Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

Again, during the exciting contest in Arkansas, the Congress of the United States appointed a committee to investigate the affairs in that state, and ‘whether said State had now a government republican in form, the officers of which are duly elected, and, as now organized, ought to be recognized by the Government of the United States.’

On December 24, 1874, the Congress of the United States appointed a committee to proceed to New Orleans, and investigate the state of affairs in Louisiana. This committee reported on January 14, 1875, that ‘they could not agree upon any recommendation; but, upon the situation in Louisiana, as it appeared before us, we are all agreed.’

The same Congress, before its adjournment, appointed a committee to proceed to Mississippi and make an investigation of the state of affairs there. Thus committees were kept quite busy in traveling back and forth to these states, and much of the time of Congress was occupied in discussing their affairs, and in efforts to reconcile the quarreling factions of so-called Republicans in them, to the great detriment of the public interests.

Where now were the unalienable rights of man, and the sovereignty of the people, with their safeguards; a Constitution with limited powers, the reserved rights of the states, and the supremacy of law equally over both rulers and ruled? All were gone.

It will be seen that, through all these proceedings, the government of the United States controlled as the sovereign, and the sovereignty of the people was extinct. The measures adopted were those prescribed by the government of the United States; subordinate to these and subject to the conditions of these, such others were permitted as the necessities of the people required. Affairs were not in such disorder when the Constitution of the United States was adopted. The uppermost then had come to be the undermost now, and that which was nothing then had grown to be over all now. Will it always be thus? Was the inherent sovereignty of the people destroyed by shot and shell?

The intelligent reader must perceive that this invasion of the natural and unalienable rights of man, the subjugation of the sovereignty of the people, the monstrous usurpations of powers not granted in the Constitution, the trampling under foot of the reserved rights of the states, the disregard of the supremacy of law, and the assumption of the sovereignty of the government of the United States as the corner stone of our future political edifice, is a revolution in our system of