“But,” the writer ventured to inquire, “what will become of the Federal District, since its inhabitants have no ’State right of secession’?”

“Have you ever studied law?” he asked.

The gentleman from Amherst confessed our ignorance of any point covering the case.

“There is a rule in law,” continued Mr. Davis, “that, when property is granted by one party to another for use for any specified purpose, and ceases to be used for that purpose, it reverts by law to the donor.  Now the territory constituting at present the District of Columbia was granted, as you well know, by Maryland to the United States for use as the seat of the Federal capital.  When it ceases to be used for that purpose, it, with all its public fixtures, will revert by law to Maryland.  But,” and his eye brightened to the hue of cold steel in a way the writer will never forget, as he uttered, in a tone perfectly self-poised, undaunted, and slightly defiant, the words, “that is a point which may be settled by force rather than by reason.”

This was January 1, 1861, only eleven days after South Carolina had passed her Act of Secession, and shows that even then, notwithstanding the professed desire of the South to depart in peace, the attack not only upon the national principles of union, but upon the national property as well, was projected.  Mr. Davis, loaded with the benefits of his country, yet occupied a seat in the Senate Chamber, under the most solemn oath to uphold its Constitution, which, even if his grievances had been well founded, afforded Constitutional and peaceful remedies that he had never attempted to use.  Presenting regards, very formal indeed, sick at heart, indignant, and anxious, we left the house of the traitor.

The historical conclusions to be drawn from the above slight sketches are important in several respects.  Mr. Davis, Mr. Toombs, and Mr. Hunter are among the strongest leaders of the Rebellion.  Representing the Northern, Southeastern, and Southwestern populations of the disaffected regions, their testimony had a wide application, and was perhaps as characteristic and pointed in these brief conversations, occurring just upon the eve of the bursting of the storm, as we should have heard in a hundred interviews.  That they spoke frankly was not only evidenced to us by their entire manner, but, as it is not unimportant to repeat, has been proved by subsequent events.  The conversations, therefore, indicate,—­

1.  That the grand, fundamental, legal ground for the Rebellion was a view of Constitutional rights by which property in human beings claimed equal protection under the General Government with the products of Free Labor, and to be admitted, therefore, at will, to all places under the jurisdiction of the Federal power, and not simply to be protected under local or municipal law,—­rights which the South proposed to vindicate, constitutionally, by Secession, or, in other words, by the domination of State over National sovereignty:  an entire view of the true intent of the Federal compacts and powers, which, in the great debates between Mr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun, to say nothing of elucidations by previous and subsequent jurists and statesmen, has been again and again abundantly demonstrated to be absurd.