fantry) with leather scabbard. Inscribed on the brass mounting is: "Presented to Lieutenant Fred. W. Mather, by Company I, Seventh New York Artillery." I am not sure about the "W." in the name as I dropped it about that time as a superfluity. I was in the regiment named, First Division, Second Corps Army of the Potomac (Hancock's) and was captured on the 16th June, 1864, near the Jerusalem Plank Road, Petersburg. I think it was Pickett's division, or corps in our front, and although I took the name of the officer to whom I delivered it, it was worn out in my pocket during my nine months confinement. I think he was major of a Georgia regiment, but am not certain. I am aware that this affords you a small margin of information, but it is all I have, and anything which may lead to the recovery of my sword will be gratefully remembered.

I am sir, very truly yours,

FRED. MATHER.

EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS.

THE DELAY IN THE PUBLICATION of this number was anticipated and announced in our last; but we hope to be able to issue the remaining numbers of the volume by the last of this month or the first of next. Our subscribers will get their full quota of numbers and of pages, and they will bear with us that we have been compelled by circumstances beyond our control to be tardy sometimes in issuing a given number

COLONEL ANDERSON'S SPLENDID ADDRESS, for the publication of which there has been a general demand, occupies so large a part of this issue that a number of other articles have been crowded out; but we are sure that our readers will thank us for putting within their reach this full discussion of one of the great battles of the war.

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Vol. IX. Richmond, Va., Oct., Nov. and Dec., 1881. Nos. 10, 11 & 12.

State Sovereignty-Forgotten Testimony.

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 30th, 1881.

Rev'd J. Wm. Jones, Secretary of the

Southern Historical Society, Richmond, Va.:

DEAR SIR-The Hon. Jefferson Davis in his admirable argument exposing the absurdity of Judge Story's theory, that the Declaration of Independence implied or declared that the people of the several revolted colonies were "one whole people," (i. e. one sovereign political community,) forcibly says, at page 126, of Vol. I of "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," that if so, then the colony of Maryland must have been in a state of "rebellion" against the other colonies, as well as against Great Britain, from 1778 to 1781, "during which period Maryland refused to ratify or be bound by the Articles of Confederation," which instrument, if Judge Story's theory be correct, was, as Mr. Davis pertinently remarks, "binding upon her, as a majority of the 'whole people' had adopted it." Mr. Davis then continues as follows: "A fortiori, North Carolina and Rhode Island were in a state of rebellion while they declined to ratify and recognize the Constitution adopted by the other eleven fractions of this united peo

ple. Yet no hint of such pretension-of any claim over them by the majority of any assertion of the supremacy of the Union'-is to be found in any of the records of the period."

The production of Mr. Davis, in the last of the above quoted sentences, of negative evidence only in support of his position as to the attitude of the eleven United States towards North Carolina and Rhode Island, shows, I think, that when he wrote his argument on this subject he could not have been aware of the existence of Government records, proving by the most direct, positive and clear testimony that the United States Government, among the very earliest of its official transactions, (i. e. at the first and second sessions of the first Congress in 1789-90,) formally and by legislative acts, acknowledged North Carolina and Rhode Island to be outside of the jurisdiction of the United States, and no more subject to "the supremacy of the Union" than France or China was, and thereby acknowledged their independence.

That Mr. Davis should not have been aware of the existence of this most important testimony is not at all to be wondered at, when we reflect that writers on constitutional questions, or questions of civil law, when searching among ancient and obsolete statutes in the hope of finding matter pertinent to the objects they have in view, do, as a rule, examine first the title or caption of a law under the impression that it is always a reliable indicator of the contents of the law, and if they see no allusion in the title to the object of their search, they are very apt to conclude that there is nothing in the law relating to it, and to proceed no farther in their examination of the law.

Several years ago, while rummaging among the early statutes of the Federal Government, I discovered* the important testimony which is the principal subject of this paper, and on asking many able and experienced lawyers and jurists, among whom was an eminent ex-judge of a United States District Court, if they knew, or had ever heard of this testimony, I was answered in the negative by each of them.

Appended to this paper will be found the full titles with extracts from and condensed statements of the substance of pertinent parts of certain five statutes or acts passed by the first Congress that ever assembled under the present Constitution.

The dates of those five acts are respectfully: July the 4th, July the 20th, July the 31st, September the 16th, 1789, and February 8th, 1790.

*Although it is a regular record of the proceedings of Congress, and has always been accessible to any person, I call it a discovery from the fact that everybody seems to have forgotten it.

In the course of this paper, I shall cite other acts, which are not appended hereto. The title of neither of the first four of these acts makes any mention of North Carolina or Rhode Island, nor do the two first acts mention either of those States even in their text; but before the reader shall have finished reading in this paper the study of those five acts as taken together, and as bearing on each other, he will see clearly how the text of the two first came to operate on the commerce and ships of North Carolina and Rhode Island, and were intended to be made so to operate. The text, however, of the last three of the acts will destroy forever any doubt that may have heretofore lingered in the reader's mind, even if he were Judge Story redivivus; who, it is clear to my mind, (if he was sincere in his theory) could never have read and made a study of these five acts grouped together in one body, as it were, and separated from the many other acts that lie between them, but have no bearing on them. Had he done so, he, even if he had been only a second-rate lawyer, would have seen that they constituted a fatal obstacle to the validity of his theory.

The mention of North Carolina by name in the title of the fifth of these acts, (viz.: that of Febuary 8th, 1790,) while Rhode Island is not mentioned in that title, would naturally not be suggestive of anything of the slightest importance to any one searching for information on this subject, inasmuch as he would infer from the date of the act (over two months after North Carolina had ratified the Constitution), and from the mention of that State only in the title, that the act had reference only to the entrance of that State into the Union. While the act does provide for extending the laws of the Union over North Carolina, it, at the same time, makes in its text most unqualified admissions of the independent nationality of Rhode Island, (reciting her name,) and of her entire independence of and political alienation from the United States.

From the beginning of the government, in April, 1789, down to the 31st of July, of that year, there was no revenue law whatever of the United State in force. The first act laying "duties on goods, wares and merchandizes," (being the second act of any kind ever passed by Congress) although enacted on the 4th of July, yet, by its own terms, was not nor could it become an operative law until the 1st of August next following. The next revenue act, being the third act ever passed by Congress, was enacted on the 20th of July, 1789, and it imposed duties not on the cargoes, but on the tonnage only of ships or vessels coming into the ports of the eleven United States; but this act, by its own terms, could not become operative law until the 15th of August next

following. The above mentioned two acts were the only revenue acts that were passed during the year 1789.

And now the time has arrived, I conceive, for us to enquire why did Congress postpone the operation of the act of July 4th to the 1st of August, and the act of July 20th to the 15th of August. No reason for this postponement is apparent on the face of either of the acts, and, so far as I know, history assigns no cause for it. Readers of American history well know that there was very strong reason for those two laws to have been passed early in May, and to have gone into operation immediately on their passage. The eleven United States of that day were as a Confederacy, utterly impecunious and in very urgent need of immediate revenues, and yet we have before us the strange spectacle of Congress idly waiting, without any visible cause, from April to August before putting into effect any measures for raising much needed rev

enues.

I have a theory, Mr. Secretary, which explains, I think, this otherwise unaccountable delay of Congress, and furnishes, doubtless, the true reason for it. It is well known that the Congress of the summer of 1789 and all their constituents were exceedingly desirous that North Carolina and Rhode Island should enter the Union. Notwithstanding that each of these two States had already held its own separate convention and had therein refused to ratify the Constitution, yet Congress knew that numerous and able friends of the Union were then, and had been during the prior winter and spring, diligently at work within each of the two States, urging the early assembling of a second convention; and it was known that there was a very fair prospect of such convention being called soon.

[North Carolina did, indeed, call her second convention in November of that year, and ratified the Constitution on the 29th of that month.] Now if the two States could be induced to ratify the Constitution before any legislation of Congress should be effected of a character bearing on them as countries foreign to the United States, the friends of the United States could say in Europe as well as in America that there had been no disruption of the Union when Congress assembled in April 1789, and no secession of eleven States from the first union; and that the delay of North Carolina and Rhode Island in ratifying the new Constitution would be spoken of merely as the exceeding caution of those two States, as manifested by their taking ample time to deliberate and decide on a matter of so great importance.

But time wore on, and when the 31st day of July arrived, (one day only, mind you, before the act of 4th July would begin to operate,) and