the entire system, and break up the interchange of correspondence so essential to our civilization.  If the States had any such right, they could affix discriminating tariffs on the correspondence of other States passing through them.  The State of New-York could, if this right existed, make the letters sent over its roads by the people of Massachusetts to the people of Ohio, pay just such tariffs for the ‘right of passage’ as it might choose.  The absurdity and utter unreasonableness of this claimed right is so apparent as to need no argument against it.

The exercise of this pretended right by the Southern States has caused the present rebellion.  But for this doctrine we should not be expending a million a day in supporting six hundred thousand men in camp, who ought to be producers for the support of life instead of missionaries of death.  This war is the legitimate result of this heresy of ’State rights.’  If this doctrine had never been put in practice, we should not now have slavery to curse us with its degrading, inhumanizing influences.  Slavery exists in violation of the Constitution.  Slavery was never established by that document.  The States violated it in their attempts at legalizing it.  All their laws declaring that the status of the child must be that of the mother, are but so many ’BILLS OF ATTAINDER,’ working ‘CORRUPTION OF BLOOD;’ and every State, as well as Congress itself, was and is positively prohibited by the Constitution from passing any such bill or law; and should we ever succeed in having any but a pro-slavery, slave-catching Supreme Court, all these laws will be annulled by their own most positive unconstitutionally.  True, there were slaves at the time the Constitution was adopted, but all then living are now dead; and but for this doctrine of ‘State rights,’ there never would have been any State law making the child of a slave mother also a slave; but for this doctrine no such bill of attainder would have been passed, or if passed, it never could have been enforced; and we should not to-day be listening to the cries of four millions of slaves, nor have the homes of thousands of honest citizens made desolate by the absence of loved ones.  But for this terrible doctrine, ’the click of hammers closing rivets up,’ would not now be giving ’dreadful note of preparation.’  But for this heresy, subversive of all law, of all order, of all nationality, we should not to-day be at war for our existence.  But for this doctrine, and the right claimed by some of the States to extend their ‘bills of attainder,’ working corruption of blood over the entire Union, we should not have our homes filled with grief and our streets covered with the funeral pageants of brave men killed in defense of the Union.  We want no more evidence of the accursed nature of the doctrine of ‘State rights.’  We are a UNION—­a NATION.  We must have NATIONAL LAWS, NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS, NATIONAL FREEDOM.  We have had too much of State law, too much of State rights, too much of State slavery.  The NATION MUST BE SUPREME.  The States must be subordinate.  As we uphold and perpetuate the National authority, so will be our existence as a people.  As we detract from this, so will be our weakness and downfall.