NATIONAL CONSTITUTION: THE ONLY ROAD TO NATIONAL PEACE. A LETTER ΤΟ THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. By WILLIAM GILES DIX. BOSTON: ESTES AND LAURIAT, 143 WASHINGTON STREET. 1875. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, BY W. G. DIX, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. to national shoulders, it sought and yet seeks to extend and apply the cloth by a patchwork of amendments; but this patching, patching, everlasting patching, with amendments after amendments is not the work required. It is trifling with great needs, great opportunities, great responsibilities, and gives no sign or proof of those qualities which the world generally concedes to America, energy and directness of thought and action. The President's Message has some most commendable suggestions; but it is marked by the usual irresolution of his state papers. It lacks the tone of authority and decision which people expect and like to see in those whom they choose for their civil guides. Those rulers have ever been not only the most efficient, but the most honored, revered, and beloved, who have dared most plainly to say, and have most boldly dared to do, what was right, and what they knew to be right. Within the strict limit of his Constitutional duty, the President could have said more and done more to promote national unity as the only pledge of national safety and peace. The President seems to regret the fading away of the lurid and distracting colors of Federalism, and to look with all the horror his nature permits upon the genial, growing light of nationality, which, notwithstanding his horror, will shine more and more, and brighter and brighter, unto the perfect day. It seems hopeless to expect him to begin, as he only can, by urging others to begin the great work of organic reform. In the faith and fear of God then I lift and unfurl the standard of a National Constitution, and implore my countrymen to rally around it, armed only with the wills and words of patriotic demand; for there will be and can be no safety for American unity, prosperity, power, and liberty, and there will be and can be no patriotic devotion, loyal and harmonious, from the Lakes to the Gulf, and from ocean to ocean, except under a National Government, ruling by the forms and sanctions of a National Constitution. NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. PEABODY, MASSACHUSETTS, October 1, 1874. To U. S. GRANT, President of the United States. MR. PRESIDENT, - During the gloomy year of 1779, George Washington, in a letter to a friend, wrote these words of wisdom: "To me it appears no unjust simile, to compare the affairs of this great continent to the mechanism of a clock, each State representing some one or other of the smaller parts of it, which they are endeavoring to put in fine order, without considering how useless and unavailing their labor is, unless the great wheel or spring, which is to set the whole in motion, is also well attended to, and kept in good order." In the same letter he had written as follows: “I have seen without despondency, even for a moment, the hours which America has styled her gloomy ones; but I have beheld no day since the commencement of hostilities, when I have thought her liberties in such imminent danger as at present. Friends and foes seem now to combine to pull down the goodly fabric we have hitherto been raising, at the expense of so much time, blood, and treasure; and unless the bodies politic will exert themselves to bring things back to first principles, correct abuses, and punish our internal foes, inevitable ruin must follow. Indeed, we seem to be verging so fast to destruction, that I am filled with sensations to which I have been a stranger until within these three months."* The evil genius which nearly drove to despair the Father of his Country, and, more than anything else, hindered his heroic labors for the good of all, was State jealousy, the main cause of all the dangers and anxieties of the Revolution. The earnest appeals of * Marshall's Life of Washington, Vol. IV. pp. 7-9. |