Social justice reasoning of the "other Gettysburg Address"

[Bartolome_Casas]

Edward Everett, a non-Catholic minister, gave a long speech before Lincoln much more famous short speech. Below is a key segment, which I think you will find very relevant to social justice issues tearing apart the USA in our time.

civilwarhome.com/everettgettysburg.htm

  I call the war which the Confederates are waging against the Union a 'rebellion,' because it is one, and in grave matters it is best to call things by their right names. I speak of it as a crime, because the Constitution of the United States so regards it, and puts 'rebellion' on a par with 'invasion.' The Constitution and law not only of England, but of every civilized country, regard them in the same light; or rather they consider the rebel in arms as far worse than the alien enemy. To levy war against the United States is the constitutional definition of treason, and that crime is by every civilized government regarded as the highest which citizen or subject can commit. Not content with the sanctions of human justice, of all the crimes against the law of the land it is singled out for the denunciations of religion. The litanies of every church in Christendom whose ritual embraces that office, as far as I am aware, from the metropolitan cathedrals of Europe to the humblest missionary chapel in the islands of the sea, concur with the Church of England in imploring the Sovereign of the Universe, by the most awful adjurations which the heart of man can conceive or his tongue utter, to deliver us from 'sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion.' And reason good; for while a rebellion against tyranny--a rebellion designed, after prostrating arbitrary power, to establish free government on the basis of justice and truth--is an enterprise on which good men and angels may look with complacency, an unprovoked rebellion of ambitious men against a beneficent government, for the purpose--the avowed purpose--of establishing, extending and perpetuating any form of injustice and wrong, is an imitation on earth of that first foul revolt of 'the Infernal Serpent,' against which the Supreme Majesty sent forth the armed myriads of his angels, and clothed the right arm of his Son with the three-bolted thunders of omnipotence.

 But to hide the deformity of the crime under the cloak of that sophistry which strives to make the worse appear the better reason, we are told by the leaders of the Rebellion that in our complex system of government the separate States are 'sovereigns, and that the central power is only an 'agency established by these sovereigns to manage certain little affairs--such, forsooth, as Peace, War, Army, Navy, Finance, Territory, and Relations with the native tribes--which they could not so conveniently administer themselves. It happens, unfortunately for this theory, that the Federal Constitution (which has been adopted by the people of every State of the Union as much as their own State constitutions have been adopted, and is declared to be paramount to them) nowhere recognizes the States as 'sovereigns'--in fact, that, by their names, it does not recognize them at all; while the authority established by that instrument is recognized, in its text, not as an 'agency,' but as 'the Government of the United States.' By that Constitution, moreover, which purports in its preamble to be ordained and established by 'the People of the United States,' it is expressly provided, that 'the members of the State legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution.' Now it is a common thing, under all governments, for an agent to be bound by oath to be faithful to his sovereign; but I never heard before of sovereigns being bound by oath to be faithful to their agency.

 

[Bartolome_Casas]

Here’s some more of that speech:

     Certainly I do not deny that the separate States are clothed with sovereign powers for the administration of local affairs. It is one of the most beautiful features of our mixed system of government; but it is equally true, that, in adopting the Federal Constitution, the States abdicated, by express renunciation, all the most important functions of national sovereignty, and, by one comprehensive, self-denying clause, gave up all right to contravene the Constitution of the United States. Specifically, and by enumeration, they renounced all the most important prerogatives of independent States for peace and for war,--the right to keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, or to engage in war unless actually invaded; to enter into compact with another State or a foreign power; to lay any duty on tonnage, or any impost on exports or imports, without the consent of Congress; to enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; to grant letters of marque and reprisal, and to emit bills of credit--while all these powers and many others are expressly vested in the General Government. To ascribe to political communities, thus limited in their jurisdiction--who cannot even establish a post office on their own soil--the character of independent sovereignty, and to reduce a national organization, clothed with all the transcendent powers of government, to the name and condition of an 'agency' of the States, proves nothing but that the logic of secession is on a par with its loyalty and patriotism.

     Oh, but 'the reserved rights!' and what of the reserved rights? The tenth amendment of the Constitution, supposed to provide for 'reserved rights,' is constantly misquoted. By that amendment, '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.' The 'powers reserved must of course be such as could have been, but were not delegated to the United States,--could have been, but were not prohibited to the States; but to speak of the right of an individual State to secede, as a power that could have been, though it was not delegated to the United States, is simple nonsense.

     But waiving this obvious absurdity, can it need a serious argument to prove that there can be no State right to enter into a new confederation reserved under a constitution which expressly prohibits a State to 'enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation,' or any 'agreement or compact with another State or a foreign power?' To say that the State may, by enacting the preliminary farce of secession, acquire the right to do the prohibited things--to say, for instance, that though the States, in forming the Constitution, delegated to the United States and prohibited to themselves the power of declaring war, there was by implication reserved to each State the right of seceding and then declaring war; that, though they expressly prohibited to the States and delegated to the United States the entire treaty-making power, they reserved by implication (for an express reservation is not pretended) to the individual States, to Florida, for instance, the right to secede, and then to make a treaty with Spain retroceding that Spanish colony, and thus surrendering to a foreign power the key to the Gulf of Mexico,--to maintain propositions like these, with whatever affected seriousness it is done, appears to me egregious trifling.

 

[Rete]

I am coming to the conclusion that it is impossible to reach social justice in the United States. Indeed it is impossible to reach social justice in the world. It’s impossible because our world is fallen.

All nations are inhabited by people who are torn between the evil demands of the world (and their own bodies) and the good demands of God (and their soul’s desire to unite with him). One or the other side, at any given time, affects that soul to social and political action in accordance with it.

Both sides exist in constant conflict, not just because of the spiritual conflict between God and those who side with the enemy, but because in purely normative terms their interests directly contradict and oppose one another. For every nation, there really exists two nations. You have one nation which, in the Spirit of St. Augustus, that points toward the City of God. The other nation represents the fallen and ruinous aspects of the culture.

These two nations cannot coexist without conflict. They must continue in conflict until the Final Judgment, in every age, and in every place where humanity decides to establish itself into civilizations.

While I have long been interested in natural law and its relationship to our nation, I no longer believe it helps us to appeal to it as this minister did. It doesn’t matter because most Americans in our generation have chosen darkness. In so doing, they will oppose natural law, even though it forms the edifice upon which the founders formed the social contract of our nation. It doesn’t mean any more to these people than it did to the slave-holders who declared war against our nation rather than face the eventual eradication of slavery.