ciency of the law; and assassinations and savage cruelties would be perpetrated with all the frequency belonging to barbarous and cruel communities. It is plain, then, that the language of this amendment imports no more than that every man has a right to speak, write, and print his opinions upon any subject whatever, without any prior restraint, so always that he does not injure any other person in his rights, person, property, or reputation; and so always that he does not thereby disturb the public peace, or attempt to subvert the Government." "Of the cases presented for my action, upon the principles above named, I have by order excluded from the mails twelve of these treasonable publications, of which several had been previously presented by the grand jury as incendiary and hostile to constitutional authority." I am not aware that at any time, nor from any quarter, during that long session, any inquiry or complaint was made, or objection taken touching that action, or the considerations then presented in support of it. From this it was fairly inferred that Congress then unanimously recognized the action as not only in harmony with, but in direct aid of, the Constitution of the United States, then shaken by the assaults of its avowed enemies. | siderations there is reason to doubt whether the abolitionists have a right to make use of the mails of the United States to convey their publications into States where their circulation is forbidden by law, and it is by no means certain that mail-carriers and postmasters are secure from the penalties of that law, if they knowingly carry, distribute, or hand them out. * * As well may the counterfeiter and robber demand the use of the mails for consummating their crimes, and complain of a violation of their rights when it is denied. "Upon these grounds a postmaster may well hesitate to be the agent of the abolitionists in sending their incendiary publications into States where their circulation is prohibited by law; and much more may postmasters residing in those States refuse to distribute them. * I do not desire to be understood as affirming that the suggestions here thrown out ought, without the action of higher authority, to be considered as the settled construction of the law, or regarded by postmasters as the rule of their future action. It is only intended to say that in a sudden emergency, involving principles so grave and consequences so serious, the safest course for postmasters and the best for the country is that which you have adopted. The immediate occasion of the orders excluding certain You prevent your Government from being the unwilling newspapers from the mails was a communication to this de-agent and abettor of crimes against the States which strike partment of the action of a grand jury of the United States at their very existence, and give time for the proper aucircuit court for the Southern District of New York. Their thorities to discuss the principles involved and digest a safe presentment was in the following words. [See ante for pre-rule for the futuro guidance of the department. sentment.] This authoritative exhibition of the character of these papers, as disseminators of treason and instigators of the highest crime known to our laws, could not be disregarded, accompanied, as it was, by representations of their dangerous effect upon the military operations of the country. Entertaining the highest possible regard for the liberty of the press, distinguished from its uncontrolled and criminal license, I would not, except in time of war, have adopted the arguments of my predecessors in office, in justification of the non-delivery of printed matter sent through the mails. The question has been repeatedly presented to my predecessors in time of peace in relation to printed matter styled "incendiary," or "abolition in its character," and in respect to the States now in insurrection. While justifying postmasters in their refusal to receive or forward mail matter described by the general terms of the postal laws as "mailable matter," an eminent Postmaster General of the administration of General Jackson, under date of August 22, 1835, addressed a letter to the postmaster at New York giving his views upon the question under discussion. The New York postmaster had assumed to decide that certain newspapers, placed in that post office for conveyance in the mails, were incendiary in their character, and calculated to promote insurrection. He refused to forward them. The Postmaster General, declining himself to decide upon the character of the publications in question, and refusing to make the orders thereon, justified his deputy postmaster in the decision made by him, and supported him by the following arguments, extracted from his letter of that date, to which the attention of Congress was subsequently called. That Congress, however, by its inaction, seemed to concur in the right and the policy of excluding such alleged treasonable and insurrectionary publications from the mails. POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT, August 22, 1835. "Postmasters may lawfully know, in all cases, the con tents of newspapers, because the law expressly provides that they shall be so put up that they may be readily examined; and if they know those contents to be calculated and designed to produce, and, if delivered, will certainly produce, the commission of the most aggravated crimes upon the property and persons of their fellow citizens, it cannot be doubted that it is their duty to detain them, if not even to hand them over to the civil authorities. * "While persisting in a course which philanthropy recommends and patriotism approves, I doubt not that you and the other postmasters who have assumed the responsi bility of stopping these inflammatory papers in their pas sage to the South will perceive the necessity of performing your duty in transmitting and delivering ordinary newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets, with perfect punctuality. Occasion must not be given to charge the postmasters with carrying their precautions beyond the necessities of the case, or capriciously applying them to other cases in which there is no necessity; and it would be the duty, as well as the inclination, of the department to punish such assumption with unwonted severity. This suggestion I do not make because I have any apprehension that it is needed for your restraint, but because I wish this paper to bear upon its face a complete explanation of the views which I take of my own duty in the existing emergency." The question was afterwards repeatedly presented in this department. In February, 1857, it was brought before Postmaster General Campbell, in connection with the exclusion of the Cincinnati Gazette from postal privileges in Mississippi. A certain postmaster at Yazoo had denied it the privilege of his post office. Mr. Campbell referred the question to the Attorney General of President Pierce's administration. Under date of March 2, 1857, the Attorney General, as the law officer of the Government, replied officially to the Postmaster General, justifying such action on the part of postmasters, and asserting, among others, the following arguments and conclusions: "ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE, "March 2, 1857. "With these premises we have the main question very much simplified. It is this: Has a citizen of one of the United States plenary indisputable right to employ the functions and the officers of the Union as the means of enabling him to produce insurrection in another of the United States? Can the officers of the Union lawfully lend its functions to the citizens of one of the States for the purpose of promoting insurrection in another State? "Taking the last of these questions first, it is obvious to say that, inasmuch as it is the constitutional obligation of the United States to protect each of the States against 'domestic violence,' and to make provision to suppress insurrections,' it cannot be the right of the United States, or of any of its officers, and, of course, it cannot be their duty to promote, or be the instrument of promoting, insurrection in any part of the United States. "If it be justifiable to detain papers passing through the mail, for the purpose of preventing or punishing isolat ed crimes against individuals, how much more important is it that this responsibility should be assumed to prevent "As to the first question, likewise, it seems obvious to say, insurrections and save communities? If, in time of war, a that, as insurrection in any one of the States is violation of postmaster should detect a letter of an enemy or spy pass-law, not only so far as regards that State itself, but also as ing through the mail, which, if it reached its destination, regards the United States, therefore no citizen of the Union would expose his country to invasion and her armies to can lawfully incite insurrection in any one of the States. destruction, ought he not to arrest it? Yet, where is the * It would be preposterous to suppose that any legal power to do so? citizen of the United States has lawful right to do that which he is bound by law to prevent when attempted by any and all others; and monstrous to pretend that a citizen of one of the States has a moral right to promote or commit insurrection or domestic violence, that is, robbery, burglary, arson, rape, and murder, by wholesale, in another of the States. As a measure of great public necessity, therefore, you and the other postmasters who have assumed the responsibility of stopping these inflammatory papers will, Ihave no doubt, stand justified in that step before your country and all mankind. "Are the officers of the United States compelled by the Constitution and laws to become the instruments and accomplices of those who design to baffle and make nugatory the constitutional laws of the States; to fill them with sedition and murder and insurrection; to overthrow those institutions which are recognized and guarantied by the Constitution itself? In these con "These considerations, it seems to me, are decisive of the question of the true construction of the act of Congress. of that it is impossible for me to doubt. Its enactment is, that if any postmaster shall unlawfully detain,' he shall be subject to fine, imprisonment, and disqualification. Then, if the thing be of lawful delivery, it cannot be lawfully detained; while, on the other hand, it cannot be unlawful to detain that which it is unlawful to deliver. Such is the plain language and the manifest import of the act of Congress. "I do not mean to be understood that the word 'unlawfully' of the act determines the case: on the contrary, my conclusion would be the same, though that word had not been here inserted. By employing it, indeed, the act expressly admits that there may be lawful cause of detention. But such lawful cause would not the less exist, although its existence were not thus expressly recognized. And, of all conceivable causes of detention, there can be none more operative than treasonableness of character, for in every society the public safety is the supremest of laws. "Nay, if, instead of expressly admitting lawful causes of detention, the act had undertaken to exclude them-if, for instance, it had in terms required the postmasters to circulate papers, which, in tendency and purpose, are of character to incite insurrection in any of the States-still my conclusion would be the same. I should say of such a provision of law it is a nullity, it is unconstitutional; not so by reason of conflict with any State law, but because inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States. "The Constitution forbids insurrection; it imposes on Congress and the President the duty of suppressing insurrection; this obligation descends through Congress and the President to all the subordinate functionaries of the Union, civil and military; and any provision of an act of Congress requiring a Federal functionary to be the agent or minister of insurrection in either of the States would violate palpably the positive letter, and defeat one of the primary objects, of the Constitution. "These, my conclusions, apply only to newspapers, pamphlets, or other printed matter, the character of which is of public notoriety, or is necessarily brought to the knowledge of the postmaster by publicity of transmission through the mails unsealed, and as to the nature of which he cannot plead ignorance. and disqualification? Is the inconvenience which the foreign Government or its emissary may suffer, in not being able to effect the free circulation of such treasonable inatter or the inconvenience which the disaffected person to whom it was addressed suffers, in his not being able to receive and to circulate further such treasonable matter-are these inconveniences to outweigh the inconvenience to the whole country, as well as to individuals, of insurrection, and of civil or servile war? Is that the true construction of the act of Congress? I think no legal expositor could hesitate to say, no. "Now in what does the general case supposed, with its all but self-evident conclusions, differ from the specific case under consideration? Simply, that any European Government possesses the sovereign right, as an act of war, to attack us with attempts to excite insurrection as well as with cannon-subject to be repelled by the sovereign power of the Union-but no citizen of the United States possesses legal right to promote rebellious acts in any part of the country, whether as against the authority of the United States or of the particular State in which he is, or of any other of the States. * "In fine, the proposition may be made universal to the effect that no person in the United States, whether he be citizen, subject, or alien, has the legal right to promote rebellion. In the foregoing series of supposi tions we have reasoned out a conclusion from the premises of the attempt of a foreign Government, by the use of our mails and post offices, to promote insurrection in the United States. And shall not the citizens of one of the States of the Union be held entitled to the same security from attempts to promote insurrection among them, on the part of their fellow-citizens of other States? On the whole, then, it seems clear to me that a deputy postmaster, or other officer of the United States, is not required by law to become knowingly the enforced agent or instrument of enemies of the public peace, to disseminate, in their behalf, within the limits of any one of the States of the Union printed matter, the design and tendency of which are to promote insurrection in such State."* "It is intimated in one of the documents before me that to permit a deputy postmaster to detain a news- Again, in 1859, Mr. Holt, then at the head of this departpaper because of its imputed unlawfulness would be to erect ment, in a letter dated the 5th of December of that year, him into a censor of the press. These are but words of rhe-addressed to a postmaster in Virginia, adhered to the prece torical exaggeration. Public journals are a necessary part dents, and said: of our social life, just as much as the steamboat, the railway train, or the telegraph. There is not the least reason to apprehend that we shall suffer ourselves to be deprived of them by the interposition of unlawful impediments to their circulation. "We shall appreciate the true legal relation of the whole question if we consider a supposition which has more than once heretofore been actual fact, and may be such again. Suppose that some European Government-whether in the prosecution of war, or induced by hostility of purpose not yet become war, but tending towards it, or in the spirit of misdirected propagandism of its own particular social or political opinions-should undertake to produce revolution or insurrection in the United States. Would it, in that case, be the duty, would it be the right, of the Government or officers of the Union to aid the foreign Government in its inimical machinations? To this general inquiry, of course, there can be but one possible answer. It would be the man fest duty of every officer of the United States-nay, of every officer of each State-nay, of every citizen of the United States, to resist, and to do everything in his power to de feat all such machinations; for every citizen of the United States is under engagement, express or implied, to uphold and maintain the Constitution. "One of the most solemn constitutional obligations imposed on the Federal Government is that of protecting the States against 'insurrection' and 'domestic violence;' of course none of its instrumentalities can be lawfully employed in inciting, even in the remotest degree, to the very crime which involves in its train all others, and with the suppression of which it is especially charged." These citations show that a course of precedents has existed in this department for twenty-five years-known to Congress, not annulled or restrained by act of Congress-in accordance with which newspapers and other printed matter, decided by postal officers to be insurrectionary, or treasonable, or in any degree inciting to treason or insurrection, have been excluded from the mails and post offices of the United States solely by authority of the executive adminis tration. This, under the rules settled by the Supreme Court of the United States, as applicable to executive construction of laws with whose execution the departments are specially *JEFFERSON DAVIS thus expressed himself on this opinion of Attorney General CUSHING a few months after its publication: WASHINGTON, January 4, 1858. GENTLEMEN: When I last addressed you in answer to your letter communicating the views and feelings of the citizens of Yazoo City, in relation to the circulation of incendiary matter through the mails of the United States, I promised that you should hear from me further, and gave you assurance of such action by the last Administration as would be satisfactory to you. "In the general contingency supposed it is quite immaterial whether foreign attempts to produce revolution consist of exhortations to insurrection by word of mouth-that is, the introduction of emissaries of sedition into the country-or of exhortations to insurrection in the form of handbills, newspapers, or pamphlets. In whatever manner attempted, the thing itself would be an act of wrongful or hostile attack on our sovereignty and on our national and private peace; defensible as an act of war on the part of an enemy Government, but otherwise against natural law, against public law, aga nst municipal law; and therefore, on all these accounts, requiring to be manfully withstood The Attorney General, in the opinion enclosed, sustains and counteracted by every sound-hearted and true-minded the conclusion of the President and the Postmaster Gencitizen of the United States, and more especially by all offi-eral, and so satisfactorily disposes of the question at issue cers, civil and military, of the Federal Government, from that I hope that we shall be saved from any further agitathe President down to the humblest village postmaster in tion of it. the land. "The general supposition includes printed, equally with oral, exhortations to insurrection. Take now, by itself, the case of printed matter of that description. Is it the legal duty of the Post Office Department knowingly to circulate such matter? Is it the legal duty of deputy postmasters? Or reducing the general supposition down to its narrowest expression in the limited exigencies of the present case, is a deputy postmaster required knowingly to circulate such matter under penalty of indictment, removal from office, I have thus long delayed the promised communication in expectation of receiving the opinion of the Attorney General upon the legal merits of the case, the question having been referred to him by the Postmaster General, the Hon. James Campbell. Concurring fully with you in your opinion of the powers of a State, the duty of its citizens, and the obligation of our community in such contingency as that presented by the case reported in your letter, I trust we shall also agree that the matter has been concluded in a manner worthy of the State-Rights Administration under which it arose. With great regard, I am your friend and fellow-citizen, JEFFERSON DAVIS. To Messrs. Robert Bowman, George B. Wilkinson, and A. M. Harlow, committee, Yazoo City. charged, would establish my action as within the legal con- I do not wish to be understood, however, as indorsing, but rather as distinctly dissenting from, some of the arguments and conclusions, and from the extent to which preceding Administrations have gone, as indicated by some of the foregoing citations. The precedents and arguments go far beyond any action which I have taken, or would be willing to take, under the like circumstances. 1st. I reject that portion of the precedents which allows twenty-eight thousand postmasters of the country to judge, each for himself, what newspapers are lawful and what unlawful; what may go in the mails and what shall be excluded. I have refused to allow postmasters to sit in final judgment upon all the interests involved, subject as they are to conflicting local prejudices. The Postmaster General, who is more directly responsible to Congress, and more accessible to their inquiries, should alone exercise such authority, in whatever degree it exists, and should not devolve it on subordinates. Whatever control can be lawfully exercised over the mails by a postmaster may always be exercised or ordered by the chief, under whose direction the law expressly subordinates the postmaster. This is a self-evident proposition. It has, however, been sustained by the official opinion of the Attorney General of the United States, dated March 2, 1857. 2d. I dissent from the extent to which the doctrine has been carried by late administrations, that in time of peace, and in the absence of all hostile or criminal organizations, operating against Constitution or law, either a Postmaster General, or any postmaster, can at will exclude from the mails newspapers and other printed matter which contain discussions obnoxious to some special interest, but not aimed against Government, law, or the public safety. It is too dangerous a discretion to be exercised or desired by any executive officer attached to the constitutional freedom of the press. Such has been, in some cases, the action of this department in late years, and I take this occasion to break the too great uniformity of its decisions in this respect. Even in time of war, the power so long conceded should be used with great care and delicacy. I say in time of war, because the executive department has powers then which do not attach to it in time of peace. The Constitution provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation." Yet, in time of war, the life, liberty, and property of persons in the United States, being also insurrectionary enemies of the United States, are necessarily taken without any process except that of powder and the bayonet. And no man denies the right as an incident of war. Yet, in peace, it could not be done. These acts are as thoroughly constitutional in war as they are unconstitutional in peace. In harmony with this principle, I would give far greater latitude to alleged wrongful and obnoxious printed matter in a period of peace than would be justifiable in a time of war. This reply to the inquiry transmitted to me by the committee embraces the following conclusions: First. That the exercise of the authority inquired of rests upon the Constitution of the United States, and the definition of mailable matter given in the postal law, as construed by past administrations of this department, enforced by the official opinion of a late Attorney General of the United States, and known to and recognized by former Congresses of the United States. Second. That a power and a duty to prevent hostile printed matter from reaching the enemy, and to prevent such matter from instigating others to co-operate with the enemy, by the aid of the United States mails, exist in time of war, and in the presence of treasonable and armed enemies of the United States, which do not exist in time of peace, and in the absence of criminal organizations. Third. That the present Postmaster General has restricted the exercise of the power during this war far within the scope claimed and allowed by former Administrations in periods of national peace. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient ⚫ servant, M. BLAIR, Postmaster General. The committee review the case, and conclude as follows: Your committee are not unmindful of the fact that too great caution cannot be exercised in arriving at a conclusion as to what is and what is not lawful mailable matter; or, in other words, what papers, publications, or messages are treasonable in their character, or for other reasons unlaw. ful, and should, therefore, be excluded from the mails. In the case now before the committee the grand jury of one of the federal courts in the State of New York concur. red in opinion with the head of the Post Office Department in the construction of the character of the publications, and the purposes of the publishers, it being, too, in a time when extreme vigilance was demanded in the executive department of the Government to preserve the integrity of the Union. And the object being to secure that noble and master General was not only within the scope of his powers, patriotic object, your committee believe the act of the Postbut induced solely by considerations of the public good. Mr. GEO. H. PENDLETON, of Ohio, (of the Judiciary Committee,) in his speech, March 3, 1863, in the House, quoted these two additional paragraphs from AMOS KENDALL's opinion of 1835: "After mature consideration of the subject, and seeking the best advice within my reach, I am confirmed in the opinion that the Postmaster General has no legal authority, by any order or regulation of the Department, to exclude from the mails any species of magazines, newspapers, or pamphlets. Such a power vested in the head of this Department would be fearfully dangerous, and has therefore been withheld. Any order or letter of mine directing or officially sanctioning the step you have taken would, therefore, be utterly powerless and void, and would not in the slightest degree relieve you from its responsibility. "The Postmaster General has no legal power to prescribe any rules for the government of postmasters in such cases; nor has he ever attempted to do so. They act in each case on their own responsibility; and if they improperly detain or use papers sent to their offices for transmission or delivery it is at their peril, and on their heads falls the punishment. If in time of war a postmaster should detect the letter of an enemy or a spy passing through the mail, which, if it reached its destination, would expose his country to invasion and her armies to destruction, ought he not to arrest it? Yet where is his legal power to do so?" He added: In 1836, Mr. Calhoun, as chairman of a special committee of the Senate, reported a bill making it a penal offence for any postmaster to receive into the mails for transmission to any person within a State, or to deliver out of the mails to any such person, any publication the circulation of which was forbidden by that State. Subsequently the first clause of the bill was stricken out, and the latter, relating to the delivery of such matter, was retained. It gave rise to much discussion, and elicited an extremely able debate from the most eminent members of that then very able body. Mr. Calhoun, the zealous advocate of the bill, contended that a bill of this nature was the only one which Congress had the power to pass; that Congress could not discriminate in reference to character what publications shall or shall not be transmitted through the mail, without abridging the liberty of the press, and subjecting it to the control of congressional legislation; but that no such restriction applied to the States; they might forbid such publications as they thought dangerous, and that Congress had the power, and ought to exercise it, of co-operating with the States in repressing the circulation of publications thus prohibited. The circulation of anti-slavery documents, tending to excite servile insurrection, had become a great evil. It had awakened fears of trouble among the slaves, and had therefore exasperated the people. Most of the slaveholding States had passed laws forbidding their circulation under severe penalties. They were still carried through the mails, and it began to be questioned whether the postmasters were not relieved from the penalties of the State law because they were acting under the sanction of Federal law. Great anxiety existed to relieve the apprehensions of the southern people. The President, General Jackson, recommended the subject most earnestly to Congress. He did not pretend that there existed any power of relief in any of the Executive Departments. Senators, almost without exception, expressed a determination to go as far as they could to apply a remedy. But the bill was most strenuously opposed. It was said to curtail the freedom of the press. * * The bill was lost by a majority of seven; Messrs. Benton, Clay, Crittenden, Southard, Wall, Leigh, Goldsborough, among others from the slaveholding States; and Messrs. 1 Webster, Niles, Ewing, and Davis, with others from the non-slaveholding States voting against it. And yet it is in reference to this discussion and this action that the Postmaster General in his letter to the committee says "that Congress by its inaction seemed to concur in the right and the policy of excluding such alleged treasonable and insurrectionary publications from the mails." On the contrary, Congress expressly refused to sanction the idea that it had the power; and certainly no other department of the Gov ernment has. that occasion or against any class of men. It is one of an enduring character, to be asserted at all times and against all condition of citizens, without favor or distinction. Unless all are made to bow to the law, it will be respected by none. Unless all are made secure in their rights of person and property, none can be protected. If the owners of the above-named journals have violated State or national laws, they must be proceeded against and punished by those laws. Any action against them outside of legal procedures is criminal. At this time of civil war and disorder, the ma Generals commanding departments frequent-jesty of the law must be upheld or society will sink into ly prohibit the circulation of certain newspapers anarchy. Our soldiers in the field will battle in vain for within the limits of their commands. Major constitutional liberty if persons or property, or opinions, General Wallace, May 18, 1864, suppressed the are trampled upon at home. We must not give up home freedom, and thus disgrace the American character while Baltimore Evening Transcript. Major General our citizens in the army are pouring out their blood to Rosecrans, May 26, 1864. prohibited the circu- maintain the national honor. They must not find when lation of the Metropolitan Record in the depart-they come back that their personal and fireside rights have been despoiled. ment of Missouri. The circulation of the Cincinnati Enquirer has recently been prohibited, by the General commanding, in Kentucky. NEW YORK, December 9, 1859. MR. POSTMASTER OF LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA: SIR: I take leave to assure you that I shall do nothing of the sort. The subscribers to the Tribune in Lynchburg have paid for their papers; we have taken their money, and shall fairly and fully earn it, according to contract. If they direct us to send their papers to some other post office, we shall obey the request; otherwise, we shall send them as originally ordered. If you or your masters choose to steal and destroy them, that is your affair-at all events, not ours; and if there is no law in Virginia to punish the larceny, so much the worse for her and our plundered subscribers. If the Federal Administration, whereof you are the tool, after monopolizing the business of mail-carrying, sees fit to become the accomplice and patron of mail-robbery, I suppose the outrage must be borne until more honest and less servile rulers can be put into high places at Washington, or till the people can recover their natural right to carry each other's letters and printed matter, asking no odds of the Government. Go ahead in your own base way. I shall stand steadfast for human liberty and the protection of all natural rights. Yours, stiffly, HORACE GREELEY. THE RECENT SUPPRESSION IN NEW YORK. 1864, May 19-By order of the Secretary of War, the offices of the Journal of Commerce and the World-in which papers had appeared a forged proclamation of the President for 400,000 troops were seized by the military authorities and held for several days. This led to these proceedings: Gov. Seymour's Letter to the District Attorney. To A. OAREY HALL, Esq., District Attorney of the County of New York: SIR: I am advised that on the 19th inst., the office of The Journal of Commerce and that of The New York World were entered by armed men, the property of the owners seized, and the premises held by force for several days. It is charged that these acts of violence were done without due legal process, and without the sanction of State or national laws. If this be true the offenders must be punished. In the month of July last, when New York was a scene of violence, I gave warning that "the laws of the State must be enforced, its peace and order maintained, and the property of its citizens protected at every hazard." The laws were enforced at a fearful cost of blood and life. The declaration I then made was not intended merely for In addition to the general obligation to enforce the laws of the land, there are local reasons why they must be upheld in the city of New York. If they are not, its commerce and greatness will be broken down. If this great center of wealth, business, and enterprise is thrown into disorder and bankruptcy, the National Government will be paralyzed. What makes New York the heart of our country? Why are its pulsations felt at the extremities of our land? Not through its position alone, but because of the world-wide belief that property is safe within its limits from waste by mobs and from spoliation by Government. The laborers in the workshop, the mine, and in the field, on this continent and in every other part of the globe, send to its merchants, for sale or exchange, the products of their toil. These merchants are made the trustees of the wealth of millions living in every land, because it is believed that in their hands property is safe under the shield of laws administered upon principle and according to known usages. This great confidence has grown up in the course of many years by virtue of a painstaking, honest performance of duty by the business men of your city. In this they have been aided by the enforcement of laws based upon the solemnly-recorded pledges that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and that no one shall be deprived of liberty or property without due process of law." For more than eighty years have we as a people been building up this universal faith in the sanctity of our jurisprudence. It is this which carries our commerce upon every ocean and brings back to our merchants the wealth of every clime. It is now charged that, in utter disregard of the sensitiveness of that faith, at a moment when the national credit is undergoing a fearful trial, the organs of commerce are seized and held, in violation of constitutional pledges, that this act was done in a public mart of your great city, and was thus forced upon the notice of the commercial agents of the world, and they were shown in an offensive way that property is seized by military force and arbitrary orders. These things are more hurtful to the national honor and strength than the loss of battles. The world will confound such acts with the principles of our Government, and the folly and crimes of officials will be looked upon as the natural results of the spirit of our institutions. Our State and local authorities must repel this ruinous inference. If the merchants of New York are not willing to have their harbor sealed up and their commerce paralyzed, they must unite in this demand for the security of persons and property. If this is not done, the world will withdraw from their keeping its treasures and its commerce. History has taught all that official violation of law in times of civil war and disorder goes before acts of spoilation and other measures which destroy the safeguards of com THE LAWS TO BE ENFORCED. on, J. Austin Stevens, jr., Amos H. Trowbridge, Samuel 1. Beekman, Seabury Brewster, Jacob D. T. Hersey, Benedict Lewis, jr., Willard Phelps, Win. T. Skeff, W. M. Letter from Governor Seymour to District Attorney Hall, of Thuruan, John P. Worstell, John Townsend, John D. Welsh, Chris. Zabriskie, jr. The grand jury having taken the usual oath, A. OAKEY HALL, Esq., Judge Russell delivered a charge in which he thus alluded to the order for the arrest of the proprietors, and for the suppression of their journals: The first part of the order was never fully executed. The latter part was, and the forcible possession maintained for several days. The author of the fraud, it is said, has been discovered, and the newspapers in question have been exonerated from all suspicion of guilt or blame. If this be so, this is an instance of innocent men being summarily interfered with, or trespassed upon, in the sanctity of their persons and property. As such, it is a violation of both the Federal and State Constitutions, and it is your duty to examine into it. This is not a self-imposed or self-assumed duty by this court. The facts were communicated to the Executive of this State, and he addressed to the district attorney of this county the communication I now read to you. [The Judge then read Governor Seymour's letter.] Acting upon the duty this Court owes to the laws of this State, which is repeated in the official document I have just read to you, I beg to submit the matter to your calmest and most careful consideration. The Court is convinced that you will deal with it in such a manner as becomes the dutiful and loyal citizens of a dutiful and loyal State. Anything like political bias should be discarded. The question is simply thus: Have the laws of the State, in reference to the protection of person and property, been violated, and if so, who are the parties who have been concerned in it? No matter what their station may be, they must answer for the wrong, if there be one. If the President of the United States, or other officer who assumed to issue the order, had no such power or authority, those who obeyed and enforced it are clearly responsible. New York. EXECUTIVE CHAMBER, ALBANY, June 25. District Attorney of the City and County of New York: SIR: In the matter of the seizure of the offices of The World and Journal of Commerce, the grand jury, in disre presentment make of all such matters and things as should be given them in charge," have refused to make such inquiries, and declare that "it is inexpedient to examine into the subject referred to in the charge of the court" with respect to such seizures. It becomes my duty, under the express requirements of the constitution, "to take care that the laws of the State are faithfully executed." If the grand jury, in pursuance of the demands of the law and the obligations of their oaths, had inquired into the matter given them in charge by the court and the public prosecutor, their decision, whatever it might have been, would have been entitled to respect. As they have refused to do their duty, the subject of the seizure of these journals should at once be brought before some proper magistrate. If you wish any assistance in the prosecution of these investigations, it will be given to you. gard of their oaths," to diligently inquire into and true As it is a matter of public interest that violations of the laws of the State be punished, the views or wishes of the parties immediately affected must not be suffered to influence the action of public officers. If through fear or other motives they are unwilling to aid you in getting at facts, it will be your duty to compel their attendance as witnesses in behalf of the people. Respectfully yours, HORATIO SEYMOUR. The newspapers give this account of further proceedings: THE ARREST OF GENERAL DIX. The arrest of General Dix and several other officers on For the purposes of this occasion, the Court instructs you Friday, July 1, was made upon warrants issued by City that such an order as has been referred to would not, under Judge Russell. Several persons appeared before the city the circumstances stated, be any protection to those con- judge, in answer to subpoenas allowed by him, at the incerned in its execution. This will raise the question at issue stance of District Attorney Hall, and had testified to facts between the State and General Government in a legal way. relating to the seizure of The World and Journal of ComAny attempt to interfere with freedom of speech or liberty merce newspapers. The letter of Governor Seymour to the of the press has been regarded and watched with the great district attorney, condemuing the grand jury for its return est jealousy by the constituents of our Federal and State in the case of those newspapers, and saying that "the subGovernments. These invaluable privileges are protected ject should be brought before some proper magistrate," is in both the Federal and State Constitutions. Neither Con- said to have induced the district attorney to procure the afgress nor our State Legislature can make a law abridging fidavits to be made before Russell. The district attorney either right. In the year 1798, the famous "Sedition law" arst made an affidavit in the form of a complaint, dated 28th was passed by Congress, giving the Government extraor- June, in which he declared that he had been informed and dinary power in reference to publications calculated to believed that "Hon. A. Lincoln" directed "John A. Dix" weaken its authority. So unpalatable was this law that it to do several acts against The World and Journal of Comwas finally repealed. Two of the State Legislatures ex-merce, and the editors of those journals, enumerated in the pressly declared against its constitutionality. At the time complaint of the district attorney, and charging that the it was passed, the Government being in a state of compara- said Dix" feloniously ordered one William Barstow" (Captive infancy, it ought probably to have been more favor- tain Barstow) to arrest the editors of the newspapers named, ably regarded; but it involved rights too dear to be trenched and "mischievously ordered one William Hays" (Acting upon or surrendered. In reference to the alleged author of Assistant Provost Marshal General Hays) to procure the the spurious proclamation, you will receive evidence of the closing up of the newspaper offices; that the arrest of Mr. fact establishing his guilt, and if you are satisfied of it, you Hallock was procured, and that gentleman kept for the will present him for such an offence as, under the advice of space of about three hours; that "the said Hays instructed the district attorney, (to whom you are entitled to appeal Major Powers, who caused one Fundy" (Captain Fundy) for advice,) may be proper. At common law, the "spread- and some commissioned officers and privates, whom the ing false news to make discord between the king and no. district attorney names, to "go armed and equipped" to bility, or concerning any great man of the realm," was an take possession of the Journal of Commerce office; and that offence against the public peace, punishable with fine and the said Hays caused similar acts to be done to The World, imprisonment. through Lieutenant Gabriel Tuthill and several other soldiers. The district attorney then charges that John A. Dix and William Barstow are guilty of kidnapping, and the others, with John A. Dix, of inciting to a riot and forcibly detaining property; and the district attorney prays that action be taken to sustain the dignity of the State. It may be that the elements of the common law will be invoked by the district attorney in reference to this offender. In reference to the parties engaged in taking and maintaining forcible possession of the newspaper establishments, the court instructs you that if there were three or more of them, they would be liable as for riot, which has been defined to be "where three or more actually do an unlawful act of violence, either with or without a common cause or quarrel, or even do a lawful act, as removing a nuisance, in a violent or tumultuous manner." RESPONSE OF THE GRAND JURY. Judge Russell then issued subpoenas, directed to Messrs. William H. Hallock, of the Journal of Commerce; David G. Croly, of The World; William W. Jacobus, John S. Betts, auctioneer, Daniel R. Kirwan, and Washington Hills, Jr., clerk in The World office, who appeared before the judge and made their several affidavits, the district attorney examining the witnesses. Resolved, That the grand inquest respectfully represent to ARREST OF GENERAL DIX BY THE SHERIFF. the honorable court that, in their judgment, it is inexpe- In accordance with the letter of Governor Seymour, di. dient to examine into the subject referred to in the commu-recting the matter of the suppressed newspapers to be nication of the Executive of the State and the charge of the brought before a magistrate, Mr. A. Oakey Hall commenced court, namely: the action of the General Government as to taking evidence and submitting testimony before Judge certain newspapers in this city. Russell on Tuesday. After examining the witnesses, Judge Russell came to the conclusion that it was a proper case for him to issue his warrant. Accordingly warrants were placed CYRUS MASON, Foreman. JOHN AUSTIN STEVENS, Jr., Secretary. |