Future Political Conundrums

History in Education

History in Education

The following is excerpted from a 1999 Southern Partisan interview with acclaimed educator, author and historian Dr. Clyde N. Wilson, former Chair of the University of South Carolina Department of History. There he was editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun, volumes 10 through 28 which drew praise from the Journal of American History; was presented with the Bostick Medal for Contributions to South Carolina Letters; the John Randolph Club Award for Lifetime Achievement; and was the founding Dean of the Stephen D. Lee Institute.

The question posed was: “Do you think the ordinary Southerner should be concerned or care about what happens in the field of education?”

“Yes, of course, because the educational system is supposed to belong to the people. It doesn’t. It belongs to the experts. But it should belong to the people, and the people have a right to hope that the university will be a part of the support of their culture. That is why South Carolina College was founded.

But I am inclined more and more to think that the entire public education system is more and more irrelevant. I look at what the historians are doing. They are writing about things that are so narrow or so esoteric that nobody cares. They are like a bureaucracy, divorced from the real world. Higher education is going that way, therefore becoming more irrelevant all the time. And in the future, more of the really good education is going to take place outside of public institutions.

I hope people will begin developing institutions – different kinds of institutions. This why we have begun the League of the South Institute for Southern History and Culture. We’ve had a number of very successful summer schools and are starting a new program called Hedge Schools. This was how the Irish preserved their language and culture while under occupation as the British were trying to wipe out their language and customs. Speaking anything but English was forbidden, so you learned Gaelic under the hedge, or in a barn somewhere to keep up your history and traditions. It was a great idea.”

When asked what he considered to be the common traits of great American historians, Dr. Wilson’s answered with the following:

“Imagination and fairness. Like a judge, you have to be able to see that history is complicated and that there are many different things going on. A historian should understand this and not judge the past so readily as it seems so common now, such as judging people of the past as evil because they didn’t do things as we do today. And fairness, as facts don’t speak for themselves and any historical account is an arrangement of particular facts. To make some sort of meaning requires imagination. Understanding what is important and portraying it in a imaginative way. An example is Shelby Foote, who was able to absorb all the historical material, but render it in a way that presents a readable, but true story.”

It is notable that Foote was not an academically trained historian yet achieved his high stature and fame through hard work and exhaustive reading, esp. Tacitus, Thucydides, Gibbon and Proust.

(Southern Partisan, 2^nd Quarter 1999, pp. 47-48)

Truman’s War Bypasses Congress

Lincoln established the unconstitutional precedent of a president waging war without congressional approval. The following is drawn from a chapter entitled “A Costly Mistake: War Without Congressional Approval.” As a note of clarification, Sen. Robert Taft was not an “isolationist” but an anti-interventionist who advocated avoidance of European or Asian wars, concentrating instead on solving its domestic problems. He advocated a strong American military as adequate protection and opposed Truman’s unconstitutional actions.

Truman’s War Bypasses Congress

“After Sen. Scott Lucas of Illinois had read to the Senate on June 27 Truman’s initial statement committing US air and naval forces and ordering the fleet to neutralize Formosa, Senator James P. Kem, Republican of Missouri, rose: “I notice that in the President’s statement he says ‘I have ordered the fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa.’ Does that mean he has arrogated to himself the authority of declaring war?”

“A state of emergency exists,” Lucas said, ignoring the fact that Truman had not legally declared one. Based on the action of the United Nations Security Council,” Lucas explained, the President of the United States has ordered action. It is a demonstration of our keeping the faith.”

Republican Senator John Bricker of Ohio interposed, “Am I correct in saying that the President’s action was taken as a result of the cease-fire order issued by the Security Council? Lucas said that Bricker was correct as far as action in Korea was concerned. Watkins declared that Truman had taken a step leading toward war.

“The Congress is now in session,” the senator said, “and unless there is power in the United Nations to order our forces into action of this kind which may result in a major world clash, then I think we should have been informed by the President in a message to Congress today. As I recall, we were told time and time again when we were considering the [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] that nothing would take us into war under that pact without action by Congress. The President could not do it . . . Now, according to the action taken, by the mere order and request of the United Nations, our troops can be sent into a fighting war without Congress saying ‘yes or no.’

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides that Congress shall have the power to declare war.

The big gun went off in the Senate on June 28. In a crackling speech, Robert Taft, “an old-time isolationist” to Truman – alleged:

“a complete usurpation by the President of authority to use the armed forces of the country. His action has brought about a de facto war with the government of northern Korea. He has brought that war about without consulting Congress and without congressional approval. We have a situation in which in a far-distant part of the world one nation has attacked another, and if the President can intervene in Korea without congressional approval, he can go to war in Malaya or Indonesia or Iran or South America.” With but the slightest detour on a map Taft might have included Vietnam.

“Mr. President”, a reporter asked, “everybody is asking in this country, are we or are we not at war?”

“We are not at war,” Truman replied and later added that “the members of the United Nations are going to the relief of the Korean Republic to suppress a bandit raid . . .”

“Mr. President, would it be correct, against your explanation, to call this a police action under the United Nations?”

Truman responded, “Yes, that’s exactly what it amounts to . . .”

Again, Truman had let a reporter put words in his mouth that were later to be held against him. He did not initiate, nor volunteer, the phrase “police action” any more than he had “red herring,” but the result was to be the same as if he had.”

(Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949-1953. Robert J. Donovan. W.W. Norton & Company, 1982, pp. 219-223)

State’s Rights and Civil Rights

“States’ Rights are easy enough to define. The Tenth Amendment does it succinctly: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people [of the States]”

Civil rights should be no harder. In fact, however – thanks to extravagant and shameless misuse by people who ought to know better – it is one of the most badly understood concepts in modern political usage. Civil rights [are] frequently used synonymously with “human rights” – or with “natural rights.”

As often as not, it is simply a name for describing an activity that someone deems politically or socially desirable. A sociologist writes a paper proposing to abolish some inequity, or a politician makes a speech about it – and, behold, a new “civil right” is born! The Supreme Court has displayed the same creative powers.

A civil right is a right that is asserted and is therefore protected by some valid law. It may be asserted by the common law, or by local or federal statutes, or by the Constitution; but unless a right is incorporated in the law, it is not a civil right and is not enforceable by the instruments of the civil law.

There may be some rights – “natural,” “human,” or otherwise – that should also by civil rights. But if we desire to give such rights the protection of the law, our recourse is to a legislature or to the amendment procedures of the Constitution. We must not look to politicians, or sociologists – or the courts – to correct the deficiency.

[The] federal Constitution does not require the States to maintain racially mixed schools. Despite the recent holding of the Supreme Court, I am firmly convinced – not only that integrated schools are not required – but that the Constitution does not permit any interference whatsoever by the federal government in the field of education.

It may be wise or expedient for Negro children to attend the same schools as white children, but they do not have a civil right to do so which is protected by the federal Constitution, or which is enforceable by the federal government. The intentions of the founding fathers in this matter are beyond any doubt: no powers regarding education were given to the federal government.”

(The Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater, Victor Publishing Company, 1960, pp. 31-34)

A New Swarm of Carpetbaggers

In the early 1940s the Republican party in Virginia, and nationally, was largely moribund. But due to the increasing communist-infiltration of FDR’s administration and organized labor, Republican power increased as did open fissures in the Democratic party. In the mid-1940s, FDR courted support from Sidney Hillman’s communist-dominated Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) which delivered Democratic votes.

A Virginia Democrat openly-hostile to organized labor and who denounced public employee unions was William Tuck, who served as governor 1946 -1950. When Virginia Electric & Power employees threatened a strike in early 1946, Tuck responded with a state of emergency, mobilized State militia and threatened to induct 1600 of the utility’s employees. The following year he secured passage of a law outlawing compulsory union membership and establishing Virginia as a “right to work” State. Tuck also voiced support for Virginia’s defiance of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board ruling of 1954, fearing that his State’s schools would become like the District of Columbia’s “blackboard jungles” of juvenile crime, drugs and pregnancies.

A New Swarm of Carpetbaggers

“Virginia’s Eight District Congressman Howard W. Smith, comprising Alexandria, Arlington and Falls Church, assailed the CIO’s Political Action Committee as a “new swarm of carpetbaggers who are invading the Southern States [and] are impregnated with communism.”

Like most of his Southern colleagues, Virginia Senator Robert Byrd initially greeted Truman’s ascension to the Presidency in 1945 with favor. After all, Truman was the son of a Confederate soldier, and his Missouri accent fueled the feeling among Southerners that one of their own finally was in charge. In fact, Truman owed his spot on the national ticket in 1944 to Southern Democrat leaders who had insisted that Roosevelt jettison liberal Vice President Henry Wallace as the price for continued support. Though Byrd and his colleagues expected Truman’s leadership to move their party back to center, they did not get it.

Instead, Truman presented Congress with “civil rights” initiatives and home rule for the District of Columbia, which received a sharp and swift denunciation from Virginia’s senior senator. “Taken in their entirety,” declared Byrd, “[the Truman civil rights proposals] constitute a mass invasion of State’s rights never before even suggested, much less recommended, by any previous President.”

At the Democratic National Convention, Truman was re-nominated, and Virginia’s votes went in protest to conservative Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. A few days later, Southern Democrats met in Birmingham, Alabama, and under a “State’s Rights Party” banner nominated their own ticket headed by then-Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Though Virginia’s Democratic leadership did not attend the event in Birmingham, Governor Tuck unmistakably signaled his preference for the South Carolina governor and introduced him at a Richmond rally.

The black-owned Norfolk Journal and Guide aired its distrust of Truman. “When and if it becomes expedient,” the newspaper commented, “Mr. Truman could just as ruthlessly trade away the interests of the Negro for the support of some other group which he felt more important.” Though Truman probably garnered a slim majority of the black vote in the State, many black Virginians backed Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey, whose moderate record as New York’s governor appealed to them.”

(The Dynamic Dominion: Realignment and Rise of Virginia’s Republican Party Since 1945. Frank B. Atkinson. George Mason University Press. 1992, pp. 20-22; 24-25)

Why Annihilate State Rights?

Marylander Montgomery Blair’s loyalty to the President and ambition for another post beyond Postmaster General remained undimmed. He unsuccessfully sought Mr. Lincoln’s nomination as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. On December 6, 1864, Blair wrote Lincoln his views on the progress of reconstruction and Radical Republican policies.

Why Annihilate State Rights?

“In compliance with your request I commit to writing the views to which I referred in a recent conversation. The gradual suppression of the rebellion renders necessary now a persistence in the policy announced in your amnesty proclamation, with such additional provisions as experiment may have suggested – or its repudiation and the adoption of some other policy. For my part I recognize the plan already initiated by you as consonant with the constitution – well calculated to accomplish the end proposed, and as tending to win over the affections of a portion of the disaffected citizens to unite with all the loyal to aid the work of the military power wielded by you. You have repeatedly driven out the rebel power, enabling the loyal people of the State to restore and reinvigorate their constitutional authority without the intervention of Congress.

The military force of the United States has expelled rebel armies and their allies within the South. Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana are embracing the amnesty proclamation, stepping into the Union under its provisions. They come recognizing the validity of your proclamation – slavery being discarded and so it is manifest, that just as soon as the military power of the Rebellion is driven out, the reign of the US Constitution will resume. The whole country hails your fundamental proclamation of freedom made universal by the vote of three-fourths of the States confirming it by constitutional amendment to secure forever the freedom of the slaves.

What then is the motive for annihilating State rights? It is certainly unnecessary to maintain Mr. Sumner’s “doctrine of State suicide” “State forfeiture State abdication” – the doctrine “that the whole rebel region is tabula rasa, or a clean slate, where Congress under the Constitution may write laws” in order to secure the extirpation of slavery.

Yet Mr. Sumner seems to confine his purpose of reducing States to territories to the object of bringing slavery within the grasp of Congress, and argues, “Slavery is impossible within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government.” For many years I’ve had this conviction and have constantly maintained it. I am glad to believe that it is implied in the Chicago platform. Mr. Chase is known to accept it sincerely. Then if slavery in the Territories is unconstitutional and under the exclusive jurisdiction of the national government, then slavery would be impossible there.

It follows that if slavery is no longer in question, why are the States to be disfranchised and denied their municipal right? What then is the purpose of Mr. Chase’s idea of disfranchising the States, turning them into territories and giving to Congress the power of making their local laws. This would be depriving States of their former unquestioned right of regulating suffrage. The States have heretofore made laws denying the suffrage to underage citizens, females, Negroes, Indians, unnaturalized aliens and others incapacitated by moral or physical defects.

If the States resume their places in the Union under your proclamation and the loyal votes of the people accepted, certainly they may assert the political sovereignty as it stood before the war.

The plan of throwing those States out of the Union grows out of the ambition of a class of usurpers to seize the occasion of depriving the States of their indubitable municipal rights . . . The object is undoubtedly to disfranchise the white race who had created the State governments of the South, and who contributed their full share in asserting national independence and creating the government of the United States. This is to be accomplished by the imposition of conditions by Congress on the readmission of those States into the Union which forfeits those municipal rights heretofore exerted by all States in their internal government.

An object now avowed is to enable Congress to constitute a State government by exacting conditions on admission which shall put blacks and whites on equality in the political control of a government originally created by the white race for themselves.

This is not merely manumission from masters, but it may turn out that those who have been held in servitude may become themselves the masters of the government created by another race. This revolutionary scheme looks to the establishment of a new control over the municipal rights of the State governments in the South, which has you well know been a favorite one of the late Secretary. You will remember that Mr. Chase suggested the modification of your amnesty and reconstruction proclamation, so as to allow all loyal citizens to vote, which included all the freedmen while excluding all the whites who had been engaged in the Rebellion. This would probably have thrown the governments of those states into the hands of the African race, as constituting the majority who had not borne arms against the government.”

(Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress. Transcribed and Annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College. Galesburg, Illinois. (Letter from Montgomery Blair to Abraham Lincoln, December 6, 1864).

From Connecticut to Dred Scott

Well before the Dred Scott case of 1857 was the question brought before Connecticut Judge David Daggett, chief justice of the court of errors, in October 1833 raising the validity of a State law which “forbid any school, academy, or literary institution for the instruction of colored persons who are not inhabitants of this State.” The law was in place as the State’s colored schools tended to “greatly increase the colored population of the State and thereby to the injury of the people.” The defendant, a free Negro, insisted that the law was unconstitutional as it was in violation of the United States Constitution regarding the equal rights of citizens of all States.”

Regarding “citizens,” only the 1789 Constitution’s Article 4, sec. 2 states: “The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” The Dred Scott case of 1857 rested upon this, and the question before the Court was simply whether Scott was a citizen of a State, as argued below.

To underscore the validity of the Constitution’s Article 4, sec. 2, the victorious Republican party was forced to follow the amendment route as it sought manipulation of the South’s black vote.

From Connecticut to Dred Scott

“Are slaves citizens? At the adoption of the Constitution of the United States [in 1789], every State was a slave State . . . We all know that slavery is recognized in that Constitution; it is the duty of this court to take that Constitution as it is, for we have sworn to support it . . . Then slaves were not considered citizens by the framers of the Constitution.

“Are free blacks citizens? . . . to my mind it would be a perversion of terms, and the well-known rules of construction, to say that slaves, free blacks or Indians were citizens, within the meaning of that term as used in the Constitution. God forbid that I should add to the degradation of this race of men; but I am bound, by my duty, to say that they are not citizens.”

In the case of Hobbs vs Fogg the State of Pennsylvania furnished another strong precedent for the decision of the [Dred] Scott case. At the election of 1835 a negro offered to vote. Solely on account of his color, the judges of election refused the privilege. The Negro insisted that “as a freeman and citizen of the State” the provisions contained in the State constitution and laws entitled him to the right of suffrage. The judges justified themselves on the ground “that a free Negro or mulatto is not a citizen within the meaning of the Constitution and law of the United States, and of the State of Pennsylvania, and, therefore, is not entitled to the right of suffrage . . .” The chief justice delivered the opinion, to which there was unanimous assent [to declare] “that no colored race was party to our social compact. Our ancestors settled the province as a community of white men; that the blacks were introduced into it as a race of slaves; whence an unconquerable prejudice of caste, which has come down to our day . . .” This is followed by “Yet it is proper to say that [Article 2, section 4] of the Federal Constitution, presents an obstacle to the political freedom of the Negro, which seems to be insuperable.”

Now then, in addition to the presumption that [those] of pure African blood whose ancestors had been American slaves, was presumed to have been born and to have continued a slave, these laws show that all the States had given to the Federal Constitution, from the days of its ratification down to the Dred Scott decision, a practical interpretation agreeing unanimously that a Negro, though free and a native of a State, was not a person as the word ‘citizen’ defines as that word was used by the framers of the Constitution.”

(The Legal and Historical Status of the Dred Scott Decision. Elbert William R. Ewing. Cobden Publishing Company, 1909, pp. 67-69)

“We Are Now an Occupied Territory”

“We Are Now an Occupied Territory”

Gov. Orval Faubus’ Message to Arkansas:

“On Tuesday, September 24, 1957 . . . the cleverly conceived plans of the US Justice Department under Republican Herbert Brownell, were placed in execution. One thousand two hundred troops of the 101^st Airborne Division were flown in from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to occupy Little Rock’s Central High School.

At the same time, the entire Arkansas National Guard and Air guard were federalized and are now a part of the US Army and Air Force. We are now an occupied territory.

Evidence of the naked force of the federal government is here apparent in the unsheathed bayonets in the backs of schoolgirls – in the backs of students – and in the bloody face of a railroad worker, who was bayoneted and then felled by the butt of a rifle in the hands of a sergeant of the 101^st Airborne Division. This man, on private property, as a guest in a home two blocks from the school, has been hospitalized. Others have suffered bayonet wounds from the hands of the US Army soldiers. Your New York newspapers also show the scenes.

Up until the time the injunction was issued against me by the imported federal judge, the peace had been kept in Little Rock by as few as 30 National Guardsmen. Not a blow was struck, no injury inflicted on any person, and no property damage sustained. I wish to point out that no violence broke out in the city until after the injunction was issued by the imported federal judge, and the National Guardsmen were withdrawn. And I might add here, all we have ever asked for is a little time, patience and understanding, as so often expressed by President Eisenhower himself, in solving this problem.

In the name of God, whom we all revere, in the name of liberty we hold so dear, in the name of decency, which we all cherish – what is happening in America? Is every right in the United States Constitution now lost? Does the will of the people, that basic precept of our republic, no longer matter? Must the will of the majority now yield, under federal force, to the will of the minority, regardless of the consequences?

If the answers to these questions are in the affirmative . . . we no longer have a union of States under a republican form of government. If this be true, then the States are mere subdivisions of an all-powerful federal government, these subdivisions being nothing more than districts for the operation of federal agents and federal military forces – forces which operate without any regard for the rights of a sovereign State or its elected officials, and without due regard for personal and property rights.

The imported federal comes from a State a thousand miles away with no understanding whatsoever of the difficulties of our problems in the field of race relations.”

(Another Tragic Era: Gov. Faubus Gives His Side of the Arkansas Story. US News & World Report, October 4, 1957, pp. 66-67)

Lincoln’s Rotten Borough Political Device

Credit should be given to New York Governor Horatio Seymour for immediately seeing through Lincoln’s 10-percent plan of “reconstruction” of the United States, that is, creating loyal States out of conquered provinces. Even the Radical Republicans saw that Lincoln’s plan would only increase executive power while restricting their predatory raids on Southern property.

Lincoln’s Rotten Borough Political Device

“From the night of the October 1863 elections in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Lincoln kept his eyes glued on the coming contest. Two days later he was back in the War Department discussing political prospects.

The first development in the campaign was a Presidential proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction for the Southern States. On December 8 Lincoln announced that any person in the South – with the exception of high-ranking civil and military officers of the Confederacy – might be granted amnesty if he took an oath of allegiance to the United States. Moreover, whenever ten percent of the population of any State had taken the oath, they might hold elections and establish a State government, which the President would recognize.

The political implications of the proclamation were immediately evident to both Radical Republicans and Democrats. Horatio Seymour of New York perceived it as a new assault on popular liberties. In his January message to the legislature, he pointed out that the arbitrary military power of the federal government was growing steadily. Moreover, every measure to pervert the war into a war against private property and personal rights at the South had been paralleled by claims to exercise military power at the North.

He enumerated them: there was the emancipation proclamation for the South, and the suspension of habeas corpus at the North; the Confiscation Act for the South, and arrests, imprisonment and banishment for Northern citizens; the claim to destroy political organizations in the South, and the armed interference in Northern elections.

These acts against Northern liberties had been justified as necessary, but the government had given up no powers when the emergency had passed. In fact, “more prerogatives are asserted in the hour of triumph than were claimed as a necessity in days of disaster and danger.” The doctrine of Southern degradation, explained the Governor, “is a doctrine of Northern bankruptcy . . . it is a measure for lasting despotism over one-third of our country, which will be the basis for military despotism over the whole land.”

As for Lincoln’s reconstruction program, Seymour saw it as a political device. The minority of one-tenth in reconstructed States would be kept in power by the North’s arms and treasure. There would be no motive, prophesied the Governor, to draw the remaining population into the fold; instead, “there will be every inducement of power, of gain, and of ambition, to perpetuate the condition of affairs.”

Moreover, it would be to the interest of the national administration to continue this system of government. Nine controlled States in the South with 70,000 voting population would balance in the House of Representatives and in the electoral college one half the population of the United States. Fourteen hundred men in Florida would balance New York in the Senate.

Thus, the nine States mentioned in Lincoln’s proclamation, together with Pierpont’s [western] Virginia would constitute a system of rotten boroughs that would govern the nation.”

(Lincoln and the War Governors. William B. Hesseltine. Alfred A. Knopf, 1955. Pp.-350-353)

America’s First Welfare Program

In 1887, President Grover Cleveland vetoed the “Dependent Pension Bill” which sought to reward a favored Republican constituency, the North’s veterans of the Civil War. Since 1865, the Republican party had created and expanded a virtual national welfare program to attract their votes. Viewing this bill as simply a “raid on the US Treasury” benefitting the Republican party, Cleveland incurred the wrath of Northern veterans as he believed it was charity, and his veto the honorable path to take.

The Daily Advertiser of Boston in early September 1865 contained the letter of an astute resident who advised the public to give veterans work and a full share of public offices. Otherwise, he feared, “we shall guarantee a faction, a political power, to be known as the soldier vote . . . I wonder if our State politicians remember that 17,000 men can give the election to either party.”

America’s First Welfare Program

Lincoln’s government initiated a military pension system in mid-July 1862 and included a $5 fee for Claim Agents who assisted veterans; attorneys could charge $1.50 if additional testimony and affidavit were required. The House of Representatives set this latter amount given the temptation for unscrupulous attorneys to take undue advantage of the pensioners. With this Act passed, practically every member of Congress became anxious to provide for soldiers, sailors and their dependents – more than a few began to take advantage of the political power that lay in the hands of the “soldier vote.” A Mr. Holman, representing Indiana in Congress, praised the 5,000 Indiana men “who gave up the charmed circle of their homes to maintain the old flag of the Union.”

As the war continued into 1864 and the spirit of revenge in the North increased, it was officially proposed to create a large pension fund for Northern soldiers by confiscating Southern property. In September 1865, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, a former slave-State, “proposed a plan whereby he hoped the government would realize over three and a half billions of dollars by confiscating Southern property. Although no such a measure ever became law, it reveals the attitude which several members of the House had toward the question of pensions.”

The abuse of the pension system by 1875 caused the commissioner, Henry Atkinson, to state that “the development of frauds of every character in pension claims has assumed such magnitude as to require the serious attention of Congress . . .”

(History of the Civil War Military Pensions, 1861-1865. John William Oliver. Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 844, Vol. 4, No. 1. pp. 11-12; 14; 20; 41)

Revolutionary Changes in Government

Listing allegedly revolutionary changes between Fort Sumter in 1861 and Reconstruction, in 1867 Ohio Democratic Congressman George H. Pendleton assembled the following catalogue.

The Old Republic:

Equality of States.
Federal government limited to national and internal affairs only.
Equal branches of the federal government.
Reverence for Constitutional rights.
Delegated powers.
The Constitution and fundamental law.
Plain, simple, cheap government; army limited to 15,000 men.
Freedom of thought.
Freedom of reason.
Internal peace.
Freedom of debate in Congress.

The New Republic:

Ten States blotted out . . .
Federal government touches even private affairs.
Congress omnipotent.
Non-existent; viz., military arrests and suspension of the [habeas corpus] writ.
Federal government now has all power.
The United States Constitution now a dead letter.
Huge public debt and standing army of 100,000.
No freedom of thought.
No freedom of reason.
No internal peace.
Congress now ruled by caucus.

(A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution. Harold M. Hyman. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1975, pg. 293)