Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Address of Hon. George Ticknor Curtis: At Philadelphia, Sept; 30, 1864
The government of the United States is a government of direct and sovereign powers, granted to it by solemn cessmn ot' the people of each State. It has therefore a right to put down all mili tary or other forcible resistance to the exercise of its constitutional powers in any State. But it can have no rightto acquire by force powers'which have netf er, been conferred upon it' by the Consti tution, and Which cannot be exercised under the Constitution and it can therefore never treat a State, or the people of a State, as if they had forfeit cd their right of self government in those matters to which the Constitu tion of the United States does not ex tend. Taking this just and accurate view, he appears to have' entertained the hepe that after the Southern armies had been defeated, the people of the seceded States would find it mbst ex pedient to abandon their plan of a sep arate government and resume their constitution'al obligations. But in or der to aid this tendency, if such a ten deney could be developed in the South, he saw very clearly that a humane, civ ilized, andjustpolicy toward the peo ple ot'those States was absolutely es sential to success; and having been educated in the high principles with which modern civilization surrounds the exercise of war by Christian nations, and recognizing the fact that this con test had taken the proportions of a great war, he strove, in all that he did and all that he inculcated, to impress such a policy upon all its operations. Nay more, he strove to impress that policy upon the action of the govern ment. It is all embodied, as you know very well, in the celebrated letter which he addressed to President Lin coln from Harrison's Bar.
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