alike 
 of morality and religion. What is an oath, but an appeal to the 
 omniscient God, as a witness to the truth whereof we affirm? In 
 this consists the essence of the sin of perjury: that "the" juror 
 has the thought of God and religion upon his mind at the time, so 
 that, if he offends, it is in defiance of the sanctions of religion, 
 
and implies a disbelief or contempt of God's knowledge, power 
 and justice.'' Since human society cannot exist without mutual 
 confidence, and this in turn depends upon truth, the oath has been 
 ordained by 'God for the attainment of both these ends. To guard 
 as far as possible against the temptations to falsehood, the reli- 
 gious sentiment in man is brought into exercise, and the conscience 
 is surrounded by all those motives which can be drawn from a 
 consideration of God and his retributive justice. The juror (the 
 term being taken in its etymological and not in its technical sense) 
 is cited immediately before the divine tribunal, that in the view of 
 Him who searches all hearts, and is pledged to punish fraud as an 
 offense against His authority, he may have the strongest induce- 
 ment to utter the truth. This, of course, is founded upon the idea 
 that'human government itself is not only an ordinance of God, but 
 a dim reflection of the divine. We could not, indeed, be subjects 
 of human law, if we were not antecedently under the jurisdiction 
 of the Supreme Ruler of the world. Hence, human government is 
 not only divinely ordained, but its existence and preservation 
 depend upon those religious convictions which are recognized in 
 the divine law. With all the temporal sanctions by which it strives 
 to enforce obedience, its control over human conduct is not effectual 
 until it invokes the aid of conscience, and thus places a police in 
 every human breast. Its strongest protection is found in the oath 
 which takes hold of the righteous nature in man. It can rise no 
 higher than this : It summons us into the presence 'of the Infinite 
 God, and sways his awful sceptre .Dver the soul, as it compels our 
 testimony in sight of those tremendous judgments which fence 
 around the prerogatives of that august Being. Hence, moralists 
 have not hesitated to describe the oath as a two-fold covenant 
 made both with society and God ; and in this latter aspect, it rises 
 into the solemnity of an act of worship. Thus -it is that "men 
 swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation, is to them an 
 end of all strife." The pledge of veracity is deposited with the 
 Judge of all the earth, and upon its forfeiture are suspended the 
 fearful retributions of eternity. If this does not bind the conscience, 
 nothing can bind, and society is without a guarantee for that 
 truthfulness upon which human intercourse must at last hinge. 
 
 To triflle, therefore, with the sanctity of the oath, is to strike a 
 fatal blow both at religion and at law. It destroys religion by 
 
10 
 
 weakening the sense of God's presence in the soul, and by 
 debauching the very faculty to which all her sanctions are addressed. 
 " He that cometh unto God must believe that He is, and that He is 
 the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." It also undermines 
 the foundations upon which civil government is built, which can- 
 not lose its hold upon the conscience without destroying the very 
 source of its authority. No increase of civil penalties can 
 compensate for the loss of this moral control. For besides the 
 fact that every addition to the criminal legislation of a country 
 only increases the friction and wears out the machinery of govern- 
 ment, there are many offences which cannot be reached by it, and 
 in any case, it is but a collateral security which it affords. 
 
 I freely confess my alarm at the ventilation of a doctrine 
 which thus summarily dispenses with the obligation of the oath. 
 If it be not arrested, the most complete demoralization of our 
 people must ensue, which will render all government impossible 
 save that of brute physical force. The prevalence, indeed, of this 
 corrupt sentiment is the remote cause of all the troubles in which 
 we are now involved. Covenants and treaties solemnly instituted 
 by our forefathers were no longer interpreted in their simple and 
 obvious meaning. Ingenuity itself was put to the torture to 
 devise expositions which should eviscerate them of the principles 
 which they were ordained to conserve, until at length our modern 
 alchemists found in the doctrine of "a higher law" the mighty 
 solvent which destroyed the power of oaths arid covenants at once. 
 Men swore with due solemnity ^o uphold the Constitution and the 
 laws, but with a mental reservation to uproot those very institu- 
 tions which that Constitution had been framed to defend ; until 
 the universal perfidy of the North suddenly burst every ligature 
 by which the States were held together in the Federal Union. 
 
 Are our people willing to walk in the footsteps of our foes ? 
 And is it a suitable preparation for a new historic career, to inocu- 
 late this young nation with the virus of that perfidy, which has 
 already destroyed before our eyes one of the moat colossal 
 governments upon earth? Nor is it difficult to trace the practical 
 operations of this secret poison as it diffuses itself through the 
 body politic, If the juror may swear no longer u in animum impo- 
 nentis," but according to a socret intention of his own, then ho 
 alone can judge how far he is bound. The magistrate may, by his 
 
11 
 
 sweeping dispensation, absolve himself from the guilt of malfeas- 
 ance in office ; the juryman upon the panel and the witness upon 
 the stand may combine to defeat all the ends of justice, through 
 an oath which opens and shuts conveniently at the bidding of 
 caprice, until, in the total overthrow of morality, society itself 
 shall crumble through universal distrust. The application may 
 be made to the very parties whose plea we are now considering. 
 They swear allegiance to the government at Washington, raising 
 the band to Heaven in attestation of their sincerity ; yet, at the 
 same moment, they require us to believe their affirmation of loyalty 
 to the government at Richmond. Which of these opposing declara- 
 tions is to be received ? Plainly, this cannot be determined 
 without weighing both in the balance of probabilities ; but as 
 far as their naked word is 'concerned, how can it challenge confi- 
 dence, when, even under the awful sanction of an oath, it confesses 
 to wilful falsehood ? Can it ever be lawful for men to place them- 
 selves in that condition of disability where their simple word can 
 never be accepted as the gauge of truth ? This might be enforced 
 by adverting to the peril incurred by subscription of the Lincoln 
 oath. Being registered citizens of the United States, suppose it 
 had been required of them to bear arms against their brethren of 
 the South, who are now battling for the restoration of that birth- 
 right which, in an evil hour, they have bartered away ? And what 
 hinders it but the conviction in the tyrant's mind that they cannot 
 be trusted with the very duties which their oath of fealty implies ? 
 A conviction, by the way, which involves him in the still greater 
 disgrace of compelling an oath in which he does not confide, but 
 which also shows the guilt of subscribing it, since this alone 
 saves from the most fearful crime of lifting the hand against the 
 mother that bore them. 
 
 I come now to the second and entirely distinct line of defense 
 raised by some who have been entangled in the snare, among 
 whom are many far too conspicuous to assume a position known 
 to be false, or to subscribe to an oath with anything approaching 
 to mental reservation. I cannot refrain, in passing, from the re- 
 mark, that upon all questions of honor and principle, the first 
 thought of an honest and pure mind is the safest ; for in this the 
 instinct of manliness and truth usually finds expression. The 
 
12 
 
 Second thoughts which prudence is prone to suggest, are generally 
 the inlets of temptation, and turn out to be subterfuges for the 
 evasion of duty. It is alleged, then, by this second class, that the 
 control and protection of the Confederacy being, throughout the 
 fortunes of war, wholly suspended, upon the principle of submitting 
 to the powers that be, they took the oath to the only authority 
 which de facto existed, and which made this the only condition 
 upon which its protection could be enjoyed, They took it moreover 
 in good faith, intending to keep it so loi g as the Federal rule 
 should continue, but in the hope that this rule would, in due sea- 
 son, terminate, and restore them to the civil connections from 
 which their hearts were never estranged. This position is im- 
 pregnable so far as a de facto submission to military force is con- 
 cerned. Neither the laws of war nor those of reason oblige men 
 to continue a factious and unavailing opposition against over- 
 whelming and crushing force ; and no blame could attach to them 
 for simply yielding to the rule of warfare, which connects with a 
 surrender the cessation of active hostility. But it is an immense 
 leap from this to the making of a solemn covenant, transforming 
 into a government of law, what was before only a government of 
 force ; for the oath of allegiance transferred with the citizenship 
 all its moral obligations, and invested the authority of Butler 
 with the sanctions of a recognized and legal government. 
 
 Had these parties approached the Federal commander with 
 language substantially this : l *ns a defenceless people, wholly 
 within your power, we submit without resistance to military force, 
 and without conceding this submission to be obedience," no censure 
 could attach to them, and they would then be embraced within the 
 terms of the eulogy conveyed in the resolutions you have presented 
 before Congress. If it be said that allegiance was the only con- 
 dition upon which protection could be afforded to property and 
 life, my answer is that the hazafc] should have been incurred, along 
 with thousands who chose to be registered as "Alien Enemies" to 
 the United States, rather than forfeit their loyalty to the South. 
 Actual submission to military supremacy, was all that could be 
 demanded of them by the rules of civilized warfare ; and it was 
 their privilege to stand upon the assertion of this right, before the 
 nations of the rarih. Notwithstanding- the ghostly terrors by 
 
13 
 
 which they were surrounded, the Government at Washington 
 dared not, under the eyes of mankind, to exact more. A few vic- 
 tims mig'ht perhaps be selected from the mass, upon whom to vent 
 disappointment and spleen, and a brief persistence in tyranny 
 might have tested the endurance of the community ; but a little 
 firmness would have carried them over the trial, and won for the 
 sufferers an immortality of gloi^. In proof of which I adduce the 
 fact, that wherever else in the Confederacy the enemy has been 
 stoutly defied with all his bluster, he has been compelled to yield 
 a reluctant acquiescence in the moral code established by civilized 
 nations for the regulation of warfare. 
 
 But suppose the reverse of this, and a long dispensation of 
 suffering to ensue, are we to avow the doctrine that the cherished 
 convictions of the soul must be surrendered, upon the plea of 
 coercive necessity ? I will put the argument in a form likely to 
 be appreciated by the Christian men who have taken refuge under 
 this plea. Should the days of religious persecution again appear, 
 would it be right, in order to save property and life, to abjure 
 Christianity, and to offer sacrifices upon the altar of Jupiter, as 
 was done in the second century ? The frailt}'' of human nature 
 might yield now, as it did then, under the fiery ordeal, and know- 
 ing that we are men, we might weep tears of compassion, nay, 
 almost of forgiveness, over an apostacy thus extorted. But what 
 judgment would we pronounce upon a cool argument framed to 
 justify this defection ? If we could be brought to pardon the one, 
 we could not tolerate the other. 
 
 Yet, after all, why is not the plea of coercive necessity as con- 
 clusive in this case as in the one we are now considering ? I freely 
 admit the disparity between the two, in that one relates to the 
 duties which we owe to God, while the other respects the duties 
 we owe to man. But I see not why the obligation may not be as 
 imperative to abide by our principles in the one sphere as well as 
 in the other why duty to our country may not be as paramount 
 in the earthly kingdom, as duty to our God is in the spiritual and 
 heavenly. I have been educated, sir, in a school which regards 
 the obligations we owe to country as only next to those which we 
 owe to God ! Our country ! wir'at does not the term embrace ? 
 
 It means our homes, and the cheerful firesides, and the 
 
14 
 
 prattling babes that gather round the paternal knee. It means 
 sweet neighborhood and friendship, and the tender chariites which 
 solace life from the cradle to the tomb ; it means the memories of 
 our youth, as they grow fresh again in the twilight of age ; it 
 means ancestry, and the proud recollection of honored sires, who 
 bequeathed their blessing with the names we inherit ; it means 
 our altars and sanctuaries, whois* we have worshipped God, and 
 held communion with His saints on earth ; it means the graves 
 where our loved ones are lying, consecrated by the tears of a bitter 
 parting when they were laid out of our sight forever ; it means 
 all that the human heart can remember and love, all the associations 
 which spread their secret network over human life ; all the scattered 
 leaves, on which are written the sorrows and the joys through 
 which man travels onward to his rest above. Our country and our 
 God ! The two blend evermore in the Christian patriot's thought, 
 and shall it be said there are no martyrdoms for the one, when the 
 gibbet and the flame are welcomed for the other ? 
 
 True heroism may be displayed not less in endurance, than in 
 action ; and our fellow-citizens in Louisiana enjoyed a distinguished 
 opportunity of rendering service to the Confederacy quite as 
 valuable as that of the army in the field. Can any good reason be 
 assigned why they should not run the hazard of confiscation, of 
 imprisonment and of death, equally with those who encountered 
 the risk of capture, of wounds, and of death upon the field of 
 slaughter ? If these were justiffScl in their apostacy by the perils 
 by which they were surrounded, why may not these be justified 
 on precisely the same grounds for declining the gage of battle 
 in the presence of the foe? In short, the plea under discussion seems 
 to resolve patriotism into an affair of simple contract. The ina- 
 bility of the Confederacy for the time being to protect them, 
 is viewed as dissolving * the bond between them and it and like 
 traders in the market, they bargain with another party, purchasing 
 protection with loyalty. Upon this principle, patriotism is a word 
 without meaning, and allegiance becomes the sport of accident 
 and chance. I have not the heart to pursue the discussion under 
 this aspect ; I cannot believe that our friends have deliberately 
 brought themselves to rest in tr*s bleak and desolate conclusion. 
 By the instinct which recoils from it, let them detect the sophistry 
 
15 
 
 of the whole plea from which SF is deduced, by the rigor of a re- 
 morseless logic. I close this long letter, by suggesting two con- 
 siderations, which alone should -have deterred these jurors from 
 subscribing the oath in question, In the first place, its imposition 
 was in contravention of a right, which ought never to have been 
 conceded. I have already stated that the acknowledged laws of 
 warfare required the subjugation of the whole, before tests of 
 loyalty should be exactel from^he constituent parts. Why was 
 not the attempt to establish aTraitrary precedent, full of mischief 
 to the world at large met by a manly protest and with an appeal 
 to the verdict of mankind ? Duty not to their country alone, but 
 to the race of man, forbade the concession of such a claim. In 
 the second place, the distinctive ground on which this war is waged 
 by the North is, that the South has embarked in a wicked rebellion, 
 upon crushing which, the very IHfe .of the nation depends. It totally 
 ignores the authority of sovereign States intervening between the 
 citizen and the central power ; and simply for this reason, an oath 
 of allegiance is exacted from individuals. A monstrous despotism 
 has grown up. which swallows all the States alive, and treats their 
 jurisdiction as no more than thatjjf a municipal corporation. Are 
 the jurors in Louisiana williiiwlp lend their names to a doctrine 
 which has already converted the freest government on earth into 
 the most reckless and corrupt despotism upon which the sun ever 
 shone ? And are they prepared to brand with the infamy of re- 
 bellion, that sacred cause for which their own brothers, and their 
 own sons are periling life and limb upon many a field of battle ? 
 Yet the oath they have sworn, sanctions this foul calumny against 
 the heroes and the martyrs of their own blood. Could my voice, 
 sir, be heard in Louisiana, I would say to those who once listened 
 to me with affection and respect, cancel this dreadful oath, before 
 it is too late ; retrieve your position by a bold and manly retraction.. 
 Before this war rushes on to its close, say to the Federal authorities, 
 " we have recovered our manhqpd. and withdraw the allegiance, 
 unjustly and cruelly extorted at our hands." If the dangers of 
 such an act be great, remember that in the greatness of these wil] 
 consist the amplitude of the reparation you make to an injured 
 cause. There is no alternative but that of a dishonored name, 
 cleaving to you and to your children as long as history shall last. 
 It is now almost a century strfce " the first American Revolution, 
 
and men to this day point the luTVi' and say f "there goes a man 
 through whose veins the blood of a tory flows." Choose the 
 dungeon and the scaffold a thou^ud times, rather than transmit 
 the taint of' this leprosy to your * 
 the nerve for this, if the oath can 
 
 uring. But if you have riot 
 >t be retrieved, let it go before 
 
 the country without a word of d.-fvise. Do not, in the attempt at 
 justification, withdraw the under^itmings of social order, and in- 
 
 volve both government and n 
 act stand forth a confession of 
 
 uo'i in a common ruin. Let the 
 infirmity ; and perhaps like 
 
 the Recording Angel, whom Stu'ue describes, your country may 
 give its censure, and then drop 1 iO tear of compassion which will 
 blot it out forever. 
 
 I remain, dear sir, 
 
 Most respectfully jud truly yours, 
 
 B. M. PALMER.