Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, Delivered During the Summer of 1858:

 On Fourth of July, 1858, at Sea. At Serenade, at Portland, Maine. At Portland Convention, Maine. At Belfast Encampment, Maine. At Belfast Banquet, Maine. At Portland Meeting, Maine. At Fair at Augusta, Maine. At Faneuil Hall, Boston. At New York Meeting. Before Mississippi Legislature. &c. &c. 

 To the People of Mississippi. 

I have been induced by the persistent misrepresentation of popularAddresses made by me at the North and the South during the year 1858, to collect them, and with extracts from speeches made by me in theSenate in 1850, to present the whole in this connected form; to theend that the case may be fairly before those by whose judgment I amwilling to stand or fall. 

 Jefferson Davis. 

 Extracts From Speeches in U. S. Senate. 

In the Senate of the United States, May 8, 1850, in presenting theResolutions of the Legislature of Mississippi:

It is my opinion that justice will not be done to the South, unlessfrom other promptings than are about us here--that we shall have nosubstantial consideration offered to us for the surrender of an equalclaim to California. No security against future harassment by Congresswill probably be given. The rain-bow which some have seen, I fear wasset before the termination of the storm. If this be so, those who havebeen first to hope, to relax their energies, to trust in compromisepromises, will often be the first to sound the alarm when danger againapproaches. Therefore I say, if a reckless and self-sustainingmajority shall trample upon her rights, if the Constitutional equalityof the States is to be overthrown by force, private and politicalrights to be borne down by force of numbers, then, sir, when thatvictory over Constitutional rights is achieved, the shout of triumphwhich announces it, before it is half uttered, will be checked by theunited, the determined action of the South, and every breeze willbring to the marauding destroyers of those rights, the warning: woe, woe to the riders who trample them down! I submit the report andresolutions, and ask that they may be read and printed for the use ofthe Senate. --(_Cong. Globe_, p. 943-4. )

In the Senate of the United States, June 27, 1850, on the CompromiseBill:

If I have a superstition, sir, which governs my mind and holds itcaptive, it is a superstitious reverence for the Union. If one caninherit a sentiment, I may be said to have inherited this from myrevolutionary father. And if education can develop a sentiment in theheart and mind of man, surely mine has been such as would most developfeelings of attachment for the Union. But, sir, I have an allegianceto the State which I represent here. I have an allegiance to those whohave entrusted their interests to me, which every consideration offaith and of duty, which every feeling of honor, tells me is above allother political considerations. I trust I shall never find myallegiance there and here in conflict. God forbid that the day shouldever come when to be true to my constituents is to be hostile to theUnion. If, sir, we have reached that hour in the progress of ourinstitutions, it is past the age to which the Union should have lived. If we have got to the point when it is treason to the United States toprotect the rights and interests of our constituents, I ask why shouldthey longer be represented here? why longer remain a part of theUnion? If there is a dominant party in this Union which can deny to usequality, and the rights we derive through the Constitution; if we areno longer the freemen our fathers left us; if we are to be crushed bythe power of an unrestrained majority, this is not the Union for whichthe blood of the Revolution was shed; this is not the Union I wastaught from my cradle to revere; this is not the Union in the serviceof which a large portion of my life has been passed; this is not theUnion for which our fathers pledged their property, their lives, andsacred honor. No, sir, this would be a central Government, raised onthe destruction of all the principles of the Constitution, and thefirst, the highest obligation of every man who has sworn to supportthat Constitution would be resistance to such usurpation. This is myposition. 

My colleague has truly represented the people of Mississippi asardently attached to the Union. I think he has not gone beyond thetruth when he has placed Mississippi one of the first, if not thefirst, of the States of the Confederation in attachment to it. But, sir, even that deep attachment and habitual reverence for the Union, common to us all--even that, it may become necessary to try by thetouchstone of reason. It is not impossible that they should unfurl theflag of disunion. It is not impossible that violations of theConstitution and of their rights, should drive them to that dreadextremity. I feel well assured that they will never reach it until ithas been twice and three times justified. If, when thus fullywarranted, they want a standard bearer, in default of a better, I amat their command. --(_Cong. Globe_, p. 995-6)

 On Fourth of July, 1858, At Sea. [From the Boston Post. ]

The fine ship _Joseph Whitney_, from Baltimore, Captain S. Howes, wasmaking for this port on the day of the celebration of the nation'sbirth, and among an unusually brilliant array of passengers fromdifferent parts of the country, was the distinguished Senator, Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi. The patriotic suggestion of thecaptain, to celebrate the day in a manner befitting the greatanniversary, met with a hearty response from the company, among whomwere zealous republicans, democrats and Americans. A committee wasappointed to invite the Senator to make an address, and he consented. 

First, the Declaration of Independence was read by Sebastian F. Streeter, Esq. , of Baltimore, when Senator Davis made an address ofsingular felicity of diction and impassioned eloquence, and of such acharacter as to command the admiration of those who listened to it. Hecommenced by happy allusions to the array of beauty and intelligencethat stood before him from all parts of our common country; he thenpassed in review the condition of the feeble and separate colonies of1776, and contrasted with it the country now--the only proper republicon earth, as it stood before the world in its wonderful progress inart, and agriculture, and commerce, and all the elements thatconstitute a great nation. When thus sailing on the Atlantic, lookingto the coast of the United States, he was reminded of those boldrefugees from the British and French oppression who crosses thesewater to found a home in what was then a wilderness. The memory, too, arose of the many sorrowing hearts and oppressed spirits since bornover these waves to that refuge from political oppression which ourfathers founded as the home of liberty and the asylum of mankind. Herterrtiory {sic}, which now stretches from ocean to ocean, contains avast interior yet unpeopled; and, with a destiny of still further andcontinued expansion of area, why should the gate of the temple be nowshut upon sorrowing mankind? Rather let it be that the gate should beforever open, and an emblematic flag, hereafter as heretofore, wave awelcome to all to come to the modern Abdella--fugitives from politicaloppression. 

Senator Davis dwelt at some length on the right of search question--onthe insulting claim which Great Britain made to a peace-right to visitour ships. Under the pretence of stopping the slave trade--a tradeagainst which the United States was the first nation to raise itsvoice--she had interrupted and destroyed a lucrative commerce we hadenjoyed in ivory and other products on the coast of Africa. The lateoutrages in the Gulf found us, as a people, with domestic quarrels onour hands; but if this power counted on existing divisions and onmaking them wider, the result showed how great was her error. Theinsult was resented by a united people; the Senate, as one man, leapedup against British pretensions; while England, as suddenly, astonished, withdrew her pretensions. The claim she so long preferredis given up--entirely abandoned. The same spirit that resented insultin the past will resent it in the future. I stand, said the Senator, substantially on the deck of an American vessel; it is American soil;the American flag floats over it; its right to course the oceanpathway is perfect. When the blue firmament reflected its own color inthe sea, it was the unappropriated property of mankind; and it wasarrogant and idle for any nation to deny to the United States her fullenjoyment of this common property. It was for the full and undisturbedenjoyment of this right that out fathers, when much less prepared forwar than we are now, engaged in the conflict of 1812; and for thisright we were ready to strike in 1858. Let a feign power, under anypretence whatever, insult the American flag, and it will find that weare not a divided people, but that a mighty arm will be raised tosmite down the insulter, and this great country will continue united. 

Trifling politicians in the South, or in the North, or in the West, may continue to talk otherwise, but it will be of no avail. They arelike the mosquitoes around the ox: they annoy, but they cannot wound, and never kill. There was a common interest which run through all thediversified occupations and various products of these sovereignStates; there was a common sentiment of nationality which beat inevery American bosom; there were common memories sweet to us all, and, though clouds had occasionally darkened our political sky, the goodsense and the good feeling of the people had thus far averted anycatastrophe destructive of our constitution and the Union. It was infraternity and an elevation of principle which rose superior tosectional or individual aggrandizement that the foundations of ourUnion were laid; and if we, the present generation, be worthy of ourancestry, we shall not only protect those foundations fromdestruction, but build higher and wider this temple of liberty, andinscribe perpetuity upon its tablet. 

In the course of his beautiful speech, senator Davis passed a nobleeulogium on our mother country; and dwelt on the many reasons why themost cordial friendship should be maintained with her; and heconcluded by a tribute to the fair sex--the women--beautiful woman; tothe wondrous educational influence as the mother which she exercisedover the minds of men. It is ever, at all times, felt andoperative--upon the dreary waste of ocean, on the lonely prairie, inthe troublous contests at the national halls. And when the arm ismoved in the deadly conflicts of the battle-field, and the foe isvanquished, then the gentle influences instilled by women do theirwork, and the heart melts into tears of pity and prompts to deeds ofmercy. 

After this intellectual repast, then succeeded congratulations; theair was made vocal with song; while, through the foresight of thegallant captain, at the evening hour, the sky about the good shipJoseph Whitney was brilliant with those various pyrotechnic displayswhich must be so grateful to the spirit of patriotic John Adams, ofbonfire and illumination-memory. 

 Speech at the Portland Serenade, July 9th, 1858. 

After the music had ceased, Mr. Davis appeared upon the steps, and assoon as the prolonged applause with which he was greeted had subsided, he spoke in substance as follows:

Fellow Countrymen:--Accept my sincere thanks for this manifestation ofyour kindness. Vanity does not lead me so far to misconceive yourpurpose as to appropriate the demonstration to myself; but it is notless gratifying to me to be made the medium through which Mainetenders an expression of regard to her sister Mississippi. It ismoreover, with feelings of profound gratification that I witness thisindication of that national sentiment and fraternity which made us, and which alone can keep us, one people. At a period, but as yesterdaywhen compared with the life of nations, these States were separate, and in sorts respects opposing colonies; their only relation to eachother was that of a common allegiance to the government of GreatBritain. So separate, indeed almost hostile, was their attitude, thatwhen Gen. Stark, of Bennington memory, was captured by savages on thehead waters of the Kennebec, he was subsequently taken by them toAlbnny {sic} where they went to sell furs, and again led away acaptive, without interference on the part of the inhabitants of thatneighboring colony to demand or obtain his release. United as we noware, were a citizen of the United States, as an act of hostility toour country, imprisoned or slain in any quarter of the world, whetheron land or sea, the people of each and every State of the Union, withone heart, and with one voice, would demand redress, and woe be to himagainst whom a brother's blood cried to us from the ground. Such isthe fruit of the wisdom and the justice with which our fathers boundcontending colonies into confederation and blended different habitsand rival interests into a harmonious whole, so that shoulder toshoulder they entered on the trial of the revolution, step with steptrod its thorny paths until they reached the height of nationalindependence and founded the constitutional representative liberty, which is our birthright. 

When the mother country entered upon her career of oppression, indisregard of chartered and constitutional rights, our forefathers didnot stop to measure the exact weight of the burden, or to ask whetherthe pressure bore most upon this colony or upon that, but saw in itthe infraction of a great principle, the denial of a common right, indefence of which they made common cause; Massachusetts, Virginia andSouth Carolina vieing with each other as to who should be foremost inthe struggle, where the penalty of failure would be a dishonorablegrave. 

Tempered by the trials and sacrifices of the revolution, dignified byits noble purposes, elevated by its brilliant triumphs, endeared toeach other by its glorious memories, they abandoned the confederacy, not to fly apart when the outward pressure of hostile fleets andarmies were removed, but to draw closer their embrace in the formationof a more perfect union. By such men, thus trained and ennobled, ourConstitution was formed. It stands a monument of principle, offorecast, and, above all, of that liberality which made each willingto sacrifice local interest, individual prejudice or temporary good tothe general welfare, and the perpetuity of the Republican institutionswhich they had passed through fire and blood to secure. The grantswere as broad as were necessary for the functions of the generalagent, and the mutual concessions were twice blessed, blessing bothhim who gave and him who received. Whatever was necessary for domesticgovernment, requisite in the social organization of each community, was retained by the States and the people thereof; and these it wasmade the duty of all to defend and maintain. 

Such, in very general terms, is the rich political legacy our fathersbequeathed to us. Shall we preserve and transmit it to posterity? Yes, yes, the heart responds, and the judgment answers, the task is easilyperformed. It but requires that each should attend to that which mostconcerns him, and on which alone he has rightful power to decide andto act. That each should adhere to the terms of a written compact andthat all should cooperate for that which interest, duty and honordemand. For the general affairs of our country, both foreign anddomestic, we have a national executive and a national legislature. Representatives and Senators are chosen by districts and by States, but their acts affect the whole country, and their obligations are tothe whole people. He who holding either seat would confine hisinvestigations to the mere interests of his immediate constituentswould be derelict to his plain duty; and he who would legislate inhostility to any section would be morally unfit for the station, andsurely an unsafe depositary if not a treacherous guardian of theinheritance with which we are blessed. 

No one, more than myself; recognizes the binding force of theallegiance which the citizen owes to the State of his citizenship, butthat State being a party to our compact, a member of our union, fealtyto the federal Constitution is not in opposition to, but flows fromthe allegiance due to one of the United States. Washington was notless a Virginian when he commanded at Boston; nor did Gates or Greeneweaken the bonds which bound them to their several States, by theircampaigns in the South. In proportion as a citizen loves his ownState, will he strive to honor by preserving her name and her famefree from the tarnish of having failed to observe her obligations, andto fulfil her duties to her sister States. Each page of our history isillustrated by the names and the deeds of those who have wellunderstood, and discharged the obligation. Have we so degenerated, that we can no longer emulate their virtues? Have the purposes forwhich our Union was formed, lost their value? Has patriotism ceased tobe a virtue, and is narrow sectionalism no longer to be counted acrime? Shall the North not rejoice that the progress of agriculture inthe South has given to her great staple the controlling influence ofthe commerce of the world, and put manufacturing nations under bond tokeep the peace with the United States? Shall the South not exult inthe fact, that the industry and persevering intelligence of the North, has placed her mechanical skill in the front ranks of the civilizedworld--that our mother country, whose haughty minister some eighty oddyears ago declared that not a hob-nail should be made in the colonies, which are now the United States, was brought some four years ago torecognize our pre-eminence by sending a commission to examine our workshops, and our machinery, to perfect their own manufacture of the armsrequisite for their defence? Do not our whole people, interior andseaboard, North, South, East, and West, alike feel proud of thehardihood, the enterprise, the skill, and the courage of the Yankeesailor, who has borne our flag far as the ocean bears its foam, andcaused the name and the character of the United States to be known andrespected wherever there is wealth enough to woo commerce, andintelligence enough to honor merit? So long as we preserve, andappreciate the achievements of Jefferson and Adams, of Franklin andMadison, of Hamilton, of Hancock, and of Rutledge, men who labored forthe whole country, and lived for mankind, we cannot sink to the pettystrife which would sap the foundations, and destroy the politicalfabric our fathers erected, and bequeathed as an inheritance to ourposterity forever. 

Since the formation of the Constitution, a vast extension ofterritory, and the varied relations arising there from, have presentedproblems which could not have been foreseen. It is just cause foradmiration--even wonder, that the provisions of the fundamental lawshould have been found so fully adequate to all the wants ofgovernment, new in its organization, and new in many of the principleson which it was founded. Whatever fears may have once existed as tothe consequences of territorial expansion, must give way before theevidence which the past affords. The general government, strictlyconfined to its delegated functions, and the States left in theundisturbed exercise of all else, we have a theory and practice whichfits our government for immeasurable domain, and might, under amillennium of nations, embrace mankind. 

From the slope of the Atlantic our population with ceaseless tide haspoured into the wide and fertile valley of the Mississippi, witheddying whirl has passed to the coast of the Pacific, from the Westand the East the tides are rushing towards each other--and the mind iscarried to the day when all the cultivable and will be inhabited, andthe American people will sign for more wildernesses to conquer. Butthere is here a physico-political problem presented for our solution. Were it was purely physical--your past triumphs would leave but littledoubt of your capacity to solve it. 

A community, which, when less than twenty thousand, conceived thegrand project of crossing the White Mountains, and, unaided, save bythe stimulus which jeers and prophecies of failure gave, successfullyexecuted the herculean work, might well be impatient, if it weresuggested that a physical problem was before us, too difficult fortheir mastery. The history of man teaches that high mountains and widedeserts have resisted the permanent extension of empire, and haveformed the immutable boundaries of States. From time to time, undersome able leader, have the hordes of the upper plains of Asia sweptover the adjacent country, and rolled their conquering columns overSouthern Europe. Yet, after the lapse of a few generations, thephysical law to which I have referred, has asserted its supremacy, andthe boundaries of those States differ little now from those whichobtained three thousand years ago. Rome flew her conquering eaglesover the then known world, and has now subsided into the littleterritory on which her great city was originally built. The Alps andthe Pyrenees have been unable to restrain imperial France; but herexpansion was a leverish action; her advance and her retreat weretracked with blood, and those mountain ridges are the re-establishedlimits of her empire. Shall the Rocky Mountains prove a dividingbarrier to us? Were ours a central consolidated government, instead ofa Union of sovereign States, our fate might be learned from thehistory of other nations. Thanks to the wisdom and independent spiritof our forefathers, this is not our case. Each State having solecharge of its local interests and domestic affairs, the problem whichto others has been insoluble, to us is made easy. Rapid, safe, andeasy communication and co-operation among all parts of ourcontinent-wide republic. The network of railroads which bind the Northand the South, the slope of the Atlantic and the valley of theMississippi, together testify that our people have the power toperform, in that regard, whatever it is their will to do. 

We require a railroad to the States of the Pacific for present uses;the time no doubt will come when we shall have need of two or three;it may be more. Because of the desert character of the interiorcountry the work will be difficult and expensive. It will require theefforts of an united people. The bickerings of little politicians, thejealousies of sections, must give way to dignity of purpose and zealfor the common good. If the object be obstructed by contention anddivision as to whether the route to be selected shall be northern, southern or central, the handwriting is on the wall, and it requireslittle skill to see that failure is the interpretation of theinscription. You are a practical people and may ask, how is thatcontest to be avoided? By taking the question out of the hands ofpoliticians altogether. Let the Government give such aid as it isproper for it to render to the Company which shall propose the mostfeasible and advantageous plan; then leave to capitalists withjudgment sharpened by interest, the selection of the route, and thedifficulties will diminish as did those which you overcame when youconnected your harbor with the Canadian Provinces. 

It would be to trespass on your kindness and to violate theproprieties of the occasion, were I to detain the vast concourse whichstands before me, by entering on the discussion of controvertedtopics, or by further indulging in the expression of such reflectionsas circumstances suggest. 

I came to your city in quest of health and repose. From the moment Ientered it you have showered upon me kindness and hospitality. Thoughmy experience has taught me to anticipate good rather than evil frommy fellow man, it had not prepared me to expect such unremittingattention as has here been bestowed. I have been jocularly asked inrelation to my coming here, whether I had secured a guaranty {sic} formy safety, and lo, I have found it. I stand in the midst of thousandsof my fellow citizens. But my friend, I came neither distrusting, notapprehensive, of which you have proof in the fact that I brought withme the objects of tenderest affection and solicitude--my wife and mychildren; they have shared with me your hospitality, and will alikeremain your debtors. If at some future time, when I am mingled withthe dust, and the arm of my infant son has been nerved for deeds ofmanhood, the storm of war should burst upon your city, I feel that, relying upon his inheriting the instincts of his ancestors and mine, Imay pledge him in that perilous hour to stand by your side in thedefence of your hearth stones, and in maintaining the honor of a flagwhose constellation though torn and smoked in many a battle, by seaand land, has never been stained with dishonor, and will I trustforever fly as free as the breeze which unfolds it. 

A stranger to you, the salubrity of your location and the beauty ofits scenery were not wholly unknown to me, nor were there wantingassociations which bust memory connected with your people. You willpardon me for alluding to one whose genius shed a lustre upon all ittouched, and whose qualities gathered about him hosts of friends, wherever he was known. Prentiss, a native of Portland, lived fromyouth to middle age in the county of my residence, and the inquirieswhich have been made, show me that the youth excited the interestwhich the greatness of the man justified, and that his memory thusremains a link to connect your home with mine. 

A cursory view, when passing through your town on former occasions, had impressed me with the great advantages of your harbor, its easyentrance, its depth, and its extensive accommodation for shipping. Butits advantages, and if facilities as they have been developed bycloser inspection, have grown upon me until I realize that it is noboast, but the language of sober truth which in the present state ofcommerce pronounces them unequaled in any harbor of our country. 

And surely no place could be more inviting to an invalid who sought arefuge from the heat of a southern summer. Here waving elms offer himshared walks, and magnificent residences surrounded by flowers, fillthe mind with ideas of comfort and of rest. If weary of constantcontact with his fellow men, he seeks a deeper seclusion, there, inthe back ground of this grand amphitheatre, lie the eternal mountains, frowning with brow of rock and cap of snow upon the smiling fieldsbeneath, and there in its recesses may be found as much of wildness, and as much of solitude, as the pilgrim weary of the cares of life candesire. If he turn to the front, your capacious harbor, studded withgreen islands of ever varying light and shade, and enlivened by allthe stirring evidences of commercial activity, offer him the mingledcharms of busy life and nature's calm repose. A few miles further, andhe may site upon the quiet shore to listen to the murmuring wave untilthe troubled spirit sinks to rest, and in the little sail thatvanishes on the illimitable sea, we may find the type of the voyagewhich he is so soon to take, when, his ephemeral existence closed, heembarks for that better state which lies beyond the grave. 

Richly endowed as you are by nature in all which contributes topleasure and to usefulness, the stranger cannot pass without paying atribute to the much which your energy has achieved for yourselves. Where else will one find a more happy union of magnificence andcomfort, where better arrangements to facilitate commerce? Where somuch of industry, with so little noise and bustle? Where, in a phrase, so much effected in proportion to the means employed? We hear the puffof the engine, the roll of the wheel, the ring of the axe, and thesaw, but the stormy, passionate exclamations so often mingled with thesounds, are no where heard. Yet, neither these nor other things whichI have mentioned; attractive though they be, have been to me the chiefcharm which I have found among you. For above all these I place thegentle kindness, the cordial welcome, the hearty grasp, which made mefeel truly and at once, though wandering far, that I was still athome. 

My friends, I thank you for this additional manifestation of your goodwill. 

 Speech at the Portland Convention. 

On Thursday, August 24th, 1858, when the Democratic Convention hadnearly concluded its business, a committee was appointed to wait onMr. Davis, and request him to gratify them by his presence in theConvention. He expressed his willingness to comply with the wishes ofhis countrymen, and accordingly repaired to the City Hall. On enteringhe was greeted in the most cordial and enthusiastic manner. Afterbusiness was finished, he proceeded to the rostrum, and, addressingthe Convention, said:

Friends, fellow-citizens, and brethren in Democracy, he thanked themfor the honor conferred by their invitation to be present at theirdeliberations, and expressed the pleasure he felt in standing in themidst of the Democracy of Maine--amidst so many manifestations of theimportant and gratifying fact that the Democratic is, in truth, anational party. He did not fail to remember that the principles of theparty declaring for the largest amount of personal liberty consistentwith good government, and to the greatest possible extent of communityand municipal independence, would render it in their view, as in hisown, improper for him to speak of those subjects which were local intheir character, and he would endeavor not so far to trespass upontheir kindness as to refer to anything which bore such connection, direct or indirect--and he hoped that those of their opponents who, having the control of type, fancied themselves licensed to manufacturefacts, would not hold them responsible for what he did not say. Hesaid he should carry with him, as one of the pleasant memories of hisbrief sojourn in Maine, the additional assurance, which intercoursewith the people had given him, that there still lives a NationalParty, struggling and resolved bravely to struggle for the maintenanceof the Constitution, the abatement of sectional hostility, and thepreservation of the fraternal compact made by the Fathers of theRepublic. He said, rocked in the cradle of Democracy, having learnedits precepts from his father, --who was a Revolutionary Soldier--and inlater years having been led forward in the same doctrine by thepatriot statesman--of whom such honorable mention was made in theirresolutions--Andrew Jackson, he had always felt that he had in his ownheart a standard by which to measure the sentiments of a Democrat. When, therefore, he had seen evidences of a narrow sectionalism, whichsought not the good of the whole, not even the benefit of a part, butaimed at the injury of a particular section, the pulsations of his ownheart told him such cannot be the purpose, the aim, or the wish of anyAmerican Democrat--and he saw around him to-day evidence that hisopinion in this respect had here its verification. As he looked uponthe weather-beaten faces of the veterans and upon the flushed cheekand flashing eye of the youth, which told of the fixed resolve of theone, and the ardent, noble hopes of the other, strengthened hope andbright anticipations filled his mind, and he feared not to ask thequestions shall narrow interests, shall local jealousies, shalldisregard of the high purposes for which our Union was ordained, continue to distract our people and impede the progress of ourgovernment toward the high consummation which prophetic statesmen haveso often indicated as her destiny?--[Voices, no, no, no! Muchapplause. ]

Thanks for that answer; let every American heart respond no; let everyAmerican head, let every American hand unite in the great object ofNational development. Let our progress be across the land and over thesea, let our flag as stated in your resolutions, continue to wave itswelcome to the oppressed, who flee from the despotism of other lands, until the constellation which marks the number of our States whichhave already increased from thirteen to thirty two, shall go onmultiplying into a bright galaxy covering the field on which we nowdisplay the revered stripes, which record the original size of ourpolitical family, and shall shed its benign light over all mankind, topoint them to the paths of self-government and constitutional liberty. 

He here referred to the history of the Democratic party, and numberedamong its glories the various acts of territorial acquisition andtriumphs through its foreign intercourse in the march of civilizationand National amity, as well as in the glories which from time to timehad been shed by the success of our arms upon the name and characterof the American people. He alluded to the recent attempt by some ofthe governments of Europe, to engraft upon National law a prohibitionagainst privateering. He said whenever other governments were willingto declare that private property should be exempt from the rigors ofwar, on sea as it is on land, our government might meet them more thanhalf way, but to a proposition which would leave private property theprey of national vessels and thus give the whole privateering to thosegovernments which maintained a large naval establishment in time ofpeace, he would unhesitatingly answer no. Our merchant marineconstituted the militia of the sea--how effective it had been in ourlast struggle with a maritime power, he need not say to the sons ofthose who had figured so conspicuously in that species of warfare. Thepolicy of our government was peace. We could not consent to bear theuseless expense of a naval establishment larger than was necessary forits proper uses in a time of peace. Relying as we had and musthereafter upon the merchant marine to man whatever additional vesselswe should require, and upon the bold and hardy Yankee sailor, when hecould no longer get freight for his craft, to receive a properarmament, and go forth like a knight errant of the sea in quest ofadventure against the enemies of his country's flag. 

He said our country was powerful for all military purposes, and ifasked to compare her armies and her navy with those of the greatpowers of Europe, he would answer, that is not our standard. Historyteaches that our strength is in the courage and patriotism, the skilland intelligence of our people. A part of the American army was beforehim, and a part of the American navy was lying in the harbor of theircity. That army and that navy had fought the battles of theRevolution, of the "war of 1812" and of the war with Mexico, and wouldnever be found wanting, whilst the patriotism of the earlier days ofthe Republic, proved a sufficient cement to hold the different partsof our wide spread and extending country together. He said thateverything around him spoke eloquently of the wisdom of the men whofounded these colonies-their descendants, who sat before him, contrasted strongly, as did their history and present power, stand outin bold relief, when compared with those of the inhabitants of Centraland Southern America. Chief among the reasons for this, he believed tobe the self-reliant hardihood of their forefathers who, when but ahandful, found themselves confronted by hordes of savages, yet proudlymaintained the integrity of their race and asserted its supremacy overthe descendants of Shem, in whose tents they had come to dwell. Theypreferred to encounter toil, privation and carnage, rather than debasetheir lineage and race. Their descendants of that pure and heroicblood have advanced to the high standard of civilization attainable bythat type of mankind. Stability and progress, wealth and comfort, artand science, have followed their footsteps. 

Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see theCaucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the formsof free government, because they have copied them. To its benefitsthey have not attained, because that standard of civilization is abovetheir race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mournsthat some petty chief may triumph, and through a sixty days'government ape the rulers of the earth. Even now the nearest andstrongest of these American Republics, which were fashioned after themodel of our own, seems to be tottering to a fall, and the world isinquiring as to who will take possession; or, as protector, raise andlead a people who have shown themselves incompetent to governthemselves. 

He said our fathers laid the foundation of Empire, and declared itspurposes; to their sons it remained to complete their superstructure. The means by which this end was to be secured were simple and easy. Itinvolved no harder task than that each man should attend to his ownbusiness, that no community should arrogantly assume to interfere withthe affairs of another--and that all by the honorable obligation offulfiling that compact which their fathers had made. 

He then referred to the commercial position of Maine, and spoke of herbrightly unfolding prospects of prosperity and greatness. Manyconsidered her wealth to consist of her forests, and that herprosperity would decline when her timber was exhausted--he held to adifferent opinion, and thought they might welcome the day, when thesombre shadows of the Pine gave place to verdant pastures and fruitfulfields. Was he asked, what then was to become of the interest ofship-building? He would answer--let it be changed from wood to iron. The skill to be aquired be a few years' experience, would at a fairprice for iron, enable our ship builders to construct iron ships, which, taking into account their greater capacity for freight andgreater durability, would be cheaper than vessels of wood, even whilsttimber was as abundant as now;--at least such was the information hehad derived from persons well informed upon those subjects. 

He expressed the gratification he felt for the courtesy of theDemocracy in Maine, and doubted not that the Democracy of Mississippiwould receive it, with grateful recognition, as evincing fraternalsentiment by kindness done to one of her sons, not the less arepresentative, because a humble member of her Democracy. 

 Speech at Belfast Encampment. 

About the o'clock the troops at the encampment being under arms, Col. Davis was escorted to the ground and reviewed them. He was thenintroduced to the troops by Gen. Cushman, as follows--

Officers and fellow soldiers, I introduce to you Col. Jefferson Davis, an eminent citizen of Mississippi, --a man, and I say a hero, who has, in the service of his country, been among and faced hostile guns. 

Col. Davis replied as follows--

Citizen Soldiers:--I feel pleased and gratified at the exhibition Ihave witnessed of the military spirit and instruction of the volunteermilitia of Maine. I acknowledge the compliment which has been paid tome, and I welcome it as the indication of the liberality and nationalsentiment which makes the militia of each State the effective, as theyare the constitutional defenders of our whole country. 

To one who loves his country in all its parts, it is natural torejoice in whatever contributes to the prosperity and honor, and marksthe stability and progress of any portion of its people. I thereforelook upon the evidence presented to me of the soldierly enthusiasm andmilitary acquirements displayed on this occasion, with none the lesspleasure because I am the citizen of another and distant State. It wasnot the policy of our government to maintain large armies of navies intime of peace. The history of our past wars established the fact thatit was not needful to do so. The militia had bee found equal to allthe emergencies of war. Their patriotism, their intelligence, theirknowledge of the use of arms, had given to then all the efficiency ofveterans, and on many bloody fields they have shown their superiorityover the disciplined troops of their enemies. A people morally andintellectually equal to self-government, must also be equal inself-defence. My friends, your worthy General has alluded to myconnection with the military service of the country. The memory aroseto myself when the troops this day marched past me, and when I lookedupon their manly bearing and firm step. I thought could I have seenthem thus approaching the last field of battle on which I served, where the changing tide several times threatened disaster to theAmerican flag, with what joy I would have welcomed those striped andstarred banners, the emblem and the guide of the free and the brave, and with what pride would the heart have beaten when welcoming thedanger's hour, brethren from so remote an extremity of our expandedterritory. 

One of the evidences of the fraternal confidence and mutual relianceof our fathers was to be found in their compact or mutual protectionand common defence. So long as their sons preserve the spirit andappreciate the purpose of their fathers, the United States will remaininvincible, their power will grow with the lapse of time, and theirexample show brighter and brighter as revolving ages roll over thetemple our fathers dedicated to constitutional liberty, and foundedupon truths announced to their sons, but intended for mankind. I thankyou, citizen soldiers, for this act of courtesy. It will long andgratefully be remembered, as a token of respect to the distant Stateof which I am a citizen, and I trust will be noted by others, asindicating that national sentiment which made, and which alone canpreserve us a nation. 

 Banquet After Encampment at Belfast. 

The Mayor then gave:

The heroes who have fought our country's battles: may their servicesbe appreciated by a grateful people. 

Loud calls being made for Col. Jefferson Davis, that gentleman aroseand said:

The sentiment to which he was called to respond excited memories whichcalled up proud emotions, though their associations were sad. He couldnot reply to a compliment paid to the gallantry of his comrades in thewar with Mexico, without remembering how many of them now mingle withthe dust of a foreign land, and how many of them have sunk after theday of toil was done by reason of the exposure endured in the serviceof their country. The land has mourned, and still mourns, the fall ofits bravest and best, and truly are our laurels mingled with thecypress, 'tis well, and 'tis wise, 'tis natural and 'tis proper, thatin looking on the laurels of our glory we should pause to pay atribute to the cypress which weeps over them, and having paid thistribute to the gallant dead, the memory of whose service can neverdie, we pass to the consideration of their acts, and the beneficialresults which their sacrifices have secured. When that war begun, ourhistory recorded evidence only of the power of our people for defence. The Fabian policy of Washington, admirably adapted to the condition ofthe Colonies, achieved so much in proportion to the means, that hewould be rash indeed who should attempt to criticise it. The prudent, though daring course of Jackson, fruitful as it was ofthe end to be attained, did not yet serve to illustrate the capacityof our people for the trials and the struggles attendant on theoperations of an invasive war. Hence it was commonly asserted that theAmerican people, though they might resist attack, were powerless toredress aggression which was not connected with the invasion of theirterritory. The idea of reliance upon undisciplined militia was treatedwith contempt and derision. To borrow a simile from the pit, we wereregarded as dung-hill soldiers, who would only fight at home. In thewar with Mexico our armies carried their banners over routes hithertounknown, through mountain passes where nature had almost completed thework of defence, and penetrated further into the enemy's country thanany European army has ever marched from the source of its supplies. Not to prolong the comparison by a reference to events of a remoteperiod, he would only refer to the last campaign in European war. Thecombined armies of France and England, after preparation worthy oftheir great military power, advanced through friendly territory to theouter verge of the country, against which they directed a war ofinvasion, and after a prolonged siege by sea and by land, finallycaptured a seaport town which they could not hold. Before them lay thecountry they had come to invade, but there, at the outer gate, theirmarch was arrested, and in sight of the ships which brought themsupplies and reinforcements, they terminated a campaign, the scale andproclaimed objects of which had caused the world to look on inexpectation of achievements the like of which man had not seen. Whywas it so? was it not that they were unable to move from the depot ofsupplies, though a distance less than half of that over which our armypassed before reaching a productive region would have brought theallied forces to a country filled with all the supplies necessary forthe support of an army. Is it boastful to say that American troops, and an American treasury, would have encountered and have overcomesuch an obstacle? He did not forget the complaints which had been madeon account of the vast expenditures which had been made in theprosecution of the war with Mexico; but he remembered with pride thecapacity which the country had exhibited to bear such expenditure, andbelieved that our people had no money standard by which to measure theduty of their government, and the honor of their flag. We bear with usfrom the wars in which we have been engaged no other memory of theircost than the loss of the gallant dead. To the printed reports andtabular statements we must go when we desire to know how many dollarswere expended. The successful soldier when he returns from the fieldis met by a welcome proportionate to the leaves which he has added tothe wreath of his country's glory. Each has his reward; to one, theadmiring listener at the hearthstone; to another, the triumphalreception; to all, the respect which patriotism renders to patrioticservice. To the soldier who, in the early part of the Mexican war, setthe seal of invincibility upon American arms, and subsequently by asignal victory dispersed and disorganized the regular army of Mexico, his countrymen voted the highest reward known to our government. Twicebefore have the people in like manner manifested their approbation andesteem. Thus has the military spirit of the country been nursed;to-day it needs not the monarchial bundles of ribbons, orders andtitles to sustain it. Thus has the American citizen been made torealize that it is sweet and honorable to die for one's country; andto feel proudest among his family memories of the names of those whosuccessfully fought or bravely died in defence of the national flag. Often he had had occasion to feel, and to mark the mingled sensationof pride and of sorrow with which friends revert to those whogallantly died in the field. Even at this now remote day he could nottravel in Mississippi without having the recollection of his fallencomrades painfully revived by meeting a mother who mourns her son withthe agony of a mother's grief; a father, whose stern nature vainlystruggles to conceal the involuntary pang, or tender children who knownot the extent of their deprivation, though it is indeed the sorest ofall. Let none then be surprised that he could not see thee laurel savethrough the solemn shade of the cypress. Time, however, softened theshadow long before it withers the leaf. On his way to this place helearned that it was possible, and he seized the occasion to visit theresidence of Gen. Knox, of revolutionary memory. His own desire to seesomething which had been identified with a patriot soldier who had solargely contributed to the success of the revolution, and theestablishment of the institutions we inherited, was but an indicationof the military sentiment which lives in the American heart. It turnsthe step of the traveller from his direct path, it attracts the boy inhis first reading, it fires the ambition of the youth, and encirclesthe veteran with the kindness of his neighbors, and swells the trainwhich follows his bier when, his duty to his country performed, heanswers the summons of his God, and is translated to a better sphere. It is that same military enthusiasm which calls you from theavocations and the pleasures of home to the duties and discomforts ofthe camp, that you may prepare yourselves whenever your country needsit to render her efficient service. On the militia of the country therights of its citizens, and the honor of its flag, must mainly dependin the event of a war; they only need to be organized and instructedto render them a secure reliance. Mingled with the great body of thepeople, identified with their feelings and their interests, proud ofthe prowess of their fathers and jealousy careful of the country'shonor, if properly instructed and prepared, the first trumpet callshould bring from plain and from mountain a citizen soldiery who wouldencircle the land and check the invader with a wall of fire. Your planof encampment seems best suited to the purposes of practicalinstruction. A pilgrim in search of health, his steps had beenfortunately directed to Maine, the courtesy of the commander of thisencampment had induced him to visit it and to review the troops. Inall respects it had been to him most gratifying. The appointments, themovements, the stern faces, and stalwart forms of the men, spoke ofthe power to do, and the will to dare whatever it was needful andproper to perform. This day to manifest respect to a citizen of adistant State, whose only claim upon them is that he has been anAmerican soldier, and is an American citizen, they had cheerfullymarched through heavy mire. So much had they given to so small ademand on their natural sentiment, he could not doubt they would withequal alacrity, and with the same firm step, march over a field mirywith the blood of comrade and of foe, where opposing causes make tomen a common fate. 

Among the objects which were of interest to him and which he had hopedto visit, was the fortification at the narrows of the Penobscot. During the last session of congress he had endeavored to obtain anappropriation for the completion of the work which had advanced to thepoint which made it effective against shipping, but left still liableto be carried by land attack. He was not of those who thought itnecessary to raise walls wherever an enemy might land and march, forhe would say that henceforward there would remain to an invading armybut to choose between captivity and a grave. To protect commercialports against naval assault forts are needful and should be completedso as to render them defensible by small garrisons, and to save thosegarrisons as far as possible from the sacrifice of life. Our peoplerequire no wall to separate them from other countries, unless it beneedful for our own restraint. Our policy is peace, and the factshines brightly on the pages of our history that not one acre of itsextensive acquisitions have been claimed as the spoil of the sword. Unpeopled deserts have been purchased, and on its own application acommunity has been admitted to our family of states. But we haveoffered to the world the singular example of conquered territoryreturned to the vanquished. 

Permit me in this connection, whilst ever mindful of the just relationand necessity for concurrent action between the civil and militarydepartments of government, to bear testimony to the value of themilitia for the purposes of peace. The principle of self-governmentand the spirit of independence are so deep rooted in the American mindthat our people would illy brook the enforcement of law by anyextraneous power, and it is to be hoped we never will see a case inwhich the people of a State will not be able to maintain the civilauthority, and vindicate offended law against all opposers whomsoever. To give energy and activity to such popular action the organization ofthe militia will be most convenient whenever force shall be needful. It is not a little remarkable that though the first Presidents inemphatic language from time to time recommended a thoroughorganization of the militia as one of the most important duties of thegovernment, but little more has yet been done than to make provisionsfor supplying them with arms, and for calling them out when requiredfor federal purposes. There is a moral effect arising from thespectacle of each State possessed of a body of instructed militia, ready not only to maintain its government at home, but to unite withthe militia of other States and to form an army upon which all canrely whenever a common danger calls for a common defence. It has beenthus that from time to time the fraternity of our revolutionaryfathers has been renewed among their sons, and additional assurancehas been given that the sentiment of nationality on which our Unionwas founded could never die. That the expansion of the circle did notweaken its cohesive power, nor the piling of arch upon arch endangerthe foundation on which our political temple was built. It was not astructure of expediency; master workmen cleared away the surface wherethe errors and prejudices of ages had accumulated, dug deep down tothe unmutable rock of truth, and with unchanging principlesconstructed the walls to stand till time should become eternity. Whois there, then, forgetful of his revolutionary descent, insensible tothe pride which the name of the United States justly inspires, faithless to the duty which the bond of his fathers imposes, andreckless of all which the honorable discharge of that duty ensures, would unite with impious purpose to destroy that foundation, andstrive, with sacrilegious hand to tear the flag under which we hadmarched from colonial dependence to our present national greatness. Away with speculative theories, and false philanthropy ofabstractions, which tend to destroy one half, one third, aye, or asingle star of that bright constellation which lights the pathway ofour future career, and sends a hopeful ray through the clouds ofdespotism which hang over less favored lands. 

Our mission is not that of propagandists--our principles forbidinterference with the institutions of other countries; but we may hopethat our example will be imitated, and should so live that this modelof representative liberty, community independence, and governmentderived from the consent of the governed, and limited by a writtencompact, should commend itself to the adoption of others. We now standisolated among the great nations of the earth; the opposition ofmonarchial governments to the theory on which ours is founded, pointsto the possibility of an alliance against us, by which what is termednational law may be modified and warped to our prejudice if not to ourassailment. It needs the united power, harmonious action andconcentrated will of the people of all these States to roll the wheelof progress to the end which our fathers contemplated, and which theirsons, if they are wise and true, may behold. May the kindness andcourtesy which have characterized the present occasion on whichMississippi has been greeted by Maine, be a type of the feeling whichshall ever exist between the extremes of our common country. FromFlorida to California, from Oregon to Maine, from the centre to theremotest border, may the possessors of our constitutional heritageappreciate its value, and faithfully, fraternally labor for itsthorough development, looking back to the original compact for thepurposes for which the Union was established, and forward to theblessing which such union was designed and is competent to confer. 

 Speech at the Portland Meeting. 

When it became known that Mr. Davis had arrived at the Hall, he wasloudly called for. Hon. Joseph Howard, chairman of the meeting, thenintroduced Mr. Davis, who, on coming forward, was greeted with cheerupon cheer from the vast audience. As soon as the prolonged andenthusiastic applause with which he was welcomed had subsided, Mr. Davis, addressing the audience as fellow citizens and Democraticbrethren, said that the invitation with which he had been favored toaddress them, evinced a purpose to confer together for the commongood--for the maintenance of the constitution, the bond of union. Hewould not be expected to discuss local questions; he would not in thisimitate the mischievous agitators who inflame the Northern mindagainst the Southern States. He came among them, an invalid, advisedby his physician to resort to this clime for the restoration of hishealth; as an American citizen, he had not expected that his right tocome here would be questioned; as a stranger, or if not entirely so, known mainly by the detraction which the ardent advocacy of the rightsof the South had brought upon him, he had supposed that neither hiscoming nor his going would attract attention. But his anticipationshad proved erroneous. The polite, the manly, elevated men, liftedabove the barbarism which makes stranger and enemy convertible terms, had chosen, without political distinction, to welcome his coming, andby constant acts of generous hospitality to make his sojourn aspleasant as his physical condition would permit. 

On the other hand, men who make a trade of politics, and whose capitalconsists in the denunciation of the institutions of other States, haderroneously judged him by themselves, and had regarded his coming as apolitical mission; wherefore it was, he was led to suppose, that thescavengers of that party had been employed in the publication offalsehoods, both in relation to himself and his political friends atthe South. 

So far as it affected him personally their attacks were no more thanthe barking of a cur, which, by its clamor, indicates the inhospitablecharacter of the master who keeps him. If his friends and himselfwere, as had been falsely charged, Disunionists and Nullifiers, theymight naturally have looked for kinder considerations from a partywhich circulates petitions for a "prompt and peaceful dissolution ofthe Union" on account of the incompatibility of the sections--from aparty, which, having proved faithless to the obligation of theconstitution in relation to the fugitive from service or labor, thendeclares null and void the law which their dereliction made itnecessary for Congress to enact. The fealty of himself and friends tothe constitution, and their honorable discharge of its obligations wastheir rebuke to this party, in whose hostility he found the highestcommendation in their power to bestow. 

By reckless fabrication, by garbling and inserting new words intoextracts, they had attempted to deceive the people here as to hisopinions, and had crowned the fraud by the absurd announcement thathis was the creed on which the people of Maine must vote next Monday. 

It was due to the hospitality which he had received at their handsthat he should not interfere in their domestic affairs, and he had notfailed to remember the obligation; when republicans had introduced thesubject of African slavery he had defended it, and answeredpharisaical pretensions by citing the Bible, the constitution of theUnited States and the good of society in justification of theinstitutions of the State of which he was a citizen; in this he butexercised the right of a freeman and discharged the duty of a Southerncitizen. Was it for this cause that he had been signalized as aslavery propagandists? He admitted in all its length and breadth theright of the people of Maine to decide the question for themselves; heheld that it would be an indecent interference, on the part of acitizen of another State, if he should arraign the propriety of thejudgment they had rendered, and that there was no rightful power inthe federal government or in all the States combined, to set aside thedecision which the community had made in relation to their domesticinstitutions. Should any attempt be made thus to disturb theirsovereign right, he would pledge himself in advance, as a State-rightsman, with his head, his heart and his hand, if need be, to aid them inthe defence of this right of community independence, which the Unionwas formed to protect, and which it was the duty of every Americancitizen to preserve and to guard as the peculiar and prominent featureof our government. 

Why, then, this accusation? Do they fear to allow Southern men toconverse with their philosophers, and seek thus to silence or excludethem? He trusted others would contemn them as he did, and that many ofour brethren of the South would, like himself, learn by sojourn here, to appreciate the true men of Maine, and to know how little are thepolitical abolitionists and the abolition papers the exponents of thecharacter and the purposes of the Democracy of this State. 

And now having brushed away the cob-webs which lay in his path, hewould proceed to the consideration of subjects worthy of the audiencehe had the honor to address. 

Democrats, patriots, by whatever political name any of you may beknown, you have a sacred duty to perform to your ancestry and toposterity. The time is at hand when for good or for evil, thequestions which have agitated the public mind are to be solved. Is ittrue as asserted by northern agitators that there is such contrarietybetween the North and the South that they cannot remain united! Orrather, is it not true as our fathers deemed it, that diversity in thecharacter of the population, in the products and in the institutionsof the several States formed a reason for their union and tended tosecure to their posterity the liberty which was the common object oftheir love, and by cultivating untrammeled intercourse and free tradebetween the States, to duplicate the comforts of all?

There was a time when the test of patriotism was the readiness tosever the bond which bound the colonies to the mother country. Recently our people with joyous acclamation have welcomed theconnection of the United States with Great Britain, by the Atlanticcable. The one is not inconsistent with the other. When the homegovernment violated the charters of the colonies, and assumed tocontrol the private interests of individuals, the love of politicalliberty, the determination at whatever hazard to maintain theirrights, led our fathers to enter on the trial of revolution. Havingachieved the separation, they did what was in their power for thedevelopment of commerce. They secured free trade between the States, without surrendering State independence. Their sons, not only free, but beyond the possibility of future interference in their domesticaffairs, now seek the closest commercial connection with the countryfrom which their fathers achieved a political separation. 

Had the proposition been made to consolidate the States after theirindependence had been achieved, all must know it would have beenrejected--yet there are those who now instigate you to sectionalstrife for the purpose of sectional dominion and the destruction ofthe rights of the minority. Do they mean treason to the Constitutionand the destruction of the Union? Or do they vilely practice oncredulity and passion for personal gain? The latter is suggested bythe contradictory course they pursue. At the same time they proclaimwar upon the slave property of the South, they ask for protection tothe manufactures of the staple which could not be produced if thatproperty did not exist. And while they assert themselves to be thepeculiar friends of commerce and navigation, they vaunt their purposeto destroy the labor which gives vitality to both; whilst theyproclaim themselves the peculiar friends of laboring men at the North, they insist that the negroes are their equals; and if they are sincerethey would, by emancipation of the blacks, bring them together anddegrade the white man to the negro level. They seek to influence thenorthern mind by sectional issues and sectional organization, yet theyprofess to be the friends of the Union. The Union voluntarily formedby free, equal, independent States. 

We of the South, on a sectional division, are in the minority; and iflegislation is to be directed by geographical tests--if theconstitution is to be trampled in the dust, and the unbridled will ofthe majority in Congress is to be supreme over the States; we shouldhave the problem which was presented to our Fathers when the Coloniesdeclined to be content with a mere representation in parliament. 

If the constitution is to be sacredly observed, why should there be astruggle for sectional ascendency? The instrument is the same in alllatitudes, and does not vary with the domestic institutions of theseveral States. Hence it is that the Democracy, the party of theconstitution, have preserved their integrity, and are to-day the onlynational party and the only hope for the preservation and perpetuationof the Union of the States. 

Mr. Jefferson denominated the Democracy of the North, the naturalallies of the South. It is in our generation doubly true; they arestill the party with whom labor is capital, and they are now the partywhich stands by the barriers of the constitution, to protect them fromthe waves of fanatical and sectional aggression. The use of the wordaggression reminded him that the people here have been daily haranguedabout the aggressions of the slave power, and he had been curious tolearn what was so described. It is, if he had learned correctly, theassertion of the right to migrate with slaves into the territories ofthe United States. Is this aggression? If so, upon what? Not uponthose who desire close association with the negro; not uponterritorial rights, unless these self-styled lovers of the Union havealready dissolved it and have taken the territories to themselves. Theterritory being the common property of States, equals in the Union, and bound by the constitution which recognizes property in slaves, itis an abuse of terms to call aggression the migration into thatterritory of one of its joint owners, because carrying with him anyspecies of property recognized by the constitution of the UnitedStates. The Federal government has no power to declare what isproperty anywhere. The power of each State cannot extend beyond itsown limits. As a consequence, therefore, whatever is property in anyof the States must be so considered in any of the territories of theUnited States until they reach to the dignity of communityindependence, when the subject matter will be entirely under thecontrol of the people and be determined by their fundamental law. Ifthe inhabitants of any territory should refuse to enact such laws andpolice regulations as would give security to their property or to his, it would be rendered more or less valueless, in proportion to thedifficulty of holding it without such protection. In the case ofproperty in the labor of man, or what is usually called slaveproperty, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could notordinarily retain it. Therefore, though the right would remain, theremedy being withheld, it would follow that the owner would bepractically debarred by the circumstances of the case, from takingslave property into a territory where the sense of the inhabitants wasopposed to its introduction. So much for the oft repeated fallacy offorcing slavery upon any community. 

If Congress had the power to prohibit the introduction of slaveproperty into the territories, what would be the purpose? Would it beto promote emancipation? That could not be the effect. In the firstsettlement of a territory the want of population and the consequentdifficulty of procuring hired labor, would induce emigrants to takeslaves with them; but if the climate and products of the country wereunsuited to African labor--as soon as white labor flowed in, theowners of slaves would as a matter of interest, desire to get rid ofthem and emancipation would result. The number would usually be sosmall that this would be effected without injury to society orindustrial pursuits. Thus it was in Wisconsin, notwithstanding theordinance of '87; and other examples might be cited to show that thisis not mere theory. 

Would it be to promote the civilization and progress of the negrorace? The tendency must be otherwise. By the dispersion of the slaves, their labor would be rendered more productive and their comfortsincreased. The number of owners would be multiplied, and by moreimmediate contact and personal relation greater care and kindnesswould be engendered. In every way it would conduce to the advancementand happiness of the servile caste. 

No--no--it is not these, but the same answer which comes to everyinquiry as to the cause of fanatical agitation. 'Tis for sectionalpower, and political ascendency; to fan a sectional hostility, whichmust be, as it has been, injurious to all, and beneficial to none. Forwhat patriotic purpose can the Northern mind be agitated in relationto domestic institutions, for which they have no legal or moralresponsibility, and from the interference with which they arerestrained by their obligations as American citizens?

Is it in this mode that the spirit of mutual support and common effortfor the common good, is to be cultivated? Is it thus that confidenceis to be developed and the sense of security to grow with the growingpower of each and every State? Is it thus that we are to exemplify theblessings of self-government by the free exercise in each independentcommunity of the power to regulate their domestic institutions assoil, climate, and population may determine?

Among the questions which have been made the basis of recentagitation, and has contributed as much, perhaps, as any other topopular delusion, was the act known as the Missouri Compromise. Itwill be remembered that the agitation of 1819 on the subject ofslavery, was not masked as it has been since, by pretensions ofphilanthropy--it was an avowed opposition to the admission of aslave-holding State. A long and bitter controversy was terminated bythe admission of the State of Missouri, and the prohibition of slaverynorth of the parallel of 36 deg. 30 minutes. He, and those with whomhe most concurred, had always contended that Congress had noconstitutional power to make the interdiction. But the people havinggenerally acquiesced, the matter was considered settled; and whenTexas, a slave-holding State, was admitted into the Union, Southernmen, regarding the Missouri Act as a compact, assented to theextension of the line through the territory of Texas, with a provisionthat any State formed out of the territory north of 36: 30: should benon-slaveholding. But when, at a subsequent period, we made extensiveacquisitions from Mexico, and it was proposed to divide the territoryby the same parallel, the North generally opposed it, and after a longdiscussion, the controversy was settled on the principle ofnon-intervention by Congress in relation to property in theterritories. The line of the Missouri Compromise was repudiated. And aSenator who had been most prominent in denouncing the repeal of theMissouri Compromise as a violation of good faith on the part of theSouth, in 1850, described it as a measure which had been the grave ofevery Northern man who supported it, and objected to the boundary of36: 30: for the territory of Utah, because of the politicalimplication which its adoption would contain. 

The act having been thus signally repudiated by the denial in everyform of the power of Congress to fix geographical limits within whichslavery might or might not exist; when it became necessary to organizethe territories of Kansas and Nebraska, it was but the corollary ofthe proposition which had been maintained in 1850 to repeal the actwhich had fixed the parallel of 36: 30: as the future limit of slaveryin the territory of Louisiana. 

Consistency demanded so much; fairness and manhood could not havegranted less. He was not then a member of Congress; but if he hadbeen, he should have voted for that repeal; for although in 1850 hehad favored the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to thePacific Ocean, and believed that it would most conduce to the harmonyof the States, he had yielded to the action of the Government, andconsidered the position then taken as conclusive against the retentionof the line in Louisiana and Texas, which its beneficiaries hadrefused to extend through the territories acquired from Mexico. As ageneral principle, he thought it was best to leave the territories allopen. Equality of right demanded it, and the federal government had nopower to withhold it. Whatever validity the Missouri Compromise acthad, it derived from the acquiescence of the people. After 1850 thenit had none. The South had not asked Congress to extend slavery intothe territories, and he in common with most Southern statesmen, deniedthe existence of any power to do so. He held it to be the creed of theDemocracy, both in the North and the South, that the GeneralGovernment had no constitutional power either to establish or prohibitslavery anywhere; a grant of power to do the one must necessarily haveinvolved the power to do the other. Hence it is their policy not tointerfere on the one side or the other, but protecting each individualin his constitutional rights, to leave every independent community todetermine and adjust all domestic questions as in their wisdom mayseem best. 

Politicians of the opposite school seemed to forget the relation ofthe General Government to the States; even so far as to argue asthough the General Government had been the creator instead of thecreature of the States. He had learned that attempts had been made toimpress upon the people of Maine the belief that they were in dangerof having slavery established among them by decree of the SupremeCourt of the United States. He scarcely knew how to answer so palpablean absurdity. The court was established, among other purposes, toprotect the people from unconstitutional legislation; and if Congress, in the extreme of madness, should attempt thus to invade thesovereignty of a State, it would be within the power, and would be theduty of the court, to check the aggression by declaring such law void. The court have, on more than one occasion, asserted the right oftransit as a consequence of the guarantees of the Constitution, but itwould require much ingenuity to torture the protection of a travelleror sojourner into an assertion of a right to become resident andintroduce property in contravention of the fundamental law of theState, or of a citizen to hold property within a State in violation ofits constitution and its policy. The error of the proposition was sopalpable that, like the truth of an axiom, it could not be renderedplainer by demonstration. 

It is not within the scope of human foresight to see theembarrassments which may arise in the execution of any policy. When itwas declared that soil, climate, and unrestrained migration should beleft to fix the _status_ of the territories, and institutions of theStates to be formed out of them, no one probably anticipated thatcompanies would be incorporated to transport colonists into aterritory with a view to decide its political condition. Congress, ashe believed, yielding too far to the popular idea, had surrendered itsright of revision and thus had recently lost its power to restrainimproper legislation in the territories. From these joint causes hadarisen the unhappy strife in Kansas, which at one time threatened toterminate in civil war. The Government had been denounced for theemployment of United States troops. Very briefly he would state thecase. 

The movement of the Emigrant Aid Societies of the North was met bycounteracting movements in Missouri and other Southern States. Thusopposing tides of emigration met on the plains of Kansas. The land wasa scene of confusion and violence. Fortunately the murders which for atime filled the newspapers, existed nowhere else; and the men who werereported slain, usually turned up after a short period to enjoy theeulogies which their martyrdom had elicited. But arson, theft anddisgraceful scenes of disorder did really exist, and bands of armedmen indicated the approach of actual hostilities. What was theGovernment to do? Perhaps you will say, call out the militia. But thatwould have been to feed and arm one of the parties for the destructionof the other. To call out the militia of neighboring States would havebeen but little better. The sectional excitement then ran so high, that they would probably have met upon the fields of Kansas ascombatants, the government in the meantime furnishing the supplies forboth armies. It was necessary to have a force--one which would be freefrom sectional excitement or partisan zeal and under executivecontrol. The army fulfiled these conditions. It was thereforeemployed. It dispersed marauding parties, disarmed organized invaders, arrested disturbers of the peace, gave comparative quiet and repose tothe territory, without taking a single life, aye, or shedding one dropof blood. The end justified the means, and the result equaled all thatcould have been anticipated. 

The anomalous condition of a territory possessing full legislativepower, but not invested with the sovereignty of a State, justified theanxiety exhibited by Congress to be relieved from the embarrassmentwhich the case of Kansas presented. The Senate passed a bill toauthorize a convention for the preparation of a constitution for theadmission of Kansas as a State. It however failed in the House ofRepresentatives, and the legislature of Kansas, availing themselves ofthe plenary power conferred upon them by the organic act, proceeded toprovide for the assembling of a convention, and the formation of aconstitution. The law was minute and fair in its provisions, so nearlyresembling the bill of the Senate that the one was probably copiedfrom the other. It seemed to secure to every legal voter everydesirable opportunity to exercise his right. One of the parties of theterritory, however, denying the legal existence of the legislature, chose to abstain from voting. The other elected the delegates whoformed the constitution. The validity of the instrument he has beendenied, because it was not submitted for popular ratification. He heldthis position to be wholly untenable, and could but regard it as agross departure from the principle of popular sovereignty. Apeople--he used the word in its strict political sense--having theright to make for themselves their fundamental law, may eitherassemble in mass convention for that purpose, or may select delegatesand limit their power to the preparation of an instrument to besubmitted to a popular decision; or they may appoint delegates withfull powers to frame the fundamental law of the land. Whether theyadopt one mode or the other is a question with which others have noright to interfere, and he who claims for Congress the power to sit injudgment on the manner in which a people may form a constitution, isoutside of the barrier which would restrain him from claiming forCongress the right to dictate the instrument itself. If the rightexisted to form a constitution at all, the power of Congress inrelation to the instrument was limited to the simple inquiry: is itrepublican? In this view of the case it would not matter to him theninety-ninth part of a hair whether a people should chose to admit orexclude slave property. Their right to enter the Union would be athing apart from that consideration. 

He had felt great doubt as to the propriety of admitting Kansas, andhad only yielded those doubts to the peculiar necessities which seemedto make the case exceptional. The inhabitants of the territory hadhowever decided not to enter the Union upon the terms proposed, and hethought their decision was fortunate. They had not the requisitepopulation; their resources were too limited to give assurance thatthey would be able to bear the expenses of their government andproperly to perform the duties of a State. But more than this, theirlegislative history shows that they are wanting in the essentialcharacteristics of a community; whichever party has had the control ofthe legislature, has manifested by its acts not a desire to promotethe public good, and protect individual rights, but a purpose to warupon their political opponents as a hostile power. The political partywith which he most sympathized had marked its legislation by requiringtest oaths, offensive to all our notions of political freedom; and theother party had assumed to take from the territorial executive thecontrol of the militia and to place it in irresponsible hands, where, it reports speak truly, it has been employed in the most wantonoutrages and disgraceful persecution of citizens of the oppositepolitical party. He held, therefore, that the decision of theinhabitants was fortunate and wise. It was well, that before theyassume the responsibilities of a State, they should gather population, develop the natural resources of the country, and above all acquirethe homogeneous character which would give security to person andproperty, and fit them to be justly denominated a community. 

A stranger, and but a passing observer of events in Maine, he hadnevertheless seen indications of a reaction in popular opinion, whichpromised hopefully for the future of Democracy, _hopefully_, it mightbe permitted for one to say who believed that the success of theDemocracy was the only hope for the maintenance of the constitutionand the perpetuation of the Union which sprung from and cannot outliveit. If the language of his friend who preceded him should proveprophetic, the waving of the banner he described would be the dawningof a day which would bring gladness and confidence to many a heart nowclouded with distrust, and loud would be the cheers which, on distantplain and mountain, would welcome Maine again to her position on thetop of the Democratic pyramid. He saw a brighter sky above him; hefelt a firmer foundation beneath his feet, and hoped ere long througha triumph achieved by the declaration of principles, suited to everylatitude and longitude of the United Slates, to receive the assurancethat we have passed the breakers --that our ship may henceforth floatfreely on--that our flag, no longer threatened with mutilation ordestruction, shall throw its broad stripes to the breeze and gatherstars until its constellation shines a galaxy, and records a family ofStates embracing the new world and its adjacent islands. 

 Speech at State Fair at Augusta, ME. [From the Eastern Argus, Sept 29, 1858. ]

On Thursday evening a large and brilliant audience assembled in theRepresentatives' Hall, in the Capitol, to listen to the distinguishedstatesman from Mississippi, who, upon brief notice and without amoment's leisure for preparation, had kindly consented to address theAgricultural Society. We have already spoken of the gratifyingcharacter of what he termed his desultory remarks and of the cordiallyenthusiastic manner in which both the orator and his address werereceived. As the occasion, as well as the character of the remarks, will make them interesting to the whole people of our State, we aregratified in being able to lay before our readers a more extended andaccurate report of them than has before appeared. 

At about half-past eight o'clock, the Society came into the Hall, already crowded in every part, and its President, Hon. Samuel F. Perley, in brief and complimentary terms, introduced Col. Davis, whoadvanced to the speaker's stand, and was received with loud andprolonged applause. He said:

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and countrymen: To the many acts ofkindness received from the people of Maine, I have to add the welcomereception this evening. The invitation of the Agricultural Society, with the attendant circumstances, serve further to impress me with thehospitality of ray fellow citizens of this State. Coming here, aninvalid, seeking the benefits which your clime would afford, andpreceded by a reputation which was expected to prejudice youunfavorably towards me, I have everywhere met courtesy and considerateattention, from the hour I landed on your coast to the present time. It was natural to ask, whence come these manifestations? Is it becausethe opinion which had been formed has been found to be unjust, and thereaction has been in proportion to the previous impulse? Or is it theexhibition of your regard for loyalty to one's friends, and devotionby a citizen to the community to which he belongs? Either the one orthe other is honorable to you; but there is a broader and morebeneficent motive--the prompting of that sentiment which would causeyou to recognize in every American citizen a brother. That feelingwhich Daniel Webster indicated when he met me in company with yourdistinguished townsman, ex-Senator Bradbury, and taking us with theright hand and with the left, said in the peculiarly impressive mannerwhich belonged to him, "My brethren of the North and of the South, howare ye?"

It is usual to offer to an Agricultural Society nothing less than aprepared address, and had I come with an intention to speak to you, Ishould not have failed to make that preparation which is evidence ofdue regard for the audience. The invitation under which I now speak, having been given and accepted this evening, I have no power to domore than to offer you desultory remarks on such subjects as my visitto the Fair have suggested, and which may occur to me as I progress. 

With great pleasure I have witnessed evidences of much attention anddeep interest in agriculture. It is the basis of all wealth. It is theproducer--brings all new contributions to the general store. Themechanic arts are essential to its success, and they serve by changingthe form, to multiply the value of agricultural products. And commercetoo, by exchanging the products of individuals and of countries, enhances the value of labor, and increases the comfort of man. Theyare all essential to each other. I have no disposition to magnify ordepreciate either, but my proposition is, that the soil is the sourcefrom which human wealth springs. In addition to these pursuits, society requires what are termed liberal professions. They are notproducers, though they may contribute, by diffusing knowledge, toincrease production. They may be necessary to give security toproperty and to take care of some physical wants. For instance youhave lawyers and doctors; and the less need you have of them thebetter; for though necessary, like government, it is evil which makesthem so. As to another class--those who have the cure of souls--theirmission is so sacred, their function so high as to place them beyondcomment; and of them I have nothing to say, except that I propose tosay nothing. 

Among the products of agriculture I of course intended to include thefarmer's stock, and I must here bear my tribute of admiration to thefine display which has been made of horned cattle; particularly ofwork oxen, remarkable for their size, their adaptation to the purposesfor which they are kept and the docility and yet the unflagging spiritwhich they manifested in the trials of strength and of deep ploughing. I have not before seen such fine specimens of the Devon cattle, --ofcourse I speak of them as they present themselves to the eye--notpretending to judge of their relative value to other stock exhibited. Improvement in the breed of domestic animals goes hand in hand withagricultural mechanism, to give the ability to make two blades ofgrass to grow where but one grew before, and thus to render you indeedbenefactors. Skill in the use, and ingenuity in devising andconstructing implements, serve to render labor productive, and relieveit of its most dreary drudgery. It is this mechanical ingenuity whichhas compensated for the high price of labor among us, and aided in thedevelopment of resources which makes our country the greatest of theearth. Blest by soil, climate and government, if we are, as claimed, pre-eminent among nations, it is because we have added to otheradvantages a more general cultivation of the mind. The superiority isattributable not so much to physical energy, activity andperseverance, as to the improvement of that portion of the man whichlies above the eyes. 

Though you have done much for the improvement of agriculturalimplements, your work is far from being completed. It is not a littlesurprising that we should, to this day, have no reliable rule by whichto make a plough, and though the model has been improved, certainly itis yet not unlike, and so far as exact science is concerned, is on apar with that implement as used by the Romans, and as it appeared inancient architecture; the form, proportion and angular relation of theparts, and the adjustment of the whole to the power to be applied, offer problems alike interesting to the mechanic, and useful to thecultivator. In your ploughing matches sufficient evidence was affordedof the fitness of the implements employed to turn deep and widefurrows; but should we be content with such result as is obtained bytrying different models, and then copying one which is found to begood?

Maine was so richly endowed with harbors and forests of ship timberthat it was naturally to be expected, as it has fallen out, that thepursuits of navigation would most occupy the attention of her people. But let not her sons look to the period when her forests havedisappeared as that beyond which her prosperity may not continue. There are large tracts of land which when labor is no longer directedto lumber, will become, in the hands of the farmer, what the valley ofthe Kennebec now is. The land may not offer soil so deep as alluvialdistricts, nor be at first as productive as those on which a deepvegetable mould has accumulated, yet its productiveness may not beless permanent than those. In them the elements which support thefarmer's crop may be exhausted by cultivation or carried down intosubstrata of gravel or sand. In the remote West to which so many arepressing, the emigrant will encounter an arid climate in whichirrigation is necessary to ensure a return for the labor of husbandry, and this involves an original expenditure which it will usuallyrequire large capital to bear. In this climate the sun, like a mightypump, is daily raising the water which the currents of cold air fromthe mountains, or from the sea, precipitate in the form of genialshowers during the period of your growing crops; and the granite ofthe mountains slowly, but steadily disintegrating, gives up itsfertilizing property to be scattered by unseen hands over plain andover valley. With care and with skill in its use I can see no end tothe productiveness of that portion of your land which is fit forcultivation. 

Your crops, and your mode of tillage are different from that to whichI am accustomed, and the result is that each supplies a differentsegment in the circle of man's wants. I am glad that it is so, that itmust necessarily be so. Glad, because it is an everlasting bondbetween us; one which, whilst it binds, renders both doublyprosperous. Blessed is our lot in this, that our fathers linked ustogether, and established free trade between us. In the diversity ofclimate, and of crops, there is an assurance that entire failurecannot occur. If disaster and blight should fall upon one section, itneed not go to a foreign land in search of bread. Famine, gauntfamine, with its skeleton step, can never pass our borders whilst thefree trade of the Union continues. 

But difference in pursuits, in population, and domestic institutions, have been made the basis of hostile agitation, and urged as a cause ofseparation. To my mind the reverse would be the rational conclusion. Each exchanging, the surplus of that which it can best produce for thesurplus of another which it most requires, the benefit must be mutual, and the advantage common. Here is a commercial, a selfish bond to holdus together. But I will stop here, because the current of my thoughtis carrying me beyond the limit of topics proper to the occasion, andI must offer as an apology the fact, that though myself a cultivatorof the soil, my mind has for several years been given so much topolitical subjects, that in speaking without having previouslyarranged what to say, the thought inadvertently runs from the matter Iwished to present, into collateral questions of governmental concern. Before turning back, however, into the original channel, permit me tosay that the diversity of which I have been speaking, formed no smallinducement to the union of the States, and that it has been throughthat union that we have attained to our present position, and standto-day, all things considered, the happiest, and among the greatest inthe family of nations. 

In looking around upon the evidences you have brought of mechanicaland agricultural improvement, I have viewed it not with the curiosityof a stranger, but with the interest of one who felt that he had apart in it, as an exhibition of the prosperity of his country. Thewhole confederacy is my country, and to the innermost fibres of myheart I love it all, and every part. I could not if I would, and wouldnot if I could, dwarf myself to mere sectionality. My first allegianceis to the State of which I am a citizen, and to which by affection andassociation I am personally bound; but this does not obstruct theperception of your greatness, or admiration for much which I havefound admirable among you. 

Yankee is a word once applied to you as a term of reproach, but youhave made it honorable and renowned. You have borne the flag of yourcountry from the time when it was ridiculed as a piece of stripedbunting, until it has come to be known and respected wherever the rayof civilization has reached; and your canvass-winged birds of commercehave borne civilization into regions, where it is not boasting to say, but for your prowess it would not have gone. You have a right to beproud of your achievements as well on the land as the sea. Well mayyou point as you do with satisfaction, to your school houses and yourwork-shops, and to the fruits they have borne on the forum and in thecouncil chamber, and in the manufactures which have increased thecomforts of our own people, and have encircled the globe to findexchangeable products required at home. Those are the greatest andmost beneficent triumphs--the triumph of mind over matter. These arethe monuments of greatness, which resist both time and circumstance. 

I have spoken of diversity among the people of the United States; yetthere is probably greater similitude than is to be found elsewhereover the same extent of country, and in the same number of people. Inlanguage, especially, our people are one; surely much more so thanthose of any other country. The diversity between the people of thedifferent States, even those most remote from each other, is not asgreat as that between inhabitants of adjoining countries of England, or departments of France or Spain, where provinces have their separatedialects. And chief among the causes for this I would place theprimary book, in which children of my day learned their letters, andtook their first lessons in spelling and reading. I refer to the goodold spelling book of Noah Webster, on which I doubt if there has beenany improvement, and which had the singular advantage of being usedover the whole country. To this unity of language and generalsimilitude, is to be added a community of sentiment wherever theAmerican is brought into contrast or opposition to any other people. 

If shadows float over our disc and threaten an eclipse; if there bethose who would not avert, but desire to precipitate catastrophe tothe Union, these are not the sentiments of the American heart; theyare rather the exceptions and should not disturb our confidence inthat deep-seated sentiment of nationality which aided our fathers whenthey entered into the compact of union, and which has preserved it tous. You manifest that sentiment to-day in the courtesy which you haveextended to me. In what other land could a countryman go so far fromhis home and receive among strangers the attention which could only beexpected from friends? But it is not your kindness only, which hascaused me here to feel at home; I have been brought in contact withmen of my own pursuit, the tillers of the ground and the breeders ofstock; and in my intercourse with this class of your citizens, I havebeen further confirmed in the high estimate heretofore placed uponthat portion of our population. Happily for our country and itsinstitutions, extensive territory and favorable climate, haveattracted a large part of our population to agricultural pursuits. Itis in the individuality, the sobriety, and self reliance of the ruralpopulation that I look for the highest development of those qualitiesessential to self-government, and the brightest illustration ofpatriotic devotion. They may not be the best informed, but learningand wisdom are by no means equivalent terms. Isolation and entiredependence upon himself; give independence of character and favor thatself-inquiry which best enables man to comprehend and measure themotives of his fellow. Crowded together in cities originality is lost, mind becomes as it were acadamized; and though the intercourse isfavorable to the acquisition of knowledge, it is most unfriendly tothat individuality, independence, and purity, without which republicangovernments rapidly sink into decay. It was probably in this view thatMr. Jefferson said, great cities were sores upon the body politic. Needful for the purposes of commerce, required for the exchanges onwhich agricultural and manufacturing industry depend for theirprosperity, --they are not evils which we could desire to see abated. My desire, however, is, that the rural districts shall not lose theirrelative importance or cease to control in public affairs. Misled anddeceived they may be, interested in a public wrong they cannot be, andtheirs is the sober thought upon which reliance must be placed for thecorrection of errors and delusions, which may temporarily prevail. 

In societies like this the farmers have the opportunity of comparingopinions and results, and thus increasing the amount of theirknowledge. The spirit of emulation which is excited must lead toimprovement, by better directing energy in their pursuit. Thepublication of the results and the comparisons thus instituted withwhat is done in other States, encourages State pride and developescommunity feeling. Whatever tends to the cultivation of the idea ofState sovereignty and community independence, strengthens thefoundation on which rests our federal government--the fruition of thatprinciple which led our fathers into the war of the revolution, wherethey purchased with their blood the rich inheritance transmitted tous. 

Man once received the title of Domitor Equi, he being proud of theachievement of taming the horse, and then, so far as we can learn, gentler woman sat like Penelope handling the distaff. Subsequentlythere arose a race of Amazons, who, aspiring to the feats of man, lostthe gentleness of woman; but in our happy land and day, rising abovethe one without running to the excess of the other, lovely woman, withall the gentle charms which graced a Penelope, musters her energy whenoccasion requires, and displays her prowess in commanding the horse. Among the interesting features of the exhibition I shall remember theequestrianism of the ladies. Though it was beautiful in every sense ofthe word, it was not regarded as mere sport, but the rather lookedupon as part of that mental and physical training which makes a womanmore than the mere ornament of the drawing-room--fits her usefully toact her appropriate part in the trying scenes to which the mostfavored may be subjected--to become the mother of heroes, and live inthe admiration of posterity. 

Fears had once been entertained and much opposition was formerly madeto an extension of the area of the United States. A wiser policy, however, prevailed, and the introduction of new regions, increasingthe variety of our productions, have magnified the advantages of freetrade between the States, and made us almost independent of othercountries for the supply of every object whether of necessity or ofluxury. I would be glad to extend our boundary and make the circle ofour products complete, so that, whilst we would encourage commercewith christendom we should be, commercially as we are politically, absolutely independent, whenever it should be proper or necessary toterminate intercourse with any or every other country. A statesman offormer days wished that the Atlantic was a sea of fire, that it mightbe a barrier to shut out European contamination. Whatever fear wasonce justifiable, no apprehension now need to exist, that our peoplewill imitate or seek to adopt the political theories of Europe. Wehave recently rejoiced in the success of the attempt to establishtelegraphic communication with England; because in closer commercialties we saw no danger of political influence. I was happy this eveningto receive assurances that the success of that enterprise was at lastcomplete. I have not been of those whose doubts were stronger thantheir hopes--thanks to a sanguine temperament. I have from thebeginning anticipated success, and have heretofore said that if thepresent attempt riled I was sure that Yankee enterprise and skillcould make a cable and lay it across the Atlantic. And we look forwardto the result with hope, not doubting, that the closest commercialconnexion with other countries can only bring to us benefits. We arenot, and have not been, political propagandists, yet believing ourform of government the best, we properly desire its extension andinvite the world to scrutinize our example of representative liberty. 

The stars on our flag, recording the number of the States united, havealready been more than doubled; and I hopefully look forward to theday when the constellation shall become a galaxy covering the stripes, which record the original number of our political family, and shallshed over the nations of the earth the light of regeneration tomankind. It has sometimes been said to he our manifest destiny that weshould possess the whole of this continent. Whether it shall ever allbe part of the United States is doubtful, and may never be desirable;but that in some form or other, it should come under the protectorateor control of the United States, is a result which seems to me, in theremote future, certain. It waits as the consequence upon intellectualvigor, upon physical energy, upon the capacity to govern, and can onlybe defeated by a suicidal madness, of which it does not belong to theoccasion to treat. 

I would not be understood to advocate what is called fillibustering. Our country has never obtained territory except fairly, honorably andpeaceably. We have conquered territory, but have asserted no title asthe right of conquest, returning to Mexico all except the part sheagreed to sell and for which we paid a liberal price. England havingfillibustered around the world, has reproached us for aggrandizement, and we point to history and invite a comparison. There is no stainupon our escutcheon, no smoke upon our garments, and thus may theyremain pure forever! The acquisitions of which I spoke, theprotectorate which was contemplated, were such as the necessities ofthe future should demand, and the good of others as much as our ownrequire, and this step by step, faster or slower, will, I believe, finally embrace the continent of America and its adjacent islands. 

I am not among those who desire to incorporate into our Union, countries densely populated with a different race. Deserts, 'tis theprovince of our people to subdue. A mere handful of inhabitants, suchas existed in Louisiana, are soon enveloped in the tide ofimmigration; of this character of acquisition I have no fear; but themingling of races is a different thing. I have looked with interestand pleasure upon the crosses of your cattle and horses, and saw in itthe evidence of improvement. Let your Messengers, your Morgans, yourDrews, and your Eatons be mingled with each other and with newinportations; so with your Durhams, Devons, Ayreshires and yourJerseys. The limit to these experiments will be where experience showsdeterioration. There is one cross which it is to be hoped you willavoid: 'tis that which your Puritan fathers would not adopt or evenentertain. They kept pure the Caucasian blood which flowed in theirveins, and therein is the cause of your present high civilization, your progress, your dignity and your strength. We are one, let usremain unmixed. In our neighbors of Southern and Central America wehave a sufficient warning; and may it never be our ill-fortune tolearn by experience the lessons taught by their example. 

It is due to the hospitality and kind consideration with which I havebeen treated since I first came among you that I should not leave youunder any doubt in relation to the accusations which have been busilycirculated against me. And this, it is to be hoped, will not bemistaken for egotism, since the greatest interest I have in doing sois to justify you to yourselves. I know of no selfish purpose, unlessa proper desire for esteem he such, which would lead me to attempt toundeceive you, so far as any of you may have been imposed upon. Icertainly do not expect to change my residence from the State in whichI was reared; and I long since avowed the intention never again toreceive official trust from any other authority than that of thepeople of the State of which I am a citizen. It has been representedto you that you were showering attentions upon one who was hostile toyour interests, and regardless of your rights. I am grateful to youfor the constant evidence you have given that you discredited thestatement, and I am therefore the more anxious that you should notremain in doubt. The public record contains all I have said and done, and in it nothing can be found to sustain the statement. Of this I amquite sure, because it has always been with me a principle to exercisepublic functions in the spirit of the Constitution and the purposes ofthe Union. If I know myself, I have never given a vote from a feelingof hostility to any portion of our common country; but have alwayskept in view the common obligation for the common welfare, and desiredby maintaining the constitution in each and every particular, toperpetuate the blessings it was designed to secure, and to transmitthe inheritance received from our fathers unmutilated anduncontaminated to remotest posterity. In some positions it hasdevolved upon me to study interests in Maine, with a view to securefor them proper provision, and I feel that I am justified in sayingthey were considered as became one who had sworn to protect theConstitution, and who had a function to perform in relation to asovereign State of the Union. Heretofore I have been prompted merelyby what I believed to be duty to you from me as an officer under theConstitution. Hereafter, though the principles on which I will actcannot vary, I should be less than a man if I did not feel deeperinterest in whatever concerns you. I shall always bear with me mostpleasurable recollections of my sojourn among you, and hope it may bemy good fortune some day to meet some of you in Mississippi, and thushave it in my power to reciprocate, imperfectly it may be, thekindness which you bestowed upon me. I thank you for your politeattention, and cordially wish for you, one and all, present and futureprosperity. 

 Speech at the Grand Ratification Meeting, Faneuil Hall, _Monday evening, Oct. 11th, 1858. _

Countrymen, Brethren, Democrats--Most happy am I to meet you, and tohave received here renewed assurance--of that which I have so longbelieved--that the pulsation of the democratic heart is the same inevery parallel of latitude, on every meridian of longitude throughoutthe United States. But it required not this to confirm me in a beliefso long and so happily enjoyed. --Your own great statesman who hasintroduced me to this assembly has been too long associated with me, too nearly connected, we have labored too many hours, sometimes evenuntil one day ran into another, in the cause of our country, for me tothan to understand that a Massachusetts democrat has a heartcomprehending the whole of our wide Union, and that its pulsationsalways beat for the liberty and happiness of its country. Neithercould I be unaware such was the sentiment of the democracy of NewEngland. For it was lay fortune lately to serve under a Presidentdrawn from the neighboring, State of New Hampshire, [applause, ] and Iknow that he spoke the language of his heart, for I learned it in touryears of intimate connection with him, when he said he knew "no north, no south, no east, no west, but sacred maintenance of the common bondand true devotion to the common brotherhood. " Never, sir, in the pasthistory of our country, never, I add, in its future destiny, howeverbright it may be, did or will a man of higher and purer patriotism, aman more devoted to the common weal of his country, hold the helm ofour great ship of State, than that same New Englander, FranklinPierce. [Applause. ]

I have heard the resolutions read and approved by this meeting; heardthe address of your candidate for Governor; and these added to theaddress of my old and intimate friend, Gen. Cushing, bear to me freshtestimony, which I shall be happy to carry away with me, that thedemocracy, in the language of your own glorious Webster, "stilllives, " lives not as his great spirit did, when it hung 'twixt lifeand death, like a star upon the horizon's verge, but lives like thegerm that is shooting upward, like the sapling that is growing to amighty tree, the branches of which will spread over the commonwealth, and may redeem and restore Massachusetts to her once glorious place inthe Union. 

As I look around me and see this venerable hall thus thronged, itreminds me of another meeting, when it was found too small to containthe assembly--that great meeting which assembled here, when the peoplewere called upon to decide what should be done in relation to thetea-tax. Faneuil Hall, on that occasion, was found too small, and thepeople went to the Old South Church, which still stands--a monument ofyour early history. And I hope the day will soon come when manyDemocratic meetings in Boston will be too large for Faneuil Hall![Applause. ] I am welcomed to this hall, so venerable for itsassociations with our early history; to this hall of which you are sojustly proud, and the memories of which are part of the inheritance ofevery American citizen; and feel, as I remember how many voices ofpatriotic fervor have here been heard; that in it originated the firstmovements from which the Revolution sprung; that here began thatsystem of town meetings and free discussion which is the glory andsafety of our country; that I had enough to warn me, that though mytheme was more humble than theirs, (as befitted my poorer ability, )that it was a hazardous thing for me to attempt to speak in thissacred temple. But when I heard your statesman (Gen. Cushing) say, that a word once here spoken never dies, that it becomes a part of thecircumambient air, I felt a reluctance to speak which increases uponme as I recall his expression. But if those voices which breathed thefirst instincts into the Colony of Massachusetts, and into thosecolonies which formed the United States, to proclaim communityindependence, and asserts it against the powerful mother country, --ifthose voices live here still, how must they feel who come here topreach treason to the Constitution, and assail the Union it ordainedand established? [Applause. ] It would seem that their criminal heartsshould fear that those voices, so long slumbering, would break theirsilence, that the forms which look down from these walls behind andaround me, would walk forth. And that their sabres would once more bedrawn from their scabbards, to drive from this sacred temple fanaticalmen, who desecrate it more than did the changers of money and thosewho sold doves, the temple of the living God. [Loud cheers. ]

And here, too, you have, to remind you, and to remind all who enterthis hall, the portraits of those men who are dear to every lover ofliberty, and part and parcel of the memory of every American citizen. Highest among them all I see you have placed Samuel Adams and JohnHancock. [Applause. ] You have placed them the highest and properly;for they were the two, the only two, excepted from the proclamation ofmercy, when Governor Gage issued his anathema against them and theirfellow patriots. These men, thus excepted from the saving grace of thecrown, now occupy the highest place in Faneuil Hall, and thus areconsecrated highest in the reverence of the people of Boston. [Applause. ] This is one of the instances in which we find traditionmore reliable than history; for tradition has borne the name of SamuelAdams to the remotest corner of our territory, placed it among thehousehold words taught to the rising generation, and there in the newStates intertwined with our love of representative liberty, it is aname as sacred among us as it is among you of New England. [Applause. ]

We remember how early he saw the necessity of _communityindependence_. How, through the dim mists of the future, and inadvance of his day, he looked forward to the proclamation of thatindependence by Massachusetts; how he steadily strove, through goodreport and evil report, with the same unwavering purpose, whether inthe midst of his fellow citizens, cheered by their voices, or whetherisolated, a refugee, hunted as a criminal, and communing with his ownheart, now under all circumstances his eve was still fixed upon hisfirst, last hope, the community independence of Massachusetts! Andwhen we see him, at a later period, the leader in that correspondencewhich waked the feelings of the other colonies and brought intofraternal association the people of Massachusetts with the people ofother colonies--when we see his letters acknowledging the receipt ofthe rice of South Carolina, the flour, the pork, the money ofVirginia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, and others, contributionsof affection to relieve Boston of the sufferings inflicted upon herwhen her port was closed by the despotism of the British crown--wethere see the beginning of that sentiment which insured theco-operation of the colonies throughout the desperate struggle of theRevolution, and which, if the present generation be true to thecompact of their sires, to the memory and to the principles of thenoble men from whom they descended, will perpetuate for them thatspirit of fraternity in which the Union began. [Applause. ]

But it is not here alone, nor in reminiscences connected with theobjects which present themselves within this hall, that the people ofBoston have much to excite their patriotism and carry them back to thegreat principles of the revolutionary struggle. Where in this vicinitywill you go and not meet some monument to inspire such sentiments? Onone side are Lexington and Concord, where sixty brave countrymen camewith their fowling pieces to oppose six hundred veterans, --wherepeaceful citizens animated by the love of independence and covered bythe triple shield of a righteous cause, finally forced those veteransback, and pursued them on the road, fighting from every barn and bush, and stock, and stone, till they drove them to the shelters from whichthey had gone forth! [Applause. ] And there on another side of yourcity stand those monuments of your early patriotism, Breed's andBunker's Hill whose soil drank the sacred blood of men who lived fortheir country and died for mankind! Can it be that any of you treadthat soil and forget the great purposes for which those men bravelyfought, or nobly died?" [Applause. ] While in yet another directionrise the Heights of Dorchester, once the encampment of the greatVirginian, the man who came here in the cause of Americanindependence, who did not ask "Is this a town of Virginia?" but, "Isthis a town of my brethren?" who pitched his camp and commenced hisoperations with the steady courage and cautious wisdom characteristicof Washington, hopefully, resolutely waiting and watching for the daywhen he could drive the British troops out of your city. [Cheers. ]

Here, too, you find where once the Old Liberty Tree, connected with somany of your memories, grew. You ask your legend, and learn that itwas cut down for firewood by the British soldiers, as some of yourmeeting houses were pulled down. They burned the old tree, and itwarmed the soldiers enough to enable them to evacuate the city. [Laughter. ] Had they been more slowly warmed into motion, had itburned a little longer, it might have lighted Washington and hisfollowers to their enemies. 

But they were gone, and never again may a hostile foe tread yourshore. Woe to the enemy who shall set his footprint upon your soil; hecomes to a prison or he comes to a grave! [Applause. ] Americanfortifications are not intended to protect our country from invasion. They are constructed elsewhere as in your harbor to guard points wheremarine attacks can he made; and for the rest, the breasts of Americansare our parapets. [Applause. ]

But, my friends, it is not merely in these military associations, sohonorably connected with the pride of Massachusetts, that one whovisits Boston finds much for gratification. If I were selecting aplace where the advocate of strict construction of the Constitution, the extreme asserter of democratic state rights doctrine should go forhis text, I would send him into the collections of your historicalassociation. Instead of finding Boston a place where the records wouldteach only federalism, he would find here, in bounteous store, thatsacred doctrine of state rights, which has been called the extreme andultra opinion of the South. He would find among your early recordsthat at the time when Massachusetts was under a colonial government, administered by a man appointed by the British crown, guarded byBritish soldiers; the use of this old Faneuil Hall was refused by thetown authorities to a British Governor, to hold a British festival, because he was going to bring with him the agents for collecting, andnaval officers sent here to enforce, an unconstitutional tax upon yourcommonwealth. Such was the proud spirit of independence manifestedeven in your colonial history. Such the great stone your fathers hewedwith sturdy hand, and left the fit foundation for a monument to staterights! [Applause. ] And so throughout the early period of our countryyou find Massachusetts leading, most prominent of all the States, inthe assertion of that doctrine which has been recently so muchdecried. 

Having achieved your independence, having passed through theconfederation, you assented to the formation of our presentconstitutional Union. You did not surrender your state sovereignty. Your fathers had sacrificed too much to claim as the reward of theirtrials that they should merely have a change of masters. And a changeof masters it would have been had Massachusetts surrendered her Statesovereignty to the central government, and consented that that centralgovernment should have the power to coerce a State. But if this powerdoes not exist, if this sovereignty has not been surrendered, then, Isay, who can deny the words of soberness and truth spoken by yourcandidate this evening, when he has plead to you the cause of Stateindependence, and the right of every community to he the judge of itsown domestic affairs? [Applause. ] This is all we have ever asked--weof the South, I mean, --for I stand before you one of those who havebeen called the ultra men of the South, and I speak, therefore, forthat class; and tell you that your candidate for Governor has assertedto-night everything which we have claimed as a right, and demanded asa duty resulting from the guarantees of the Constitution, made for ourmutual protection. [Applause. ] Nor is here alone in that such doctrineis asserted, the like it has been my happiness to hear in yourdaughter, the neighboring State of Maine. I have found that thedemocrats there asserted the same broad, constitutional principle forwhich we have been contending, by which we are willing to live, forwhich we are willing to die! [Loud cheers and cries of "good!"]

In this state of the case, my friends, why is the country agitated?What is there practical or rational in the present excitement? Why, since the old controversies, with all their lights and shadows, havepassed away, is the political firmament covered by one dark pall, thefuneral shade of which increases with every passing year?

Why is it, I say, that you are thus agitated in relation to thedomestic affairs of other communities? Why is it that the peace of thecountry is disturbed in order that one people may assume to judge ofwhat another people should do? Is there any political power toauthorize such interference? If so, where is it? You did not surrenderyour sovereignty. You gave to the federal government certainfunctions. It was your agent, created for specified purposes. It cando nothing save that which you have given it power to perform. Whereis the grant of the Constitution which confers on the federalgovernment a right to determine what shall be property? Surely nonesuch exists; that question it belongs to every community to settle foritself: you judge in your case; every other State must judge in itscase. The federal government has no power to create or establish; morepalpably still, it has no power to destroy property. Do you pay taxesto an agent that he may destroy your property? Do you support him forthat purpose? It is an absurdity on the face of it. To ask thequestion is to answer it. The government is instituted to protect, notto destroy property. In abundance of caution, your fathers providedthat the federal government should not take private property, even forits own use, unless by making due compensation therefore. One of itsgreat purposes was to increase the security of property, and by a moreperfect union of forces, to render more effective protection to theStates. When that power for protection becomes a source of danger, thepurpose for which the government was formed will have been defeated, and the government can no longer answer the ends for which it wasestablished. 

Why, then, in the absence of all control over the subject of Africanslavery, are you agitated in relation to it? With Pharisaicalpretension it is sometimes said it is a moral obligation to agitate, and I suppose they are going through a sort of vicarious repentancefor other men's sins. [Laughter. ] Who gave them a right to decide thatit is a sin? By what standard do they measure it? Not theConstitution; the Constitution recognizes the property in many forms, and imposes obligations in connection with that recognition. Not theBible; that justifies it. Not the good of society; for if they gowhere it exists, they find that society recognizes it as good. What, then, is their standard? The good of mankind? Is that seen in thediminished resources of the country? Is that seen in the diminishedcomfort of the world? Or is not the reverse exhibited? Is it in thecause of Christianity? It cannot be, for servitude is the only agencythrough which Christianity has reached that degraded race, the onlymeans by which they have been civilized and elevated. Or is theircharity manifested in denunciation of their brethren who arerestrained from answering by the contempt which they feel for a merebrawler, whose weapons are empty words? [Applause. ]

What, my friends, must be the consequences of this agitation? Good orevil? They have been evil, and evil they must be only, to the end. Notone particle of good has been done to any man, of any color, by thisagitation. It has been insidiously working the purpose of sedition, for the destruction of that Union on which our hopes of futuregreatness depend. 

On the one side, then you see agitation, tending slowly and steadilyto that separation of the states, which, if you have any hopeconnected with the liberty of mankind, if you have any national pridein making your country the greatest of the earth, if you have anysacred regard for the obligation which the acts of your fathersentailed upon you, --by each and all of these motives you are promptedto united and earnest effort to promote the success of that greatexperiment which your fathers left it to you to conclude. [Applause. ]On the other hand, if each community, in accordance with theprinciples of our government, whilst controlling its own domesticinstitutions, faithfully struggles as a part of the united whole, forthe common benefit of all, the future points us to fraternity, tounity, to co-operation, to the increase of our own happiness, to theextension of our useful example over mankind, and the covering of thatflag, whose stars have already more than doubled their originalnumber, [applause, ] with a galaxy to light the ample folds which thenshall wave either the recognized flag of every state, or therecognized protector of every state upon the continent of America. [Applause. ]

In connection with the idea, which I have presented of the earlysentiment of community independence, I will add the very striking factthat one of the colonies, about the time that they had resolved tounite for the purpose of achieving their independence, addressed thecolonial congress to know in what condition they would be in theinterval between their separation from the government of Great Britainand the establishment of the government for the colonies. The answerof the colonial congress was exactly that which might have beenexpected--exactly that which state rights democracy would answerto-day, to such an inquiry--that they must take care of their domesticpolity, that the congress "had nothing to do with it. " [Applause. ] Ifsuch sentiment continued--if it governed in every state--ifrepresentatives were chosen upon it--then your halls of legislationwould not be disturbed about the question of the domestic concerns ofthe different states. The peace of the country would not be hazardedby the arraignment of the family relations of people over whom thegovernment has no control. In harmony working together, inco-intelligence for the conservation of the interests of the country, in protection to the states and the development of the great ends forwhich the government was established, what effects might not beproduced? As our government increased in expansion, it would increasein its beneficent influence upon the people; we should increase infraternity; and it would be no longer a wonder to see a man comingfrom a southern state to address a Democratic audience in Boston. [Applause, cries of "good, good. "]

But I have referred to the fact that, at an early period, Massachusetts stood pre-eminently forward among those who assertedcommunity independence. And this reminds me of an incident, inillustration, which occurred when President Washington visited Boston, and John Hancock was Governor. The latter is reported to have declinedto call upon the President, because he contended that every man whocame within the limits of Massachusetts must yield rank and precedenceto the Governor of the State; and only surrendered the point onaccount of his personal regard and respect for the character of GeorgeWashington. I honor him for it, --value it as one of the earlytestimonies in favor of State Rights, and wish all our governors hadthe same high estimate of the dignity of the office of Governor of aState as had that great and glorious man. [Applause. ]

Thus it appears that the founders of this government were the trueDemocratic States Rights men. That Democracy was States rights, andStates rights was Democracy, and it is to-day. Your resolutionsbreathe it. The Declaration of Independence embodies the sentimentwhich had lived in the hearts of the people for many years before itsformal assertion. Our fathers asserted that great principle--the rightof the people to choose the government for themselves--that governmentrested upon the consent of the governed. In every form of expressionit uttered the same idea, _community independence_, and the dependenceof the government upon the community over which it existed. It was anAmerican principle, the great spirit which animated our country then, and it were well if more inspired us now. But I have said that thisState sovereignty--this community independence--has never beensurrendered, and that there is no power in the federal government tocoerce a State. Does any one ask, then, how it is that a State is tobe held to its obligations? My answer is: by _its honor_, and theobligation is the more sacred to observe every feature of the compact, because there is no power to force obedience. The great error of theconfederation was that it attempted to act upon the States. It wasfound impracticable, and our present form of government was adopted, which acts upon individuals and does not attempt to act upon States. 

The question was considered in the convention which framed theconstitution, and after discussion the proposition to give power tothe general government to enforce upon a resistant State obedience tothe law was rejected. It was upon this ground of exemption fromcompulsion that the compact of the States became a sacred obligation;and it was upon this honorable fulfilment principally that our fathersdepended for the security of the rights which the Constitution wasdesigned to secure. [Applause. ]

The fugitive slave compact in the Constitution of the United Statesimplied that the States should fulfil it voluntarily. They expectedthe States to legislate so as to secure the rendition of fugitives. 

And in 1788 it was a matter of complaint that the colony of Floridadid not restore fugitive negroes from the United States who escapedinto that colony, and a committee, composed of Hamilton, of New York, Sedgwick, of Massachusetts, and Madison, of Virginia, reportedresolutions in the Congress instructing the committee for foreignaffairs to address the _charge d'affaires_ at Madrid to apply to hismajesty of Spain to issue orders to his governor to compel them tosecure the rendition of fugitive negroes to any one who should gothere entitled to receive them. This was the sentiment of thecommittee, and they added, by way of example, as the States wouldreturn any slaves from Florida who might escape into their limits. 

When the Constitutional requirement was imposed, who could havedoubted that every State faithful to its obligations would complywithout raising questions as to whether the institution should orshould not exist in another community over which they had no control. Congress was at last forced by the failures of the States, tolegislate on the subject, and this has been one of the causes by whichyou have been disturbed. You have been called upon to make war againsta law which would never have been enacted, if each State hadfaithfully discharged the obligation imposed by the compact of theConstitution. [Cheers. ]

There is another question connected with this negro agitation. It isin relation to the right to hold slaves in the Territories. What powerhas Congress to declare what shall be property? None, in the territoryor elsewhere. Have the States by separate legislation the power toprescribe the condition upon which a citizen may enter on and enjoythe common property of the United States? Clearly not. Shall those whofirst go into the territory, deprive any citizen of the United Statessubsequently emigrating thither, of those rights which belong to himas an equal owner of the soil? Certainly not. Sovereignty jurisdictioncan only pass to these inhabitants when the States, the owners of thatterritory, shall recognize the inhabitants as an independentcommunity, and admit it to become an equal State of the Union. Untilthen the Constitution and laws of the United States must be the rulesgoverning within the limits of a territory. The Constitutionrecognizes all property gives equal privileges to every citizen of theStates; and it would be a violation of its fundamental principles toattempt any discrimination. [Applause. ] Viewed in any of its phases, political, moral, social, general, or local, what is there to sustainthis agitation in relation to other people's negroes, unless it be abridge over which to pass into office--a ready capital in politicsavailable to missionaries staving at home-reformers of things whichthey do not go to learn--preachers without and audience--overseerswithout laborers and without wages--war-horses who snuff the battleafar off, and cry: " Aha! aha! I am afar off from the battle. " [Greatlaughter and applause. ]

Thus it is that the peace of the Union is destroyed; thus it is thatbrother is arrayed against brother; thus it is that the people come toconsider--not how they can promote each other's interests, but howthey may successfully war upon them. And the political agitator likethe vampire fans the victim to which he clings but to destroy. 

Among culprits there is none more odious to my mind than a publicofficer who takes an oath to support the Constitution--the compactbetween the States binding each for the common defence and generalwelfare of the other--yet retains to himself a mental reservation thathe will war upon the principles he has sworn to maintain, and upon theproperty rights the protection of which are part of the compact of theUnion. [Applause. ]

It is a crime too low to be named before this assembly: It is onewhich no man with self-respect would ever commit. To swear that hewill support the Constitution--to take an office which belongs in manyof its relations to all the States; and to use it as a means ofinjuring a portion of the States of whom he is thus therepresentative; is treason to every thing honorable in man. It is thebase and cowardly attack of him who gains the confidence of another, in order that he may wound him. [Applause. ]

But we have heard it argued--have seen it published--a petition hasbeen circulated for signers, announcing that there was anincompatibility between the sections; that the Union had been triedlong enough, and that it had proved to be necessary to separate fromthose sections of the Union in which the curse of slavery existed. Ah!those modern saints, so much wiser than our fathers, have discoveredan incompatibility requiring separation in those relations whichexisted when the Union was formed. They have found the remnants onlyof a diversity which existed when South Carolina sent her rice toBoston, and Maryland and Pennsylvania and New York brought in theirfunds for her relief. 

They have found the remnants only; for from that day to this thedifference between the people has been constantly decreasing, and thenecessity for union which then arose in no small degree from thediversity of product, and soil and climate, has gone on increasing, both by the extension of our own territory and the introduction of newtropical products; so that whilst the difference between the peoplehas diminished, the diversity in the products has increased, and thatmotive for union which your fathers found exists in a higher degreethan it did when they resolved to be united. 

Diversity there is of occupation, of habits, of education, ofcharacter. But it is not of that extreme kind which provesincompatibility, or even incongruity; for your Massachusetts man, whenhe comes to Mississippi, adopts our opinions and our institutions, andfrequently becomes the most extreme southern man among us. [Greatapplause. ] As our country has extended--as new products have beenintroduced into it, the free trade which blesses our Union, has beenof increasing value. 

And it is not an unfortunate circumstance that this diversity ofpursuit and character has survived the condition which produced it. Originally it sprang in no small degree from natural causes. Massachusetts became a manufacturing and a commercial State because ofthe connection between her fine harbor and water power, resulting fromthe fact that the streams make their last leap into the sea, so thatthe ship of commerce brought the staple to the manufacturing power. This made you a commercial and manufacturing people. In the SouthernStates great plains interpose between the last leaps of the streamsand the sea. Those plains most proximate to navigation, were the firstcultivated, and the sea bore their products to the most approachablewater power, there to be manufactured. This was the first cause of thedifference. Then your longer and more severe winters--your soil not asfavorable for agriculture, also contributed to make you amanufacturing and commercial people. 

After the controlling cause had passed away--after railroads had beenbuilt--after the steam engine had become a motive power for a largepart of machinery, the characteristics originally stamped by naturalcauses continued the diversity of pursuit. Is it fortunate orotherwise? I say it is fortunate. Your interest is to remain amanufacturing and ours to remain an agricultural people. 

Your prosperity is to receive our staple and to manufacture it, andours to sell it to you and buy the manufactured goods. [Applause. ]This is an interweaving of interests, which makes us all the richerand all the happier. 

But this accursed agitation, this offensive, injurious intermeddlingwith the affairs of other people, and this alone it is that willpromote a desire in the mind of any one to separate these great andgrowing States. [Applause. ]

The seeds of dissension may be sown by invidious reflections. Men maybe goaded by the constant attempt to infringe upon rights and totraduce community character, and in the resentment which follows it isnot possible to tell how far the case may be driven. I therefore pleadto you now to arrest a fanaticism which has been evil in thebeginning, and must be evil to the end. You may not have the numericalpower requisite; and those at a distance may not understand how manyof you there are desirous to put a stop to the course of thisagitation. But let your language and your acts teach them toappreciate a faithful self-denying minority. I have learned since Ihave been in New England the vast mass of true State Rights Democratsto be found within its limits--though not represented in the halls ofCongress. 

And if it comes to the worst; if, availing themselves of a majority inthe two Houses of Congress, our opponents should attempt to trampleupon the Constitution; to violate the rights of the States; toinfringe upon our equality in the Union, I believe that even inMassachusetts, though it has not had a representative in Congress formany a day, the State Rights Democracy, in whose breasts beats thespirit of the revolution, can and will whip the Black Republicans. [Great applause. ] I trust we shall never be thus purified, as it were, by fire; but that the peaceful progressive revolution of the ballotbox will answer all the glorious purposes of the Constitutional Union. [Applause. ]

I marked that the distinguished orator and statesman who preceded mein addressing you used the words _national_ and _constitutional_ insuch relations to each other as to show that in his mind the one was asynonym of the other. And does he not do so with reason? We became anation by the constitution; whatever is national springs from theconstitution; and national and constitutional are convertible terms. [Applause. ]

Your candidate for the high office of governor--whom I have been onceor twice on the point of calling your governor, and whom I hope I maybe able soon to call so, [applause]--in his remarks to you haspresented the same idea in another form. And well may Massachusettsorators, without even perceiving what they are saying, uttersentiments which lie at the foundation of your colonial as well asyour revolutionary history, which existed in Massachusetts before therevolution, and have existed since, whenever the true spirit whichcomes down from the revolutionary sires has been aroused intoutterance within her limits. [Applause. ]

It has been not only, my friends, in this increasing and mutualdependence of interest that we have formed new bonds. Those bonds areboth material and mental. Every improvement in the navigation of ariver, every construction of a railroad, has added another link to thechain which encircles us, another facility for interchange and newachievements, whether it has been in arts or in science, in war or inmanufactures, in commerce or agriculture, success, unexampled successhas constituted for us a common and proud memory, and has offered tous new sentiments of nationality. 

Why, then, I would ask, do we see these lengthened shadows, whichfollow in the course of our political day? is it because the sun isdeclining to the horizon? Are they the shadows of evening; or arethey, as I hopefully believe, but the mists which are exhaled by thesun as it rises, but which are to be dispersed by its meridiansplendor? Are they but evanescent clouds that flit across but cannotobscure the great purposes for which the Constitution was established?

I hopefully look forward to the reaction which will establish the factthat our sun is yet in the ascendant--that the cloud which has coveredour political prospect is but a mist of the morning--that we are againto be amicably divided in opinion upon measures of expediency, uponquestions of relative interest, upon discussions as to the rights ofthe States, and the powers of the federal government, --such discussionas is commemorated in this historical picture [pointing to thepainting. ] There your own great Statesman, Webster, addresses hisargument to our brightest luminary, the incorruptible Calhoun, wholeans over to catch the accents of eloquence that fall from his lips. [Loud applause. ]

They differed as Statesmen and philosophers; they railed not, warrednot against each other; they stood to each other in the relation ofaffection and regard. And never did I see Mr. Webster so agitated, never did I hear his voice so falter, as when he delivered his eulogyon John C. Calhoun. [Applause. ]

But allusion was made to my own connection with your favorite departedStatesman. I will only say on this occasion, that very early in thecommencement of my congressional life, Mr. Webster was arraigned foran offence which affected him most deeply. He was no accountant; allknew that there was but little of mercantile exactness in his habits. He was arraigned on a pecuniary charge--the misapplication of what isknown as the secret service fund; and I was one of the committee thathad to investigate the charge. I endeavored to do justice, to examinethe evidence with a view to ascertain the truth. As an American Ihoped he would come out without stain or smoke upon his garments. Buthowever the fame of so distinguished an American Statesman might claimsuch hopes, the duty was rigidly to inquire, and rigorously to dojustice. The result was that he was acquitted of every charge that wasmade against him, and it was equally my pride and my pleasure tovindicate him in every form which lay within my power. [Applause. ] Noman who knew Daniel Webster, would have expected less of him. Had ourposition been reversed, none such could have believed that he wouldwith a view to a judgment ask whether a charge was made against aMassachusetts man or a Mississippian. No! it belonged to a lower, alater, and I trust a shorter lived race of statesmen ["hear, " "hear, "]to measure all facts by considerations of latitude and longitude. [Warm applause. ]

I honor that sentiment which makes us oftentimes too confident, and todespise too much the danger of that agitation which disturbs the peaceof the country. I honor that feeling which believes the ConstitutionalUnion too strong to be shaken. But at the same time I say, in soberjudgment, it will not do to treat too lightly the danger which hasbeset and which still impends over us. Who has not heard ourConstitutional Union compared to the granite cliffs which line the seaand dash back the foam of the waves, unmoved by their fury. Recently Ihave stood upon New England's shore, and have seen the waves of atroubled sea dash upon the granite which frowns over the ocean, haveseen the spray thrown back from the cliff, and the receding wave fretlike the impotent rage of baffled malice. But when the tide had ebbed, I saw that the rock was seamed and worn by the ceaseless beating ofthe sea, and fragments riven from the rock were lying on the beach. 

Thus the waves of sectional agitation are dashing themselves againstthe granite patriotism of the land. If long continued, that too mustshow the seams and scars of the conflict. Sectional hostility mustsooner or later produce political fragments. The danger lies at yourdoor, it is time to arrest it. It is time that men should go back tothe origin of our institutions. They should drink the waters of thefountain, ascend to the source, of our colonial history. 

You, men of Boston, go to the street where the massacre occurred in1770. There learn how your fathers unfaltering stood for communityright. And near the same spot mark how proudly the delegation of thedemocracy came to demand the removal of the troops from Boston, andhow the venerable Samuel Adams stood asserting the rights of thepeople, dauntless as Hampden, clear and eloquent as Sidney. 

All over our country these monuments, instructive to the presentgeneration, of what our fathers felt and said and did, are to befound. In the library of your association for the collection of yourearly history, I found a letter descriptive of the reading of theaddress to his army by Gen. Washington during one of those winterswhen he sought shelter for the ill clad, unshod, but victorious armywith which he achieved the independence we enjoy; he had built a logcabin for a meeting house, and there reading his address, his sightfailed him, he put on his glasses and with emotion which manifestedthe reality of his feelings, said, "I have grown gray in the serviceof my country, and now I am growing blind. " Who can measure the valueof such incidents in a people's history? It is a privilege to haveaccess to documents, which cause us to realize the trials, the patientendurance, the hardy virtue and moral grandeur of the men from whom weinherit our political institutions, and to whose teachings it werewell that the present generations should constantly refer. 

If you choose still further to stretch your vision to South Carolina, you will find a parallel to that devotion to their country's causewhich illustrates the early history of the Democrats of Boston. Theprisoners at Charleston, when confined upon the hulks where they wereexposed to the small pox, and, wasted by the progress of theinfection, were brought upon the shore and assured that if they wouldenlist in his majesty's service they should be relieved from theirpresent and prospective suffering, but if they refused the rationswould be taken from their families, and themselves sent to the hulksand exposed to the infection. Emaciated as they were, distressed withthe prospect of their families being turned into the street to starve, the spirit of independence, the devotion to liberty, was so warmwithin their breasts that they gave one loud hurrah for GeneralWashington, and chose death rather than dishonor. [Loud applause. ] Andif from these glorious recollections, from the emotions they excite, your eye is directed to your present condition, and you mark theprosperity, the growth and honorable career of your country, I envynot the heart of that man whose pulse does not beat quicker, who doesnot feel within him the exultation of pride at the past glory and thefuture prospects of his country. These prospects are to be realized ifwe are only wise and true to the obligations of the compact of ourfathers. For all which can sow dissension can stop the progress of theAmerican people, can endanger the achievement of the high prospects wehave before us is that miserable spirit, which, disregarding duty andhonor, makes war upon the Constitution. Madness must rule the hourwhen American citizens, trampling as well upon the great principles atthe foundation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutionof the United States, as upon the honorable obligations which theirfathers imposed upon them, shall turn with internicine hand tosacrifice themselves as well as their brethren, upon the altar ofsectional fanaticism. 

With these views, it will not be surprising to those who differ fromme, that I feel an ardent desire for the success of the State RightsDemocracy, that convinced of the destructive consequences of theheresies of their opponents, and of the evils upon which they wouldprecipitate the country, I do not forbear to advocate, here andelsewhere, the success of that party which alone is national, on whichalone I rely for the preservation of the Constitution, to perpetuatethe Union, and to fulfil the purposes which it was ordained toestablish and secure. [Loud cheers. ]

My friends, my brethren, my countrymen--[applause]--I thank you forthe patient attention you have given me. It is the first time it hasbeen my fortune to address an audience here. It will probably be thelast. Residing in a remote section of the country, with private aswell as public duties to occupy the whole of my time, it would only beunder some such necessity for a restoration of health as has broughtme here this season, that I could ever expect to make more than a veryhurried visit to any other portion of the Union than that of which Iam a citizen. 

I will say, then, on this occasion, that I am glad, truly glad, thatit has been my fortune to stay long enough among the New Englanders toobtain a better acquaintance than one can who passes in the ordinaryway through the country, at the speed of the railroad tourist. I havestayed long enough to feel that generous hospitality which evincesitself to-night, which has showed itself in every town and village ofNew England where I have gone--long enough to learn that though notrepresented in Congress, there is within the limits of New England alarge mass of as true Democrats as are to be found in any portion ofthe Union. Their purposes, their construction of the Constitution, their hopes for the future, their respect for the past, is the same asthat which exists among my beloved brethren in Mississippi. [Applause. ]

It is not a great while since one who was endeavoring to pursue mewith unfriendly criticism opened an article with my name and "gone toBoston!"--He seemed to think it a damaging reflection to say of methat I had gone to Boston--I wish he could have been here to look uponthese Democratic faces to-night, and to listen to your resolutions andthe words of your Massachusetts speakers, he might have been taughtthat a man might go and stay at Boston and learn better Democracy thanmany have acquired in other places. 

I shall gratefully carry with me the recollections of this and ofother meetings witnessed since I have been among you. In the hour ofapprehension I will hopefully turn back to my observations here--herein this consecrated hall, where men so early devoted themselves toliberty and community independence; and will endeavor to impress uponothers who know you only as you are misrepresented in the two Housesof Congress, [applause, ] how true and how many are the hearts thatbeat for constitutional liberty, and with high resolve to respectevery clause and guaranty which the Constitution contains, are pledgedto faithfully uphold the rights of any and every portion of theStates, and of the people. [Tremendous cheering. ]

 Speech in the City of New York, _Palace Garden Meeting, Oct. 19, 1858. _

Countrymen, Democrats:--When I accepted this evening the invitation tomeet you here, it was to see and to hear, not to speak. I havelistened with pleasure to the language addressed to you by yourcandidate for the highest office in the State. It is the language ofpatriotism; it is an appeal to the common sense of the people in favorof that fraternity on which our Union was founded, and on which aloneit can long continue to exist. I have rejoiced to hear the applausewith which such sentiments, when he uttered them, have been receivedby those here convened, and trust it is but an indication of thatonward progress of reaction which I believe has already commenced, andwhich is to sink to the lowest depths of forgetfulness the strugglewhich has so long agitated the country, and prompted an internecinewar against your countrymen. [Applause. ]

Truly has the distinguished gentleman pointed out to you the extremeabsurdity of attempting to excite you upon the ground of southernaggression upon the north. We have nothing to aggress upon. We havenot now, as he has told you, the power, though once we had, tointerfere with your domestic institutions. We never had the will to doso. And if we had the power now, true to the instincts and history ofour fathers, we would abstain from intermeddling in your domesticaffairs. [Applause. ] I have no purpose on this or any other occasionto mingle in the consideration of those questions which are local toyou. I am not sufficiently learned in conchology to do it if I would, [laughter, ] and I have too great a respect for community independenceto do it if I could. My purpose then is, simply in answer to yourcall, to offer you a few reflections, such as may occur to me, as Iprogress, upon those questions which are common to us all, and whichbelong to the memories of our fathers, and are linked with the hopesof our children. [Applause. ] If; then, without preparation, I do it inunvarnished phrase, if I cannot carry you along with me because of thewant of that flowing diction which might catch the ear, still I askyou to hear me for my cause, for it is the cause of our country, it isthe cause of democracy, it is the cause of human liberty. [Applause. ]

Who now stand arrayed against the democratic party? The relations ofparties and the issues upon which we have been divided have changed. What now is the basis of opposition to the democratic party? It istwofold--interference with the negroes of other people, andinterference with the rights now secured to foreigners who expatriatethemselves and come to our land. ["Hear, hear, " and applause. ] To eachcommunity belongs the right to decide for itself what institutions itwill have. To each people sovereign within their own sphere, belongs, and to them only belongs, the right to decide what shall be property. You have decided it for yourselves. Who shall gainsay your decision?Mississippi has decided it for herself; who has the right to gainsayher decision? The power of each people to rule over their domesticaffairs lies at the foundation of that Declaration of Independence towhich you owe your existence among the nations of the earth; thatdeclaration which led your fathers into and through the war of therevolution. _It is that which constitutes to-day the doctrine ofState-rights, upon which it is my pride and pleasure to stand. _[Applause. ] Congress has no power to determine what shall be propertyanywhere. Congress has only such grants as are contained in theConstitution. And the Constitution confers upon it no power to rulewith despotic hand over the inhabitants of the Territories. Within thelimits of those Territories, the common property of the Union, you andI are equal; we are joint owners. Each of us has the right to go intothose Territories, with whatever property is recognized by theConstitution of the United States. [Applause. ] Congress has no powerto limit or abridge that right. But the inhabitants of a Territorywhen as a people they come to form a State government, _when theypossess the power and jurisdiction which belongs to the people of NewYork, or any other State, have the right to decide that question, andno power upon earth has the right to decide it before that time. _[Applause. ]

[At this point the Young Men's Democratic National Club, with bannersand transparencies, entered the garden, and were received withenthusiastic cheers. ]

The dull remarks, my friends, which I was in the course of making toyou, have been interrupted by a beautiful episode, which I am surewill more than exceed the whole value of the poem, if I may thuscharacterize my dull speech. And I am glad that foremost among all thetransparencies and banners, comes this flag which speaks of the "YoungMen's Democratic National Club. "--[Three cheers for Davis. ] It is onthe young men we must rely. I have found that in every severepolitical struggle, where the contest on the one side was forprinciple, and on the other for spoils, it has been the gray-hairedfather and the boy with the peach bloom upon his cheek upon whomprinciples had to rely for support. My own generation--and I regret tosay it--seems too deeply steeped in the trickery of politics to beable to rise above the influence of personal and political gain intothe pure field of patriotism. And I am therefore glad to see the"Young Men's Democratic National Club" leading this procession. 

But to return to the argument I was making. I said that Congress hadno power to legislate upon what should be property anywhere; thatCongress had no power to discriminate between the citizens of thedifferent States who should go into the Territories, the commonproperty of all the States, but that those Territories of rightremained open to every citizen, and every species of propertyrecognized in the Constitution, until the inhabitants should become apeople, form a fundamental law for themselves, and, as authorized bythe Constitution, assume the powers, duties, and obligations of aState. And now, my friends, I would ask you, further, of what valuewould a congressional decision upon that subject be? If it be aconstitutional right, as I contend it is, then it is a matter forjudicial decision. If Congress should assert that such is not theright of each of our citizens, and the courts appointed as an arbiterin such cases should decide that it is their right, the enactmentwould, therefore, be void. It, on the other hand, it is not a right, but Congress should assert it to be one, and the courts should declarethat no such right exists under the Constitution, then, Congress hasno power to create it; and it is in this sense that Congress has notthe power to establish or prohibit slavery anywhere. [Applause. ]

What, then, has been the foundation of all this controversy? Yourcandidate has justly pointed out to you that unpatriotic struggle forsectional aggrandizement which has brought about this contest--acontest, as it were, between two contending powers for nationalpredominance--a contest upon the one side to enlarge the majority itnow possesses, and a contest upon the other side to recover the powerit has lost, and become the majority. This is the attitude of hostilenations, and not of States bound together in fraternal unity. This isthe feeling that one by one is cutting the strands which originallyheld the States together. You have seen your churches divided; youhave seen trade turned aside from its accustomed channel; you haveseen jealousy and uncharitableness and bickering springing up andgrowing stronger day by day, until at last, if it continue, the cordof union between the States reduced simply to the political strand, may not suffice to hold them together. Once united by every tie offraternal feeling, shoulder to shoulder, step by step, our fatherswent through the revolution, prompted by a common desire for thecommon good, and animated by devotion to the principle of popularliberty. They struggled against the mother country, because thatcountry endeavored to legislate for the colonies, and the coloniesclaimed as a right that they must not be taxed except by their ownrepresentatives, and refused to submit to unconstitutionallegislation. If now, in this struggle for the ascendency in power, oneaction should gain such predominance as would enable it, by modifyingthe Constitution and usurping new power, to legislate for the other, _the exercise of that power would throw us back into the condition ofthe colonies. _ And if in the veins of the sons flows the blood oftheir sires, _they would not fail to redeem themselves from tyrannyeven should they be driven to resort to revolution. _ [Applause. ]

And what is the other question of difference now? It is the agitation, as a national question, of the right of foreigners to suffrage withinthese States. Now, I ask, what power has Congress over the question?Yet members to Congress are elected upon that question. How wouldCongress legislate upon it?--They say, by modifying the naturalizationlaws. What do those laws confer? The right to hold real estate and theright to devise it by will; the right to sue and be sued in the courtsof the United States; and the rights to receive passports andprotection from the government of the United States. Who wishes towithhold those privileges from foreigners? Nobody alleges it. But theysay that the ballot-box must be protected from foreign votes. HasCongress the right to say that foreigners shall not vote within thelimits of your State? Are you willing to leave that to Congress?[Cries of " No, no, no, " and applause. ] In some of the States, byState legislation, foreigners are permitted to vote before they canbecome citizens under the naturalization laws. The naturalization lawsare not, therefore, controlling over the question of suffrage. Thepower of Congress is limited to the establishment of a uniform rule ofnaturalization throughout the States. But what further do they couplewith these demands which they make for congressional legislation? Theyproclaim their purpose to be to exclude paupers and criminals fromabroad. --Do paupers and criminals come for the right of suffrage? Theycome here for bread, or to fly from the laws which they have violated. Whether they shall be entitled to vote or not, would neither increasenor diminish the number of that class by a single individual. But, myfriends, who is a pauper, or who is a criminal? Is a man a paupermerely because he comes here without property, without money in hispurse? Go, look along your lines of internal improvements, where everymile has mingled with it the bones of some foreigner who labored tocreate it. Go to your battle fields, where your flag has been bornetriumphantly, and where fresh laurels have been added to the brow ofyour country, and there you will find the sod dyed as deep by theblood of the foreign born as by that of the native citizen. [Applause. ] Is the able-bodied man, who comes here to contribute toyour national interests by building up your public works, or aiding inthe erection of your architectural constructions, or who bears yourflag in the hour of danger, and who bleeds and dies for your country, is he the pauper you desire to exclude? And who is the criminal? Is ithe who, flying from the persecution of despotic governments, seeks ourland as the Huguenot did, as did Soule, the stern American orator, asmany others within your limits have done under more recent strugglesfor liberty in Europe? [Applause. ] Then, who are the paupers andcriminals? Is that to be decided by the ruling of other countries, bythe laws of France, or of England? Or is it to be decided by your ownlaws, by your own rules of judicature? If by the latter, then there isno good ground for controversy. We do not advocate that any countryshall empty its poor houses, get rid of the duty of supporting itspaupers, and throw that charge upon us. We could not permit anycountry to empty its prisons and penitentiaries to mingle that portionof its population with ours. But we do war against the use of termsthat delude the people, and are intended to exclude the high-spiritedand hard-working men who contribute to the bone, the sinew, and thewealth of our country. [Applause. ]

Such, then, my friends, is the opposition to the democracy, the onlynational party. The opposition, I say, claims two things from thefederal government, neither of which it has the constitutional powerto perform. It agitates this section of the Union in relation toproperty which it has not, and of which, I say, it knows literallynothing. For had the orator (Mr. Giddings) who was quoted to-night, known anything of the relations between the master and the slave, hewould not have talked of the slave armed with the British bayonet. Ourdoors are unlocked at night; we live among them with no more fear ofthem than of our cows and oxen. We lie down to sleep trusting to themfor our defence, and the bond between the master and the slave is asnear as that which exists between capital and labor anywhere. Now, about the idea of British bayonets in the hands of slaves: Thedelusion which has always excited my surprise the most has been thatwhich has led so many of the northern men to strike hands with theBritish abolitionists to make war on their southern brethren. If theycould effect their ends, and Great Britain could insert the wedgewhich should separate the States, what further use would she have forthe northern section? You are the competitors of Great Britain in thevast field of manufacture, whom she most fears, and though she may bewith you in the scheme which would effect a separation of theseStates, yet the moment that separation should be effected she would beunder the promptings of interest your worst enemy. [Applause. ] Ourfathers fought and bled to secure the common interests of the country. They reclaimed us from colonial bondage to national independence. Theystamped upon it free trade in order that the interests of all might bepromoted, that each section might be interwoven with the other--inorder that there might be the strongest bond of mutual dependence. Andstep by step, from that day to this, that common and mutual dependencehas been growing. 

From the seeds of narrow sectionality and purblind fanaticism, havesprung the tares which threaten the principles of that declarationwhich made the Colonies independent States, and of that compact bywhich the States were united by a bond to-day far more valuable thanwhen it was signed. You have among you politicians of a philosophicturn, who preach a high morality; a system of which they are thediscoverers, and it is to be hoped will long remain the exclusivepossessors. They say, it is true the Constitution dictates this, theBible inculcates that; but there is a higher law than those, and callupon you to obey that higher law, of which they are the inspiredgivers. [Laughter and applause. ] Men who are _traitors_ to the compactof their fathers--_men who have perjured the oaths they havethemselves taken_--they who wish to steep their hands in the blood oftheir brothers; these are the moral law-givers who proclaim a higherlaw than the Bible, the Constitution, and the laws of the land. Thishigher-law doctrine, it strikes me, is the most convenient one I everheard of for the _criminal_. You, no doubt, have a law which punishesa man for stealing a horse or a bale of goods. But the thief wouldfind more convenient a higher law which would justify him in keepingthe stolen goods. The doctrine is now advanced to you only in itsrelation to property of the Southern States, thus it is the pillgilded, to conceal its bitterness; but it will re-act deeply uponyourselves if you accept it. What security have you for your ownsafety if every man of vile temper, of low instincts, of base purpose, can find in his own heart a higher law than that which is the rule ofsociety, the Constitution, and the Bible? _These higher-law preachersshould be tarred and feathered, and whipped by those they have thusinstigated. This, my friends, is what was called in good oldrevolutionary times. Lynch Law. _ It is sometimes the very best law, because it deals summary justice upon those who would otherwise escapefrom all other kinds of punishment. The man who with sycophantic faceand studied phrase, and with assumed philosophic morality, preachestreason to the Constitution and the dictates of all human society, isa fit object for a Lynch law that would be higher than any he couldurge. [Applause. ]

My democratic friends, I am deeply gratified by the exhibition whichis before me. I see here a field of faces, assembled in the name ofDemocracy, and over it high, bright and multiplied for the occasion, as stars have been added by Democracy to the flag of our country, blaze the lights which typify democratic principles, pointing upward, to guide our country to that haven of prosperity which our fathers sawin the distant future, and which they left it for their sons toattain. It we are true to ourselves, true to the obligations which theConstitution imposes upon us, and if we are wise and energetic in thestruggles which lie before us, our path is onward to more of nationalgreatness than ever people before possessed. We are held together bythat two-fold government, which is susceptible of being made perfectin the small spheres of State limits, and capable of the greatestimperial power, by the combination of these municipal powers into onefor foreign action. It is a form of government such as the wit of mannever devised until our fathers, with a wisdom that approachedinspiration, framed the Constitution, and transmitted it as a legacyto us. It devolves upon every one of you, to see that each provisionof that Constitution is cordially and faithfully observed. Ifcordially and faithfully observed, the powers of hell and of earthcombined can never shake the happiness and prosperity of the people ofthe United States. [Applause. ] With every revolving year there willarise new motives for holding tenaciously to each other. With everyrevolving cycle there will come new sources of pride and nationalsentiment to the people. Year after your flag will grow morebrilliant, by the addition of fresh stars, recording the growth of ourpolitical family, and onward, over land and over sea, the progress ofAmerican principles, of human liberty illustrated, and protected bythe power of the United States, will hold its way to a triumph such asthe earth has never witnessed. [Applause. ] On the other hand, what dowe see? A picture so black that if I could unveil it, I would not inthis cheery moment expose a scene so chilling to your enthusiasm, andrevolting to your patriotic hearts. My friends, feeling that I havealready detained you too long, I now return to you my cordial thanksfor the kindness with which you have received me to-night. 

 Speech Before the Mississippi Legislature. 

Mississippians: Again it is my privilege and good fortune to be amongyou, to stand before those whom I have loved, for whom I have labored, by whom I have been trusted and honored, and here to answer formyself. Time and disease have frosted my hair, impaired my physicalenergies, and furrowed my brow, but my heart remains unchanged, andits every pulsation is as quick, as strong, and as true to yourinterests, your honor, and fair fame, as in the period of my earlieryears. 

It is known to many of you, that at the close of the last session ofCongress, wasted by protracted, violent disease, I went, in accordancewith medical advice, to the Northeastern coast of the United States. Against the opinion of my physician, I had remained at Washingtonuntil my public duties were closed, and then adopted the only coursewhich it was believed gave reasonable hope for a final restoration tohealth--that is, sought a region where I should be exempt from theheat of summer, and from political excitement. 

In one respect at least, this accorded with my own feelings, forphysically and mentally depressed, fearful that I should never againbe able to perform my part in the trials to which Mississippi might besubjected, I turned away from my fellows with such feelings as thewounded elk leaves his herd, and seeks the covert, to die alone. Misrepresentation and calumny followed me even to the brink of thegrave, and with hyena instinct would have pursued me beyond it. 

The political positions which I had always occupied, justified theexpectation that in New England I should be left in loneliness. Inthis I was disappointed; courtesy and kindness met me on my firstlanding, and attended me to the time of my departure. Themanifestations of comity and hospitality, given by the generous andthe noble, aroused the petty hostility of the more extreme of theBlack Republicans, and their newspapers assailed me with the low abusewhich for years I had been accustomed to receive at their hands. I hadalways despised their malice and defied their enmity; their assaultsdid not surprise me, but when I found them echoed in Southern papers, it did astonish, I will confess, it did pain me, not for any injuryapprehended to myself, but for its evil effect upon the cause withwhich I was identified. 

Was it expected that to public and private manifestations of kindnessby the people of Maine, I should return denunciation and repel theirgenerous approaches with epithets of abuse? If they had deserved suchreproach, they could not merit it at my hands. A guest hospitablyattended, it would have been inconsistent with the character of agentleman, to have done less than acknowledge their kindness, and itwas not in my nature to feel otherwise than grateful to them for themany manifestations of a desire to render pleasant and beneficial thesojourn of an invalid among them. But they did not deserve it, and Iam happy to state as the result of my acquaintance with them, that wehave a large body of true friends among them, men who maintain ourconstitutional rights as explicitly and as broadly as we assert them, and who have performed this service with the foreknowledge that theywere thereby to sacrifice their political prospects, at least, untilthrough years of patient exertion they should correct error, suppressfanaticism, and build for themselves a structure on the basis oftruth, which had long been unwelcome and might not soon be understood. 

But there were other evidences of regard more valuable to me thanexhibitions of personal kindness. Regard for the people ofMississippi, founded on a special attention to their history; thegallant services of your sons in the field, were publicly claimed asproperty which Mississippi could not appropriate to herself; but whichwere part of the common wealth of the nation, and belonged equally tothe people of Maine. Could I be insensible to such recognition of thehonorable fame of Mississippi? No, the memory of the gallant dead, whodied at Monterey and Buena Vista, forbade it. 

At a subsequent period, when in Massachusetts, one of herdistinguished sons, (Gen. Cushing, ) paid a compliment to the featperformed by the Mississippi Regiment in checking the enemies cavalryon the field of Buena Vista one Black Republican newspaper denied theoriginality of the movement, and claimed it to have been previouslyperformed by an English regiment at Quatre Bras. This claim wasunfounded; the service performed by the British Regiment having beenof a totally different character and for a different purpose. --ASouthern paper, however, has gone one step beyond that of theMassachusetts paper, and denies the merit claimed for the servicerendered by saying that it was the result of accident, growing out ofthe peculiar conformation of the ground on which the regiment ralliedand that it was necessary for the safety of the regiment, being likethe act of a man who leaps from a burning ship and takes the chance ofdrowning. 

If this only affected myself, I should leave it, like othermisrepresentations, unnoticed, but it concerns the hard earnedreputation of the regiment I commanded. It affects the fame ofMississippi, and propagates an error which may pollute the current ofhistory. 

We live in an age of progress, and it requires a progressive age toproduce a military critic who should discover that a soldier deservedno credit for availing himself of the accidents of ground. One half ofthe science of war consists in teaching how to take advantage of theirregularities of the ground on which military movements are to bemade, or defensive works are to be constructed. The highest reputationof Generals in every age has resulted in their skill in militarytopography. The most marked compliment ever paid by one General toanother, was that of Napoleon to Cæsar, when he halted on hisencampments without a previous reconnoisance. But the regiment did notrally as stated, for it had not been dispersed; neither was theirmovement the result of their own necessity, or adopted for their ownsafety. They were marching by the flank, on the side of a ravine, whenthe enemy's cavalry were seen approaching. They could have halted onthe side of the ravine, which was so precipitous that they would havebeen there as sate from a charge as if they had been in Mississippi. They could have gone down into the ravine, and have been concealedeven from the sight of the cavalry. The necessity was to prevent thecavalry from passing to the rear of our line of battle, where theymight have attacked, and probably carried our batteries, which werethen without the protection of our infantry escort. It was ourcountry's necessity and not our own which prompted the service thereperformed. For this the regiment was formed square across the plain, and there stood motionless as a rock, silent as death, and eager as agreyhound for the approach of the enemy, at least nine times, numerically, their superiors. Some Indiana troops were formed on thebrink of the ravine with the right flank of the Mississippi Regiment, constituting one branch of what has been called the "V". When theenemy had approached as near as he dared and seemed to shrink fromcontact with the motionless, resolute living wall which stood beforehim, the angry crack of the Mississippi rifle was heard, and as thesmoke rose and the dust fell, there remained of the host which solately stood before us but the fallen and the flying. The rear of ourline of battle was again secured, and a service had been renderedwhich in no small degree contributed to the triumph which finallyperched upon the banner of the United States. 

I am not a disinterested, and may not be a competent judge, but I knowhow I thought, and still believe, that your sons, given by you to thepublic service in the war with Mexico, have not received the fullmeasure of the credit which was their due. They, however, received somuch that we might be content to rest on the history as it has beenwritten. But it constitutes a reason why we should not permit any ofthe leaves to be unjustly torn away. 

To return to the consideration of the less important subject, themisrepresentation of myself; I will again express the surprise I feltthat when abolition papers were assailing me with a view to destroyany power which I might acquire to correct the error which had beeninstilled into the minds of the people of the North in relation toSouthern sentiments and Southern institutions, that they should havereceived both aid and comfort from Southern newspapers, and beenbolstered up in the attempt to misrepresent my political position. When the charge was made, which was copied in Northern papers, that Ihad abandoned those with whom I co-operated in 1852, to produce aseparation of the States, my friend, the editor of the Mississippian, seeing the misrepresentation of my position, and naturally supposing, as we had no discussion in 1852, the reference must have been made tothe canvass of 1851, quoted from the resolutions of the State-RightsDemocratic Convention, and from an address published by myself to thepeople, to show that my position was the reverse of that assigned tome. Before proceeding, I will advert to a reference which has beenmade to him, as my "organ. " He is no more my "organ" than I am his. Wehave generally concurred, I and have been able to understand andanticipate his positions as he has mine. I am indebted to him for manyfavors. He is indebted to me for nothing. As Democrats, as gentlemen, as friends, we occupy to each other the relation of exact equality. 

Notwithstanding that irrefutable answer to the charge, it has beenreiterated, and, as before, located in the year 1852. It is known toyou all that our discussions were in 1851. I then favored a conventionof the Southern States, that we might take counsel together, as to thefuture which was to be anticipated, from the legislation of 1850. Thedecision of the State was to acquiesce in the legislation of thatyear, with a series of resolutions in relation to futureencroachments. I submitted to the decision of the people, and have ingood faith adhered to the line of conduct which it imposed. Thereforein 1852 there is no record from which to disprove any allegation, butyou know the charge to be utterly unfounded, and charity alone cansuppose its reiteration was innocently made. Neither in that year norin any other, have I ever advocated a dissolution of the Union, or theseparation of the State of Mississippi from the Union, except as thelast alternative, and have not considered the remedies which liewithin that extreme as exhausted, or ever been entirely hopeless oftheir success. I hold now, as announced on former occasions, thatwhilst occupying a seat in the Senate, I am bound to maintain theGovernment of the Constitution, and in no manner to work for itsdestruction; that the obligation of the oath of office, Mississippi'shonor and my own, require that, as a Senator of the United States, there should be no want of loyalty to the Constitutional Union. Whenever Mississippi shall resolve to separate from the Confederacy, Iwill expect her to withdraw her representatives from the GeneralGovernment, to which they are accredited. If I should ever, whilst aSenator, deem it my duty to assume an attitude of hostility to theUnion, I should, immediately thereupon, feel bound to resign theoffice, and return to my constituency to inform them of the fact. Itwas this view of the obligations of my position, which caused me, onvarious occasions, to repel, with such indignation, the accusation ofbeing a disunionist, while holding the office of Senator of the UnitedStates. 

I have been represented as having, advocated "Squatter Sovereignty" ina speech made at Bangor, in the State of Maine, A paragraph has beenpublished purporting to be an extract from that speech, andvituperative criticism, and forced construction have exhaustedthemselves upon it, with deductions which are considered authorized, because they are not denied in the paragraph published. 

In this case, as in that of the charge in relation to my position in1852, there is no record with which to answer. I never made a speechat Bangor. And a fair mind would have sought for the speech to see howfar the general context explained the paragraph, before indulging inhostile criticism. 

Senator Douglas, in a speech at Alton, adopting the paragraphpublished, and evidently drawing his opinion from the unfairconstruction which had been put upon it, claims to quote from a speechmade by me at Bangor, to sustain the position taken by him atFreeport. He says:

"You will find in a recent speech, delivered by that able and eloquentstatesman, Hon. Jefferson Davis, at Bangor, Maine, that he took thesame view of this subject that I did in my Freeport speech. He theresaid:"

"'If the inhabitants of any territory should refuse to enact such lawsand police regulations as would give security to their property andhis, it would be rendered more or less valueless, in proportion to thedifficulty of holding it without such protection. In the case ofproperty in the labor of a man, or what is usually called slaveproperty, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could notordinarily retain it. Therefore, though the right would remain, theremedy being withheld, it would follow that the owner would bepractically debarred, by the circumstances of the case, from takingslave property into a Territory where the sense of the inhabitants wasopposed to its introduction. So much for the oft repeated fallacy offorcing slavery upon any community. '"

It is fair to suppose, if the Senator had known where to find thespeech from which this extract was taken, that he would have examinedit before proceeding to make such use of it. And I can but believe, ifhe had taken the paragraph free from the distortion which it hadundergone from others, that he must have seen it bore no similitude tohis position at Freeport, and could give no countenance to thedoctrine he then announced. He there said:

"The next question Mr. Lincoln propounded to me is: 'Can the people ofa territory exclude slavery from their limits by any fair means, before it comes into the Union as a State?' I answer emphatically, asMr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times, on every stump inIllinois, that in my opinion, the people of a territory can, by lawfulmeans, exclude slavery before it comes ill as a State. [Cheers. ] Mr. Lincoln knew that I had given that answer over and over again. Heheard me argue the Nebraska bill on that principle all over the State, in 1854, and '55, and '56, and he has now no excuse to pretend to haveany doubt upon that subject. Whatever the Supreme Court may hereafterdecide as on the abstract question of whether slavery may go in underthe Constitution or not, the people of a territory have the lawfulmeans to admit or exclude it as they please for the reason thatslavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless supported bylocal police regulations, furnishing remedies aid means of enforcingthe right of holding slaves. Those local aid police regulations canonly be furnished by the local Legislature. If the people of theTerritory are opposed to slavery they will elect members to theLegislature who will adopt unfriendly legislation to it. If they arefor it, they will adopt the legislative measures friendly to slavery. Hence no matter what may be the decision of the Supreme Court, on thatabstract questions still the right of the people to make it a slaveterritory or a free territory, is perfect and complete under theNebraska Bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln will deem my answer satisfactory onthis point. " This is the distinct assertion of the power ofterritorial legislation to admit or exclude slavery; of the first inthe race of migration who reach a territory, the common property ofthe people of the United States to enact laws for the exclusion ofother joint owners of the territory, who may in the exercise of theirequal right to enter the common property, choose to take with themproperty recognized by the Constitution, built not acceptable to thefirst emigrants to the Territory. That Senator had too often and toofully discussed with me the question of "squatter sovereignty" to bejustified in thus mistaking my opinion. The difference between us isas wide as that of one who should assert the right to rob from him whoadmitted the power. It is true, as I stated it at that time, allproperty requires protection from the society in the midst of which itis held. This necessity does not confer a right to destroy, but rathercreates an obligation to protect. It is true as I stated it, thatslave property peculiarly requires the protection of society, andwould ordinarily become valueless in the midst of a community, whichwould seek to seduce the slave front his master, and conceal himwhilst absconding, and as jurors protect each other in any suit whichthe master might bring for damages. The laws of the United States, through the courts of the United States, might enable the master torecover the slave wherever he could find him. But you all know, insuch a community as I have supposed, that a slave inclined to abscondwould become utterly useless, and that was the extent of theadmission. 

The extract on which reliance has been placed was taken from a speechmade at Portland, and both before and after the extract, the languageemployed conclusively disproves the construction, which unfriendlycriticism has put upon the detached passage. Immediately preceding it, the following language was used:

"The Territory being the common property of States, equals in theUnion, and bound by the Constitution which recognizes property inslaves, it is an abuse of terms to call aggression the migration intothat Territory of one of its joint owners, because carrying with himany species of property recognized by the Constitution of the UnitedStates. The Federal Government has no power to declare what isproperty enywhere. {sic} The power of each State cannot extend beyondits own limits. As a consequence, therefore, whatever is property inany of the States, must be so considered in any of the territories ofthe United States until they reach to the dignity of communityindependence, when the subject matter will be entirely under thecontrol of the people, and be determined by their fundamental law. Ifthe inhabitants of any territory should refuse to enact such laws andpolice regulations as would give security to their property or to his, it would be rendered more or less valueless, in proportion to thedifficulty of holding it without such protection. In the case ofproperty in the labor of man, or what is usually called slaveproperty, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could notordinarily retain it. Therefore, though the right would remain, theremedy being withheld, it would follow that the owner would bepractically debarred by the circumstances of the case, from takingslave property into a territory where the sense of the inhabitants wasopposed to its introduction. So much for the oft repeated fallacy offorcing slavery upon any community. "

And in a subsequent part of the same speech, the matter was treated ofin this wise:

"The South had not asked Congress to extend slavery into theterritories, and he in common with most other Southern statesmen, denied the existence of any power to do so. He held it to be the creedof the Democracy, both in the North and the South, that the generalgovernment had no constitutional power either to establish or prohibitslavery anywhere; a grant of power to do the one must necessarily haveinvolved the power to do the other. Hence it is their policy not tointerfere on the one side or the other, but protecting each individualin his constitutional rights, to leave every independent community todetermine and adjust all domestic questions as in their wisdom mayseem best. "

In other speeches made elsewhere, in New England and in New York theequality of the South as joint owners was declared and maintained, asI had often done before the people of Mississippi and in the Senate ofthe United States when the subject was in controversy. The positiontaken by me in 1850, in the form of an amendment offered to one of thecompromise measures of that year, was intended to assert the equalright of all property to the protection of the United States, and todeny to any legislative body the power to abridge that right. Thedecision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case has fullysustained our position in the following passage:

"If Congress itself cannot do this, (prohibit slavery in a Territory, )if it is beyond the powers conferred on the Federal Government--itwill be admitted, we presume, that it could not authorize aterritorial government to exercise them. _It could confer no power onany local government established by its authority, to violate theprovisions of the Constitution. _

"And if the Constitution recognizes the right of property of themaster in a slave; and makes no distinction between that descriptionof property and other property owned by a citizen, _no tribunal_, acting under the authority of the United States, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, has a right to draw such a distinction, ordeny to it the benefit of the provisions and guarantees which havebeen provided for the protection of private property against theencroachments of the government. "

At the time of the adoption of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, it certainlywas understood that the constitutional rights to take slaves into anyterritory of the United States should thenceforth be regarded as ajudicial question; and therefore special provision was made tofacilitate the bringing of such questions before the Supreme Court ofthe United States. After the decision to which reference has just beenmade, the prominent advocate of the bill at the time of its enactmentshould have been estopped from recurring to his "squatter sovereignty"heresies, though the decision should have been different from hisanticipation or desire. And as much interest has been felt in relationto his position, and some inquiry has been made as to my view of it, Iwill here say, that I consider him as having recanted the betteropinions announced by him in 1854, and that I cannot be compelled tochoose between men, one of whom asserts the power of Congress todeprive us of a constitutional right, and the other only denies thepower of Congress, in order to transfer it to the territoriallegislature. Neither the one nor the other has any authority to sit injudgment on our rights under the Constitution. 

Between such positions, Mississippi cannot have a preference, becauseshe cannot recognize anything tolerable in either of them. 

Having called your attention to the speech made at Portland, to showthat other parts of it disprove the construction put upon theparagraph, which was taken from it, and reported to be a part of thespeech delivered at Bangor, it may be as well on this occasion tostate the circumstances under which the speech was made at Portland. Immediately preceding the State election, I was invited, by thedemocracy of that city, to address them, and my attention wasespecially called to a delusion practiced on the people of Maine, bywhich many were led to believe that there was a purpose on the part ofthe South, through the government of the United States, to forceslavery not only into the territories, but also into thenon-slaveholding States of the Union. It was represented to me that inthe last Presidential canvass that one of the Senators of Maine hadconvinced many of the voters that if Mr. Buchanan should be elected, slavery would be forced upon Maine, and that the other Senator wasarguing that the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court had givenauthority to introduce and hold slaves in that State. To counteractsuch impressions, injurious to the South and her friends, the remarkswhich have been extracted were made. 

On that, as on other occasions, it was deemed a duty to correctmisrepresentation and seek to vindicate our purposes from theprejudice which ignorance and agitation had created against us. If itwas in my power in any degree to allay sectional excitement, tocultivate sounder opinions and a more fraternal feeling, it was a taskmost acceptable to me, and one for the performance of which I couldnot doubt your approval. But it has been my fortune to be the objectof a malice which I have not striven to appease because I wasconscious that it rested upon no injury or injustice inflicted by me. The land swarms with Presidential candidates, announced by theiragents or their friends, or by themselves, as the mode most availablefor preventing too zealous and partial friends from putting them innomination. To these it was the source of unfounded apprehension, thatI went to the coast of New England, instead of returning toMississippi. If any of them had known the necessity which kept me fromhome, it is fair to suppose the aspirant for such distinction couldnot have been guilty of the meanness of suppressing that fact, andallowing misrepresentation to do its work in my absence. 

For the wretch who is doomed to go through the world bearing apersonal jealousy or a personal malignity, which renders him incapableof doing justice, and studious of misrepresentation, I can only feelpity, and were it possible to feel revengeful, could consign him to noworse punishment than that of his own tormentors, the vipers nursed inhis own breast. 

But long have I delayed what is my chief purpose, to speak to myfriends, the men whose good opinion is to me of importance only secondto the approval of my own conscience. So far as they havemisunderstood me, it is a pleasure to set forth the true meaning ofboth my words and my deeds. To my traducers I have no explanations tooffer and no apologies for any one. If State Rights men in the excessof their zeal have censured me, I have no reproaches for them, butcheerfully bear the burden which may be imposed upon me by zeal in thecause to which my political life has been devoted, and in imitation ofJob, would bless the State Rights Democracy of Mississippi, even ifthe object of its vengeance: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust inhim. "

If I had been asked what interpretation might possibly be put upon thepublished sketch of the remarks made by me at sea on the Fourth ofJuly last, speculation would have been exhausted before it would haveoccurred to me that my State Rights friends would consider themselvesdescribed under the head of "trifling politicians, " who could notbelieve that the country would remain united to repel insult to ourflag as it had recently been on the occasion of the attempt toexercise visit and search in the Gulf of Mexico, under the pretext ofchecking the African slave trade. The publisher of that sketch hasalready announced that it was not a report, and that for its languageI could not justly be considered responsible. To this it is needlessthat I should add any thing. But I have treated it, and will treat itin the view necessarily taken by those who construed it before suchdenial was made. 

During the period of greatest adversity, in the hour of gloom anddefeat, the State Rights Democracy had no cause to complain of myfealty. We struggled together, fell together, rose together, and tothem I am indebted for whatever of consideration or position Ipossess. Endeared to me by our common suffering; grateful to them forthe steadfast support with which they have honored me, accustomed torefer with pride to my identity with them, it would have been strangeindeed, if when separated from them under circumstances which turnedany eyes, with more than ordinary anxiety towards my home, I shouldthen have sought an occasion to heap reproachful language upon them. 

Often it has been my duty to repel the accusations of others whosought to attribute to the State Rights Democracy opinions not theirown, and to impute to them the purpose to agitate for the destructionof the government we inherited. As one of the State Rights party, Ideny that the language published is a picture of me or my class, and Ihave as little disposition now, as at any former time, to separatemyself from the body of the party, with which I have so long acted, which I rejoice to see in power at home, and daily more and morerespected in the other States. 

I have thus defined who were not meant, and will now tell who weremeant. Firsts they were the noisy agitators who were constantlydisturbing the public peace and proclaiming that slavery is so greatan evil, that the preservation of the Union is subordinate to thepurpose of abolishing it. They who object to any protection, on thehigh seas or elsewhere, being given to slave property by thegovernment of the United States; who would rejoice in any insultoffered to the national flag if borne by a vessel sailing from aSouthern port; and who have been for some time back circulatingpetitions for a dissolution of the Union on the ground of theincompatibility of the sections. And to these may be added the few, the very few of Southern men who fancying that they would haveadvantages out of the Union which they cannot possess within it, however fully the compact should be observed and State Equalitymaintained, desire its dissolution, and taking counsel of theirpassions, decry the labors of all who seek to preserve the governmentas our fathers formed it, and to develop the great purposes for whichit was ordained and established. 

The other phrase which has been the subject of comment was, "and thisgreat country will remain united. " How "united" is set forth in thelanguage to which this clause was a conclusion, "united to protect ournational flag whenever a foreign power, presuming on our domesticdissention, should dare to insult it. " The unanimity with which men ofall parties in the two houses of Congress rallied to support theexecutive in maintaining the rights of our flag, had been the subjectof my commendation. Upon that fact the idea expressed rested. At worstit could but have evinced too much credulity, and I trust I may diebelieving that whenever the honor of our flag shall demand it, everymountain and valley and plain, will pour forth their hardy sons, andthat shoulder to shoulder they will march against any foreign foewhich shall invade the rights of any portion of the United States. 

And here permit me as a duty to you, and an obligation upon myself, topay the tribute which I believe to be due the Northern Democracy. Having formed my opinion of them upon insufficient data, I have hadoccasion, after much intercourse with them, to modify it. I believethat a great reaction has commenced; how far it will progress I do notpretend to say, but am hopeful that agitation will soon becomeunprofitable to political traders in New England, and this hope restsupon the high position taken by the Northern Democracy, and upon theincreased vote which in some of the States, under the more distinctavowal of sound principles, their candidates have received. You maynow often hear among them not only the unqualified defence of yourconstitutional rights, but the vindication of your institutions in theabstract, and in the concrete. 

In the town of Portland, just preceding the election, a Democrat oflarge means and extensively engaged in commercial transactions andcity improvements addressed the Democracy, arguing that theirprosperity depended upon their connection with countries, the productsof which were dependent upon slave labor; and the future growth andprosperity of their city depended upon the extension of slave laborinto all countries where it could be profitably employed. He showed bya statistical statement the paralysing effect which would be producedupon their interest by the abolition of slavery. The Black Republicanpapers of course abused him, and compared him to Davis and Toombs, buthis sound views were approved by the Democracy, and so far as I couldjudge, he gained consideration by their manly utterance. 

A generation had been educated in error, and the South had donenothing in defence of the abstract right of slavery. Within a fewyears essays have been written, books have been published, by northernas well as by southern men, and with the increase of information, there has been a subsidence of prejudice, and a preparation of themind to receive truth. Our friends are still in a minority. It wouldbe vain to speculate as to the period when their position will bereversed. Whether sooner or later, or never, they are still entitledto our regard and respect. A few years ago those who maintained ourconstitutional right, and to secure it voted for the Kansas andNebraska bill, went home to meet reproach and expulsions from publicemployment. 

Even their social position was affected by that political act. The fewyears, however, which have elapsed, have produced a great change. Theyhave recovered all except their political position. That bill whichwas considered when it was enacted, a Southern measure, for whichNorthern men bravely sacrificed their political prospects, has of latebeen denounced at the South as a cheat and a humbug. A poor returncertainly, to those who conscientiously maintaining our rights, surrendered their popularity to secure what the men for whom they madethe sacrifice now pronounce to have been a cheat. It is true that billhas recently received in some quarters a construction which itsfriends did not place upon it when it was enacted. But it should bejudged by its terms and by contemporaneous construction. 

When I visited the people of Mississippi last year, the question ofgreatest public excitement, was connected with the action of theExecutive in relation to the admission of Kansas as a State of theUnion. You had been led to suppose that the President would attempt tocontrol the action of the convention, and if the constitution was notsubmitted to a popular vote, would oppose by all the means within hispower, the admission of the State within the Union. You were alsoexcited at a dogma which had been put forth, to the effect that nomore slave States should be admitted. I agreed with you then, that ifthe President took such position he would violate the obligations ofhis office, and be faithless to the trust which you had reposed inhim. I agreed with you then, that the exclusion of a State, because itwas slaveholding, would be such an offence against your equality aswould demand at your hands the vindication of your rights. What hasbeen the result? The convention framed the constitution, submittedonly the clause relating to slavery to a popular vote, and applied foradmission. The President in his annual message referred in favorableterms to the application, then not formally made, and when theConstitution reached him transmitted it to Congress with a specialmessage, in which he fully and emphatically maintained the right ofadmission. 

After the convention had adjourned, Mr. Stanton, acting Governor ofthe Territory, called and extra session of the Freesoil Legislature, which has been elected, and it passed an act to submit the wholeconstitution to a popular vote. The President removed him fromoffice, --a further evidence of the sincerity with which he wasfulfiling your expectations in relation to Kansas. And it gives mepleasure here to say of him, what I am assured I can now say withconfidence, that he will not shrink a hair's breadth from the positionhe has taken, but will move another step in advance, and fall, if fallhe must, manfully upholding the rights and defying the insolence ofill-gotten power. 

When the bill was presented to the Senate for the admission of theState of Kansas, after a long discussion, it was adopted, with aprovision which required the State after admission to relinquish itsclaim to all the land asked for in its ordinance, except 5, 000, 000acres, that being the largest amount which had been ever granted to aState at the period of its admission. There was also a provisiondeclaratory of the right of the people to change their constitution atany time; though the instrument itself had restricted them for a termof years. I considered both those provisions objectionable; the first, because it was directory of legislation to be enacted by a State; andthe second, because it was inviting to a disregard of the fundamentallaw, and had too much the seeming of a concession to the anti-slaveryfeeling which was impatient for a change of the constitution. Thatbill failed in the House, and was succeeded by a bill of theOpposition which recognized the right of Kansas to be admitted with apro-slavery constitution, provided it should be adopted by a popularvote. This also failed, and in the division between the two Houses, acom- {sic}

As there has been much diversity of opinion in relation to that law, and I think much misapprehension as to its character, I will bepardoned for speaking of it somewhat minutely. 

When it was known that the Conference Committee had prepared a bill, Imittee of conference was appointed, which framed the bill that becamea law. Being at the time confined to my house by disease, invited mycolleague and the Representatives from the State to visit me, that wemight confer together and decide upon the course which we wouldpursue. Before the evening of our meeting, a distinguished member ofthe House of Representatives, a member of the Committee, called andread to me the bill which they had prepared. It contained somefeatures which I considered objectionable. He concurred with me, andpromised to use his efforts to have them stricken out. When theMississippi delegation assembled, our conference was full, and markedby the desire, first to protect the rights of our State, and secondly, to secure unanimity of action by its delegation. The objections whichwere urged, referred, as my memory serves me, entirely to the featureswhich I had reason to hope would be stricken out. One of thedelegation announced an unwillingness to support the proposedmodification of the Senate proposition, lest it should be consideredas yielding the point on which we had insisted that Congress could notrequire the Constitution to be submitted to a popular vote. I refer tothe lamented Quitman, whose sincere devotion to Southern interests, noone, who knew him, could question. I regretted that he deemed itnecessary to vote, finally, against the measure, but I honor themotive which governed his course. 

The ordinance which was attached to the Constitution, was not a partof it, but a condition annexed to the application for admission. IfCongress had stricken the ordinance out, the effect, I believe, wouldhave been that of admitting the State without any reservation of thepublic land; would have transferred as an attribute of sovereignty theuseful as well as the eminent domain. The Southern Senators whoreceived the soubriquet of Southern ultras, held that position in1850, in relation to the public lands of California, and itconstituted one of their objections to the admission of that State atthe time it was effected. To modify the ordinance, that is to changethe condition on which the inhabitants of Kansas proposed to enterinto the Union was necessarily to give them the right to withdrawtheir proposition. 

It remained then for Congress if they reduced the amount of land askedfor in the ordinance, either to provide the mode in which theinhabitants should accept or reject the modification or leave them todo it in such manner as they might adopt. The convention was defunct, the legislature was black republican and thought to be entitled tolittle confidence, and it seemed to be better that Congress shoulditself provide the mode of ascertaining the public will than leavethat duty to the territorial legislature, such as it was believed andproven to be. It was a mere question of expediency, and I think thebest course was pursued. 

To have admitted the State without modification of the ordinance, would have been to grant five times as much of the public land as hadever been given to a State at the period of admission. 

There was nothing to justify such a discrimination, and otherwise theState could not be admitted without referring the question orviolating the principle of State sovereignty. 

As a condition precedent, the general government may require therecognition of its right to control the primary disposal of the land, but can have no right to impose a condition with the mandate that itshall be subsequently fulfiled and no power to enforce the mandate ifthe State admitted should refuse to comply. Not for all the land inKansas, not for all the land between the Missouri and the Pacificocean, not for all the land of the continent of North America, would Iagree that the federal government should have the power to coerce aState. 

The necessity for having all conditions agreed upon before theadmission of a State was demonstrated by Mr. Soule, in 1850, in thediscussion of the bill for the admission of California. Mr. Websterreplied to him but did not answer his argument, and the course ofevents seems likely to verify all that Senator Soule foretold. 

Of the three methods which were supposable, I think Congress adoptedthe best; it was the only one which was attainable and secured allwhich was of value to the South. It was the admission by Congress of aState with a pro-slavery Constitution; it was the triumph of theprinciple that forbade Congress to interfere either as to the matterof the Constitution or the manner in which it should be formed andadopted. 

The refusal of the inhabitants to accept the reduced endowment offeredto them, and their decision to remain in a territorial condition, was, in my opinion, wise on their part and fortunate on ours. The lateGovernor, Denver, has forcibly pointed out to them their want of meansto support a State government, and the propriety of giving their firstattention to the establishment of order and the development of theirinternal resources. There were many reasons to doubt the fitness ofthe inhabitants of Kansas to be admitted as a State. 

The condition of the country and the previous legislation of Congressmade the case exceptional, and, in my judgment, justified the courseadopted. I have, therefore, no apology or regret to offer in the case. 

The Northern opponents of the measure have, among other denunciatoryepithets, applied to it those of "bribery" and "coercion. " "Bribery"to give less by twenty millions of acres of land than was claimed, and"coercion" to leave them to the option of receiving the usualendowment, or waiting until they had an amount of population whichwould give some assurance of their ability to maintain a Stategovernment. Though such is the requirement of the law, and designed tosecure exemption from the mischievous agitation which has for severalyears disturbed the country and benefitted only the demagogues whomake a trade of politics, we may scarcely hope to escape from arenewal of the agitation which has been found so profitable. The nextphase of the question will probably be in the form of what is termedan "enabling act, "--a favorite measure with the advocates of "squattersovereignty, " who, claiming for the inhabitants of a Territory all thepower of the people of a State, nevertheless consider it necessarythat Congress should confer the power to form a Constitution and applyas a State. Congress has given authority for admission in some cases, but I think it better to avoid than to follow the precedent. Not thatI am concerned for the doctrine of "squatter sovereignty, " but that Iwould guard against the mischievous error of considering the federalgovernment as the parent of States, and would restrict it to thefunction of admitting new States into the Union, barring allpretension to the power of creating them. 

It seems now to be probable that the Abolitionists and their allieswill have control of the next House of Representatives, and it may bewell inferred from their past course that they will attemptlegislation both injurious and offensive to the South. I have anabiding faith that any law which violates our constitutional rights, will be met with a veto by the present Executive. --But should the nextHouse of Representatives be such as would elect an AbolitionPresident, we may expect that the election will be so conducted asprobably to defeat a choice by the people and devolve the electionupon the House. 

Whether by the House or by the people, if an Abolitionist be chosenPresident of the United States, you will have presented to you thequestion of whether you will permit the government to pass into thehands of your avowed and implacable enemies. Without pausing for youranswer, I will state my own position to be that such a result would bea species of revolution by which the purposes of the Government wouldbe destroyed and the observance of its mere forms entitled to norespect. 

In that event, in such manner as should be most expedient, I shoulddeem it your duty to provide for your safety outside of a Union withthose who have already shown the will, and would have acquired thepower, to deprive you of your birthright and to reduce you to worsethan the colonial dependence of your fathers. 

The master mind of the so-called Republican party, Senator Seward, hasin a. Recent speech at Rochester, announced the purpose of his partyto dislodge the Democracy from the possession of the federalGovernment, and assigns as a reason the friendship of that party forwhat he denominates the slave system. He declares the Union betweenthe States having slave labor and free labor to be incompatible, andannounces that one or the other must disappear. He even asserts thatit was the purpose of the framers of the Government to destroy slaveproperty, and cites as evidence of it, the provision for an amendmentof the Constitution. He seeks to alarm his auditors by assuring themof the purpose on the part of the South and the Democratic party toforce slavery upon all the States of the Union. Absurd as all this mayseem to you, and incredulous as you may be of its acceptance by anyintelligent portion of the citizens of the United States, I havereason to believe that it has been inculcated to no small extent inthe Northern mind. 

It requires but a cursory examination of the Constitution of theUnited States; but a partial knowledge of its history and of themotives of the men who formed it, to see how utterly fallacious it isto ascribe to them the purpose of interfering with the domesticinstitutions of any of the States. But if a disrespect for thatinstrument, a fanatical disregard of its purposes, should ever inducea majority, however large, to seek by amending the Constitution, topervert it from its original object, and to deprive you of theequality which your fathers bequeathed to you, I say let the star ofMississippi be snatched from the constellation to shine by itsinherent light, if it must be so, through all the storms and clouds ofwar. 

The same dangerously powerful man describes the institution of slaveryas degrading to labor, as intolerant and inhuman, and says the whitelaborer among us is not enslaved only because he cannot yet be reducedto bondage. Where he learned his lesson, I am at a loss to imagine;certainly not by observation, for you all know that by interest, ifnot by higher motive, slave labor bears to capital as kind a relationas can exist between them anywhere; that it removes from us all thatcontroversy between the laborer and the capitalist, which has filledEurope with starving millions and made their poor houses an onerouscharge. You too know, that among us, white men have an equalityresulting from a presence of the lower caste, which cannot exist wherewhite men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. Themechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor ofthe African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupieswhere all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that ourmechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us. 

I say to you here as I have said to the Democracy of New York, if itshould ever come to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted tothe destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right asa feeble minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution togive an ineffectual negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shallthen bear to the federal government the relation our colonial fathersdid to the British crown, and if we are worthy of our lineage we willin that event redeem our rights even if it be through the process ofrevolution. And it gratifies me to be enabled to say that no portionof the speech to which I have referred was received with more markedapprobation by the Democracy there assembled than the sentiment whichhas just been cited. I am happy also to state that during the pastsummer I heard in many places, what previously I had only heard fromthe late President Pierce, the declaration that whenever a Northernarmy should be assembled to march for the subjugation of the South, they would have a battle to fight at home before they passed thelimits of their own State, and one in which our friends claim that thevictory will at least be doubtful. 

Now, as in 1851, I hold separation from the Union by the State ofMississippi to be the last remedy--the final alternative. In thelanguage of the venerated Calhoun I consider the disruption of theUnion as a great though not the greatest calamity. I would clingtenaciously to our constitutional Government, seeing as I do in thefraternal Union of equal States the benefit to all and the fulfilmentof that high destiny which our fathers hoped for and left it for theirsons to attain. I love the flag of my country with even more than afilial affection. Mississippi gave me in my boyhood to her militaryservice. For many of the best years of my life I have followed thatflag and upheld it on fields where if I had fallen it might have beenclaimed as my winding sheet. When I have seen it surrounded by theflags of foreign countries, the pulsations of my heart have beatquicker with every breeze which displayed its honored stripes andbrilliant constellation. I have looked with veneration on thosestripes as recording the original size of our political family andwith pride upon that constellation as marking the family's growth; Iglory in the position which Mississippi's star holds in the group; butsooner than see its lustre dimmed--sooner than see it degraded fromits present equality-would tear it from its place to be set even onthe perilous ridge of battle as a sign round which Mississippi's bestand bravest should gather to the harvest-home of death. 

As when I had the privilege of addressing the Legislature a year ago, so now do I urge you to the needful preparation to meet whatevercontingency may befall us. The maintenance of our rights against ahostile power is a physical problem and cannot be solved by mereresolutions. Not doubtful of what the heart will prompt, it is not theless proper that due provision should be made for physicalnecessities. Why should not the State have an armory for the repair ofarms, for the alteration of old models so as to make them conform tothe improved weapons of the present day, and for the manufacture on alimited scale of new arms, including cannon and their carriages; thecasting of shot and shells, and the preparation of fixed ammunition?

Such preparation will not precipitate us upon the trial of secession, for I hold now, as in 1850, that Mississippi's patriotism will holdher to the Union as long as it is constitutional, but it will give toour conduct the character of earnestness of which mere paperdeclarations have somewhat deprived us; it will strengthen the handsof our friends at the North, and in the event that separation shall beforced upon us, we shall be prepared to meet the contingency withwhatever remote consequences may follow it, and give to manly heartsthe happy assurance that manly arms will not fail to protect thegentle beauty which blesses our land and graces the present occasion. 

You are already progressing in the construction of railroads which, whilst they facilitate travel, increase the products of the State andthe reward of the husbandman, are a great element of strength by themeans they afford for rapid combination at any point where it may bedesirable to concentrate our forces. To those already in progress Ihope one will soon be added to connect the interior of the State withthe best harbor upon our Gulf coast. When this shall be completed atrade will be opened to that point which will produce directimportation and exportation to the great advantage of the planter aswell as all consumers of imported goods; and furnishing "exchange, "will protect us from such revulsion as was suffered last fall whenduring a period of entire prosperity at home, our market was paralyzedby failures in New York. 

The contemplated improvement in the levee system, will give to ourpeople a mine of untold wealth; and as we progress in the developmentof our resources and the increase of our power, so will we advance inState pride and the ability to maintain principles far higher in valuethan mountains of gold or oceans of pearl. 

But I find myself running into those visions which have hung before mefrom my boyhood up; which at home and abroad have been the hopeconstantly attending upon me, and which the cold wing of time has beenunable to wither. I am about to leave you to discharge the duties ofthe high trust with which you have honored me. I go with the same lovefor Mississippi which has always animated me; with the same confidencein her people, which has cheered me in the darkest hour. As often as Imay return to you, I feel secure of myself, and say I shall come backunchanged. Or should the Providence which has so often kindlyprotected me, not permit me to return again, my last prayer will befor the honor, the glory and the happiness of Mississippi.