ight 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, NAT