AMERICAN ELOQUENCE

STUDIES IN AMERICAN POLITICAL HISTORY

Edited with Introduction by Alexander Johnston

Reedited by James Albert Woodburn

Volume III. (of 4)

V. --THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE (Continued from Vol. II. )VI. --SECESSION. 

CONTENTS. 

 INTRODUCTION

 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE On The Kansas-Nebraska Bill --United States Senate, February 3, 1854. 

 EDWARD EVERETT On The Kansas-Nebraska Bill --United States Senate, February 8, 1854. 

 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS On The Kansas-Nebraska Bill --United States Senate, March 3, 1854. 

 CHARLES SUMNER On The Crime Against Kansas --United States Senate, May 20, 1856. 

 PRESTON S. BROOKS On The Sumner Assault --House Of Representatives, July 14, 1856. 

 JUDAH P. BENJAMIN On The Property Doctrine And Slavery In The Territories --United States Senate, March 11, 1858. 

 ABRAHAM LINCOLN On The Dred Scott Decision --Springfield, Ills. , June 26, 1857. 

 ABRAHAM LINCOLN On His Nomination To The United States Senate --At The Republican State Convention, June 16, 1858. 

 THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE DOUGLAS In Reply To Lincoln--Freeport, Ills. , August 27, 1858. 

 WILLIAM H. SEWARD On The Irrepressible Conflict--Rochester, N. Y. , October 25, 1858. 

VI. -SECESSION. 

 JOHN PARKER HALE On Secession; Moderate Republican Opinion --United States Senate, December 5, 1860. 

 ALFRED IVERSON On Secession; Secessionist Opinion --United States Senate, December 5, 1860. 

 BENJAMIN WADE On Secession, And The State Of The Union; Radical Republican Opinion--United States Senate, December 17, 1860. 

 JOHN JORDON CRITTENDEN On The Crittenden Compromise; Border State Unionist Opinion--United States Senate, December 18, 1860. 

 ROBERT TOOMBS On Secession; Secessionist Opinion --United States Senate, January 7, 1861. 

 SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX On Secession; Douglas Democratic Opinion --House Of Representatives, January 14, 1861. 

 JEFFERSON DAVIS On Withdrawal From The Union; Secessionist Opinion --United States Senate, January 21, 1861. 

LIST OF PORTRAITS

 WILLIAM H. SEWARD -- Frontispiece From a photograph. 

 SALMON P. CHASE -- From a daguerreotype, engraved by F. E. JONES. 

 EDWARD EVERETT -- From a painting by R. M. STAIGG. 

 STEPHEN A. DOUGLASS -- From a steel engraving. 

 JEFFERSON DAVIS -- From a photograph. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE REVISED VOLUME. 

The third volume of the American Eloquence is devoted to thecontinuation of the slavery controversy and to the progress of thesecession movement which culminated in civil war. 

To the speeches of the former edition of the volume have been added:Everett on the Nebraska bill; Benjamin on the Property Doctrine andSlavery in the Territories; Lincoln on the Dred Scott Decision; Wadeon Secession and the State of the Union; Crittenden on the CrittendenCompromise; and Jefferson Davis's notable speech in which he took leaveof the United State Senate, in January, 1861. 

Judged by its political consequences no piece of legislation in Americanhistory is of greater historical importance than the Kansas-Nebraskabill. By that act the Missouri Compromise was repealed and the finalconflict entered upon with the slave power. In addition to the speechesof Douglas and Chase, representing the best word on the opposing sidesof the famous Nebraska controversy, the new volume includes the notablecontribution by Edward Everett to the Congressional debates on thatsubject. Besides being an orator of high rank and of literary renown, Everett represented a distinct body of political opinion. As aconservative Whig he voiced the sentiment of the great body of thefollowers of Webster and Clay who had helped to establish the Compromiseof 1850 and who wished to leave that settlement undisturbed. The studentof the Congressional struggles of 1854 will be led by a speech like thatof Everett to appreciate that moderate and conservative spirit towardslavery which would not persist in any anti-slavery action having atendency to disturb the harmony of the Union. That this conservativeopinion looked upon the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as an act ofaggression in the interest of slavery is indicated by Everett's speech, and this gives the speech its historic significance. 

Judah P. Benjamin may be said to have been the ablest legal defender ofslavery in public life during the decade of 1850-60. His speech onthe right of property in slaves and the right of slavery to nationalprotection in the territories was probably the ablest on that side ofthe controversy. Lincoln's speech on the Dred Scott Decision has beensubstituted for one by John C. Breckinridge on the same subject; thiswill serve to bring into his true proportions this great leader of thecombined anti-slavery forces. No voice, in the beginnings of secessionand disunion, could better reflect the positive and uncompromisingRepublicanism of the Northwest than that of Wade. The speech from himwhich we have appropriated is in many ways worthy of the attention ofthe historical student. 

We may look to Crittenden as the best expositor of the CrittendenCompromise, the leading attempt at compromise and conciliation in thememorable session of Congress of 1860-61. Crittenden's subject andpersonality add historical prominence to his speech. The CrittendenCompromise would probably have been accepted by Southern leaders likeDavis and Toombs if it had been acceptable to the Republican leadersof the North. The failure of that Compromise made disunion and warinevitable. Jefferson Davis' memorable farewell to the Senate, followingthe assured failure of compromise, seems a fitting close to the periodof our history which brings us to the eve of the Civil War. 

The introduction of Professor Johnston on "Secession" is retained asoriginally prepared. A study of the speeches, with this introductionand the appended notes, will give a fair idea of the political issuesdividing the country in the important years immediately preceding thewar. Limitations of space prevent the publication of the full speechesfrom the exhaustive Congressional debates, but in several instanceswhere it has seemed especially desirable omissions from the formervolume have been supplied with the purpose of more fully representingthe subjects and the speakers. To the reader who is interested inhistorical politics in America these productions of great politicalleaders need no recommendation from the editor. 

J. A. W. 

SALMON PORTLAND CHASE, OF OHIO. (BORN 1808, DIED 1873. )

ON THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL; SENATE, FEBRUARY 3, 1854. 

The bill for the organization of the Territories of Nebraska and Kansasbeing under consideration--Mr. CHASE submitted the following amendment:

Strike out from section 14 the words "was superseded by the principlesof the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures, and;so that the clause will read:

"That the Constitution, and all laws of the United States which are notlocally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within thesaid Territory of Nebraska as elsewhere within the United States, exceptthe eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouriinto the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which is hereby declaredinoperative. "

Mr. CHASE said:

Mr. President, I had occasion, a few days ago to expose the uttergroundlessness of the personal charges made by the Senator from Illinois(Mr. Douglas) against myself and the other signers of the IndependentDemocratic Appeal. I now move to strike from this bill a statementwhich I will to-day demonstrate to be without any foundation in factor history. I intend afterward to move to strike out the whole clauseannulling the Missouri prohibition. 

I enter into this debate, Mr. President, in no spirit of personalunkindness. The issue is too grave and too momentous for the indulgenceof such feelings. I see the great question before me, and that questiononly. 

Sir, these crowded galleries, these thronged lobbies, this fullattendance of the Senate, prove the deep, transcendent interest of thetheme. 

A few days only have elapsed since the Congress of the United Statesassembled in this Capitol. Then no agitation seemed to disturb thepolitical elements. Two of the great political parties of the country, in their national conventions, had announced that slavery agitation wasat an end, and that henceforth that subject was not to be discussed inCongress or out of Congress. The President, in his annual message, hadreferred to this state of opinion, and had declared his fixed purpose tomaintain, as far as any responsibility attached to him, the quiet of thecountry. Let me read a brief extract from that message:

"It is no part of my purpose to give prominence to any subject which mayproperly be regarded as set at rest by the deliberate judgment of thepeople. But while the present is bright with promise, and the futurefull of demand and inducement for the exercise of active intelligence, the past can never be without useful lessons of admonition andinstruction. If its dangers serve not as beacons, they will evidentlyfail to fulfil the object of a wise design. When the grave shall haveclosed over all those who are now endeavoring to meet the obligations ofduty, the year 1850 will be recurred to as a period filled with anxiousapprehension. A successful war had just terminated. Peace brought withit a vast augmentation of territory. Disturbing questions arose, bearingupon the domestic institutions of one portion of the Confederacy, andinvolving the constitutional rights of the States. But, notwithstandingdifferences of opinion and sentiment, which then existed in relationto details and specific provisions, the acquiescence of distinguishedcitizens, whose devotion to the Union can never be doubted, had givenrenewed vigor to our institutions, and restored a sense of repose andsecurity to the public mind throughout the Confederacy. That this reposeis to suffer no shock during my official term, if I have power to avertit, those who placed me here may be assured. "

The agreement of the two old political parties, thus referred to by theChief Magistrate of the country, was complete, and a large majority ofthe American people seemed to acquiesce in the legislation of which hespoke. 

A few of us, indeed, doubted the accuracy of these statements, and thepermanency of this repose. We never believed that the acts of 1850 wouldprove to be a permanent adjustment of the slavery question. We believedno permanent adjustment of that question possible except by a return tothat original policy of the fathers of the Republic, by which slaverywas restricted within State limits, and freedom, without exception orlimitation, was intended to be secured to every person outside of Statelimits and under the exclusive jurisdiction of the General Government. 

But, sir, we only represented a small, though vigorous and growing, party in the country. Our number was small in Congress. By some we wereregarded as visionaries--by some as factionists; while almost all agreedin pronouncing us mistaken. 

And so, sir, the country was at peace. As the eye swept the entirecircumference of the horizon and upward to mid-heaven not a cloudappeared; to common observation there was no mist or stain upon theclearness of the sky. 

But suddenly all is changed. Rattling thunder breaks from the cloudlessfirmament. The storm bursts forth in fury. Warring winds rush intoconflict. 

 "_Eurus, Notusque ruunt, creberque procellis Africus_. "

Yes, sir, "_creber procellis Africus_"--the South wind thick with storm. And now we find ourselves in the midst of an agitation, the end andissue of which no man can foresee. 

Now, sir, who is responsible for this renewal of strife and controversy?Not we, for we have introduced no question of territorial slavery intoCongress--not we who are denounced as agitators and factionists. No, sir: the quietists and the finalists have become agitators; they whotold us that all agitation was quieted, and that the resolutions of thepolitical conventions put a final period to the discussion of slavery. 

This will not escape the observation of the country. It is Slavery thatrenews the strife. It is Slavery that again wants room. It is Slavery, with its insatiate demands for more slave territory and more slaveStates. 

And what does Slavery ask for now? Why, sir, it demands that atime-honored and sacred compact shall be rescinded--a compact which hasendured through a whole generation--a compact which has beenuniversally regarded as inviolable, North and South--a compact, theconstitutionality of which few have doubted, and by which all haveconsented to abide. 

It will not answer to violate such a compact without a pretext. Someplausible ground must be discovered or invented for such an act; andsuch a ground is supposed to be found in the doctrine which was advancedthe other day by the Senator from Illinois, that the compromise acts of1850 "superseded "the prohibition of slavery north of 36° 30', in theact preparatory for the admission of Missouri. Ay, sir, "superseded" isthe phrase--"superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures. "

It is against this statement, untrue in fact, and without foundation inhistory, that the amendment which I have proposed is directed. 

Sir, this is a novel idea. At the time when these measures were beforeCongress in 1850, when the questions involved in them were discussedfrom day to day, from week to week, and from month to month, in thisSenate chamber, who ever heard that the Missouri prohibition was to besuperseded? What man, at what time, in what speech, ever suggested theidea that the acts of that year were to affect the Missouri compromise?The Senator from Illinois the other day invoked the authority of HenryClay--that departed statesman, in respect to whom, whatever may be thedifferences of political opinion, none question that, among the greatmen of this country, he stood proudly eminent. Did he, in the reportmade by him as the chairman of the Committee of Thirteen, or in anyspeech in support of the compromise acts, or in any conversation in thecommittee, or out of the committee, ever even hint at this doctrine ofsupersedure? Did any supporter or any opponent of the compromiseacts ever vindicate or condemn them on the ground that the Missouriprohibition would be affected by them? Well, sir, the compromise actswere passed. They were denounced North, and they were denounced South. Did any defender of them at the South ever justify his support of themupon the ground that the South had obtained through them the repeal ofthe Missouri prohibition? Did any objector to them at the North evereven suggest as a ground of condemnation that that prohibition was sweptaway by them? No, sir! No man, North or South, during the whole ofthe discussion of those acts here, or in that other discussion whichfollowed their enactment throughout the country, ever intimated any suchopinion. 

Now, sir, let us come to the last session of Congress. A Nebraska billpassed the House and came to the Senate, and was reported from theCommittee on Territories by the Senator from Illinois, as its chairman. Was there any provision in it which even squinted toward this notion ofrepeal by supersedure? Why, sir, Southern gentlemen opposed it onthe very ground that it left the Territory under the operation of theMissouri prohibition. The Senator from Illinois made a speech in defenceof it. Did he invoke Southern support upon the ground that it supersededthe Missouri prohibition? Not at all. Was it opposed or vindicatedby anybody on any such ground? Every Senator knows the contrary. TheSenator from Missouri (Mr. Atchison), now the President of this body, made a speech upon the bill, in which he distinctly declared that theMissouri prohibition was not repealed, and could not be repealed. 

I will send this speech to the Secretary, and ask him to read theparagraphs marked. The Secretary read as follows:

"I will now state to the Senate the views which induced me to opposethis proposition in the early part of this session. 

"I had two objections to it. One was that the Indian title in thatTerritory had not been extinguished, or, at least, a very small portionof it had been. Another was the Missouri compromise, or, as it iscommonly called, the slavery restriction. It was my opinion at thattime--and I am not now very clear on that subject--that the law ofCongress, when the State of Missouri was admitted into the Union, excluding slavery from the Territory of Louisiana north of 36° 30', would be enforced in that Territory unless it was specially rescinded, and whether that law was in accordance with the Constitution of theUnited States or not, it would do its work, and that work would be topreclude slave-holders from going into that Territory. But when I cameto look into that question, I found that there was no prospect, nohope, of a repeal of the Missouri compromise excluding slavery from thatTerritory. Now, sir, I am free to admit, that at this moment, at thishour, and for all time to come, I should oppose the organization orthe settlement of that Territory unless my constituents, andthe constituents of the whole South--of the slave States of theUnion, --could go into it upon the same footing, with equal rights andequal privileges, carrying that species of property with them as otherpeople of this Union. Yes, sir, I acknowledge that that would havegoverned me, but I have no hope that the restriction will ever berepealed. 

"I have always been of opinion that the first great error committedin the political history of this country was the ordinance of 1787, rendering the Northwest Territory free territory. The next great errorwas the Missouri compromise. But they are both irremediable. There is noremedy for them. We must submit to them. I am prepared to do it. It isevident that the Missouri compromise cannot be re-pealed. So far as thatquestion is concerned, we might as well agree to the admission of thisTerritory now as next year, or five or ten years hence. "--_CongressionalGlobe_, Second Session, 32d Cong. , vol. Xxvi. , page 1113. 

That, sir, is the speech of the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Atchison), whose authority, I think, must go for something upon this question. Whatdoes he say? "When I came to look into that question"--of the possiblerepeal of the Missouri prohibition--that was the question he was lookinginto--"I found that there was no prospect, no hope, of a repeal of theMissouri compromise excluding slavery from that Territory. " And yet, sir, at that very moment, according to this new doctrine of the Senatorfrom Illinois, it had been repealed three years!

Well, the Senator from Missouri said further, that if he thought itpossible to oppose this restriction successfully, he never would consentto the organization of the territory until it was rescinded. But, saidhe, "I acknowledge that I have no hope that the restriction will ever berepealed. " Then he made some complaint, as other Southern gentlemen havefrequently done, of the ordinance of 1787, and the Missouri prohibition;but went on to say: "They are both irremediable; there is no remedy forthem; we must submit to them; I am prepared to do it; it is evident thatthe Missouri compromise cannot be repealed. "

Now, sir, when was this said? It was on the morning of the 4th of March, just before the close of the last session, when that Nebraska bill, reported by the Senator from Illinois, which proposed no repeal, andsuggested no supersedure, was under discussion. I think, sir, that allthis shows pretty clearly that up to the very close of the last sessionof Congress nobody had ever thought of a repeal by supersedure. Thenwhat took place at the commencement of the present session? The Senatorfrom Iowa, early in December, introduced a bill for the organizationof the Territory of Nebraska. I believe it was the same bill which wasunder discussion here at the last session, line for line, word for word. If I am wrong, the Senator will correct me. 

Did the Senator from Iowa, then, entertain the idea that the Missouriprohibition had been superseded? No, sir, neither he nor any other manhere, so far as could be judged from any discussion, or statement, orremark, had received this notion. 

Well, on the 4th day of January, the Committee on Territories, throughtheir chairman, the Senator from Illinois, made a report on theterritorial organization of Nebraska; and that report was accompanied bya bill. Now, sir, on that 4th day of January, just thirty days ago, didthe Committee on Territories entertain the opinion that the compromiseacts of 1850 superseded the Missouri prohibition? If they did, they werevery careful to keep it to themselves. We will judge the committee bytheir own report. What do they say in that? In the first place theydescribe the character of the controversy, in respect to the Territoriesacquired from Mexico. They say that some believed that a Mexican lawprohibiting slavery was in force there, while others claimed that theMexican law became inoperative at the moment of acquisition, and thatslave-holders could take their slaves into the Territory and holdthem there under the provisions of the Constitution. The TerritorialCompromise acts, as the committee tell us, steered clear of thesequestions. They simply provided that the States organized out of theseTerritories might come in with or without slavery, as they should elect, but did not affect the question whether slaves could or could not beintroduced before the organization of State governments. That questionwas left entirely to judicial decision. 

Well, sir, what did the committee propose to do with the NebraskaTerritory? In respect to that, as in respect to the Mexican Territory, differences of opinion exist in relation to the introduction of slaves. There are Southern gentlemen who contend that notwithstanding theMissouri prohibition, they can take their slaves into the territorycovered by it, and hold them there by virtue of the Constitution. On theother hand the great majority of the American people, North and South, believe the Missouri prohibition to be constitutional and effectual. Now, what did the committee pro-pose? Did they propose to repeal theprohibition? Did they suggest that it had been superseded? Did theyadvance any idea of that kind? No, sir. This is their language:

"Under this section, as in the case of the Mexican law in New Mexicoand Utah, it is a disputed point whether slavery is prohibited in theNebraska country by valid enactment. The decision of this questioninvolves the constitutional power of Congress to pass laws prescribingand regulating the domestic institutions of the various Territoriesof the Union. In the opinion of those eminent statesmen who hold thatCongress is invested with no rightful authority to legislate upon thesubject of slavery in the Territories, the eighth section of the actpreparatory to the admission of Missouri is null and void, while theprevailing sentiment in a large portion of the Union sustains thedoctrine that the Constitution of the United States secures to everycitizen an inalienable right to move into any of the Territories withhis property, of whatever kind and description, and to hold andenjoy the same under the sanction of law. Your committee do notfeel themselves called upon to enter into the discussion of thesecontroverted questions. They involve the same grave issues whichproduced the agitation, the sectional strife, and the fearful struggleof 1850. "

This language will bear repetition:

"Your committee do not feel themselves called upon to enter into thediscussion of these controverted questions. They involve the same graveissues which produced the agitation, the sectional strife, and thefearful struggle of 1850. "

And they go on to say:

"Congress deemed it wise and prudent to refrain from deciding thematters in controversy then, either by affirming or repealing theMexican laws, or by an act declaratory of the true intent of theConstitution and the extent of the protection afforded by it to slaveproperty in the Territories; so your committee are not prepared nowto recommend a departure from the course pursued on that memorableoccasion, either by affirming or repealing the eighth section ofthe Missouri act, or by any act declaratory of the meaning of theConstitution in respect to the legal points in dispute. "

Mr. President, here are very remarkable facts. The Committee onTerritories declared that it was not wise, that it was not prudent, thatit was not right, to renew the old controversy, and to arouse agitation. They declared that they would abstain from any recommendation of arepeal of the prohibition, or of any provision declaratory of theconstruction of the Constitution in respect to the legal points indispute. 

Mr. President, I am not one of those who suppose that the questionbetween Mexican law and the slave-holding claims was avoided in theUtah and New Mexico Act; nor do I think that the introduction into theNebraska bill of the provisions of those acts in respect to slaverywould leave the question between the Missouri prohibition and the sameslave-holding claims entirely unaffected. ' I am of a very differentopinion. But I am dealing now with the report of the Senator fromIllinois, as chairman of the committee, and I show, beyond allcontroversy, that that report gave no countenance whatever to thedoctrine of repeal by supersedure. 

Well, sir, the bill reported by the committee was printed in theWashington Sentinel on Saturday, January 7th. It contained twentysections; no more, no less. It contained no provisions in respect toslavery, except those in the Utah and New Mexico bills. It left thoseprovisions to speak for themselves. This was in harmony with the reportof the committee. On the 10th of January--on Tuesday--the act appearedagain in the Sentinel; but it had grown longer during the interval. It appeared now with twenty-one sections. There was a statement inthe paper that the twenty-first section had been omitted by a clericalerror. 

But, sir, it is a singular fact that this twenty-first section isentirely out of harmony with the committee's report. It undertakes todetermine the effect of the provision in the Utah and New Mexico bills. It declares, among other things, that all questions pertainingto slavery in the Territories, and in the new States to be formedtherefrom, are to be left to the decision of the people residingtherein, through their appropriate representatives. This provision, ineffect, repealed the Missouri prohibition, which the committee, in theirreport, declared ought not to be done. Is it possible, sir, that thiswas a mere clerical error? May it not be that this twenty-first sectionwas the fruit of some Sunday work, between Saturday the 7th, and Tuesdaythe 10th?

But, sir, the addition of this section, it seems, did not help the bill. It did not, I suppose, meet the approbation of Southern gentlemen, who contended that they have a right to take their slaves into theTerritories, notwithstanding any prohibition, either by Congress or by aTerritorial Legislature. I dare say it was found that the votes of thesegentlemen could not be had for the bill with that clause in it. It wasnot enough that the committee had abandoned their report, and addedthis twenty-first section, in direct contravention of its reasonings andprinciples. The twenty-first section itself must be abandoned, and therepeal of the Missouri prohibition placed in a shape which would notdeny the slave-holding claim. 

The Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Dixon), on the 16th of January, submittedan amendment which came square up to repeal, and to the claim. Thatamendment, probably, produced some fluttering and some consultation. Itmet the views of Southern Senators, and probably determined the shapewhich the bill has finally assumed. Of the various mutations which ithas undergone, I can hardly be mistaken in attributing the last to theamendment of the Senator from Kentucky. That there is no effect withouta cause, is among our earliest lessons in physical philosophy, and Iknow of no causes which will account for the remarkable changes whichthe bill underwent after the 16th of January, other than that amendment, and the determination of Southern Senators to support it, and tovote against any provision recognizing the right of any TerritorialLegislature to prohibit the introduction of slavery. 

It was just seven days, Mr. President, after the Senator from Kentuckyhad offered his amendment, that a fresh amendment was reported from theCommittee on Territories, in the shape of a new bill, enlarged to fortysections. This new bill cuts off from the proposed Territory halfa degree of latitude on the south, and divides the residue intotwo Territories--the southern Territory of Kansas, and the northernTerritory of Nebraska. It applies to each all the provisions of theUtah and New Mexico bills; it rejects entirely the twenty-firstclerical-error section, and abrogates the Missouri prohibition by thevery singular provision, which I will read:

"The Constitution and all laws of the United States which are notlocally inapplicable shall have the same force and effect within thesaid Territory of Nebraska as elsewhere within the United States, exceptthe eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouriinto the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which was superseded by theprinciples of the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromisemeasures, and is therefore declared inoperative. "

Doubtless, Mr. President, this provision operates as a repeal of theprohibition. The Senator from Kentucky was right when he said it was ineffect the equivalent of his amendment. Those who are willing to breakup and destroy the old compact of 1820 can vote for this bill with fullassurance that such will be its effect. But I appeal to them not tovote for this supersedure clause. I ask them not to incorporate intothe legislation of the country a declaration which every one knows to bewholly untrue. 

I have said that this doctrine of supersedure is new. I have now provedthat it is a plant of but ten days' growth. It was never seen or heardof until the 23d day of January, 1854. It was upon that day that thistree of Upas was planted; we already see its poison fruits. * * *

The truth is, that the compromise acts of 1850 were not intended tointroduce any principles of territorial organization applicable to anyother Territory except that covered by them. The professed object ofthe friends of the compromise acts was to compose the whole slaveryagitation. There were various matters of complaint. The non-surrenderof fugitives from service was one. The existence of slavery and theslave-trade here in this District and elsewhere, under the exclusivejurisdiction of Congress, was another. The apprehended introduction ofslavery into the Territories furnished other grounds of controversy. The slave States complained of the free States, and the free Statescomplained of the slave States. It was supposed by some that this wholeagitation might be stayed, and finally put at rest by skilfully adjustedlegislation. So, sir, we had the omnibus bill, and its appendages thefugitive-slave bill and the District slave-trade suppression bill. To please the North--to please the free States--California was to beadmitted, and the slave depots here in the District were to be brokenup. To please the slave States, a stringent fugitive-slave act was tobe passed, and slavery was to have a chance to get into the newTerritories. The support of the Senators and Representatives fromTexas was to be gained by a liberal adjustment of boundary, and by theassumption of a large portion of their State debt. The general resultcontemplated was a complete and final adjustment of all questionsrelating to slavery. The acts passed. A number of the friends of theacts signed a compact pledging themselves to support no man for anyoffice who would in any way renew the agitation. The country wasrequired to acquiesce in the settlement as an absolute finality. No manconcerned in carrying those measures through Congress, and least of allthe distinguished man whose efforts mainly contributed to their success, ever imagined that in the Territorial acts, which formed a part of theseries, they were planting the germs of a new agitation. Indeed, I haveproved that one of these acts contained an express stipulation whichprecludes the revival of the agitation in the form in which it is nowthrust upon the country, without manifest disregard of the provisions ofthose acts themselves. 

I have thus proved beyond controversy that the averment of the bill, which my amendment proposes to strike out, is untrue. Senators, will youunite in a statement which you know to be contradicted by the history ofthe country? Will you incorporate into a public statute an affirmationwhich is contradicted by every event which attended or followed theadoption of the compromise acts? Will you here, acting under your highresponsibility as Senators of the States, assert as a fact, by a solemnvote, that which the personal recollection of every Senator who was hereduring the discussion of those compromise acts disproves? I will notbelieve it until I see it. If you wish to break up the time-honoredcompact embodied in the Missouri compromise, transferred into the jointresolution for the annexation of Texas, preserved and affirmed by thesecompromise acts themselves, do it openly--do it boldly. Repeal theMissouri prohibition. Repeal it by a direct vote. Do not repeal it byindirection. Do not "declare" it "inoperative, " "because superseded bythe principles of the legislation of 1850. "

Mr. President, three great eras have marked the history of this countryin respect to slavery. The first may be characterized as the Era ofENFRANCHISEMENT. It commenced with the earliest struggles for nationalindependence. The spirit which inspired it animated the hearts andprompted the efforts of Washington, of Jefferson, of Patrick Henry, ofWythe, of Adams, of Jay, of Hamilton, of Morris--in short, of all thegreat men of our early history. All these hoped for, all these laboredfor, all these believed in, the final deliverance of the countryfrom the curse of slavery. That spirit burned in the Declaration ofIndependence, and inspired the provisions of the Constitution, and theOrdinance of 1787. Under its influence, when in full vigor, State afterState provided for the emancipation of the slaves within their limits, prior to the adoption of the Constitution. Under its feebler influenceat a later period, and during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, theimportation of slaves was prohibited into Mississippi and Louisiana, inthe faint hope that those Territories might finally become free States. Gradually that spirit ceased to influence our public councils, and lostits control over the American heart and the American policy. Anotherera succeeded, but by such imperceptible gradations that the lines whichseparate the two cannot be traced with absolute precision. The facts ofthe two eras meet and mingle as the currents of confluent streams mixso imperceptibly that the observer cannot fix the spot where the meetingwaters blend. 

This second era was the Era of CONSERVATISM. Its great maxim was topreserve the existing condition. Men said: Let things remain as theyare; let slavery stand where it is; exclude it where it is not; refrainfrom disturbing the public quiet by agitation; adjust all difficultiesthat arise, not by the application of principles, but by compromises. 

It was during this period that the Senator tells us that slavery wasmaintained in Illinois, both while a Territory and after it became aState, in despite of the provisions of the ordinance. It is true, sir, that the slaves held in the Illinois country, under the French law, were not regarded as absolutely emancipated by the provisions of theordinance. But full effect was given to the ordinance in excludingthe introduction of slaves, and thus the Territory was preservedfrom eventually becoming a slave State. The few slave-holders inthe Territory of Indiana, which then included Illinois, succeeded inobtaining such an ascendency in its affairs, that repeated applicationswere made not merely by conventions of delegates, but by the TerritorialLegislature itself, for a suspension of the clause in the ordinanceprohibiting slavery. These applications were reported upon by JohnRandolph, of Virginia, in the House, and by Mr. Franklin in the Senate. Both the reports were against suspension. The grounds stated by Randolphare specially worthy of being considered now. They are thus stated inthe report:

"That the committee deem it highly dangerous and inexpedient to impaira provision wisely calculated to promote the happiness and prosperityof the Northwestern country, and to give strength and security to thatextensive frontier. In the salutary operation of this sagacious andbenevolent restraint, it is believed that the inhabitants of Indianawill, at no very distant day, find ample remuneration for a temporaryprivation of labor and of emigration. "

Sir, these reports, made in 1803 and 1807, and the action of Congressupon them, in conformity with their recommendation, saved Illinois, andperhaps Indiana, from becoming slave States. When the people of Illinoisformed their State constitution, they incorporated into it a sectionproviding that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall hereafterbe introduced into this State. The constitution made provision for thecontinued service of the few persons who were originally held as slaves, and then bound to service under the Territorial laws, and for thefreedom of their children, and thus secured the final extinction ofslavery. The Senator thinks that this result is not attributable to theordinance. I differ from him. But for the ordinance, I have no doubtslavery would have been introduced into Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. It is something to the credit of the Era of Conservatism, uniting itsinfluences with those of the expiring Era of Enfranchisement, that itmaintained the ordinance of 1787 in the Northwest. 

The Era of CONSERVATISM passed, also by imperceptible gradations, intothe Era of SLAVERY PROPAGANDISM. Under the influences of this new spiritwe opened the whole territory acquired from Mexico, except California, to the ingress of slavery. Every foot of it was covered by a Mexicanprohibition; and yet, by the legislation of 1850, we consented to exposeit to the introduction of slaves. Some, I believe, have actually beencarried into Utah and New Mexico. They may be few, perhaps, but a feware enough to affect materially the probable character of their futuregovernments. Under the evil influences of the same spirit, we are nowcalled upon to reverse the original policy of the Republic; to supporteven a solemn compact of the conservative period, and open Nebraska toslavery. 

Sir, I believe that we are upon the verge of another era. That era willbe the Era of REACTION. The introduction of this question here, and itsdiscussion, will greatly hasten its advent. We, who insist upon thedenationalization of slavery, and upon the absolute divorce of theGeneral Government from all connection with it, will stand with the menwho favored the compromise acts, and who yet wish to adhere to them, in their letter and in their spirit, against the repeal of the Missouriprohibition. But you may pass it here. You may send it to the otherHouse. It may become a law. But its effect will be to satisfy allthinking men that no compromises with slavery will endure, except solong as they serve the interests of slavery; and that there is no safeand honorable ground for non-slaveholders to stand upon, except thatof restricting slavery within State limits, and excluding it absolutelyfrom the whole sphere of Federal jurisdiction. The old questions betweenpolitical parties are at rest. No great question so thoroughly possessesthe public mind as this of slavery. This discussion will hasten theinevitable reorganization of parties upon the new issues which ourcircumstances suggest. It will light up a fire in the country which may, perhaps, consume those who kindle it. * * *

EDWARD EVERETT, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

(BORN 1794, DIED 1865. )

ON THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL;

SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBRUARY 8, 1854

I will not take up the time of the Senate by going over the somewhatembarrassing and perplexed history of the bill, from its first entryinto the Senate until the present time. I will take it as it now stands, as it is printed on our tables, and with the amendment which was offeredby the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas) yesterday, and which, iIsuppose, is now printed, and on our tables; and I will state, as brieflyas I can, the difficulties which I have found in giving my support tothis bill, either as it stands, or as it will stand when the amendmentshall be adopted. My chief objections are to the provisions on thesubject of slavery, and especially to the exception which is containedin the 14th section, in the following words:

"Except the 8th section of the act preparatory to the admission ofMissouri into the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which was supersededby the principles of the legislation of 1850, commonly called thecompromise measures, and is hereby declared inoperative. "

On the day before yesterday the chairman of the Committee on Territoriesproposed to change the words "superseded by" to "inconsistent with, "as expressing more distinctly all that he meant to convey by thatimpression. Yesterday, however, he brought in an amendment drawn up withgreat skill and care, on notice given the day before, which is to strikeout the words "which was superseded by the principles of the legislationof 1850, commonly called the compromise measures, and is hereby declaredinoperative, " and to insert in lieu of them the following:

"Which being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention byCongress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized bythe legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures, ishereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent andmeaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory orState, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereofperfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in theirown way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States. "

 * * * * *

Now, sir, I think, in the first place, that the language of thisproposed enactment, being obscure, is of somewhat doubtful import, andfor that reason, unsatisfactory. I should have preferred a little moredirectness. What is the condition of an enactment which is declared by asubsequent act of Congress to be "inoperative and void?" Does it remainin force? I take it, not. That would be a contradiction in terms, to saythat an enactment which had been declared by act of Congress inoperativeand void is still in force. Then, if it is not in force, if it is notonly inoperative and void, as it is to be declared, but is not in force, it is of course repealed. If it is to be repealed, why not say so?I think it would have been more direct and more parliamentary to say"shall be and is hereby repealed. " Then we should know precisely, so faras legal and technical terms go, what the amount of this new legislativeprovision is. 

If the form is somewhat objectionable, I think the substance is stillmore so. The amendment is to strike out the words "which was supersededby, " and to insert a provision that the act of 1820 is inconsistentwith the principle of congressional non-intervention, and is thereforeinoperative and void. I do not quite understand how much is conveyedin this language. The Missouri restriction of 1820, it is said, isinconsistent with the principle of the legislation of 1850. If anythingmore is meant by "the principle" of the legislation of 1850, than themeasures which were adopted at that time in reference to the territoriesof New Mexico and Utah--for I may assume that those are the legislativemeasures referred to--if anything more is meant than that a certainmeasure was adopted, and enacted in reference to those territories, Itake issue on that point. I do not know that it could be proved that, even in reference to those territories, a principle was enacted at all. A certain measure, or, if you please, a course of measures, was enactedin reference to the Territories of New Mexico and Utah; but I do notknow that you can call this enacting a principle. It is certainlynot enacting a principle which is to carry with it a rule for otherTerritories lying in other parts of the country, and in a differentlegal position. As to the principle of non-intervention on the partof Congress in the question of slavery, I do not find that, either asprinciple or as measure, it was enacted in those territorial bills of1850. I do not, unless I have greatly misread them, find that there isanything at all which comes up to that. Every legislative act of thoseterritorial governments must come before Congress for allowance ordisallowance, and under those bills without repealing them, withoutdeparting from them in the slightest degree, it would be competent forCongress to-morrow to pass any law on that subject. 

How then can it be said that the principle of non-intervention on thepart of Congress in the subject of slavery was enacted and establishedby the compromise measures of 1850? But, whether that be so or not, howcan you find, in a simple measure applying in terms to these individualTerritories, and to them alone, a rule which is to govern all otherTerritories with a retrospective and with a prospective action? Isit not a mere begging of the question to say that those compromisemeasures, adopted in this specific case, amount to such a general rule?

But, let us try it in a parallel case. In the earlier land legislationof the United States, it was customary, without exception, when aTerritory became a State, to require that there should be a stipulationin their State constitution that the public lands sold within theirborders should be exempted from taxation for five years after the sale. This, I believe, continued to be the uniform practice down to the year1820, when the State of Missouri was admitted. She was admitted underthe stipulation. If I mistake not, the next State which was admittedinto the Union--but it is not important whether it was the next ornot--came in without that stipulation, and they were left free to taxthe public lands the moment when they were sold. Here was a principle;as much a principle as it is contended was established in the Utah andNew Mexico territorial bill; but did any one suppose that it acted uponthe other Territories? I believe the whole system is now abolished underthe operation of general laws, and the influence of that example mayhave led to the change. But, until it was made by legislation, the merefact that public lands sold in Arkansas were immediately subject totaxation, could not alter the law in regard to the public lands sold inMissouri, or in any other to where they were they were exempt. 

There is a case equally analogous to the very matter we are nowconsidering--the prohibition or permission of slavery. The ordinance of1787 prohibited slavery in the territory northwest of the Ohio. In 1790Congress passed an act accepting the cession which the State of NorthCarolina had made of the western part of her territory, with theproviso, that in reference to the territory thus ceded Congress shouldpass no laws "tending to the emancipation of the slaves. " Here was aprecisely parallel case. Here was a territory in which, in 1787, slaverywas prohibited. Here was a territory ceded by North Carolina, whichbecame the territory of the United States south of the Ohio, inreference to which it was stipulated with North Carolina, that Congressshould pass no laws tending to the emancipation of slaves. But I believeit never occurred to any one that the legislation of 1790 acted backupon the ordinance of 1787, or furnished a rule by which any effectcould be produced upon the state of things existing under thatordinance, in the territory to which it applied. 

I certainly intend to do the distinguished chairman of the committeeno injustice; and I am not sure that I fully comprehend his argument inthis respect; but I think his report sustains the view which I now takeof the subject: that is, that the legislation of 1850 did not establisha principle which was designed to have any such effect as he intimates. That report states how matters stood in those new Mexican territories. It was alleged on the one hand that by the Mexican _lex loci_ slaverywas prohibited. On the other hand that was denied, and it was maintainedthat the Constitution of the United States secures to every citizen theright to go there and take with him any property recognized as suchby any of the States of the Union. The report considers that a similarstate of things now exists in Nebraska--that the validity of the eighthsection of the Missouri Act, by which slavery is prohibited in thatTerritory, is doubtful, and that it is maintained by many distinguishedstatesmen that Congress has no power to legislate on the subject. Then, in this state of the controversy, the report maintains thatthe legislation of Congress in 1850 did not undertake to decide thesequestions. Surely, if they did not undertake to decide them, they couldnot settle the principle which is at stake in them; and, unless they diddecide them, the measures then adopted must be considered as specificmeasures, relating only to those case and not establishing a principleof general operation. This seems to me to be as direct and conclusive asanything can be. 

At all events, these are not impressions which are put forth by me underthe exigencies of the present debate or of the present occasion. I havenever entertained any other opinion. I was called upon for a particularpurpose, of a literary nature, to which I will presently allude moredistinctly, shortly after the close of the session of 1850, to draw up anarrative of the events that had taken place relative to the passage ofthe compromise measures of that year. I had not, I own, the best sourcesof information. I was not a member of Congress, and had not heardthe debates, which is almost indispensable to come to a thoroughunderstanding of questions of this nature; but I inquired of those whohad heard them, I read the reports, and I had an opportunity of personalintercourse with some who had taken a prominent part in all thosemeasures. I never formed the idea--I never received the intimation untilI got it from this report of the committee--that those measures wereintended to have any effect beyond the Territories of Utah and NewMexico, for which they were enacted. I cannot but think that if itwas intended that they should have any larger application, if it wasintended that they should furnish the rule which is now supposed, itwould have been a fact as notorious as the light of day. 

 * * * * *

And now, sir, having alluded to the speech of Mr. Webster, of the 7thMarch, 1850, allow me to dwell upon it for a moment. I was in a positionthe next year--having been requested by that great and lamented man tosuperintend the publication of his works--to know very particularly thecomparative estimate which he placed upon his own parliamentary efforts. He told me more than once that he thought his second speech on Foot'sresolution was that in which he had best succeeded as a senatorialeffort, and as a specimen of parliamentary dialectics; but he added, with an emotion which even he was unable to suppress, "The speech of the7th of March, 1850, much as I have been reviled for it, when I am dead, will be allowed to be of the greatest importance to the country. " Sir, he took the greatest interest in that speech. He wished it to go forthwith a specific title; and, after considerable deliberation, it wascalled, by his own direction, "A Speech for the Constitution and theUnion. " He inscribed it to the people of Massachusetts, in a dedicationof the most emphatic tenderness, and he prefixed to it that motto--whichyou all remember--from Livy, the most appropriate and felicitousquotation, perhaps, that was ever made: "True things rather thanpleasant things"--_Vera progratis:_ and with that he sent it forth tothe world. 

In that speech his gigantic intellect brought together all that itcould gather from the law of nature, from the Constitution of the UnitedStates, from our past legislation, and from the physical features ofthe region, to strengthen him in that plan of conciliation and peace, in which he feared that he might not carry along with him the publicsentiment of the whole of that, portion of the country which heparticularly represented here. At its close, when he dilated upon thedisastrous effects of separation, he rose to a strain of impassionedeloquence which had never been surpassed within these walls. Everytopic, every argument, every fact, was brought to bear upon the point;and he felt that all his vast popularity was at stake on the issue. Letme commend to the attention of Senators, and let me ask them to considerwhat weight is due to the authority of such a man, speaking under suchcircumstances, and on such an occasion, when he tells you thatthe condition of every foot of land in the country, for slavery ornon-slavery, is fixed by some irrepealable law. And you are now aboutto repeal the principal law which ascertained and fixed that condition. And, sir, if the Senate will take any heed of the opinion of one sohumble as myself, I will say that I believe Mr. Webster, in that speech, went to the very verge of the public sentiment in the non-slaveholdingStates, and that to have gone a hair's-breadth further, would have beena step too bold even for his great weight of character. 

 * * * * *

I conclude, therefore, sir, that the compromise measures of 1850 endedwhere they began, with the Territories of Utah and New Mexico, towhich they specifically referred; at any rate, that they establishedno principle which was to govern in other cases; that they had noprospective action to the organization of territories in all futuretime; and certainly no retrospective action upon lands subject to therestriction of 1820, and to the positive enactment that you now proposeto declare inoperative and void. 

I trust that nothing which I have now said will be taken in derogationof the compromises of 1850. I adhere to them; I stand by them. I do sofor many reasons. One is respect for the memory of the great men whowere the authors of them--lights and ornaments of the country, but nowtaken from its service. I would not so soon, if it were in my power, undo their work, if for no other reason. But beside this, I am one ofthose--I am not ashamed to avow it--who believed at that time, and whostill believe, that at that period the union of these States was ingreat danger, and that the adoption of the compromise measures of 1850contributed materially to avert that danger; and therefore, sir, Isay, as well out of respect to the memory of the great men who were theauthors of them, as to the healing effect of the measures themselves, I would adhere to them. They are not perfect. I suppose that nobody, either North or South, thinks them perfect. They contain some provisionsnot satisfactory to the South, and other provisions contrary to thepublic sentiment of the North; but I believed at the time they werethe wisest, the best, the most effective measures which, under thecircumstances, could be adopted. But you do not strengthen them, you donot show your respect for them, by giving them an application which theywere never intended to bear. 

 * * * * *

A single word, sir, in respect to this supposed principle ofnon-intervention on the part of Congress in the subject of slavery inthe territories. I confess I am surprised to find this brought forward, and stated with so much confidence, as an established principle of theGovernment. I know that distinguished gentlemen hold the opinion. Thevery distinguished Senator from Michigan (Mr. Cass) holds it, and haspropounded it; and I pay all due respect and deference to his authority, which I conceive to be very high. But I was not aware that any suchprinciple was considered a settled principle of the territorial policyof this country. Why, sir, from the first enactment in 1789, down to thebill before us, there is no such principle in our legislation. As far asI can see it would be perfectly competent even now for Congress to passany law that they pleased on the subject in the Territories under thisbill. But however that may be, even by this bill, there is not a lawwhich the Territories can pass admitting or excluding slavery, which itis of in the power of this Congress to disallow the next day. Thisis not a mere _brutum fulmen_. It is not an unexpected power. Yourstatute-book shows case after case. I believe, in reference to asingle Territory, that there have been fifteen or twenty cases whereterritorial legislation has been disallowed by Congress. How, then, canit be said that this principle of non-intervention in the government ofthe Territories is now to be recognized as an established principle inthe public policy of the Congress of the United States?

Do gentlemen recollect the terms, almost of disdain, with which thissupposed established principle of our constitutional policy is treatedin that last valedictory speech of Mr. Calhoun, which, unable topronounce it himself, he was obliged to give to the Senate through themedium of his friend, the Senator from Virginia. He reminded the Senatethat the occupants of a Territory were not even called the people--butsimply the inhabitants--till they were allowed by Congress to call aconvention and form a State constitution. 

 * * * * *

A word more, sir, and I have done. With reference to the great questionof slavery--that terrible question--the only one on which the North andSouth of this great Republic differ irreconcilably--I have not, on thisoccasion, a word to say. My humble career is drawing near its close, and I shall end it as I began, with using no other words on that subjectthan those of moderation, conciliation, and harmony between the twogreat sections of the country. I blame no one who differs from me inthis respect. I allot to others, what I claim for myself, the credit ofhonesty and purity of motive. But for my own part, the rule of my life, as far as circumstances have enabled me to act up to it, has been, tosay nothing that would tend to kindle unkind feeling on this subject. Ihave never known men on this, or any other subject, to be convinced byharsh epithets or denunciation. 

I believe the union of these States is the greatest possibleblessing--that it comprises within itself all other blessings, political, national, and social; and I trust that my eyes may close longbefore the day shall come--if it ever shall come--when that Union shallbe at an end. Sir, I share the opinions and the sentiments of the partof the country where I was born and educated, where my ashes will belaid, and where my children will succeed me. But in relation to myfellow-citizens in other parts of the country, I will treat theirconstitutional and their legal rights with respect, and their charactersand their feelings with tenderness. I believe them to be as goodChristians, as good patriots, as good men, as we are, and I claim thatwe, in our turn, are as good as they. 

I rejoiced to hear my friend from Kentucky, (Mr. Dixon), if he willallow me to call him so--I concur most heartily in the sentiment--utterthe opinion that a wise and gracious Providence, in his own good time, will find the ways and the channels to remove from the land what Iconsider this great evil, but I do not expect that what has been done inthree centuries and a half is to be undone in a day or a year, or a fewyears; and I believe that, in the mean time, the desired end will beretarded rather than promoted by passionate sectional agitation. Ibelieve, further, that the fate of the great and interesting continentin the elder world, Africa, is closely intertwined and wrapped up withthe fortunes of her children in all the parts of the earth to which theyhave been dispersed, and that at some future time, which is alreadyin fact beginning, they will go back to the land of their fathers, thevoluntary missionaries of Civilization and Christianity; and finally, sir, I doubt not that in His own good time the Ruler of all willvindicate the most glorious of His prerogatives, "From seeming evilstill educing good. "

STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS, OF ILLINOIS. (BORN 1813, DIED 1861. )

ON THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL;

SENATE, MARCH 3, 1854. 

It has been urged in debate that there is no necessity for theseTerritorial organizations; and I have been called upon to point out anypublic and national considerations which require action at this time. Senators seem to forget that our immense and valuable possessions on thePacific are separated from the States and organized Territories on thisside of the Rocky Mountains by a vast wilderness, filled by hostilesavages--that nearly a hundred thousand emigrants pass through thisbarbarous wilderness every year, on their way to Californiaand Oregon--that these emigrants are American citizens, our ownconstituents, who are entitled to the protection of law and government, and that they are left to make their way, as best they may, without theprotection or aid of law or government. The United States mails for NewMexico and Utah, and official communications between this Government andthe authorities of those Territories, are required to be carried overthese wild plains, and through the gorges of the mountains, where youhave made no provisions for roads, bridges, or ferries to facilitatetravel, or forts or other means of safety to protect life. As often as Ihave brought forward and urged the adoption of measures to remedy theseevils, and afford security against the damages to which our people areconstantly exposed, they have been promptly voted down as not beingof sufficient importance to command the favorable consideration ofCongress. Now, when I propose to organize the Territories, and allowthe people to do for themselves what you have so often refused to do forthem, I am told that there are not white inhabitants enough permanentlysettled in the country to require and sustain a government. True; thereis not a very large population there, for the very reason that yourIndian code and intercourse laws exclude the settlers, and forbid theirremaining there to cultivate the soil. You refuse to throw thecountry open to settlers, and then object to the organization of theTerritories, upon the ground that there is not a sufficient number ofinhabitants. * * *

I will now proceed to the consideration of the great principle involvedin the bill, without omitting, however, to notice some of thoseextraneous matters which have been brought into this discussion with theview of producing another anti-slavery agitation. We have been told bynearly every Senator who has spoken in opposition to this bill, thatat the time of its introduction the people were in a state of profoundquiet and repose, that the anti-slavery agitation had entirely ceased, and that the whole country was acquiescing cheerfully and cordiallyin the compromise measures of 1850 as a final adjustment of this vexedquestion. Sir, it is truly refreshing to hear Senators, who contestedevery inch of ground in opposition to those measures, when they wereunder discussion, who predicted all manner of evils and calamities fromtheir adoption, and who raised the cry of appeal, and even resistance, to their execution, after they had become the laws of the land--I say itis really refreshing to hear these same Senators now bear their unitedtestimony to the wisdom of those measures, and to the patrioticmotives which induced us to pass them in defiance of their threats andresistance, and to their beneficial effects in restoring peace, harmony, and fraternity to a distracted country. These are precious confessionsfrom the lips of those who stand pledged never to assent to thepropriety of those measures, and to make war upon them, so long asthey shall remain upon the statute-book. I well understand that theseconfessions are now made, not with the view of yielding their assent tothe propriety of carrying those enactments into faithful execution, butfor the purpose of having a pretext for charging upon me, as the authorof this bill, the responsibility of an agitation which they are strivingto produce. They say that I, and not they, have revived the agitation. What have I done to render me obnoxious to this charge? They say that Iwrote and introduced this Nebraska bill. That is true; but I was not avolunteer in the transaction. The Senate, by a unanimous vote, appointed me chairman of the Territorial Committee, and associated fiveintelligent and patriotic Senators with me, and thus made it our dutyto take charge of all Territorial business. In like manner, and with theconcurrence of these complaining Senators, the Senate referred to us adistinct proposition to organize this Nebraska Territory, and requiredus to report specifically upon the question. I repeat, then, we were notvolunteers in this business. The duty was imposed upon us by theSenate. We were not unmindful of the delicacy and responsibility of theposition. We were aware that, from 1820 to 1850, the abolition doctrineof Congressional interference with slavery in the Territories and newStates had so far prevailed as to keep up an incessant slavery agitationin Congress, and throughout the country, whenever any new Territory wasto be acquired or organized. We were also aware that, in 1850, the rightof the people to decide this question for themselves, subject onlyto the Constitution, was submitted for the doctrine of Congressionalintervention. This first question, therefore, which the committee werecalled upon to decide, and indeed the only question of any materialimportance in framing this bill, was this: Shall we adhere to and carryout the principle recognized by the compromise measures of 1850, or shall we go back to the old exploded doctrine of Congressionalinterference, as established in 1820, in a large portion of the country, and which it was the object of the Wilmot proviso to give a universalapplication, not only to all the territory which we then possessed, butall which we might hereafter acquire? There are no alternatives. Wewere compelled to frame the bill upon the one or the other of these twoprinciples. The doctrine of 1820 or the doctrine of 1850 must prevail. In the discharge of the duty imposed upon us by the Senate, thecommittee could not hesitate upon this point, whether we consulted ourown individual opinions and principles, or those which were known to beentertained and boldly avowed by a large majority of the Senate. The twogreat political parties of the country stood solemnly pledged before theworld to adhere to the compromise measures of 1850, "in principle andsubstance. " A large majority of the Senate--indeed, every member of thebody, I believe, except the two avowed Abolitionists (Mr. Chase and Mr. Sumner)--profess to belong to one or the other of these parties, andhence were supposed to be under a high moral obligation to carry out"the principle and substance" of those measures in all new Territorialorganizations. The report of the committee was in accordance withthis obligation. I am arraigned, therefore, for having endeavored torepresent the opinions and principles of the Senate truly--for havingperformed my duty in conformity with parliamentary law--for having beenfaithful to the trust imposed in me by the Senate. Let the votethis night determine whether I have thus faithfully represented youropinions. When a majority of the Senate shall have passed the bill--whenthe majority of the States shall have endorsed it through theirrepresentatives upon this floor--when a majority of the South and amajority of the North shall have sanctioned it--when a majority of theWhig party and a majority of the Democratic party shall have voted forit--when each of these propositions shall be demonstrated by the votethis night on the final passage of the bill, I shall be willing tosubmit the question to the country, whether, as the organ of thecommittee, I performed my duty in the report and bill which have calleddown upon my head so much denunciation and abuse. 

Mr. President, the opponents of this measure have had much to say aboutthe mutations and modifications which this bill has undergone since itwas first introduced by myself, and about the alleged departure of thebill, in its present form, from the principle laid down in the originalreport of the committee as a rule of action in all future Territorialorganizations. Fortunately there is no necessity, even if your patiencewould tolerate such a course of argument at this late hour of the night, for me to examine these speeches in detail, and reply to each chargeseparately. Each speaker seems to have followed faithfully in thefootsteps of his leader in the path marked out by the Abolitionconfederates in their manifesto, which I took occasion to expose on aformer occasion. You have seen them on their winding way, meanderingthe narrow and crooked path in Indian file, each treading close upon theheels of the other, and neither venturing to take a step to the right orleft, or to occupy one inch of ground which did not bear the footprintof the Abolition champion. To answer one, therefore, is to answer thewhole. The statement to which they seem to attach the most importance, and which they have repeated oftener, perhaps, than any other, is, that, pending the compromise measures of 1850, no man in or out of Congressever dreamed of abrogating the Missouri compromise; that from thatperiod down to the present session nobody supposed that its validity hadbeen impaired, or any thing done which endered it obligatory upon us tomake it inoperative hereafter; that at the time of submitting the reportand bill to the Senate, on the fourth of January last, neither I nor anymember of the committee ever thought of such a thing; and that we couldnever be brought to the point of abrogating the eighth section ofthe Missouri act until after the Senator from Kentucky introduced hisamendment to my bill. 

Mr. President, before I proceed to expose the many misrepresentationscontained in this complicated charge, I must call the attention ofthe Senate to the false issue which these gentlemen are endeavoring toimpose upon the country, for the purpose of diverting public attentionfrom the real issue contained in the bill. They wish to have the peoplebelieve that the abrogation of what they call the Missouri compromisewas the main object and aim of the bill, and that the only questioninvolved is, whether the prohibition of slavery north of 36° 30'shall be repealed or not? That which is a mere incident they choose toconsider the principle. They make war on the means by which we propose toaccomplish an object, instead of openly resisting the object itself. The principle which we propose to carry into effect by the bill is this:That Congress shall neither legislate slavery into any Territoriesor State, nor out of the same; but the people shall be left free toregulate their domestic concerns in their own way, subject only to theConstitution of the United States. 

In order to carry this principle into practical operation, it becomesnecessary to remove whatever legal obstacles might be found in the wayof its free exercise. It is only for the purpose of carrying out thisgreat fundamental principle of self-government that the bill renders theeighth section of the Missouri act inoperative and void. 

Now, let me ask, will these Senators who have arraigned me, or any oneof them, have the assurance to rise in his place and declare that thisgreat principle was never thought of or advocated as applicable toTerritorial bills, in 1850; that from that session until the present, nobody ever thought of incorporating this principle in all newTerritorial organizations; that the Committee on Territories did notrecommend it in their report; and that it required the amendment of theSenator from Kentucky to bring us up to that point? Will any one of myaccusers dare to make this issue, and let it be tried by the record? Iwill begin with the compromises of 1850, Any Senator who will take thetrouble to examine our journals, will find that on the 25th of Marchof that year I reported from the Committee on Territories two billsincluding the following measures; the admission of California, aTerritorial government for New Mexico, and the adjustment of the Texasboundary. These bills proposed to leave the people of Utah and NewMexico free to decide the slavery question for themselves, in theprecise language of the Nebraska bill now under discussion. A few weeksafterward the committee of thirteen took those two bills and put a waferbetween them, and reported them back to the Senate as one bill, with some slight amendments. One of these amendments was, that theTerritorial Legislatures should not legislate upon the subject ofAfrican slavery. I objected to that provision upon the ground that itsubverted the great principle of self-government upon which the bill hadbeen originally framed by the Territorial Committee. On the first trial, the Senate refused to strike it out, but subsequently did so, after fulldebate, in order to establish that principle as the rule of action inTerritorial organizations. * * * But my accusers attempt to raise up afalse issue, and thereby divert public attention from the real one, bythe cry that the Missouri compromise is to be repealed or violated bythe passage of this bill. Well, if the eighth section of the Missouriact, which attempted to fix the destinies of future generations in thoseTerritories for all time to come, in utter disregard of the rights andwishes of the people when they should be received into the Union asStates, be inconsistent with the great principles of self-governmentand the Constitution of the United States. It ought to be abrogated. The legislation of 1850 abrogated the Missouri compromise, so far as thecountry embraced within the limits of Utah and New Mexico was coveredby the slavery restriction. It is true, that those acts did not interms and by name repeal the act of 1820, as originally adopted, or asextended by the resolutions annexing Texas in 1845, any more than thereport of the Committee on Territories proposed to repeal the same actsthis session. But the acts of 1850 did authorize the people of thoseTerritories to exercise "all rightful powers of legislation consistentwith the Constitution, " not excepting the question of slavery; and didprovide that, when those Territories should be admitted into the Union, they should be received with or without slavery as the people thereofmight determine at the date of their admission. These provisions werein direct conflict with a clause in the former enactment, declaring thatslavery should be forever prohibited in any portion of said Territories, and hence rendered such clause inoperative and void to the extent ofsuch conflict. This was an inevitable consequence, resulting from theprovisions in those acts, which gave the people the right to decide theslavery question for themselves, in conformity with the Constitution. It was not necessary to go further and declare that certain previousenactments, which were incompatible with the exercise of the powersconferred in the bills, are hereby repealed. The very act ofgranting those powers and rights has the legal effect of removing allobstructions to the exercise of them by the people, as prescribedin those Territorial bills. Following that example, the Committee onTerritories did not consider it necessary to declare the eighth sectionof the Missouri act repealed. We were content to organize Nebraska inthe precise language of the Utah and New Mexico bills. Our object wasto leave the people entirely free to form and regulate their domesticinstitutions and internal concerns in their own way, under theConstitution; and we deemed it wise to accomplish that object in theexact terms in which the same thing had been done in Utah and New Mexicoby the acts of 1850. This was the principle upon which the committeevoted; and our bill was supposed, and is now believed, to have been inaccordance with it. When doubts were raised whether the bill did fullycarry out the principle laid down in the report, amendments were madefrom time to time, in order to avoid all misconstruction, and make thetrue intent of the act more explicit. The last of these amendments wasadopted yesterday, on the motion of the distinguished Senator fromNorth Carolina (Mr. Badger), in regard to the revival of any laws orregulations which may have existed prior to 1820. That amendment was notintended to change the legal effect of the bill. Its object was to repelthe slander which had been propagated by the enemies of the measure inthe North--that the Southern supporters of the bill desired to legislateslavery into these Territories. The South denies the right of Congresseither to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, or out of anyTerritory or State. Non-intervention by Congress with slavery inthe States or Territories is the doctrine of the bill, and all theamendments which have been agreed to have been made with the view ofremoving all doubt and cavil as to the true meaning and object of themeasure. * * *

Well, sir, what is this Missouri compromise, of which we have heardso much of late? It has been read so often that it is not necessaryto occupy the time of the Senate in reading it again. It was an act ofCongress, passed on the 6th of March, 1820, to authorize the people ofMissouri to form a constitution and a State government, preparatory tothe admission of such State into the Union. The first section providedthat Missouri should be received into the Union "on an equal footingwith the original States in all respects whatsoever. " The last andeighth section provided that slavery should be "forever prohibited" inall the territory which had been acquired from France north of 36° 30', and not included within the limits of the State of Missouri. Thereis nothing in the terms of the law that purports to be a compact, or indicates that it was any thing more than an ordinary act oflegislation. To prove that it was more than it purports to be on itsface, gentlemen must produce other evidence, and prove that there wassuch an understanding as to create a moral obligation in the nature of acompact. Have they shown it?

Now, if this was a compact, let us see how it was entered into. The billoriginated in the House of Representatives, and passed that body withouta Southern vote in its favor. It is proper to remark, however, that itdid not at that time contain the eighth section, prohibiting slavery inthe Territories; but in lieu of it, contained a provision prohibitingslavery in the proposed State of Missouri. In the Senate, the clauseprohibiting slavery in the State was stricken out, and the eighthsection added to the end of the bill, by the terms of which slavery wasto be forever prohibited in the territory not embraced in the State ofMissouri north of 36° 30'. The vote on adding this section stood in theSenate, 34 in the affirmative, and 10 in the negative. Of the NorthernSenators, 20 voted for it, and 2 against it. On the question of orderingthe bill to a third reading as amended, which was the test vote on itspassage, the vote stood 24 yeas and 20 nays. Of the Northern Senators, 4 only voted in the affirmative, and 18 in the negative. Thus it will beseen that if it was intended to be a compact, the North never agreed toit. The Northern Senators voted to insert the prohibition of slavery inthe Territories; and then, in the proportion of more than four to one, voted against the passage of the bill. The North, therefore, neversigned the compact, never consented to it, never agreed to be bound byit. This fact becomes very important in vindicating the character of theNorth for repudiating this alleged compromise a few months afterward. The act was approved and became a law on the 6th of March, 1820. In thesummer of that year, the people of Missouri formed a constitution andState government preparatory to admission into the Union in conformitywith the act. At the next session of Congress the Senate passed a jointresolution declaring Missouri to be one of the States of the Union, onan equal footing with the original States. This resolution was sent tothe House of Representatives, where it was rejected by Northern votes, and thus Missouri was voted out of the Union, instead of being receivedinto the Union under the act of the 6th of March, 1820, now known as theMissouri compromise. Now, sir, what becomes of our plighted faith, ifthe act of the 6th of March, 1820, was a solemn compact, as we are nowtold? They have all rung the changes upon it, that it was a sacred andirrevocable compact, binding in honor, in conscience, and morals, whichcould not be violated or repudiated without perfidy and dishonor! * * *Sir, if this was a compact, what must be thought of those who violatedit almost immediately after it was formed? I say it is a calumny uponthe North to say that it was a compact. I should feel a flush ofshame upon my cheek, as a Northern man, if I were to say that it was acompact, and that the section of the country to which I belong receivedthe consideration, and then repudiated the obligation in eleven monthsafter it was entered into. I deny that it was a compact, in any senseof the term. But if it was, the record proves that faith was notobserved--that the contract was never carried into effect--that afterthe North had procured the passage of the act prohibiting slavery in theTerritories, with a majority in the House large enough to prevent itsrepeal, Missouri was refused admission into the Union as a slave-holdingState, in conformity with the act of March 6, 1820. If the propositionbe correct, as contended for by the opponents of this bill--thatthere was a solemn compact between the North and the South that, inconsideration of the prohibition of slavery in the Territories, Missouriwas to be admitted into the Union, in conformity with the act of1820--that compact was repudiated by the North, and rescinded by thejoint action of the two parties within twelve months from its date. Missouri was never admitted under the act of the 6th of March, 1820. Shewas refused admission under that act. She was voted out of the Unionby Northern votes, notwithstanding the stipulation that she shouldbe received; and, in consequence of these facts, a new compromise wasrendered necessary, by the terms of which Missouri was to be admittedinto the Union conditionally--admitted on a condition not embraced inthe act of 1820, and, in addition, to a full compliance with all theprovisions of said act. If, then, the act of 1820, by the eighth sectionof which slavery was prohibited in Missouri, was a compact, it is clearto the comprehension of every fair-minded man that the refusal ofthe North to admit Missouri, in compliance with its stipulations, andwithout further conditions, imposes upon us a high, moral obligation toremove the prohibition of slavery in the Territories, since it has beenshown to have been procured upon a condition never performed. * * *

Mr. President, I did not wish to refer to these things. I did notunderstand them fully in all their bearings at the time I made my firstspeech on this subject; and, so far as I was familiar with them, I madeas little reference to them as was consistent with my duty; because itwas a mortifying reflection to me, as a Northern man, that we had notbeen able, in consequence of the abolition excitement at the time, toavoid the appearance of bad faith in the observance of legislation, which has been denominated a compromise. There were a few men then, asthere are now, who had the moral courage to perform their duty to thecountry and the Constitution, regardless of consequences personal tothemselves. There were ten Northern men who dared to perform their dutyby voting to admit Missouri into the Union on an equal footing with theoriginal States, and with no other restriction than that imposed by theConstitution. I am aware that they were abused and denounced as we arenow--that they were branded as dough-faces--traitors to freedom, and tothe section of country whence they came. * * *

I think I have shown that if the act of 1820, called the Missouricompromise, was a compact, it was violated and repudiated by a solemnvote of the House of Representatives in 1821, within eleven months afterit was adopted. It was repudiated by the North by a majority vote, andthat repudiation was so complete and successful as to compel Missouri tomake a new compromise, and she was brought into the Union under the newcompromise of 1821, and not under the act of 1820. This reminds me ofanother point made in nearly all the speeches against this bill, and, ifI recollect right, was alluded to in the abolition manifesto; to which, I regret to say, I had occasion to refer so often. I refer to thesignificant hint that Mr. Clay was dead before any one dared to bringforward a proposition to undo the greatest work of his hands. TheSenator from New York (Mr. Seward) has seized upon this insinuation andelaborated, perhaps, more fully than his compeers; and now the Abolitionpress, suddenly, and, as if by miraculous conversion, teems witheulogies upon Mr. Clay and his Missouri compromise of 1820. 

Now, Mr. President, does not each of these Senators know that Mr. Clay was not the author of the act of 1820? Do they not know that hedisclaimed it in 1850 in this body? Do they not know that the Missourirestriction did not originate in the House, of which he was a member? Dothey not know that Mr. Clay never came into the Missouri controversy asa compromiser until after the compromise of 1820 was repudiated, and itbecame necessary to make another? I dislike to be compelled to repeatwhat I have conclusively proven, that the compromise which Mr. Clayeffected was the act of 1821, under which Missouri came into the Union, and not the act of 1820. Mr. Clay made that compromise after you hadrepudiated the first one. How, then, dare you call upon the spirit ofthat great and gallant statesman to sanction your charge of bad faithagainst the South on this question? * * *

Now, Mr. President, as I have been doing justice to Mr. Clay on thisquestion, perhaps I may as well do justice to another great man, whowas associated with him in carrying through the great measures of 1850, which mortified the Senator from New York so much, because they defeatedhis purpose of carrying on the agitation. I allude to Mr. Webster. Theauthority of his great name has been quoted for the purpose of provingthat he regarded the Missouri act as a compact, an irrepealable compact. Evidently the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Everett)supposed he was doing Mr. Webster entire justice when he quoted thepassage which he read from Mr. Webster's speech of the 7th of March, 1850, when he said that he stood upon the position that every partof the American continent was fixed for freedom or for slavery byirrepealable law. The Senator says that by the expression "irrepealablelaw, " Mr. Webster meant to include the compromise of 1820. Now, I willshow that that was not Mr. Webster's meaning--that he was neverguilty of the mistake of saying that the Missouri act of 1820 was anirrepealable law. Mr. Webster said in that speech that every foot ofterritory in the United States was fixed as to its character for freedomor slavery by an irrepealable law. He then inquired if it was not soin regard to Texas? He went on to prove that it was; because, he said, there was a compact in express terms between Texas and the UnitedStates. He said the parties were capable of contracting and that therewas a valuable consideration; and hence, he contended, that in that casethere was a contract binding in honor and morals and law; and that itwas irrepealable without a breach of faith. 

He went on to say:

"Now, as to California and New Mexico, I hold slavery to be excludedfrom these Territories by a law even superior to that which admitsand sanctions it in Texas--I mean the law of nature--of physicalgeography--the law of the formation of the earth. "

That was the irrepealable law which he said prohibited slavery inthe Territories of Utah and New Mexico. He went on to speak of theprohibition of slavery in Oregon, and he said it was an "entirelyuseless and, in that connection, senseless proviso. "

He went further, and said:

"That the whole territory of the States of the United States, or in thenewly-acquired territory of the United States, has a fixed and settledcharacter, now fixed and settled by law, which cannot be repealed inthe case of Texas without a violation of public faith, and cannot berepealed by any human power in regard to California or New Mexico; that, under one or other of these laws, every foot of territory in the Statesor in the Territories has now received a fixed and decided character. "

What irrepealable laws? One or the other of those which he had stated. One was the Texas compact; the other, the law of nature and physicalgeography; and he contended that one or the other fixed the characterof the whole American continent for freedom or for slavery. He neveralluded to the Missouri compromise, unless it was by the allusion tothe Wilmot proviso in the Oregon bill, and therein said it was a uselessand, in that connection, senseless thing. Why was it a useless andsenseless thing? Because it was reenacting the law of God; becauseslavery had already been prohibited by physical geography. Sir, that wasthe meaning of Mr. Webster's speech. * * *

Mr. President, I have occupied a good deal of time in exposing the cantof these gentlemen about the sanctity of the Missouri compromise, andthe dishonor attached to the violation of plighted faith. I have exposedthese matters in order to show that the object of these men is towithdraw from public attention the real principle involved in the bill. They well know that the abrogation of the Missouri compromise is theincident and not the principle of the bill. They well understand thatthe report of the committee and the bill propose to establish theprinciple in all Territorial organizations, that the question of slaveryshall be referred to the people to regulate for themselves, and thatsuch legislation should be had as was necessary to remove all legalobstructions to the free exercise of this right by the people. Theeighth section of the Missouri act standing in the way of this greatprinciple must be rendered inoperative and void, whether expresslyrepealed or not, in order to give the people the power of regulatingtheir own domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to theConstitution. 

Now, sir, if these gentlemen have entire confidence in the correctnessof their own position, why do they not meet the issue boldly andfairly, and controvert the soundness of this great principle of popularsovereignty in obedience to the Constitution? They know full well thatthis was the principle upon which the colonies separated from the crownof Great Britain, the principle upon which the battles of the Revolutionwere fought, and the principle upon which our republican system wasfounded. They cannot be ignorant of the fact that the Revolution grewout of the assertion of the right on the part of the imperial Governmentto interfere with the internal affairs and domestic concerns of thecolonies. * * *

The Declaration of Independence had its origin in the violation of thatgreat fundamental principle which secured to the colonies the right toregulate their own domestic affairs in their own way; and the Revolutionresulted in the triumph of that principle, and the recognition of theright asserted by it. Abolitionism proposes to destroy the right andextinguish the principle for which our forefathers waged a seven years'bloody war, and upon which our whole system of free government isfounded. They not only deny the application of this principle to theTerritories, but insist upon fastening the prohibition upon all theStates to be formed out of those Territories. Therefore, the doctrineof the Abolitionists--the doctrine of the opponents of the Nebraskaand Kansas bill, and the advocates of the Missouri restriction--demandsCongressional interference with slavery not only in the Territories, butin all the new States to be formed therefrom. It is the same doctrine, when applied to the Territories and new States of this Union, which theBritish Government attempted to enforce by the sword upon the Americancolonies. It is this fundamental principle of self-government whichconstitutes the distinguishing feature of the Nebraska bill. Theopponents of the principle are consistent in opposing the bill. I donot blame them for their opposition. I only ask them to meet theissue fairly and openly, by acknowledging that they are opposed to theprinciple which it is the object of the bill to carry into operation. It seems that there is no power on earth, no intellectual power, nomechanical power, that can bring them to a fair discussion of the trueissue. If they hope to delude the people and escape detection for anyconsiderable length of time under the catch-words "Missouri compromise"and "faith of compacts, " they will find that the people of this countryhave more penetration and intelligence than they have given them creditfor. 

Mr. President, there is an important fact connected with this slaveryregulation, which should never be lost sight of. It has always arisenfrom one and the same cause. Whenever that cause has been removed, the agitation has ceased; and whenever the cause has been renewed, theagitation has sprung into existence. That cause is, and ever has been, the attempt on the part of Congress to interfere with the question ofslavery in the Territories and new States formed therefrom. Is it notwise then to confine our action within the sphere of our legitimateduties, and leave this vexed question to take care of itself in eachState and Territory, according to the wishes of the people thereof, inconformity to the forms, and in subjection to the provisions, of theConstitution?

The opponents of the bill tell us that agitation is no part of theirpolicy; that their great desire is peace and harmony; and they complainbitterly that I should have disturbed the repose of the country by theintroduction of this measure! Let me ask these professed friends ofpeace, and avowed enemies of agitation, how the issue could have beenavoided. They tell me that I should have let the question alone;that is, that I should have left Nebraska unorganized, the peopleunprotected, and the Indian barrier in existence, until the swellingtide of emigration should burst through, and accomplish by violence whatit is the part of wisdom and statesmanship to direct and regulate bylaw. How long could you have postponed action with safety? How longcould you maintain that Indian barrier, and restrain the onward march ofcivilization, Christianity, and free government by a barbarian wall? Doyou suppose that you could keep that vast country a howling wildernessin all time to come, roamed over by hostile savages, cutting off allsafe communication between our Atlantic and Pacific possessions? I tellyou that the time for action has come, and cannot be postponed. It isa case in which the "let-alone" policy would precipitate a crisis whichmust inevitably result in violence, anarchy, and strife. 

You cannot fix bounds to the onward march of this great and growingcountry. You cannot fetter the limbs of the young giant. He will burstall your chains. He will expand, and grow, and increase, and extendcivilization, Christianity, and liberal principles. Then, sir, if youcannot check the growth of the country in that direction, is it not thepart of wisdom to look the danger in the face, and provide for an eventwhich you cannot avoid? I tell you, sir, you must provide for lines ofcontinuous settlement from the Mississippi valley to the Pacific ocean. And in making this provision, you must decide upon what principles theTerritories shall be organized; in other words, whether the people shallbe allowed to regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, according to the provisions of this bill, or whether the oppositedoctrine of Congressional interference is to prevail. Postpone it, if you will; but whenever you do act, this question must be met anddecided. 

The Missouri compromise was interference; the compromise of 1850 wasnon-interference, leaving the people to exercise their rights under theConstitution. The Committee on Territories were compelled to act on thissubject. I, as their chairman, was bound to meet the question. I choseto take the responsibility regardless of consequences personal tomyself. I should have done the same thing last year, if there had beentime; but we know, considering the late period at which the billthen reached us from the House, that there was not sufficient time toconsider the question fully, and to prepare a report upon the subject. 

I was, therefore, persuaded by my friends to allow the bill to bereported to the Senate, in order that such action might be taken asshould be deemed wise and proper. The bill was never taken up foraction--the last night of the session having been exhausted in debate ona motion to take up the bill. This session, the measure was introducedby my friend from Iowa (Mr. Dodge), and referred to the TerritorialCommittee during the first week of the session. We have abundance oftime to consider the subject; it is a matter of pressing necessity, and there was no excuse for not meeting it directly and fairly. We werecompelled to take our position upon the doctrine either of interventionor non-intervention. We chose the latter for two reasons: first, becausewe believed that the principle was right; and, second, because it wasthe principle adopted in 1850, to which the two great political partiesof the country were solemnly pledged. 

There is another reason why I desire to see this principle recognized asa rule of action in all time to come. It will have the effect to destroyall sectional parties and sectional agitations. If, in the language ofthe report of the committee, you withdraw the slavery question fromthe halls of Congress and the political arena, and commit it to thearbitrament of those who are immediately interested in and aloneresponsible for its consequences, there is nothing left out of whichsectional parties can be organized. It never was done, and never canbe done on the bank, tariff, distribution, or any party issue which hasexisted, or may exist, after this slavery question is withdrawn frompolitics. On every other political question these have always supportersand opponents in every portion of the Union--in each State, county, village, and neighborhood--residing together in harmony and goodfellowship, and combating each other's opinions and correcting eachother's errors in a spirit of kindness and friendship. These differencesof opinion between neighbors and friends, and the discussions that growout of them, and the sympathy which each feels with the advocates ofhis own opinions in every portion of this widespread Republic, addan overwhelming and irresistible moral weight to the strength ofthe Confederacy. Affection for the Union can never be alienated ordiminished by any other party issues than those which are joined uponsectional or geographical lines. When the people of the North shallall be rallied under one banner, and the whole South marshalled underanother banner, and each section excited to frenzy and madness byhostility to the institutions of the other, then the patriot may welltremble for the perpetuity of the Union. Withdraw the slavery questionfrom the political arena, and remove it to the States and Territories, each to decide for itself, such a catastrophe can never happen. Thenyou will never be able to tell, by any Senator's vote for or against anymeasure, from what State or section of the Union he comes. 

Why, then, can we not withdraw this vexed question from politics? Whycan we not adopt the principle of this bill as a rule of action in allnew Territorial organizations? Why can we not deprive these agitators oftheir vocation and render it impossible for Senators to come here uponbargains on the slavery question? I believe that the peace, the harmony, and perpetuity of the Union require us to go back to the doctrines ofthe Revolution, to the principles of the Constitution, to the principlesof the Compromise of 1850, and leave the people, under the Constitution, to do as they may see proper in respect to their own internal affairs. 

Mr. President, I have not brought this question forward as a Northernman or as a Southern man. I am unwilling to recognize such divisionsand distinctions. I have brought it forward as an American Senator, representing a State which is true to this principle, and which hasapproved of my action in respect to the Nebraska bill. I have brought itforward not as an act of justice to the South more than to the North. Ihave presented it especially as an act of justice to the people of thoseTerritories and of the States to be formed therefrom, now and in alltime to come. I have nothing to say about Northern rights or Southernrights. I know of no such divisions or distinctions under theConstitution. The bill does equal and exact justice to the whole Union, and every part of it; it violates the right of no State or Territory;but places each on a perfect equality, and leaves the people thereof tothe free enjoyment of all their rights under the Constitution. 

Now, sir, I wish to say to our Southern friends that if they desire tosee this great principle carried out, now is their time to rally aroundit, to cherish it, preserve it, make it the rule of action in all futuretime. If they fail to do it now, and thereby allow the doctrine ofinterference to prevail, upon their heads the consequences of thatinterference must rest. To our Northern friends, on the other hand, I desire to say, that from this day henceforward they must rebuke theslander which has been uttered against the South, that they desire tolegislate slavery into the Territories. The South has vindicated hersincerity, her honor, on that point by bringing forward a provisionnegativing, in express terms, any such effect as a result of this bill. I am rejoiced to know that while the proposition to abrogate the eighthsection of the Missouri act comes from a free State, the proposition tonegative the conclusion that slavery is thereby introduced, comes froma slave-holding State. Thus, both sides furnish conclusive evidence thatthey go for the principle, and the principle only, and desire to take noadvantage of any possible misconstruction. 

Mr. President, I feel that I owe an apology to the Senate for havingoccupied their attention so long, and a still greater apology for havingdiscussed the question in such an incoherent and desultory manner. ButI could not forbear to claim the right of closing this debate. I thoughtgentlemen would recognize its propriety when they saw the mannerin which I was assailed and misrepresented in the course of thisdiscussion, and especially by assaults still more disreputable in someportions of the country. These assaults have had no other effect upon methan to give me courage and energy for a still more resolute dischargeof duty. I say frankly that, in my opinion, this measure will be aspopular at the North as at the South, when its provisions and principlesshall have been fully developed, and become well understood. The peopleat the North are attached to the principles of self-government, andyou cannot convince them that that is self-government which deprives apeople of the right of legislating for themselves, and compels them toreceive laws which are forced upon them by a Legislature in which theyare not represented. We are willing to stand upon this great principleof self-government every-where; and it is to us a proud reflection that, in this whole discussion, no friend of the bill has urged an argumentin its favor which could not be used with the same propriety in a freeState as in a slave State, and vice versed. No enemy of the bill hasused an argument which would bear repetition one mile across Mason andDixon's line. Our opponents have dealt entirely in sectional appeals. The friends of the bill have discussed a great principle of universalapplication, which can be sustained by the same reasons, and the samearguments, in every time and in every corner of the Union. 

CHARLES SUMNER, OF MASSACHUSETTS. ' (BORN 1811, DIED 1874. )

ON THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS;

SENATE, MAY 19-20, 1856. 

MR. PRESIDENT:

You are now called to redress a great transgression. Seldom in thehistory of nations has such a question been presented. Tariffs, Armybills, Navy bills, Land bills, are important, and justly occupy yourcare; but these all belong to the course of ordinary legislation. Asmeans and instruments only, they are necessarily subordinate to theconservation of government itself. Grant them or deny them, in greateror less degree, and you will inflict no shock. The machinery ofgovernment will continue to move. The State will not cease to exist. Farotherwise is it with the eminent question now before you, involving, asit does, Liberty in a broad territory, and also involving the peace ofthe whole country, with our good name in history forever more. 

Take down your map, sir, and you will find that the Territory of Kansas, more than any other region, occupies the middle spot of North America, equally distant from the Atlantic on the east, and the Pacific on thewest; from the frozen waters of Hudson's Bay on the north, and the tepidGulf Stream on the south, constituting the precise territorial centre ofthe whole vast continent. To such advantages of situation, on the veryhighway between two oceans, are added a soil of unsurpassed richness, and a fascinating, undulating beauty of surface, with a health-givingclimate, calculated to nurture a powerful and generous people, worthyto be a central pivot of American institutions. A few short months onlyhave passed since this spacious and mediterranean country was open onlyto the savage who ran wild in its woods and prairies; and now it hasalready drawn to its bosom a population of freemen larger than Athenscrowded within her historic gates, when her sons, under Miltiades, won liberty for man-kind on the field of Marathon; more than Spartacontained when she ruled Greece, and sent forth her devoted children, quickened by a mother's benediction, to return with their shields, or onthem; more than Rome gathered on her seven hills, when, under her kings, she commenced that sovereign sway, which afterward embraced thewhole earth; more than London held, when, on the fields of Crecyand Agincourt, the English banner was carried victoriously over thechivalrous hosts of France. 

Against this Territory, thus fortunate in position and population, acrime has been committed, which is without example in the records ofthe past. Not in plundered provinces or in the cruelties of selfishgovernors will you find its parallel; and yet there is an ancientinstance, which may show at least the path of justice. In the terribleimpeachment by which the great Roman orator has blasted through alltime the name of Verres, amidst charges of robbery and sacrilege, theenormity which most aroused the indignant voice of his accuser, andwhich still stands forth with strongest distinctness, arresting thesympathetic indignation of all who read the story, is, that away inSicily he had scourged a citizen of Rome--that the cry, "I am a Romancitizen, " had been interposed in vain against the lash of the tyrantgovernor. Other charges were, that he had carried away productions ofart, and that he had violated the sacred shrines. It was in the presenceof the Roman Senate that this arraignment proceeded; in a temple ofthe Forum; amidst crowds--such as no orator had ever before drawntogether--thronging the porticos and colonnades, even clinging tothe house-tops and neighboring slopes--and under the anxious gaze ofwitnesses summoned from the scene of crime. But an audience granderfar--of higher dignity--of more various people, and of widerintelligence--the countless multitude of succeeding generations, inevery land, where eloquence has been studied, or where the Roman namehas been recognized, --has listened to the accusation, and throbbed withcondemnation of the criminal. Sir, speaking in an age of light, and aland of constitutional liberty, where the safeguards of elections arejustly placed among the highest triumphs of civilization, I fearlesslyassert that the wrongs of much-abused Sicily, thus memorable in history, were small by the side of the wrongs of Kansas, where the very shrinesof popular institutions, more sacred than any heathen altar, have beendesecrated; where the ballot-box, more precious than any work, in ivoryor marble, from the cunning hand of art, has been plundered; and wherethe cry, "I am an American citizen, " has been interposed in vain againstoutrage of every kind, even upon life itself. Are you against sacrilege?I present it for your execration. Are you against;robbery? I hold it upto your scorn. Are you for the protection of American citizens? I showyou how their dearest rights have been cloven down, while a TyrannicalUsurpation has sought to install itself on their very necks!

But the wickedness which I now begin to expose is immeasurablyaggravated by the motive which prompted it. Not in any common lust forpower did this uncommon tragedy have its origin. It is the rape of avirgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of Slavery; andit may be clearly traced to a depraved longing for a new slave State, the hideous off-spring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to thepower of slavery in the National Government. Yes, sir, when the wholeworld, alike Christian and Turk, is rising up to condemn this wrong, andto make it a hissing to the nations, here in our Republic, force--ay, sir, FORCE--has been openly employed in compelling Kansas to thispollution, and all for the sake of political power. There is the simplefact, which you will in vain attempt to deny, but which in itselfpresents an essential wickedness that makes other public crimes seemlike public virtues. 

But this enormity, vast beyond comparison, swells to dimensions ofwickedness which the imagination toils in vain to grasp, when it isunderstood that for this purpose are hazarded the horrors of intestinefeud not only in this distant Territory, but everywhere throughout thecountry. Already the muster has begun. The strife is no longer local, but national. Even now, while I speak, portents hang on all the archesof the horizon threatening to darken the broad land, which alreadyyawns with the mutterings of civil war. The fury of the propagandists ofSlavery, and the calm determination of their opponents, are now diffusedfrom the distant Territory over widespread communities, and thewhole country, in all its extent--marshalling hostile divisions, andforeshadowing a strife which, unless happily averted by the triumphof Freedom, will become war--fratricidal, parricidal war--with anaccumulated wickedness beyond the wickedness of any war in human annals;justly provoking the avenging judgment of Providence and the avengingpen of history, and constituting a strife, in the language of theancient writer, more than foreign, more than social, more than civil;but something compounded of all these strifes, and in itself more thanwar; _sal potius commune quoddam ex omnibus, et plus quam bellum_. 

Such is the crime which you are to judge. But the criminal also must bedragged into day, that you may see and measure the power by which allthis wrong is sustained. From no common source could it proceed. Inits perpetration was needed a spirit of vaulting ambition which wouldhesitate at nothing; a hardihood of purpose which was insensible to thejudgment of mankind; a madness for Slavery which would disregard theConstitution, the laws, and all the great examples of our history;also a consciousness of power such as comes from the habit of power;a combination of energies found only in a hundred arms directed bya hundred eyes; a control of public opinion through venal pens and aprostituted press; an ability to subsidize crowds in every vocationof life--the politician with his local importance, the lawyer with hissubtle tongue, and even the authority of the judge on the bench; anda familiar use of men in places high and low, so that none, from thePresident to the lowest border postmaster, should decline to be itstool; all these things and more were needed, and they were found inthe slave power of our Republic. There, sir, stands the criminal, all unmasked before you--heartless, grasping, and tyrannical--with anaudacity beyond that of Verres, a subtlety beyond that of Machiavel, ameanness beyond that of Bacon, and an ability beyond that of Hastings. Justice to Kansas can be secured only by the prostration of thisinfluence; for this the power behind--greater than any President--whichsuccors and sustains the crime. Nay, the proceedings I now arraignderive their fearful consequences only from this connection. 

In now opening this great matter, I am not insensible to the austeredemands of the occasion; but the dependence of the crime against Kansasupon the slave power is so peculiar and important, that I trust to bepardoned while I impress it with an illustration, which to some mayseem trivial. It is related in Northern mythology that the god of Force, visiting an enchanted region, was challenged by his royal entertainer towhat seemed an humble feat of strength--merely, sir, to lift a cat fromthe ground. The god smiled at the challenge, and, calmly placing hishand under the belly of the animal, with superhuman strength strove, while the back of the feline monster arched far up-ward, even beyondreach, and one paw actually forsook the earth, until at last thediscomfited divinity desisted; but he was little surprised at hisdefeat when he learned that this creature, which seemed to be a cat, andnothing more, was not merely a cat, but that it belonged to and was apart of the great Terrestrial Serpent, which, in its innumerable folds, encircled the whole globe. Even so the creature, whose paws are nowfastened upon Kansas, whatever it may seem to be, constitutes in realitya part of the slave power, which, in its loathsome folds, is nowcoiled about the whole land. Thus do I expose the extent of the presentcontest, where we encounter not merely local resistance, but also theunconquered sustaining arm behind. But out of the vastness of the crimeattempted, with all its woe and shame, I derive a well-founded assuranceof a commensurate vastness of effort against it by the aroused masses ofthe country, determined not only to vindicate Right against Wrong, but to redeem the Republic from the thraldom of that Oligarchy whichprompts, directs, and concentrates the distant wrong. 

Such is the crime, and such the criminal, which it is my duty in thisdebate to expose, and, by the blessing of God, this duty shall be donecompletely to the end. * * *'

But, before entering upon the argument, I must say something of ageneral character, particularly in response to what has fallen fromSenators who have raised themselves to eminence on this floor inchampionship of human wrongs. I mean the Senator from South Carolina(Mr. Butler), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas), who, thoughunlike as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, yet, like this couple, sallyforth together in the same adventure. I regret much to miss the elderSenator from his seat; but the cause, against which he has run atilt, with such activity of animosity, demands that the opportunity ofexposing him should not be lost; and it is for the cause that I speak. The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, andbelieves himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor andcourage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made hisvows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; thoughpolluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight--I mean theharlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words. Let herbe impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her outfrom the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner orhardihood of assertion is then too great for this Senator. The frenzyof Don Quixote, in behalf of his wench, Dulcinea del Toboso, is allsurpassed. The asserted rights of Slavery, which shock equality of allkinds, are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality. If the slave Statescannot enjoy what, in mockery of the great fathers of the Republic, hemisnames equality under the Constitution--in other words, the full powerin the National Territories to compel fellow-men to unpaid toil, toseparate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the auctionblock--then, sir, the chivalric Senator will conduct the State of SouthCarolina out of the Union! Heroic knight! Exalted Senator! A secondMoses come for a second exodus!!

But not content with this poor menace, which we have been twice told was"measured, " the Senator in the unrestrained chivalry of his nature, hasundertaken to apply opprobrious words to those who differ from him onthis floor. He calls them "sectional and fanatical;" and opposition tothe usurpation in Kansas he denounces as "an uncalculating fanaticism. "To be sure these charges lack all grace of originality, and allsentiment of truth; but the adventurous Senator does not hesitate. Heis the uncompromising, unblushing representative on this floor of aflagrant sectionalism, which now domineers over the Republic, and yetwith a ludicrous ignorance of his own position--unable to see himselfas others see him--or with an effrontery which even his white head oughtnot to protect from rebuke, he applies to those here who resist hissectionalism the very epithet which designates himself. The men whostrive to bring back the Government to its original policy, when Freedomand not Slavery was sectional, he arraigns as sectional. This will notdo. It involves too great a perversion of terms. I tell that Senatorthat it is to himself, and to the "organization" of which he is the"committed advocate, " that this epithet belongs. I now fasten it uponthem. For myself, I care little for names; but since the question hasbeen raised here, I affirm that the Republican party of the Union is inno just sense sectional, but, more than any other party, national;and that it now goes forth to dislodge from the high places of theGovernment the tyrannical sectionalism of which the Senator from SouthCarolina is one of the maddest zealots. * * *

As the Senator from South Carolina, is the Don Quixote, the Senator fromIllinois (Mr. Douglas) is the Squire of Slavery, its very Sancho Panza, ready to do all its humiliating offices. This Senator, in his laboredaddress, vindicating his labored report--piling one mass of elaborateerror upon another mass--constrained himself, as you will remember, tounfamiliar decencies of speech. Of that address I have nothing to sayat this moment, though before I sit down I shall show something of itsfallacies. But I go back now to an earlier occasion, when, true to hisnative impulses, he threw into this discussion, "for a charm of powerfultrouble, " personalities most discreditable to this body. I will not stopto repel the imputations which he cast upon myself; but I mention themto remind you of the "sweltered venom sleeping got, " which, with otherpoisoned ingredients, he cast into the caldron of this debate. Of otherthings I speak. Standing on this floor, the Senator issued his rescript, requiring submission to the Usurped Power of Kansas; and this wasaccompanied by a manner--all his own--such as befits the tyrannicalthreat. Very well. Let the Senator try. I tell him now that he cannotenforce any such submission. The Senator, with the slave power at hisback, is strong; but he is not strong enough for this purpose. He isbold. He shrinks from nothing. Like Danton, he may cry, "l'audace!l'audace! toujours l'au-dace!" but even his audacity cannot compass thiswork. The Senator copies the British officer who, with boastful swagger, said that with the hilt of his sword he would cram the "stamps" down thethroats of the American people, and he will meet a similar failure. Hemay convulse this country with a civil feud. Like the ancient madman, hemay set fire to this Temple of Constitutional Liberty, grander thanthe Ephesian dome; but he cannot enforce obedience to that TyrannicalUsurpation. 

The Senator dreams that he can subdue the North. He disclaims the openthreat, but his conduct still implies it. How little that Senator knowshimself or the strength of the cause which he persecutes! He is but amortal man; against him is an immortal principle. With finite power hewrestles with the infinite, and he must fall. Against him are strongerbattalions than any marshalled by mortal arm--the inborn, ineradicable, invincible sentiments of the human heart; against him is nature in allher subtle forces; against him is God. Let him try to subdue these. * * *

With regret, I come again upon the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Butler), who, omnipresent in this debate, overflowed with rage at thesimple suggestion that Kansas had applied for admission as a State;and, with incoherent phrases, discharged the loose expectoration of hisspeech, now upon her representative, and then upon her people. There wasno extravagance of the ancient parliamentary debate, which he did notrepeat; nor was there any possible deviation from truth which he did notmake, with so much of passion, I am glad to add, as to save him fromthe suspicion of intentional aberration. But the Senator touchesnothing which he does not disfigure--with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. He shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether instating the Constitution, or in stating the law, whether in the detailsof statistics or the diversions of scholarship. He cannot ope his mouth, but out there flies a blunder. Surely he ought to be familiar with thelife of Franklin; and yet he referred to this household character, whileacting as agent of our fathers in England, as above suspicion; and thiswas done that he might give point to a false contrast with the agent ofKansas--not knowing that, however they may differ in genius and fame, inthis experience they are alike: that Franklin, when entrusted with thepetition of Massachusetts Bay, was assaulted by a foul-mouthed speaker, where he could not be heard in defence, and denounced as a "thief, " evenas the agent of Kansas has been assaulted on this floor, and denouncedas a "forger. " And let not the vanity of the Senator be inspired bythe parallel with the British statesman of that day; for it is only inhostility to Freedom that any parallel can be recognized. 

But it is against the people of Kansas that the sensibilities of theSenator are particularly aroused. Coming, as he announces, "from aState"--ay, sir, from South Carolina--he turns with lordly disgust fromthis newly-formed community, which he will not recognize even as a "bodypolitic. " Pray, sir, by what title does he indulge in this egotism? Hashe read the history of "the State" which he represents? He cannotsurely have forgotten its shameful imbecility from Slavery, confessedthroughout the Revolution, followed by its more shameful assumptions forSlavery since. He cannot have forgotten its wretched persistence inthe slave-trade as the very apple of its eye, and the condition of itsparticipation in the Union. He cannot have forgotten its constitution, which is Republican only in name, confirming power in the hands of thefew, and founding the qualifications of its legislators on "a settledfreehold estate and ten negroes. " And yet the Senator, to whom that"State" has in part committed the guardianship of its good name, insteadof moving, with backward treading steps, to cover its nakedness, rushesforward in the very ecstasy of madness, to expose it by provoking acomparison with Kansas. South Carolina is old; Kansas is young. SouthCarolina counts by centuries; where Kansas counts by years. But abeneficent example may be born in a day; and I venture to say, thatagainst the two centuries of the older "State, " may be already setthe two years of trial, evolving corresponding virtue, in the youngercommunity. In the one, is the long wail of Slavery; in the other, thehymns of Freedom. And if we glance at special achievements, it willbe difficult to find any thing in the history of South Carolina whichpresents so much of heroic spirit in an heroic cause as appears in thatrepulse of the Missouri invaders by the beleaguered town of Lawrence, where even the women gave their effective efforts to Freedom. Thematrons of Rome, who poured their jewels into the treasury for thepublic defence--the wives of Prussia, who, with delicate fingers, clothed their defenders against French invasion--the mothers of ourown Revolution, who sent forth their sons, covered with prayers andblessings, to combat for human rights, did nothing of self-sacrificetruer than did these women on this occasion. Were the whole history ofSouth Carolina blotted out of existence, from its very beginning down tothe day of the last election of the Senator to his present seat on thisfloor, civilization might lose--I do not say how little; but surelyless than it has already gained by the example of Kansas, in its valiantstruggle against oppression, and in the development of a new scienceof emigration. Already, in Lawrence alone, there are newspapers andschools, including a High School, and throughout this infant Territorythere is more mature scholarship far, in proportion to its inhabitants, than in all South Carolina. Ah, sir, I tell the Senator that Kansas, welcomed as a free State, will be a "ministering angel" to the Republic, when South Carolina, in the cloak of darkness which she hugs, "lieshowling. "

The Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas) naturally joins the Senator fromSouth Carolina in this warfare, and gives to it the superior intensityof his nature. He thinks that the National Government has not completelyproved its power, as it has never hanged a traitor; but, if the occasionrequires, he hopes there will be no hesitation; and this threat isdirected at Kansas, and even at the friends of Kansas throughout thecountry. Again occurs the parallel with the struggle of our fathers, and I borrow the language of Patrick Henry, when, to the cry from theSenator, of "treason, " "treason, " I reply, "if this be treason, makethe most of it. " Sir, it is easy to call names; but I beg to tell theSenator that if the word "traitor" is in any way applicable to thosewho refuse submission to a Tyrannical Usurpation, whether in Kansas orelsewhere, then must some new word, of deeper color, be invented, todesignate those mad spirits who could endanger and degrade the Republic, while they betray all the cherished sentiments of the fathers and thespirit of the Constitution, in order to give new spread to Slavery. Letthe Senator proceed. It will not be the first time in history, that ascaffold erected for punishment has become a pedestal of honor. Out ofdeath comes life, and the "traitor" whom he blindly executes will liveimmortal in the cause. 

 "For Humanity sweeps onward; where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas, with the silver in his hands; While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return, To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. "

Among these hostile Senators, there is yet another, with all theprejudices of the Senator from South Carolina, but without his generousimpulses, who, on account of his character before the country, and therancor of his opposition, deserves to be named. I mean the Senator fromVirginia (Mr. Mason), who, as the author of the Fugitive-Slave bill, hasassociated himself with a special act of inhumanity and tyranny. Of himI shall say little, for he has said little in this debate, though withinthat little was compressed the bitterness of a life absorbed in thesupport of Slavery. He holds the commission of Virginia; but he does notrepresent that early Virginia, so dear to our hearts, which gave to usthe pen of Jefferson, by which the equality of men was declared, andthe sword of Washington, by which Independence was secured; but herepresents that other Virginia, from which Washington and Jeffersonnow avert their faces, where human beings are bred as cattle for theshambles, and where a dungeon rewards the pious matron who teacheslittle children to relieve their bondage by reading the Book of Life. It is proper that such a Senator, representing such a State, should railagainst free Kansas. 

Senators such as these are the natural enemies of Kansas, and Iintroduce them with reluctance, simply that the country may understandthe character of the hostility which must be overcome. Arrayed withthem, of course, are all who unite, under any pretext or apology, inthe propagandism of human Slavery. To such, indeed, the time-honoredsafeguards of popular rights can be a name only, and nothing more. Whatare trial by jury, habeas corpus, the ballot-box, the right of petition, the liberty of Kansas, your liberty, sir, or mine, to one who lendshimself, not merely to the support at home, but to the propagandismabroad, of that preposterous wrong, which denies even the right of aman to himself! Such a cause can be maintained only by a practicalsubversion of all rights. It is, therefore, merely according to reasonthat its partisans should uphold the Usurpation in Kansas. 

To overthrow this Usurpation is now the special, importunate duty ofCongress, admitting of no hesitation or postponement. To this end itmust lift itself from the cabals of candidates, the machinations ofparty, and the low level of vulgar strife. It must turn from that SlaveOligarchy which now controls the Republic, and refuse to be its tool. Let its power be stretched forth toward this distant Territory, not tobind, but to unbind; not for the oppression of the weak, but for thesubversion of the tyrannical; not for the prop and maintenance of arevolting Usurpation, but for the confirmation of Liberty. 

 "These are imperial arts and worthy thee!"

Let it now take its stand between the living and dead, and cause thisplague to be stayed. All this it can do; and if the interests of Slaverydid not oppose, all this it would do at once, in reverent regard forjustice, law, and order, driving away all the alarms of war; nor wouldit dare to brave the shame and punishment of this great refusal. But theslave power dares anything; and it can be conquered only by the unitedmasses of the people. From Congress to the People I appeal. * * *

The contest, which, beginning in Kansas, has reached us, will soon betransferred from Congress to a broader stage, where every citizen willbe not only spectator, but actor; and to their judgment I confidentlyappeal. To the People, now on the eve of exercising the electoralfranchise, in choosing a Chief Magistrate of the Republic, I appeal, tovindicate the electoral franchise in Kansas. Let the ballot-box ofthe Union, with multitudinous might, protect the ballot-box in thatTerritory. Let the voters everywhere, while rejoicing in their ownrights, help to guard the equal rights of distant fellow-citizens; thatthe shrines of popular institutions, now desecrated, may be sanctifiedanew; that the ballot-box, now plundered, may be restored; and that thecry, "I am an American citizen, " may not be sent forth in vain againstoutrage of every kind. In just regard for free labor in that Territory, which it is sought to blast by unwelcome association with slave labor;in Christian sympathy with the slave, whom it is proposed to taskand sell there; in stern condemnation of the crime which has beenconsummated on that beautiful soil; in rescue of fellow-citizens nowsubjugated to a Tyrannical Usurpation; in dutiful respect for the earlyfathers, whose aspirations are now ignobly thwarted; in the name of theConstitution, which has been outraged--of the laws trampled down--ofJustice banished--of Humanity degraded--of Peace destroyed--of Freedomcrushed to earth; and, in the name of the Heavenly Father, whose serviceis perfect Freedom, I make this last appeal. 

May 20, 1856. 

MR. DOUGLAS:--I shall not detain the Senate by a detailed reply to thespeech of the Senator from Massachusetts. Indeed, I should not deem itnecessary to say one word, but for the personalities in which he hasindulged, evincing a depth of malignity that issued from every sentence, making it a matter of self-respect with me to repel the assaults whichhave been made. 

As to the argument, we have heard it all before. Not a position, not afact, not an argument has he used, which has not been employed on thesame side of the chamber, and replied to by me twice. I shall not followhim, therefore, because it would only be repeating the same answer whichI have twice before given to each of his positions. He seems to get upa speech as in Yankee land they get up a bedquilt. They take all the oldcalico dresses of various colors, that have been in the house fromthe days of their grandmothers, and invite the young ladies of theneighborhood in the afternoon, and the young men to meet them at a dancein the evening. They cut up these pieces of old dresses and make prettyfigures, and boast of what beautiful ornamental work they have made, although there was not a new piece of material in the whole quilt. Thusit is with the speech which we have had re-hashed here to-day, in regardto matters of fact, matters of law, and matters of argument--every thingbut the personal assaults and the malignity. * * *

His endeavor seems to be an attempt to whistle to keep up his courageby defiant assaults upon us all. I am in doubt as to what can be hisobject. He has not hesitated to charge three fourths of the Senate withfraud, with swindling, with crime, with infamy, at least one hundredtimes over in his speech. Is it his object to provoke some of us to kickhim as we would a dog in the street, that he may get sympathy upon thejust chastisement? What is the object of this denunciation against thebody of which we are members? A hundred times he has called the Nebraskabill a "swindle, " an act of crime, an act of infamy, and each timewent on to illustrate the complicity of each man who voted for it inperpetrating the crime. He has brought it home as a personal charge tothose who passed the Nebraska bill, that they were guilty of a crimewhich deserved the just indignation of heaven, and should make theminfamous among men. 

Who are the Senators thus arraigned? He does me the honor to make me thechief. It was my good luck to have such a position in this body as toenable me to be the author of a great, wise measure, which the Senatehas approved, and the country will endorse. That measure was sustainedby about three fourths of all the members of the Senate. It wassustained by a majority of the Democrats and a majority of the Whigsin this body. It was sustained by a majority of Senators from theslave-holding States, and a majority of Senators from the free States. The Senator, by his charge of crime, then, stultifies three fourthsof the whole body, a majority of the North, nearly the whole South, amajority of Whigs, and a majority of Democrats here. He says they areinfamous. If he so believed, who could suppose that he would ever showhis face among such a body of men? How dare he approach one of thosegentlemen to give him his hand after that act? If he felt the courtesiesbetween men he would not do it. He would deserve to have himself spit inthe face for doing so. * * *

The attack of the Senator from Massachusetts now is not on me alone. Even the courteous and the accomplished Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Butler) could not be passed by in his absence. 

MR. MASON:--Advantage was taken of it. 

MR. DOUGLAS:--It is suggested that advantage is taken of his absence. I think that this is a mistake. I think the speech was written andpractised, and the gestures fixed; and, if that part had been strickenout the Senator would not have known how to repeat the speech. All thattirade of abuse must be brought down on the head of the venerable, thecourteous, and the distinguished Senator from South Carolina. I shallnot defend that gentleman here. Every Senator who knows him loves him. The Senator from Massachusetts may take every charge made against him inhis speech, and may verify by his oath, and by the oath of every oneof his confederates, and there is not an honest man in this chamber whowill not repel it as a slander. Your oaths cannot make a Senator feelthat it was not an outrage to assail that honorable gentleman in theterms in which he has been attacked. He, however, will be here in duetime to speak for himself, and to act for himself too. I know what willhappen. The Senator from Massachusetts will go to him, whisper a secretapology in his ear, and ask him to accept that as satisfaction for apublic outrage on his character! I know the Senator from Massachusettsis in the habit of doing those things. I have had some experience of hisskill in that respect. * * *

Why these attacks on individuals by name, and two thirds of the Senatecollectively? Is it the object to drive men here to dissolve socialrelations with political opponents? Is it to turn the Senate into a beargarden, where Senators cannot associate on terms which ought to prevailbetween gentlemen? These attacks are heaped upon me by man after man. When I repel them, it is intimated that I show some feeling on thesubject. Sir, God grant that when I denounce an act of infamy I shall doit with feeling, and do it under the sudden impulses of feeling, insteadof sitting up at night writing out my denunciation of a man whom Ihate, copying it, having it printed, punctuating the proof-sheets, andrepeating it before the glass, in order to give refinement to insult, which is only pardonable when it is the outburst of a just indignation. 

Mr. President, I shall not occupy the time of the Senate. I dislike tobe forced to repel these attacks upon myself, which seem to be repeatedon every occasion. It appears that gentlemen on the other side of thechamber think they would not be doing justice to their cause if they didnot make myself a personal object of bitter denunciation and malignity. I hope that the debate on this bill may be brought to a close at asearly a day as possible. I shall do no more in these side discussionsthan vindicate myself and repel unjust attacks, but I shall ask theSenate to permit me to close the debate, when it shall close, in a calm, kind summary of the whole question, avoiding personalities. 

MR. SUMNER: Mr. President, To the Senator from Illinois, I shouldwillingly leave the privilege of the common scold--the last word; but Iwill not leave to him, in any discussion with me, the last argument, orthe last semblance of it. He has crowned the audacity of this debate byventuring to rise here and calumniate me. He said that I came here, tookan oath to support the Constitution, and yet determined not to support aparticular clause in that Constitution. To that statement I give, to hisface, the flattest denial. When it was made on a former occasion on thisfloor by the absent Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Butler), I thenrepelled it. I will read from the debate of the 28th of June, 1854, aspublished in the Globe, to show what I said in response to that calumnywhen pressed at that hour. Here is what I said to the Senator from SouthCarolina:

"This Senator was disturbed, when to his inquiry, personally, pointedly, and vehemently addressed to me, whether I would join in returning afellow-man to slavery? I exclaimed, 'Is thy servant a dog, that heshould do this thing?'"

You will observe that the inquiry of the Senator from South Carolina, was whether I would join in returning a fellow-man to slavery. It wasnot whether I would support any clause of the Constitution of the UnitedStates--far from that. * * *

Sir, this is the Senate of the United States, an important body, underthe Constitution, with great powers. Its members are justly supposed, from age, to be above the intemperance of youth, and from character tobe above the gusts of vulgarity. They are supposed to have something ofwisdom, and something of that candor which is the handmaid of wisdom. Let the Senator bear these things in mind, and let him rememberhereafter that the bowie-knife and bludgeon are not the proper emblemsof Senatorial debate. Let him remember that the swagger of Bob Acres andthe ferocity of the Malay cannot add dignity to this body. TheSenator has gone on to infuse into his speech the venom which has beensweltering for months--ay, for years; and he has alleged facts thatare entirely without foundation, in order to heap upon me some personalobloquy. I will not go into the details which have flowed out sonaturally from his tongue. I only brand them to his face as false. Isay, also, to that Senator, and I wish him to bear it in mind, that noperson with the upright form of man can be allowed--(Hesitation. )

MR. DOUGLAS:--Say it. 

MR. SUMNER:--I will say it--no person with the upright form of man canbe allowed, without violation to all decency, to switch out from histongue the perpetual stench of offensive personality. Sir, that is nota proper weapon of debate, at least, on this floor. The noisome, squat, and nameless animal, to which I now refer, is not a proper model for anAmerican Senator. Will the Senator from Illinois take notice?

MR. DOUGLAS:--I will; and therefore will not imitate you, sir. 

MR. SUMNER:--I did not hear the Senator. 

MR. DOUGLAS:--I said if that be the case I would certainly never imitateyou in that capacity, recognizing the force of the illustration. 

MR. SUMNER:--Mr. President, again the Senator has switched his tongue, and again he fills the Senate with its offensive odor. * * *

MR. DOUGLAS:--I am not going to pursue this subject further. I will onlysay that a man who has been branded by me in the Senate, and convictedby the Senate of falsehood, cannot use language requiring a reply, andtherefore I have nothing more to say. 

PRESTON S. BROOKS, OF SOUTH CAROLINA. (BORN 1819, DIED 1857. )

ON THE SUMNER ASSAULT;

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JULY 14, 1856. 

MR. SPEAKER:

Some time since a Senator from Massachusetts allowed himself, in anelaborately prepared speech, to offer a gross insult to my State, and toa venerable friend, who is my State representative, and who was absentat the time. 

Not content with that, he published to the world, and circulatedextensively, this uncalled-for libel on my State and my blood. Whateverinsults my State insults me. Her history and character have commanded mypious veneration; and in her defence I hope I shall always be prepared, humbly and modestly, to perform the duty of a son. I should haveforfeited my own self-respect, and perhaps the good opinion of mycountrymen, if I had failed to resent such an injury by calling theoffender in question to a personal account. It was a personal affair, and in taking redress into my own hands I meant no disrespect to theSenate of the United States or to this House. Nor, sir, did I designinsult or disrespect to the State of Massachusetts. I was aware of thepersonal responsibilities I incurred, and was willing to meet them. Iknew, too, that I was amenable to the laws of the country, which affordthe same protection to all, whether they be members of Congress orprivate citizens. I did not, and do not now believe, that I could beproperly punished, not only in a court of law, but here also, at thepleasure and discretion of the House. I did not then, and do not now, believe that the spirit of American freemen would tolerate slander inhigh places, and permit a member of Congress to publish and circulate alibel on another, and then call upon either House to protect him againstthe personal responsibilities which he had thus incurred. 

But if I had committed a breach of privilege, it was the privilege ofthe Senate, and not of this House, which was violated. I was answerablethere, and not here. They had no right, as it seems to me, toprosecute me in these Halls, nor have you the right in law or underthe Constitution, as I respectfully submit, to take jurisdiction overoffences committed against them. The Constitution does not justify themin making such a request, nor this House in granting it. If, unhappily, the day should ever come when sectional or party feeling should run sohigh as to control all other considerations of public duty or justice, how easy it will be to use such precedents for the excuse of arbitrarypower, in either House, to expel members of the minority who may haverendered themselves obnoxious to the prevailing spirit in the House towhich they belong. 

Matters may go smoothly enough when one House asks the other to punisha member who is offensive to a majority of its own body; but how will itbe when, upon a pretence of insulted dignity, demands are made ofthis House to expel a member who happens to run counter to its partypredilections, or other demands which it may not be so agreeable togrant? It could never have been designed by the Constitution of theUnited States to expose the two Houses to such temptations to collision, or to extend so far the discretionary power which was given to eitherHouse to punish its own members for the violation of its rules andorders. Discretion has been said to be the law of the tyrant, and whenexercised under the color of the law, and under the influence of partydictation, it may and will become a terrible and insufferable despotism. 

This House, however, it would seem, from the unmistakable tendency ofits proceedings, takes a different view from that which I deliberatelyentertain in common with many others. 

So far as public interests or constitutional rights are involved, I havenow exhausted my means of defence. I may, then, be allowed to take amore personal view of the question at issue. The further prosecution ofthis subject, in the shape it has now assumed, may not only involve myfriends, but the House itself, in agitations which might be unhappyin their consequences to the country. If these consequences could beconfined to myself individually, I think I am prepared and ready to meetthem, here or elsewhere; and when I use this language I mean what I say. But others must not suffer for me. I have felt more on account of my twofriends who have been implicated, than for myself, for they have proventhat "there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. " I willnot constrain gentlemen to assume a responsibility on my account, whichpossibly they would not run on their own. 

Sir, I cannot, on any own account, assume the responsibility, in theface of the American people, of commencing a line of conduct which in myheart of hearts I believe would result in subverting the foundations ofthis Government, and in drenching this Hall in blood. No act of mine, on my personal account, shall inaugurate revolution; but when you, Mr. Speaker, return to your own home, and hear the people of the greatNorth--and they are a great people--speak of me as a bad man, you willdo me the justice to say that a blow struck by me at this time wouldbe followed by revolution--and this I know. (Applause and hisses in thegallery. )

Mr. Brooks (resuming):--If I desired to kill the Senator, why did not Ido it? You all admit that I had him in my power. Let me tell the memberfrom New Jersey that it was expressly to avoid taking life that I usedan ordinary cane, presented to me by a friend in Baltimore, nearly threemonths before its application to the "bare head" of the MassachusettsSenator. I went to work very deliberately, as I am charged--and thisis admitted, --and speculated somewhat as to whether I should employ ahorsewhip or a cowhide; but knowing that the Senator was my superiorin strength, it occurred to me that he might wrest it from my hand, andthen--for I never attempt anything I do not perform--I might have beencompelled to do that which I would have regretted the balance of mynatural life. 

The question has been asked in certain newspapers, why I did not invitethe Senator to personal combat in the mode usually adopted. Well, sir, as I desire the whole truth to be known about the matter, I will foronce notice a newspaper article on the floor of the House, and answerhere. 

My answer is, that the Senator would not accept a message; and havingformed the unalterable determination to punish him, I believed that theoffence of "sending a hostile message, " superadded to the indictmentfor assault and battery, would subject me to legal penalties more severethan would be imposed for a simple assault and battery. That is myanswer. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, I have nearly finished what I intended to say. Ifmy opponents, who have pursued me with unparalleled bitterness, aresatisfied with the present condition of this affair, I am. I returnmy thanks to my friends, and especially to those who are fromnonslave-owning States, who have magnanimously sustained me, and feltthat it was a higher honor to themselves to be just in their judgmentof a gentleman than to be a member of Congress for life. In taking myleave, I feel that it is proper that I should say that I believe thatsome of the votes that have been cast against me have been extorted byan outside pressure at home, and that their votes do not express thefeelings or opinions of the members who gave them. 

To such of these as have given their votes and made their speecheson the constitutional principles involved, and without indulging inpersonal vilification, I owe my respect. But, sir, they have written medown upon the history of the country as worthy of expulsion, and in nounkindness I must tell them that for all future time my self-respectrequires that I shall pass them as strangers. 

And now, Mr. Speaker, I announce to you and to this House, that I am nolonger a member of the Thirty-Fourth Congress. 

(Mr. Brooks then walked out of the House of Representatives. )

JUDAH P. BENJAMIN, OF LOUISIANA. (BORN 1811, DIED 1864. )

ON THE PROPERTY DOCTRINE, OR THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN SLAVES;

SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 11, 1858. 

MR. PRESIDENT, the whole subject of slavery, so far as it is involvedin the issue now before the country, is narrowed down at last to acontroversy on the solitary point, whether it be competent for theCongress of the United States, directly or indirectly, to excludeslavery from the Territories of the Union. The Supreme Court of theUnited States have given a negative answer to this proposition, andit shall be my first effort to support that negation by argument, independently of the authority of the decision. 

It seems to me that the radical, fundamental error which underlies theargument in affirmation of this power, is the assumption that slaveryis the creature of the statute law of the several States where it isestablished; that it has no existence outside of the limits of thoseStates; that slaves are not property beyond those limits; andthat property in slaves is neither recognized nor protected bythe Constitution of the United States, nor by international law. Icontrovert all these propositions, and shall proceed at once to myargument. 

Mr. President, the thirteen colonies, which on the 4th of July, 1776, asserted their independence, were British colonies, governed by Britishlaws. Our ancestors in their emigration to this country brought withthem the common law of England as their birthright. They adopted itsprinciples for their government so far as it was not incompatible withthe peculiarities of their situation in a rude and unsettled country. Great Britain then having the sovereignty over the colonies, possessedundoubted power to regulate their institutions, to control theircommerce, and to give laws to their intercourse, both with the motherand the other nations of the earth. If I can show, as I hope to be ableto establish to the satisfaction of the Senate, that the nation thusexercising sovereign power over these thirteen colonies did establishslavery in them, did maintain and protect the institution, did originateand carry on the slave trade, did support and foster that trade, thatit forbade the colonies permission either to emancipate or export theirslaves, that it prohibited them from inaugurating any legislation indiminution or discouragement of the institution--nay, sir, more, if, atthe date of our Revolution I can show that African slavery existed inEngland as it did on this continent, if I can show that slaves were soldupon the slave mart, in the Exchange and other public places of resortin the city of London as they were on this continent, then I shall nothazard too much in the assertion that slavery was the common law of thethirteen States of the Confederacy at the time they burst the bonds thatunited them to the mother country. 

 * * * * *

This legislation, Mr. President, as I have said before, emanating fromthe mother country, fixed the institution upon the colonies. They couldnot resist it. All their right was limited to petition, to remonstrance, and to attempts at legislation at home to diminish the evil. Everysuch attempt was sternly repressed by the British Crown. In 1760, SouthCarolina passed an act prohibiting the further importation of Africanslaves. The act was rejected by the Crown; the Governor was reprimanded;and a circular was sent to all the Governors of all the colonies, warning them against presuming to countenance such legislation. In1765, a similar bill was twice read in the Assembly of Jamaica. The newsreached Great Britain before its final passage. Instructions were sentout to the royal Governor; he called the House of Assembly before him, communicated his instructions, and forbade any further progress of thebill. In 1774, in spite of this discountenancing action of the motherGovernment, two bills passed the Legislative Assembly of Jamaica; andthe Earl of Dartmouth, then Secretary of State, wrote to Sir BasilKeith, the Governor of the colony, that "these measures had createdalarm to the merchants of Great Britain engaged in that branch ofcommerce;" and forbidding him, "on pain of removal from his Government, to assent to such laws. "

Finally, in 1775--mark the date--1775--after the revolutionary strugglehad commenced, whilst the Continental Congress was in session, afterarmies had been levied, after Crown Point and Ticonderoga had been takenpossession of by the insurgent colonists, and after the first bloodshed in the Revolution had reddened the spring sod upon the green atLexington, this same Earl of Dartmouth, in remonstrance from the agentof the colonies, replied:

"We cannot allow the colonies to check or discourage in any degree atraffic so beneficial to the nation. "

I say, then, that down to the very moment when our independence was won, slavery, by the statute law of England, was the common law of the oldthirteen colonies. But, sir, my task does not end here. I desire to showyou that by her jurisprudence, that by the decisions of her judges, andthe answers of her lawyers to questions from the Crown and from publicbodies, this same institution was declared to be recognized by thecommon law of England; and slaves were declared to be, in theirlanguage, merchandise, chattels, just as much private property as anyother merchandise or any other chattel. 

A short time prior to the year 1713, a contract had been formed betweenSpain and a certain company, called the Royal Guinea Company, that hadbeen established in France. This contract was technically called inthose days an _assiento_. By the treaty of Utrecht of the 11th of April, 1713, Great Britain, through her diplomatists, obtained a transfer ofthat contract. She yielded considerations for it. The obtaining of thatcontract was greeted in England with shouts of joy. It was considereda triumph of diplomacy. It was followed in the month of May, 1713, by anew contract in form, by which the British Government undertook, forthe term of thirty years then next to come, to transport annually4800 slaves to the Spanish American colonies, at a fixed price. Almostimmediately after this new contract, a question arose in the EnglishCouncil as to what was the true legal character of the slaves thus to beexported to the Spanish American colonies; and, according to the formsof the British constitution, the question was submitted by the Crown incouncil to the twelve judges of England. I have their answer here; it isin these words:

"In pursuance of His Majesty's order in council, hereunto annexed, we dohumbly certify our opinion to be that negroes are merchandise. "

Signed by Lord Chief-Justice Holt, Judge Pollexfen, and eight otherjudges of England. 

Mr. Mason. What is the date of that?

Mr. Benjamin. It was immediately after the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713. Very soon afterwards the nascent spirit of fanaticism began to obtaina foothold in England; and although large numbers of negro slaves wereowned in Great Britain, and, as I said before, were daily sold on thepublic exchange in Lon-don, questions arose as to the right of theowners to retain property in their slaves; and the merchants of London, alarmed, submitted the question to Sir Philip Yorke, who afterwardsbecame Lord Hardwicke, and to Lord Talbot, who were then the solicitorand attorney-general of the kingdom. The question was propounded tothem, "What are the rights of a British owner of a slave in England?"and this is the answer of those two legal functionaries. They certifiedthat "a slave coming from the West Indies to England with or without hismaster, doth not become free; and his master's property in him is notthereby determined nor varied, and the master may legally compel him toreturn to the plantations. "

And, in 1749, the same question again came up before Sir Philip Yorke, then Lord Chancellor of England, under the title of Lord Hardwicke, and, by a decree in chancery in the case before him, he affirmed the doctrinewhich he had uttered when he was attorney-general of Great Britain. 

Things thus stood in England until the year 1771, when the spiritof fanaticism, to which I have adverted, acquiring strength, finallyoperated upon Lord Mansfield, who, by a judgment rendered in a caseknown as the celebrated Sommersett case, subverted the common law ofEngland by judicial legislation, as I shall prove in an instant. I sayit not on my own authority. I would not be so presumptuous. The Senatorfrom Maine (Mr. Fessenden) need not smile at my statement. I will givehim higher authority than anything I can dare assert. I say that in 1771Lord Mansfield subverted the common law of England in the Sommersettcase, and decided, not that a slave carried to England from the WestIndies by his master thereby became free, but that by the law ofEngland, if the slave resisted the master, there was no remedy by whichthe master could exercise his control; that the colonial legislationwhich afforded the master means of controlling his property had noauthority in England, and that England by her laws had provided nosubstitute for that authority. That was what Lord Mansfield decided. I say this was judicial legislation. I say it subverted the entireprevious jurisprudence of Great Britain. I have just adverted to theauthorities for that position. Lord Mansfield felt it. The case wasargued before him over and over again, and he begged the parties tocompromise. They said they would not. "Why, " said he, "I have knownsix of these cases already, and in five out of the six there was acompromise; you had better compromise this matter"; but the parties saidno, they would stand on the law; and then, after holding the case uptwo terms, Lord Mansfield mustered up courage to say just what I haveasserted to be his decision; that there was no law in England affordingthe master control over his slave; and that therefore the master'sputting him on board of a vessel in irons, being unsupported byauthority derived from English law, and the colonial law not being inforce in England, he would discharge the slave from custody on _habeascorpus_, and leave the master to his remedy as best he could find one. 

Mr. Fessenden. Decided so unwillingly. 

Mr. Benjamin. The gentleman is right--very unwillingly. He was drivento the decision by the paramount power which is now perverting theprinciples, and obscuring the judgment of the people of the North; andof which I must say there is no more striking example to be found thanits effect on the clear and logical intellect of my friend from Maine. 

Mr. President, I make these charges in relation to that judgment, because in them I am supported by an intellect greater than Mansfield's;by a judge of resplendent genius and consummate learning; one who, inall questions of international law, on all subjects not dependent uponthe peculiar municipal technical common law of England, has won forhimself the proudest name in the annals of her jurisprudence--thegentleman knows well that I refer to Lord Stowell. As late as 1827, twenty years after Great Britain had abolished the slave trade, sixyears before she was brought to the point of confiscating the propertyof her colonies which she had forced them to buy, a case was broughtbefore that celebrated judge; a case known to all lawyers by the name ofthe slave Grace. It was pretended in the argument that the slave Gracewas free, because she had been carried to England, and it was said, under the authority of Lord Mansfield's decision in the Sommersettcase, that, having once breathed English air, she was free; that theatmosphere of that favored kingdom was too pure to be breathed by aslave. Lord Stowell, in answering that legal argument, said that afterpainful and laborious research into historical records, he did not findanything touching the peculiar fitness of the English atmosphere forrespiration during the ten centuries that slaves had lived in England. 

 * * * * *

After that decision had been rendered, Lord Stowell, who was at thattime in correspondence with Judge Story, sent him a copy of it, andwrote to him upon the subject of his judgment. No man will doubt theanti-slavery feelings and proclivities of Judge Story. He was asked totake the decision into consideration and give his opinion about it. Hereis his answer:

"I have read, with great attention, your judgment in the slave case. Upon the fullest consideration which I have been able to give thesubject, I entirely concur in your views. If I had been called upon topronounce a judgment in a like case, I should have certainly arrived atthe same result. "

That was the opinion of Judge Story in 1827; but, sir, whilstcontending, as I here contend, as a proposition, based in history, maintained by legislation, supported by judicial authority of thegreatest weight, that slavery, as an institution, was protected bythe common law of these colonies at the date of the Declaration ofIndependence, I go further, though not necessary to my argument, anddeclare that it was the common law of North and South America alike. 

 * * * * *

Thus, Mr. President, I say that even if we admit for the moment thatthe common law of the nations which colonized this continent, theinstitution of slavery at the time of our independence, was dying awayby the manumissions either gratuitous or for a price of those whoheld the people as slaves, yet, so far as the continent of America wasconcerned, North and South, there did not breathe a being who didnot know that a negro, under the common law of the continent, wasmerchandise, was property, was a slave, and that he could only extricatehimself from that status, stamped upon him by the common law of thecountry, by positive proof of manumission. No man was bound to showtitle to his negro slave. The slave was bound to show manumission underwhich he had acquired his freedom, by the common law of every colony. Why, sir, can any man doubt, is there a gentleman here, even the Senatorfrom Maine, who doubts that if, after the Revolution, the differentStates of this Union had not passed laws upon the subject to abolishslavery, to subvert this common law of the continent, every one of theseStates would be slave States yet? How came they free States? Did notthey have this institution of slavery imprinted upon them by the powerof the mother country? How did they get rid of it? All, all must admitthat they had to pass positive acts of legislation to accomplish thispurpose. Without that legislation they would still be slave States. What, then, becomes of the pretext that slavery only exists in thoseStates where it was established by positive legislation, that it hasno inherent vitality out of those States, and that slaves are notconsidered as property by the Constitution of the United States?

When the delegates of the several colonies which had thus asserted theirindependence of the British Crown met in convention, the decision ofLord Mansfield in the Sommersett case was recent, was known to all. Atthe same time, a number of the northern colonies had taken incipientsteps for the emancipation of their slaves. Here permit me to say, sir, that, with a prudent regard to what the Senator from Maine (Mr. Hamlin)yesterday called the "sensitive pocket-nerve, " they all made theseprovisions prospective. Slavery was to be abolished after a certainfuture time--just enough time to give their citizens convenientopportunity for selling the slaves to southern planters, putting themoney in their pockets, and then sending to us here, on this floor, representatives who flaunt in robes of sanctimonious holiness; who makeparade of a cheap philanthropy, exercised at our expense; and who sayto all men: "Look ye now, how holy, how pure we are; you are polluted bythe touch of slavery; we are free from it. "

 * * * * *

Now, sir, because the Supreme Court of the United States says--whatis patent to every man who reads the Constitution of the UnitedStates--that it does guaranty property in slaves, it has been attackedwith vituperation here, on this floor, by Senators on all sides. Somehave abstained from any indecent, insulting remarks in relation to theCourt. Some have confined themselves to calm and legitimate argument. Tothem I am about to reply. To the others, I shall have something to say alittle later. What says the Senator from Maine (Mr. Fessenden)? He says:

"Had the result of that election been otherwise, and had not the(Democratic) party triumphed on the dogma which they had thusintroduced, we should never have heard of a doctrine so utterly atvariance with all truth; so utterly destitute of all legal logic; sofounded on error, and unsupported by anything like argument, as is theopinion of the Supreme Court. "

He says, further:

"I should like, if I had time, to attempt to demonstrate the fallacyof that opinion. I have examined the view of the Supreme Court of theUnited States on the question of the power of the Constitution to carryslavery into free territory belonging to the United States, and I tellyou that I believe any tolerably respectable lawyer in the United Statescan show, beyond all question, to any fair and unprejudiced mind, thatthe decision has nothing to stand upon except assumption, and bad logicfrom the assumptions made. The main proposition on which that decisionis founded, the corner-stone of it, without which it is nothing, withoutwhich it fails entirely to satisfy the mind of any man, is this: thatthe Constitution of the United States recognizes property in slaves, and protects it as such. I deny it. It neither recognizes slaves asproperty, nor does it protect slaves as property. "

The Senator here, you see, says that the whole decision is based onthat assumption, which is false. He says that the Constitution doesnot recognize slaves as property, nor protect them as property, and hisreasoning, a little further on, is somewhat curious. He says:

"On what do they found the assertion that the Constitution recognizesslavery as property? On the provision of the Constitution by whichCongress is prohibited from passing a law to prevent the Africanslave trade for twenty years; and therefore they say the Constitutionrecognizes slaves as property. "

I should think that was a pretty fair recognition of it. On this pointthe gentleman declares:

"Will not anybody see that this constitutional provision, if it worksone way, must work the other? If, by allowing the slave trade for twentyyears, we recognize slaves as property, when we say that at the end oftwenty years we will cease to allow it, or may cease to do so, is notthat denying them to be property after that period elapses?"

That is the argument. Nothing but my respect for the logical intellectof the Senator from Maine could make me treat this argument as serious, and nothing but having heard it myself would make me believe that heever uttered it. What, sir! The Constitution of our country says to theSouth, "you shall count as the basis of your representation five slavesas being three white men; you may be protected in the natural increaseof your slaves; nay, more, as a matter of compromise you may increasetheir number if you choose, for twenty years, by importation; when thesetwenty years are out, you shall stop. " The Supreme Court of the UnitedStates says, "well; is not this a recognition of slavery, of propertyin slaves?" "Oh, no, " says the gentleman, "the rule must work bothways; there is a converse to the proposition. " Now, sir, to anordinary, uninstructed intellect, it would seem that the converse of theproposition was simply that at the end of twenty years you should notany longer increase your numbers by importation; but the gentleman saysthe converse of the proposition is that at the end of the twenty years, after you have, under the guarantee of the Constitution, been adding byimportation to the previous number of your slaves, then all those thatyou had before, and all those that, under that Constitution, you haveimported, cease to be recognized as property by the Constitution, andon this proposition he assails the Supreme Court of the United States--aproposition which he says will occur to anybody. 

Mr. Fessenden. Will the Senator allow me?

Mr. Benjamin. I should be very glad to enter into this debate now, but Ifear it is so late that I shall not be able to get through to-day. 

Mr. Fessenden. I suppose it is of no consequence. 

Mr. Benjamin. What says the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Collamer), whoalso went into this examination somewhat extensively. I read from hisprinted speech:

"I do not say that slaves are never property. I do not say that theyare, or are not. Within the limits of a State which declares them to beproperty, they are property, because they are within the jurisdiction ofthat government which makes the declaration; but I should wish to speakof it in the light of a member of the United States Senate, and in thelanguage of the United States Constitution. If this be property in theStates, what is the nature and extent of it? I insist that the SupremeCourt has often decided, and everybody has understood, that slavery isa local institution, existing by force of State law; and of course thatlaw can give it no possible character beyond the limits of that State. "I shall no doubt find the idea better expressed in the opinion of JudgeNelson, in this same Dred Scott decision. I prefer to read his language. 

 * * * * *

"Here is the law; and under it exists the law of slavery in thedifferent States. By virtue of this very principle it cannot extendone inch beyond its own territorial limits. A State cannot regulatethe relation of master and slave, of owner and property, the manner andtitle of descent, or anything else, one inch beyond its territory. Thenyou cannot, by virtue of the law of slavery, if it makes slaves propertyin a State, if you please, move that property out of the State. It endswhenever you pass from that State. You may pass into another State thathas a like law; and if you do, you hold it by virtue of that law; butthe moment you pass beyond the limits of the slaveholding States, alltitle to the property called property in slaves, there ends. Under sucha law slaves cannot be carried as property into the Territories, oranywhere else beyond the States authorizing it. It is not propertyanywhere else. If the Constitution of the United States gives any otherand further character than this to slave property, let us acknowledge itfairly and end all strife about it. If it does not, I ask in all candor, that men on the other side shall say so, and let this point besettled. What is the point we are to inquire into? It is this: doesthe Constitution of the United States make slaves property beyond thejurisdiction of the States authorizing slavery? If it only acknowledgesthem as property within that jurisdiction, it has not extended theproperty one inch beyond the State line; but if, as the Supreme Courtseems to say, it does recognize and protect them as property furtherthan State limits, and more than the State laws do, then, indeed, itbecomes like other property. The Supreme Court rests this claim uponthis clause of the Constitution: 'No person held to service or labor inone State, under the laws thereof, shall, in consequence of any law orregulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shallbe delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor maybe due. ' Now the question is, does that guaranty it? Does that makeit the same as other property? The very fact that this clause makesprovision on the subject of persons bound to service, shows that theframers of the Constitution did not regard it as other property. Itwas a thing that needed some provision; other property did not. Theinsertion of such a provision shows that it was not regarded as otherproperty. If a man's horse stray from Delaware into Pennsylvania, he cango and get it. Is there any provision in the Constitution for it? No. How came this to be there, if a slave is property? If it is the same asother property, why have any provision about it?'"

It will undoubtedly have struck any person, in hearing this passage readfrom the speech of the Senator from Vermont, whom I regret not to seein his seat to-day, that the whole argument, ingeniously as it is put, rests upon this fallacy--if I may say so with due respect to him--thata man cannot have title in property wherever the law does not give hima remedy or process for the assertion of his title; or, in other words, his whole argument rests upon the old confusion of ideas which considersa man's right and his remedy to be one and the same thing. I havealready shown to you, by the passages I have cited from the opinions ofLord Stowell and of Judge Story, how they regard this subject. They saythat the slave who goes to England, or goes to Massachusetts, from aslave State, is still a slave, that he is still his master's property;but that his master has lost control over him, not by reason of thecessation of his property, but because those States grant no remedy tothe master by which he can exercise his control. 

There are numerous illustrations upon this point--illustrationsfurnished by the copyright laws, illustrations furnished by patent laws. Let us take a case, one that appeals to us all. There lives now a manin England who from time to time sings to the enchanted ear of thecivilized world strains of such melody that the charmed senses seem toabandon the grosser regions of earth, and to rise to purer and serenerregions above. God has created that man a poet. His inspiration is his;his songs are his by right divine; they are his property so recognizedby human law; yet here in these United States men steal Tennyson's worksand sell his property for their profit; and this because, in spite ofthe violated conscience of the nation, we refuse to give him protectionfor his property. Examine your Constitution; are slaves the only speciesof property there recognized as requiring peculiar protection? Sir, theinventive genius of our brethren of the North is a source of vast wealthto them and vast benefit to the nation. I saw a short time ago in one ofthe New York journals, that the estimated value of a few of the patentsnow before us in this Capital for renewal, was $40, 000, 000. I cannotbelieve that the entire capital, invested in inventions of thischaracter in the United States can fall short of one hundred and fiftyor two hundred million dollars. On what protection does this vastproperty rest? Just upon that same constitutional protection which givesa remedy to the slave owner when his property is, also found outside ofthe limits of the State in which he lives. 

Without this protection, what would be the condition of the northerninventor? Why, sir, the Vermont inventor protected by his own law wouldcome to Massachusetts, and there say to the pirate who had stolen hisproperty, "Render me up my property or pay me value for its use. " TheSenator from Vermont would receive for answer, if he were the counsel ofthe Vermont inventor, "Sir, if you want protection for your property goto your own State; property is governed by the laws of the State withinwhose jurisdiction it is found; you have no property in your inventionoutside of the limits of your State; you cannot go an inch beyond it. "Would not this be so? Does not every man see at once that the rightof the inventor to his discovery, that the right of the poet to hisinspiration, depends upon those principles of eternal justice which Godhas implanted in the heart of man, and that wherever he cannot exercisethem it is because man, faithless to the trust that he has received fromGod, denies them the protection to which they are entitled?'

Sir, follow out the illustration which the Senator from Vermont himselfhas given; take his very case of the Delaware owner of a horse ridinghim across the line into Pennsylvania. The Senator says: "Now, yousee that slaves are not property like other property; if slaves wereproperty like other property, why have you this special clause in yourConstitution to protect a slave? You have no clause to protect thehorse, because horses are recognized as property everywhere. " Mr. President, the same fallacy lurks at the bottom of this argument, as ofall the rest. Let Pennsylvania exercise her undoubted jurisdiction overpersons and things within her own boundary; let her do as she hasa perfect right to do--declare that hereafter, within the State ofPennsylvania, there shall be no property in horses, and that no manshall maintain a suit in her courts for the recovery of property in ahorse; and where will your horse-owner be then? Just where the Englishpoet is now; just where the slaveholder and the inventor would be if theConstitution, foreseeing a difference of opinion in relation to rightsin these subject-matters, had not provided the remedy in relation tosuch property as might easily be plundered. Slaves, if you please, arenot property like other property in this: that you can easily rob us ofthem; but as to the right in them, that man has to overthrow thewhole history of the world, he has to overthrow every treatise onjurisprudence, he has to ignore the common sentiment of mankind, he hasto repudiate the authority of all that is considered sacred with man, ere he can reach the conclusion that the person who owns a slave, ina country where slavery has been established for ages, has no otherproperty in that slave than the mere title which is given by the statutelaw of the land where it is found. * * *

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, OF ILLINOIS. (BORN 1809, DIED 1865. )

ON THE DRED SCOTT DECISION, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JUNE 26, 1857. 

And now as to the Dred Scott decision. That decision declares twopropositions--first, that a negro cannot sue in the United Statescourts; and secondly, that Congress cannot prohibit slavery in theTerritories. It was made by a divided court--dividing differently onthe different points. Judge Douglas does not discuss the merits of thedecision, and in that respect I shall follow his example, believing Icould no more improve on McLean and Curtis than he could on Taney. 

He denounces all who question the correctness of that decision, asoffering violent resistance to it. But who resists it? Who has, in spiteof the decision, declared Dred Scott free, and resisted the authority ofhis master over him?

Judicial decisions have two uses, --first, to absolutely determine thecase decided; and secondly, to indicate to the public how other similarcases will be decided when they arise. For the latter use they arecalled "precedents" and "authorities. "

We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more) in obedience to, and respect for, the judicial department of government. We think itsdecisions on constitutional questions, when fully settled, shouldcontrol not only the particular cases decided, but the general policyof the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments to theConstitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this wouldbe revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. Weknow the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it to overrule this. We offer noresistance to it. 

Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedentsaccording to circumstances. That this should be so accords both withcommon sense and the customary understanding of the legal profession. 

If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrenceof the judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordancewith legal public expectation and with the steady practice of thedepartments throughout our history, and had been in no part based onassumed historical facts which are not really true; or, if wanting insome of these, it had been before the court more than once, and hadthere been affirmed and reaffirmed through a course of years, it thenmight be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not toacquiesce in it as a precedent. 

But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to thepublic confidence, it is not factious, it is not even disrespectful, totreat it as not having yet quite established a settled doctrine for thecountry. But Judge Douglas considers this view awful. Hear him:

"The courts are the tribunals prescribed by the Constitution and createdby the authority of the people to determine, expound, and enforce thelaw. Hence, whoever resists the final decision of the highestjudicial tribunal aims a deadly blow at our whole republican system ofgovernment--a blow which, if successful, would place all our rightsand liberties at the mercy of passion, anarchy, and violence. I repeat, therefore, that if resistance to the decisions of the Supreme Court ofthe United States, in a matter like the points decided in the Dred Scottcase, clearly within their jurisdiction as defined by the Constitution, shall be forced upon the country as a political issue, it will becomea distinct and naked issue between the friends and enemies of theConstitution--the friends and the enemies of the supremacy of the laws. "

I have said, in substance, that the Dred Scott decision was in partbased on assumed historical facts which were not really true, and Iought not to leave the subject without giving some reasons for sayingthis; I therefore give an instance or two, which I think fully sustainme. Chief-Justice Taney, in delivering the opinion of the majority ofthe court, insists at great length that the negroes were no part of thepeople who made, or for whom was made, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the United States. 

On the contrary, Judge Curtis, in his dissenting opinion, shows that infive of the then thirteen States--to wit, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina--free negroes were voters, and in proportion to their numbers had the same part in making theConstitution that the white people had. He shows this with so muchparticularity as to leave no doubt of its truth; and as a sort ofconclusion on that point, holds the following language:

"The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of theUnited States, through the action in each State, of those persons whowere qualified by its laws to act thereon in behalf of themselves andall other citizens of the State. In some of the States, as we have seen, colored persons were among those qualified by law to act on the subject. These colored persons were not only included in the body of 'thepeople of the United States' by whom the Constitution was ordained andestablished; but in at least five of the States they had the power toact, and doubtless, did act, by their suffrages, upon the question ofits adoption. "

Again, Chief-Justice Taney says:

"It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion, inrelation to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized andenlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration ofIndependence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framedand adopted. "

And again, after quoting from the Declaration, he says:

"The general words above quoted would seem to include the whole humanfamily, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day, would be so understood. "

In these the Chief-Justice does not directly assert, but plainlyassumes, as a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is morefavorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution. This assumptionis a mistake. In some trifling particulars the condition of that racehas been ameliorated; but as a whole, in this country, the changebetween then and now is decidedly the other way; and their ultimatedestiny has never appeared so hopeless as in the last three or fouryears. In two of the five States--New Jersey and North Carolina--thatthen gave the free negro the right of voting, the right has since beentaken away, and in the third--New York--it has been greatly abridged;while it has not been extended, so far as I know, to a single additionalState, though the number of the States has more than doubled. In thosedays, as I understand, masters could, at their own pleasure, emancipatetheir slaves; but since then such legal restraints have been madeupon emancipation as to amount almost to prohibition. In those dayslegislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery in theirrespective States, but now it is becoming quite fashionable for Stateconstitutions to withhold that power from the legislatures. In thosedays, by common consent, the spread of the black man's bondage to thenew countries was prohibited, but now Congress decides that it will notcontinue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court decides that it couldnot if it would. In those days our Declaration of Independence was heldsacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making thebondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed and sneeredat and construed, and hawked at and torn, till, if its framers couldrise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. All thepowers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him, ambition follows, philosophy follows, and the theology of the day isfast joining the cry. They have him in his prison-house; they havesearched his person, and left no prying instrument with him. One afteranother they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him; and now theyhave him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which cannever be unlocked without the concurrence of every key--the keys inthe hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundreddifferent and distant places; and they stand musing as to whatinvention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced tomake the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is. 

It is grossly incorrect to say or assume that the public estimate of thenegro is more favorable now than it was at the origin of the government. 

Three years and a half ago, Judge Douglas brought forward his famousNebraska bill. The country was at once in a blaze. He scorned allopposition, and carried it through Congress. Since then he has seenhimself superseded in a presidential nomination by one indorsing thegeneral doctrine of his measure, but at the same time standing clearof the odium of its untimely agitation and its gross breach of nationalfaith; and he has seen that successful rival constitutionally elected, not by the strength of friends, but by the division of adversaries, being in a popular minority of nearly four hundred thousand votes. He has seen his chief aids in his own State, Shields and Richardson, politically speaking, successively tried, convicted, and executed, foran offense not their own, but his. And now he sees his own case standingnext on the docket for trial. 

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people atthe idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races;and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope upon the chances ofhis being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of that ideaupon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. Hetherefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the DredScott decision. He finds the Republicans insisting that the Declarationof Independence includes all men, black as well as white, and forthwithhe boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and proceeds to arguegravely that all who contend it does, do so only because they want tovote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with negroes. He will have it thatthey cannot be consistent else. Now I protest against the counterfeitlogic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for aslave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her foreither. I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly isnot my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns withher own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, andthe equal of all others. 

Chief-Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, admits thatthe language of the Declaration is broad enough to include the wholehuman family, but he and Judge Douglas argue that the authors of thatinstrument did not intend to include negroes, by the fact that they didnot at once actually place them on an equality with the whites. Now thisgrave argument comes to just nothing at all, by the other fact that theydid not at once, or ever afterward, actually place all white people onan equality with one another. And this is the staple argument of boththe Chief-Justice and the Senator for doing this obvious violence to theplain, unmistakable language of the Declaration. 

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include allmen, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerabledistinctness in what respects they did consider all men createdequal--equal with "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. " This they said, and this theymeant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all werethen actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about toconfer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confersuch a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that enforcementof it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. 

They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should befamiliar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantlylabored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantlyapproximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening itsinfluence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all peopleof all colors everywhere. The assertion that "all men are created equal"was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain;and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be--as, thank God, it is now proving itself--astumbling-block to all those who in after times might seek to turn afree people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew theproneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when suchshould reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, theyshould find left for them at least one hard nut to crack. 

I have now briefly expressed my view of the meaning and object of thatpart of the Declaration of Independence which declares that "all men arecreated equal. "

Now let us hear Judge Douglas's view of the same subject as I find it inthe printed report of his late speech. Here it is:

"No man can vindicate the character, motives, and conduct of the signersof the Declaration of Independence, except upon the hypothesis thatthey referred to the white race alone, and not to the African, when theydeclared all men to have been created equal; that they were speaking ofBritish subjects on this continent being equal to British subjectsborn and residing in Great Britain; that they were entitled to the sameinalienable rights, and among them were enumerated life, liberty, andthe pursuit of happiness. The Declaration was adopted for the purposeof justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized world inwithdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and dissolvingtheir connection with the mother country. "

My good friends, read that carefully over in some leisure hour, andponder well upon it; see what a mere wreck--mangled ruin--it makes ofour once glorious Declaration. 

"They were speaking of British subjects on this continent being equal toBritish subjects born and residing in Great Britain. " Why, accordingto this, not only negroes but white people outside of Great Britain andAmerica were not spoken of in that instrument. The English, Irish, andScotch, along with white Americans, were included, to be sure, but theFrench, Germans, and other white people of the world are all gone to potalong with the Judge's inferior races. 

I had thought the Declaration promised something better than thecondition of British subjects; but no, it only meant that we should beequal to them in their own oppressed and unequal condition. According tothat, it gave no promise that, having kicked off the king and lords ofGreat Britain, we should not at once be saddled with a king and lords ofour own. 

I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvementin the condition of all men everywhere; but no, it merely "was adoptedfor the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilizedworld, in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, anddissolving their connection with the mother country. " Why, that objecthaving been effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is ofno practical use now--mere rubbish--old wadding left to rot on thebattle-field after the victory is won. 

I understand you are preparing to celebrate the "Fourth, " to-morrowweek. What for? The doings of that day had no reference to the present;and quite half of you are not even descendants of those who werereferred to at that day. But I suppose you will celebrate, and will evengo so far as to read the Declaration. Suppose, after you read it oncein the old-fashioned way, you read it once more with Judge Douglas'sversion. It will then run thus: "We hold these truths to beself-evident, that all British subjects who were on this continenteighty-one years ago, were created equal to all British subjects bornand then residing in Great Britain. "

And now I appeal to all--to Democrats as well as others--are you reallywilling that the Declaration shall thus be frittered away?--thus leftno more, at most, than an interesting memorial of the dead past?--thusshorn of its vitality and practical value, and left without the germ oreven the suggestion of the individual rights of man in it?

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, OF ILLINOIS. (BORN 1809, DIED 1865. )

ON HIS NOMINATION TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE, AT THE REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION, SPRINGFIELD, ILLS. , JUNE 16, 1858. 

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, wecould better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far intothe fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, andconfident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under theoperation of that policy, that agitation not only has not ceased, buthas constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until acrisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided againstitself cannot stand. " I believe this Government cannot endurepermanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to bedissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect thatit will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all theother. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread ofit, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that itis in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push itforward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old aswell as new, North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the lattercondition? Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almostcomplete legal combination piece of machinery, so to speak--compoundedof the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him considernot only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, ifhe can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design andconcert of action among its chief architects from the beginning. 

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half theStates by State constitutions, and from most of the national territoryby Congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the strugglewhich ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened allthe national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained. But, so far, Congress only had acted, and an indorsement, by the people, realor apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained andgive chance for more. This necessity had not been overlooked, but hadbeen provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argumentof "squatter sovereignty, " otherwise called "sacred right ofself-government";--which latter phrase though expressive of the onlyrightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted useof it as to amount to just this: That, if any one man choose to enslaveanother, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argument wasincorporated with the Nebraska bill itself, in the language whichfollows: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act, not tolegislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude ittherefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form andregulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only tothe Constitution of the United States. " Then opened the roar of loosedeclamation in favor of "squatter sovereignty, " and "sacred right ofself-government. " "But, " said opposition members, "let us amend the billso as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may excludeslavery. " "Not we, " said the friends of the measure; and down they votedthe amendment. 

While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law-case, involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his ownerhaving voluntarily taken him first into a free State, and then into aTerritory covered by the Congressional prohibition, and held him as aslave for a long time in each, was passing through the United StatesCircuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska bill andlawsuit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. Thenegro's name was Dred Scott, which name now designates the decisionfinally made in the case. Before the then next Presidential election, the law-case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of the UnitedStates; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of theSenate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska bill to state hisopinion whether the people of a Territory can constitutionally excludeslavery from their limits; and the latter answers: "That is a questionfor the Supreme Court. "

The election came, Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, suchas it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundredthousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable andsatisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, asimpressively as possible, echoed back upon the people the weight andauthority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again, did notannounce their decision, but ordered a re-argument. The Presidentialinauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incomingPresident, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people toabide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a fewdays, came the decision. The reputed author of the Nebraska bill findsan early occasion to make a speech at this capital, indorsing the DredScott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. Thenew President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letterto indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express hisastonishment that any different view had ever been entertained. 

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author ofthe Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecomptonconstitution was, or was not, in any just sense, made by the people ofKansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is afair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voteddown or voted up. ' I do not understand his declaration, that he caresnot whether slavery be voted _down_ or voted _up_, to be intended by himother than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress uponthe public mind--the principle for which he declares he has suffered somuch, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to thatprinciple. If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision, squatter sovereignty squatted out ofexistence--tumbled down like temporary scaffolding--like the mouldat the foundry, served through one blast, and fell back into loosesand, --helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans against the Lecomptonconstitution involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. Thatstruggle was made on a point--the right of a people to make their ownconstitution--upon which he and the Republicans have never differed. 

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection withSenator Douglas's "care-not" policy, constitute the piece of machineryin its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are: (1) That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can everbe a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in theConstitution of the United States. This point is made in order todeprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of thatprovision of the United States Constitution, which declares that"the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges andimmunities of citizens in the several States. " (2) That, "subject to theConstitution of the United States, " neither Congress nor a TerritorialLegislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory. Thispoint is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territorieswith slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus toenhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all thefuture. (3) That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a freeState makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courtswill not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slaveState the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for a while, andapparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain thelogical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do withDred Scott, in the State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully dowith any other one or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any otherfree State. 

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraskadoctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voteddown or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are, and partially, also, whither we are tending. 

It will throw additional light on the latter to go back, and run themind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several thingswill now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they weretranspiring. The people were to be left "perfectly free, " "subject onlyto the Constitution. " What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiderscould not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted nichefor the Dred Scott decision to come in afterward, and declare theperfect freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why wasthe amendment expressly declaring the right of the people voted down?Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche forthe Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why evena Senator's individual opinion withheld till after the Presidentialelection? Plainly enough now: the speaking out then would have damagedthe "perfectly free" argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why thedelay of a re-argument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortationin favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious pattingand petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when itis dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty afterindorsement of the decision by the President and others?

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are theresult of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, differentportions of which we know have been gotten out at different times andplaces, and by different workmen--Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance, --and when we see these timbers joined together, and seethat they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenonsand mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of thedifferent pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and nota piece too many or too few--not omitting even scaffolding, --or, if asingle piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fittedand prepared yet to bring such piece in, --in such a case, we find itimpossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and Jamesall understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon acommon plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck. 

It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people of aState, as well as Territory, were to be left "perfectly free, " "subjectonly to the Constitution. " Why mention a State? They were legislatingfor Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly, the people ofa State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the UnitedStates; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territoriallaw? Why are the people of a Territory and the people of a State thereinlumped together, and their relation to the Constitution thereintreated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, byChief-Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinionsof all the concurring judges, expressly declare that the Constitution ofthe United States permits neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislatureto exclude slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit todeclare whether or not the same Constitution permits a State, or thepeople of a State, to exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; butwho can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into theopinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a State toexclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace sought toget such declaration, in behalf of the people of a territory, into theNebraska bill--I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have beenvoted down in the one case as it had been in the other? The nearestapproach to the point of declaring the power of a State over slavery ismade by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using theprecise idea, and almost the language, too, of the Nebraska act. Onone occasion, his exact language is: "Except in cases when the poweris restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of theState is supreme over the subjects of slavery within its jurisdiction. "In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by the UnitedStates Constitution is left an open question, precisely as the samequestion, as to the restraint on the power of the Territories, wasleft open in the Nebraska act. Put this and that together, and we haveanother nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled withanother Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution ofthe United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from itslimits. And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of "care notwhether slavery be voted down or voted up, " shall gain upon the publicmind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintainedwhen made. 

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful inall the States. Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present politicaldynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantlydreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making theirState free, and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the SupremeCourt has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrowthat dynasty is the work before all those who would prevent thatconsummation. That is what we have to do. How can we best do it?

There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yetwhisper us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument thereis with which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all, fromthe fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of thedynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point, uponwhich he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is agreat man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this begranted. "But a living dog is better than a dead lion. " Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work, is at least a caged and toothlessone. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anythingabout it. His avowed mission is impressing the "public heart" tocare nothing about it. A leading Douglas Democratic newspaper thinksDouglas's superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of theAfrican slave-trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that tradeis approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if itis, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacredright of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can hepossibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they canbe bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper inAfrica than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce thewhole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and assuch, how can he oppose the foreign slave-trade? How can he refuse thattrade in that "property" shall be "perfectly free, " unless he does itas a protection to the home production? And as the home producers willprobably ask the protection, he will be wholly without a ground ofopposition. Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully bewiser to-day than he was yesterday--that he may rightfully change whenhe finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, andinfer that he will make any particular change, of which he himself hasgiven no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vagueinference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas'sposition, question his motives, or do aught that can be personallyoffensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together onprinciple, so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But, clearly, he isnot now with us--he does not pretend to be, he does not promise ever tobe. 

Our cause, then, must be entrusted to, and conducted by its ownundoubted friends--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in thework--who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of thenation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this underthe single impulse of resistance to a common danger. With every externalcircumstance against us, of strange, discordant, and even hostileelements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought thebattle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, andpampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now?--now, when thatsame enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent! The result is notdoubtful. We shall not fail--if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wisecounsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it; but, sooner or later, thevictory is sure to come. 

STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS, OF ILLINOIS. (BORN 1813, DIED 1861. )

IN REPLY TO MR. LINCOLN;

FREEPORT, ILLS. , AUGUST 27, 1858. 

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I am glad that at last I have brought Mr. Lincoln to the conclusionthat he had better define his position on certain political questionsto which I called his attention at Ottawa. * * * In a few moments Iwill proceed to review the answers which he has given to theseinterrogatories; but, in order to relieve his anxiety, I will firstrespond to those which he has presented to me. Mark you, he has notpresented interrogatories which have ever received the sanction of theparty with which I am acting, and hence he has no other foundation forthem than his own curiosity. 

First he desires to know, if the people of Kansas shall form aconstitution by means entirely proper and unobjectionable, and askadmission as a State, before they have the requisite population for amember of Congress, whether I will vote for that admission. Well, now, I regret exceedingly that he did not answer that interrogatory himselfbefore he put it to me, in order that we might understand, and notbe left to infer, on which side he is. Mr. Trumbull, during the lastsession of Congress, voted from the beginning to the end against theadmission of Oregon, although a free State, because she had not therequisite population for a member of Congress. Mr. Trumbull would notconsent, under any circumstances, to let a State, free or slave, comeinto the Union until it had the requisite population. As Mr. Trumbull isin the field fighting for Mr. Lincoln, I would like to have Mr. Lincolnanswer his own question and tell me whether he is fighting Trumbull onthat issue or not. But I will answer his question. * * * Either Kansasmust come in as a free State, with whatever population she may have, orthe rule must be applied to all the other Territories alike. I thereforeanswer at once that, it having been decided that Kansas has peopleenough for a slave State, I hold that she has enough for a free State. I hope Mr. Lincoln is satisfied with my answer; and now I would like toget his answer to his own interrogatory--whether or not he will voteto admit Kansas before she has the requisite population. I want toknow whether he will vote to admit Oregon before that Territory has therequisite population. Mr. Trumbull will not, and the same reason thatcommits Mr. Trumbull against the admission of Oregon commits him againstKansas, even if she should apply for admission as a free State. If thereis any sincerity, any truth, in the argument of Mr. Trumbull in theSenate against the admission of Oregon, because she had not 93, 420people, although her population was larger than that of Kansas, hestands pledged against the admission of both Oregon and Kansas untilthey have 93, 420 inhabitants. I would like Mr. Lincoln to answer thisquestion. I would like him to take his own medicine. If he differswith Mr. Trumbull, let him answer his argument against the admission ofOregon, instead of poking questions at me. 

The next question propounded to me by Mr. Lincoln is, Can the people ofthe Territory in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizenof the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to theformation of a State Constitution? I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincolnhas heard me answer a hundred times from every stump in Illinois, thatin my opinion the people of a Territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a StateConstitution. Mr. Lincoln knew that I had answered that question overand over again. He heard me argue the Nebraska bill on that principleall over the State in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856; and he has no excusefor pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question. Itmatters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to theabstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territoryunder the Constitution; the people have the lawful means to introduce itor exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exista day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local policeregulations. Those police regulations can only be established by thelocal Legislature; and, if the people are opposed to slavery, they willelect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislationeffectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on thecontrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be onthat abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slaveTerritory or a free Territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraskabill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point. 

In this connection, I will notice the charge which he has introducedin relation to Mr. Chase's amendment. I thought that I had chased thatamendment out of Mr. Lincoln's brain at Ottawa; but it seems that itstill haunts his imagination, and that he is not yet satisfied. I hadsupposed that he would be ashamed to press that question further. He isa lawyer, and has been a member of Congress, and has occupied his timeand amused you by telling you about parliamentary proceedings. He oughtto have known better than to try to palm off his miserable impositionsupon this intelligent audience. The Nebraska bill provided that thelegislative power and authority of the said Territory should extend toall rightful subjects of legislation, consistent with the organic actand the Constitution of the United States. It did not make any exceptionas to slavery, but gave all the power that it was possible for Congressto give, without violating the Constitution, to the TerritorialLegislature, with no exception or limitation on the subject of slaveryat all. The language of that bill, which I have quoted, gave thefull power and the fuller authority over the subject of slavery, affirmatively and negatively, to introduce it or exclude it, so far asthe Constitution of the United States would permit. What more could Mr. Chase give by his amendment? Nothing! He offered his amendment forthe identical purpose for which Mr. Lincoln is using it, to enabledemagogues in the country to try and deceive the people. His amendmentwas to this effect. It provided that the Legislature should have powerto exclude slavery; and General Cass suggested: "Why not give the powerto introduce as well as to exclude?" The answer was--they have the poweralready in the bill to do both. Chase was afraid his amendment would beadopted if he put the alternative proposition, and so made it fair bothways, and would not yield. He offered it for the purpose of having itrejected. He offered it, as he has himself avowed over and over again, simply to make capital out of it for the stump. He expected that itwould be capital for small politicians in the country, and that theywould make an effort to deceive the people with it; and he was notmistaken, for Lincoln is carrying out the plan admirably. * * *

The third question which Mr. Lincoln presented is--If the Supreme Courtof the United States shall decide that a State of this Union cannotexclude slavery from its own limits, will I submit to it? I am amazedthat Mr. Lincoln should ask such a question. Mr. Lincoln's object is tocast an imputation upon the Supreme Court. He knows that there never wasbut one man in America, claiming any degree of intelligence or decency, who ever for a moment pretended such a thing. It is true that the_Washington Union_, in an article published on the 17th of lastDecember, did put forth that doctrine, and I denounced the article onthe floor of the Senate. * * * Lincoln's friends, Trumbull, and Seward, and Hale, and Wilson, and the whole Black Republican side of the Senatewere silent. They left it to me to denounce it. And what was thereply made to me on that occasion? Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, got up andundertook to lecture me on the ground that I ought not to have deemedthe article worthy of notice, and ought not to have replied to it; thatthere was not one man, woman, or child south of the Potomac, in anyslave State, who did not repudiate any such pretension. Mr. Lincolnknows that reply was made on the spot, and yet now he asks thisquestion! He might as well ask me--Suppose Mr. Lincoln should steal ahorse, would I sanction it; and it would be as genteel in me to ask him, in the event he stole a horse, what ought to be done with him. He castsan imputation upon the Supreme Court of the United States, by supposingthat they would violate the Constitution of the United States. I tellhim that such a thing is not possible. It would be an act of moraltreason that no man on the bench could ever descend to. Mr. Lincolnhimself would never, in his partisan feelings, so far forget what wasright as to be guilty of such an act. 

The fourth question of Mr. Lincoln is--Are you in favor of acquiringadditional territory in disregard as to how such acquisition may affectthe Union on the slavery question? This question is very ingeniously andcunningly put. The Black Republican crowd lays it down expressly thatunder no circumstances shall we acquire any more territory unlessslavery is first prohibited in the country. I ask Mr. Lincoln whether heis in favor of that proposition? Are you opposed to the acquisitionof any more territory, under any circumstances, unless slavery isprohibited in it? That he does not like to answer. When I ask himwhether he stands up to that article in the platform of his party, heturns, Yankee fashion, and, without answering it, asks me whether I amin favor of acquiring territory without regard to how it may affectthe Union on the slavery question. I answer that, whenever it becomesnecessary, in our growth and progress, to acquire more territory, I amin favor of it without reference to the question of slavery, and whenwe have acquired it, I will leave the people free to do as they please, either to make it slave or free territory, as they prefer. It is idleto tell me or you that we have territory enough. * * * With our naturalincrease, growing with a rapidity unknown in any other part of theglobe, with the tide of emigration that is fleeing from despotism in theold world to seek refuge in our own, there is a constant torrent pouringinto this country that requires more land, more territory upon whichto settle; and just as fast as our interest and our destiny requireadditional territory in the North, in the South, or in the islands ofthe ocean, I am for it, and, when we acquire it, will leave the people, according to the Nebraska bill, free to do as they please on the subjectof slavery and every other question. 

I trust now that Mr. Lincoln will deem him-self answered on his fourpoints. He racked his brain so much in devising these four questionsthat he exhausted himself, and had not strength enough to invent theothers. As soon as he is able to hold a council with his advisers, Love-joy, Farnsworth, and Fred Douglas, he will frame and propoundothers ("Good, " "good!"). You Black Republicans who say "good, " I haveno doubt, think that they are all good men. I have reason to recollectthat some people in this country think that Fred Douglas is a very goodman. The last time I came here to make a speech, while talking froma stand to you, people of Freeport, as I am doing to-day, I saw acarriage, and a magnificent one it was, drive up and take a position onthe outside of the crowd; a beautiful young lady was sitting on the boxseat, whilst Fred Douglas and her mother reclined inside, and the ownerof the carriage acted as driver. I saw this in your own town. ("Whatof it?") All I have to say of it is this, that if you Black Republicansthink that the negro ought to be on a social equality with your wivesand daughters, and ride in a carriage with your wife, whilst you drivethe team, you have a perfect right to do so. I am told that one of FredDouglas' kinsmen, another rich black negro, is now travelling in thispart of the State making speeches for his friend Lincoln as the championof black men. ("What have you to say against it?") All I have to say onthat subject is, that those of you who believe that the negro is yourequal, and ought to be on an equality with you socially, politically, and legally, have a right to entertain those opinions, and of coursewill vote for Mr. Lincoln. 

WM. H. SEWARD, OF NEW YORK. (BORN 1801, DIED 1872. )

ON THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT;

ROCHESTER, OCTOBER 25, 1858. 

THE unmistakable outbreaks of zeal which occur all around me, show thatyou are earnest men--and such a man am I. Let us therefore, at leastfor a time, pass all secondary and collateral questions, whether of apersonal or of a general nature, and consider the main subject of thepresent canvass. The Democratic party, or, to speak more accurately, theparty which wears that attractive name--is in possession of the FederalGovernment. The Republicans propose to dislodge that party, and dismissit from its high trust. 

The main subject, then, is, whether the Democratic party deserves toretain the confidence of the American people. In attempting to proveit unworthy, I think that I am not actuated by prejudices against thatparty, or by pre-possessions in favor of its adversary; for I havelearned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice andselfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less intheir motives than in the policies they pursue. 

Our country is a theatre, which exhibits, in full operation, tworadically different political systems; the one resting on the basis ofservile or slave labor, the other on voluntary labor of freemen. Thelaborers who are enslaved are all negroes, or persons more or lesspurely of African derivation. But this is only accidental. The principleof the system is, that labor in every society, by whomsoever performed, is necessarily unintellectual, grovelling and base; and that thelaborer, equally for his own good and for the welfare of the State, ought to be enslaved. The white laboring man, whether native orforeigner, is not enslaved, only because he cannot, as yet, be reducedto bondage. 

You need not be told now that the slave system is the older of the two, and that once it was universal. The emancipation of our own ancestors, Caucasians and Europeans as they were, hardly dates beyond a period offive hundred years. The great melioration of human society which moderntimes exhibit, is mainly due to the incomplete substitution of thesystem of voluntary labor for the one of servile labor, which hasalready taken place. This African slave system is one which, in itsorigin and in its growth, has been altogether foreign from the habitsof the races which colonized these States, and established civilizationhere. It was introduced on this continent as an engine of conquest, andfor the establishment of monarchical power, by the Portuguese and theSpaniards, and was rapidly extended by them all over South America, Central America, Louisiana, and Mexico. Its legitimate fruits are seenin the poverty, imbecility, and anarchy which now pervade all Portugueseand Spanish America. The free-labor system is of German extraction, andit was established in our country by emigrants from Sweden, Holland, Germany, Great Britain and Ireland. We justly ascribe to its influencesthe strength, wealth, greatness, intelligence, and freedom, which thewhole American people now enjoy. One of the chief elements of the valueof human life is freedom in the pursuit of happiness. The slave systemis not only intolerable, unjust, and inhuman, toward the laborer, whom, only because he is a laborer, it loads down with chains and convertsinto merchandise, but is scarcely less severe upon the freeman, to whom, only because he is a laborer from necessity, it denies facilities foremployment, and whom it expels from the community because it cannotenslave and convert into merchandise also. It is necessarily improvidentand ruinous, because, as a general truth, communities prosper andflourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practiseor neglect to practise the primary duties of justice and humanity. The free-labor system conforms to the divine law of equality, which iswritten in the hearts and consciences of man, and therefore is alwaysand everywhere beneficent. 

The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, andwatchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth andresources for defence, to the lowest degree of which human nature iscapable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and thus wastesenergies which otherwise might be employed in national development andaggrandizement. 

The free-labor system educates all alike, and by opening all the fieldsof industrial employment and all the departments of authority, to theunchecked and equal rivalry of all classes of men, at once securesuniversal contentment, and brings into the highest possible activity allthe physical, moral, and social energies of the whole state. In stateswhere the slave system prevails, the masters, directly or indirectly, secure all political power, and constitute a ruling aristocracy. In states where the free-labor system prevails, universal suffragenecessarily obtains, and the state inevitably becomes, sooner or later, a republic or democracy. 

Russia yet maintains slavery, and is a despotism. Most of the otherEuropean states have abolished slavery, and adopted the system of freelabor. It was the antagonistic political tendencies of the two systemswhich the first Napoleon was contemplating when he predicted that Europewould ultimately be either all Cossack or all republican. Never didhuman sagacity utter a more pregnant truth. The two systems are at onceperceived to be incongruous. But they are more than incongruous--theyare incompatible. They never have permanently existed together inone country, and they never can. It would be easy to demonstrate thisimpossibility, from the irreconcilable contrast between their greatprinciples and characteristics. But the experience of mankind hasconclusively established it. Slavery, as I have already intimated, existed in every state in Europe. Free labor has supplanted iteverywhere except in Russia and Turkey. State necessities developed inmodern times are now obliging even those two nations to encourage andemploy free labor; and already, despotic as they are, we find themengaged in abolishing slavery. In the United States, slavery came intocollision with free labor at the close of the last century, and fellbefore it in New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, but triumphed over it effectually, and excluded it for a period yetundetermined, from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Indeed, so incompatible are the two systems, that every new State which isorganized within our ever-extending domain makes its first political acta choice of the one and the exclusion of the other, even at the costof civil war, if necessary. The slave States, without law, at the lastnational election, successfully forbade, within their own limits, eventhe casting of votes for a candidate for President of the United Statessupposed to be favorable to the establishment of the free-labor systemin new States. 

Hitherto, the two systems have existed in different States, but side byside within the American Union. This has happened because the Union isa confederation of States. But in another aspect the United Statesconstitute only one nation. Increase of population, which is fillingthe States out to their very borders, together with a new and extendednetwork of railroads and other avenues, and an internal commerce whichdaily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the States into ahigher and more perfect social unity or consolidation. Thus, theseantagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact, andcollision results. 

Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it isaccidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is anirrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and itmeans that the United States must and will, sooner or later, becomeeither entirely a slave-holding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation. Either the cotton- and rice-fields of South Carolina and the sugarplantations of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free-labor, andCharleston and New Orleans become marts of legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye-fields and wheat-fields of Massachusetts and New Yorkmust again be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to theproduction of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more marketsfor trade in the bodies and souls of men. It is the failure to apprehendthis great truth that induces so many unsuccessful attempts at finalcompromises between the slave and free States, and it is the existenceof this great fact that renders all such pretended compromises, whenmade, vain and ephemeral. Startling as this saying may appear to you, fellow-citizens, it is by no means an original or even a modern one. Ourforefathers knew it to be true, and unanimously acted upon it whenthey framed the Constitution of the United States. They regarded theexistence of the servile system in so many of the States with sorrow andshame, which they openly confessed, and they looked upon the collisionbetween them, which was then just revealing itself, and which we are nowaccustomed to deplore, with favor and hope. They knew that one or theother system must exclusively prevail. 

Unlike too many of those who in modern time invoke their authority, theyhad a choice between the two. They preferred the system of free labor, and they determined to organize the government, and so direct itsactivity, that that system should surely and certainly prevail. For thispurpose, and no other, they based the whole structure of the governmentbroadly on the principle that all men are created equal, and thereforefree--little dreaming that, within the short period of one hundredyears, their descendants would bear to be told by any orator, howeverpopular, that the utterance of that principle was merely a rhetoricalrhapsody; or by any judge, however venerated, that it was attended bymental reservation, which rendered it hypocritical and false. By theordinance of 1787, they dedicated all of the national domain not yetpolluted by slavery to free labor immediately, thenceforth and forever;while by the new Constitution and laws they invited foreign free laborfrom all lands under the sun, and interdicted the importation of Africanslave labor, at all times, in all places, and under all circumstanceswhatsoever. It is true that they necessarily and wisely modified thispolicy of freedom by leaving it to the several States, affected as theywere by different circumstances, to abolish slavery in their own way andat their own pleasure, instead of confiding that duty to Congress; andthat they secured to the slave States, while yet retaining the systemof slavery, a three-fifths representation of slaves in the FederalGovernment, until they should find themselves able to relinquish itwith safety. But the very nature of these modifications fortifies myposition, that the fathers knew that the two systems could not endurewithin the Union, and expected within a short period slavery woulddisappear forever. Moreover, in order that these modifications might notaltogether defeat their grand design of a republic maintaining universalequality, they provided that two thirds of the States might amend theConstitution. 

It remains to say on this point only one word, to guard againstmisapprehension. If these States are to again become universallyslave-holding, I do not pretend to say with what violations of theConstitution that end shall be accomplished. On the other hand, while Ido confidently believe and hope that my country will yet become a landof universal freedom, I do not expect that it will be made so otherwisethan through the action of the several States cooperating with theFederal Government, and all acting in strict conformity with theirrespective constitutions. 

The strife and contentions concerning slavery, which gently-disposedpersons so habitually deprecate, are nothing more than the ripening ofthe conflict which the fathers themselves not only thus regarded withfavor, but which they may be said to have instituted. 

* * * I know--few, I think, know better than I--the resources andenergies of the Democratic party, which is identical with the slavepower. I do ample justice to its traditional popularity. I knowfurther--few, I think, know better than I--the difficulties anddisadvantages of organizing a new political force, like the Republicanparty, and the obstacles it must encounter in laboring without prestigeand without patronage. But, understanding all this, I know that theDemocratic party must go down, and that the Republican party must riseinto its place. The Democratic party derived its strength, originally, from its adoption of the principles of equal and exact justice toall men. So long as it practised this principle faithfully, it wasinvulnerable. It became vulnerable when it renounced the principle, and since that time it has maintained itself, not by virtue of its ownstrength, or even of its traditional merits, but because there asyet had appeared in the political field no other party that had theconscience and the courage to take up, and avow, and practise thelife-inspiring principle which the Democratic party had surrendered. At last, the Republican party has appeared. It avows, now, as theRepublican party of 1800 did, in one word, its faith and its works, "Equal and exact justice to all men. " Even when it first entered thefield, only half organized, it struck a blow which only just failed tosecure complete and triumphant victory. In this, its second campaign, ithas already won advantages which render that triumph now both easy andcertain. 

The secret of its assured success lies in that very characteristicwhich, in the mouth of scoffers, constitutes its great and lastingimbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a party ofone idea; but that is a noble one--an idea that fills and expands allgenerous souls; the idea of equality--the equality of all men beforehuman tribunals and human laws, as they all are equal before the Divinetribunal and Divine laws. 

I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all theworld knows, that revolutions never go backward. Twenty Senators and ahundred Representatives proclaim boldly in Congress to-day sentimentsand opinions and principles of freedom which hardly so many men, evenin this free State, dared to utter in their own homes twenty years ago. While the Government of the United States, under the conduct of theDemocratic party, has been all that time surrendering one plain andcastle after another to slavery, the people of the United States havebeen no less steadily and perseveringly gathering together the forceswith which to recover back again all the fields and all the castleswhich have been lost, and to confound and overthrow, by one decisiveblow, the betrayers of the Constitution and freedom forever. 

VI. -- SECESSION. 

From the beginning of our history it has been a mooted question whetherwe are to consider the United States as a political state or as acongeries of political states, as a _Bundesstaat_ or as a _Staatenbund_. The essence of the controversy seems to be contained in the very titleof the republic, one school laying stress on the word United, as theother does on the word States. The phases of the controversy have beenbeyond calculation, and one of its consequences has been a civil war oftremendous energy and cost in blood and treasure. 

Looking at the facts alone of our history, one would be most apt toconclude that the United States had been a political state from thebeginning, its form being entirely revolutionary until the finalratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781, then under thevery loose and inefficient government of the Articles until 1789, and thereafter under the very efficient national government of theConstitution; that, in the final transformation of 1787-9, there werefeatures which were also decidedly revolutionary; but that there wasno time when any of the colonies had the prospect or the power ofestablishing a separate national existence of its own. The facts arenot consistent with the theory that the States ever were independentpolitical states, in any scientific sense. 

It cannot be said, however, that the actors in the history always hada clear perception of the facts as they took place. In the teeth of thefacts, our early history presents a great variety of assertions of Stateindependence by leading men, State Legislatures, or State constitutions, which still form the basis of the argument for State sovereignty. TheState constitutions declared the State to be sovereign and independent, even though the framers knew that the existence of the State dependedon the issue of the national struggle against the mother country. Thetreaty of 1783 with Great Britain recognized the States separately andby name as "free, sovereign, and independent, " even while it establishednational boundaries outside of the States, covering a vast westernterritory in which no State would have ventured to forfeit itsinterest by setting up a claim to practical freedom, sovereignty, orindependence. All our early history is full of such contradictionsbetween fact and theory. They are largely obscured by theundiscriminating use of the word "people. " As used now, it usually meansthe national people; but many apparently national phrases as to the"sovereignty of the people, " as they were used in 1787-9, would seemfar less national if the phraseology could show the feeling of thosewho then used them that the "people" referred to was the people ofthe State. In that case the number of the contradictions would beindefinitely increased; and the phraseology of the Constitution'spreamble, "We, the people of the United States, " would not be offeredas a consciously nationalizing phrase of its framers. It is hardly tobe doubted, from the current debates, that the conventions ofMassachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Virginia, NorthCarolina, and South Carolina, seven of the thirteen States, imagined andassumed that each ratified the Constitution in 1788--90 by authority ofthe State's people alone, by the State's sovereign will; while the factsshow that in each of these conventions a clear majority was coercedinto ratification by a strong minority in its own State, backed bythe unanimous ratifications of the other States. If ratification orrejection had really been open to voluntary choice, to sovereign will, the Constitution would never have had a moment's chance of life; so farfrom being ratified by nine States as a condition precedent to goinginto effect, it would have been summarily rejected by a majority of theStates. In the language of John Adams, the Constitution was "extortedfrom the grinding necessities of a reluctant people. " The theory ofState sovereignty was successfully contradicted by national necessities. 

The change from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, though it could not help antagonizing State sovereignty, was carefullymanaged so as to do so as little as possible. As soon as the plansby which the Federal party, under Hamilton's leadership, proposed todevelop the national features of the Constitution became evident, thelatent State feeling took fire. Its first symptom was the adoptionof the name Republican by the new opposition party which took form in1792-3 under Jefferson's leadership. Up to this time the States had beenthe only means through which Americans had known any thing of republicangovernment; they had had no share in the government of the mothercountry in colonial times, and no efficient national government to takepart in under the Articles of Confederation. The claim of an exclusivetitle to the name of Republican does not seem to have been fundamentallyan implication of monarchical tendencies against the Federalists so muchas an implication that they were hostile to the States, the familiarexponents of republican government. When the Federalist majority inCongress forced through, in the war excitement against France in 1798, the Alien and Sedition laws, which practically empowered the Presidentto suppress all party criticism of and opposition to the dominant party, the Legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia, in 1798-9, passed series ofresolutions, prepared by Jefferson and Madison respectively, which forthe first time asserted in plain terms the sovereignty of theStates. The two sets of resolutions agreed in the assertion that theConstitution was a "compact, " and that the States were the "parties"which had formed it. In these two propositions lies the gist of Statesovereignty, of which all its remotest consequences are only naturaldevelopments. If it were true that the States, of their sovereign will, had formed such a compact; if it were not true that the adoption ofthe Constitution was a mere alteration of the form of a political statealready in existence; it would follow, as the Kentucky resolutionsasserted, that each State had the exclusive right to decide for itselfwhen the compact had been broken, and the mode and measure of redress. It followed, also, that, if the existence and force of the Constitutionin a State were due solely to the sovereign will of the State, thesovereign will of the State was competent, on occasion, to oust theConstitution from the jurisdiction covered by the State. In brief, theUnion was wholly voluntary in its formation and in its continuance; andeach State reserved the unquestionable right to secede, to abandon theUnion, and assume an independent existence whenever due reason, inthe exclusive judgment of the State, should arise. These latterconsequences, not stated in the Kentucky resolutions, and apparently notcontemplated by the Virginia resolutions, were put into complete form byProfessor Tucker, of the University of Virginia, in 1803, in the notesto his edition of "Blackstone's Commentaries. " Thereafter its statementsof American constitutional law controlled the political training of theSouth. 

Madison held a modification of the State sovereignty theory, which hascounted among its adherents the mass of the ability and influenceof American authorities on constitutional law. Holding that theConstitution was a compact, and that the States were the parties to it, he held that one of the conditions of the compact was the abandonmentof State sovereignty; that the States were sovereign until 1787-8, butthereafter only members of a political state, the United States. Thisseems to have been the ground taken by Webster, in his debates withHayne and Calhoun. It was supported by the instances in which theappearance of a sovereignty in each State was yielded in the fourteenyears before 1787; but, unfortunately for the theory, Calhoun was ableto produce instances exactly parallel after 1787. If the fact that eachState predicated its own sovereignty as an essential part of the stepspreliminary to the convention of 1787 be a sound argument for Statesovereignty before 1787, the fact that each State predicated itssovereignty as an essential part of the ratification of the Constitutionmust be taken as an equally sound argument for State sovereignty underthe Constitution; and it seems difficult, on the Madison theory, toresist Calhoun's triumphant conclusion that, if the States went into theconvention as sovereign States, they came out of it as sovereign States, with, of course, the right of secession. Calhoun himself had a sinceredesire to avoid the exercise of the right of secession, and it was as asubstitute for it that he evolved his doctrine of nullification, which has been placed in the first volume. When it failed in 1833, theexercise of the right of secession was the only remaining remedy for anasserted breach of State sovereignty. 

The events which led up to the success of the Republican party inelecting Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency in 1860 are so intimatelyconnected with the anti-slavery struggle that they have been placed inthe preceding volume. They culminated in the first organized attempt toput the right of secession to a practical test. The election ofLincoln, the success of a "sectional party, " and the evasion of thefugitive-slave law through the passage of "personal-liberty laws" bymany of the Northern States, are the leading reasons assigned by SouthCarolina for her secession in 1860. These were intelligible reasons, andwere the ones most commonly used to influence the popular vote. But allthe evidence goes to show that the leaders of secession were not soweak in judgment as to run the hazards of war by reason of "injuries"so minute as these. Their apprehensions were far broader, if lesscalculated to influence a popular vote. In 1789 the proportions ofpopulation and wealth in the two sections were very nearly equal. Theslave system of labor had hung as a clog upon the progress of the South, preventing the natural development of manufactures and commerce, andshutting out immigration. As the numerical disproportion between the twosections increased, Southern leaders ceased to attempt to control theHouse of Representatives, contenting themselves with balancing newNorthern with new Southern States, so as to keep an equal vote in theSenate. Since 1845 this resource had failed. Five free States, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, and Oregon, had been admitted, with nonew slave States; Kansas was calling almost imperatively for admission;and there was no hope of another slave State in future. When theelection of 1860 demonstrated that the progress of the antislaverystruggle had united all the free States, it was evident that it was buta question of time when the Republican party would control bothbranches of Congress and the Presidency, and have the power to make lawsaccording to its own interpretation of the constitutional powers of theFederal Government. 

The peril to slavery was not only the probable prohibition of theinter-State slave-trade, though this itself would have been an eventwhich negro slavery in the South could hardly have long survived. Themore pressing danger lay in the results of such general Republicansuccess on the Supreme Court. The decision of that Court in the DredScott case had fully sustained every point of the extreme Southernclaims as to the status of slavery in the Territories; it had held thatslaves were property in the view of the Constitution; that Congresswas bound to protect slave-holders in this property right in theTerritories, and, still more, bound not to prohibit slavery or allow aTerritorial Legislature to prohibit slavery in the Territories, andthat the Missouri compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional and void. The Southern Democrats entered the election of 1860 with this distinctdecision of the highest judicial body of the country to back them. TheRepublican party had refused to admit that the decision of the DredScott case was law or binding. Given a Republican majority in bothHouses and a Republican President, there was nothing to hinder thepassage of a law increasing the number of Supreme Court justices to anydesired extent, and the new appointments would certainly be of sucha nature as to make the reversal of the Dred Scott decision an easymatter. The election of 1860 had brought only a Republican President;the majority in both Houses was to be against him until 1863 at least. But the drift in the North and West was too plain to be mistaken, and itwas felt that 1860--would be the last opportunity for the Gulf Statesto secede with dignity and with the prestige of the Supreme Court'ssupport. 

Finally, there seems to have been a strong feeling among the extremesecessionists, who loved the right of secession for its own sake, thatthe accelerating increase in the relative power of the North would soonmake secession, on any grounds, impossible. Unless the right was to beforfeited by non-user, it must be established by practical exercise, andat once. 

Until about 1825-9 Presidential electors were chosen in most of theStates by the Legislature. After that period the old practice was keptup only in South Carolina. On election day of November, 1860, theSouth Carolina Legislature was in session for the purpose of choosingelectors, but it continued its session after this duty was performed. Assoon as Lincoln's election was assured, the Legislature called a StateConvention for Dec. 17th, took the preliminary steps toward putting theState on a war footing, and adjourned. The convention met at the Statecapital, adjourned to Charleston, and here, Dec. 20, 1860, passedunanimously an Ordinance of Secession. By its terms the people of SouthCarolina, in convention assembled, repealed the ordinance of May 23, 1788, by which the Constitution had been ratified, and all Acts of theLegislature ratifying amendments to the Constitution, and declared theunion between the State and other States, under the name of the UnitedStates of America, to be dissolved. By a similar process, similarordinances were adopted by the State Conventions of Mississippi (Jan. 9th), Florida (Jan. 10th), Alabama (Jan. 11th), Georgia (Jan. 19th), Louisiana (Jan. 25th), and Texas (Feb. 1st), --seven States in all. 

Outside of South Carolina, the struggle in the States named turned onthe calling of the convention; and in this matter the opposition wasunexpectedly strong. We have the testimony of Alexander H. Stephens thatthe argument most effective in overcoming the opposition to the callingof a convention was: "We can make better terms out of the Union than init. " The necessary implication was that secession was not to be final;that it was only to be a temporary withdrawal until terms of compromiseand security for the fugitive-slave law and for slavery in theTerritories could be extorted from the North and West. The argument soonproved to be an intentional sham. 

There has always been a difference between the theory of the StateConvention at the North and at the South. At the North, barring a fewvery exceptional cases, the rule has been that no action of a StateConvention is valid until confirmed by popular vote. At the South, inobedience to the strictest application of State sovereignty, the actionof the State Convention was held to be the voice of the people of theState, which needed no popular ratification. There was, therefore, no remedy when the State Conventions, after passing the ordinances ofsecession, went on to appoint delegates to a Confederate Congress, whichmet at Montgomery, Feb. 4, 1861, adopted a provisional constitutionFeb. 8th, and elected a President and Vice-President Feb. 9th. Theconventions ratified the provisional constitution and adjourned, theirreal object having been completely accomplished; and the people ofthe several seceding States, by the action of their omnipotent StateConventions, and without their having a word to say about it, foundthemselves under a new government, totally irreconcilable with thejurisdiction of the United States, and necessarily hostile to it. Theonly exception was Texas, whose State Convention had been called ina method so utterly revolutionary that it was felt to be necessary tocondone its defects by a popular vote. 

No declaration had ever been made by any authority that the erection ofsuch hostile power within the national boundaries of the UnitedStates would be followed by war; such a declaration would hardly seemnecessary. The recognition of the original national boundaries ofthe United States had been extorted from Great Britain by successfulwarfare. They had been extended by purchase from France and Spain in1803 and 1819, and again by war from Mexico in 1848. The United Statesstood ready to guarantee their integrity by war against all the rest ofthe world; was an ordinance of South Carolina, or the election of a _defacto_ government within Southern borders, likely to receive differenttreatment than was given British troops at Bunker Hill, or Santa Anna'slancers at Buena Vista? Men forgot that the national boundaries had beenso drawn as to include Vermont before Vermont's admission and withoutVermont's consent; that unofficial propositions to divide Rhode Islandbetween Connecticut and Massachusetts, to embargo commerce with NorthCarolina, and demand her share of the Confederation debt, had in 1789-90been a sufficient indication that it was easier for a State to get intothe American Union than to get out of it. It was a fact, nevertheless, that the national power to enforce the integrity of the Union had neverbeen formally declared; and the mass of men in the South, even thoughthey denied the expediency, did not deny the right of secession, oracknowledge the right of coercion by the Federal Government. To reachthe original area of secession with land-forces, it was necessary forthe Federal Government to cross the Border States, whose people ingeneral were no believers in the right of coercion. The first attemptto do so extended the secession movement by methods which were far moreopenly revolutionary than the original secessions. North Carolina andArkansas seceded in orthodox fashion as soon as President Lincoln calledfor volunteers after the capture of Fort Sumter. The State governmentsof Virginia and Tennessee concluded "military leagues" with theConfederacy, allowed Confederate troops to take possession of theirStates, and then submitted an ordinance of secession to the form ofa popular vote. The State officers of Missouri were chased out of theState before they could do more than begin this process. In Maryland, the State government arrayed itself successfully against secession. 

In selecting the representative opinions for this period, all themarked shades of opinion have been respected, both the Union and theanti-coercion sentiment of the Border States, the extreme secessionspirit of the Gulf States, and, from the North, the moderate and theextreme Republican, and the orthodox Democratic, views. The feeling ofthe so-called "peace Democrats" of the North differed so little fromthose of Toombs or Iverson that it has not seemed advisable to do morethan refer to Vallandigham's speech in opposition to the war, under thenext period. 

JOHN PARKER HALE, OF NEW HAMPSHIRE (BORN 1806, DIED 1873. )

ON SECESSION; MODERATE REPUBLICAN OPINION;

IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, DECEMBER 5, 1860. 

MR. PRESIDENT:

I was very much in hopes when the message was presented that it would bea document which would commend itself cordially to somebody. I was notso sanguine about its pleasing myself, but I was in hopes that it wouldbe one thing or another. I was in hopes that the President would havelooked in the face the crisis in which he says the country is, and thathis message would be either one thing or another. But, sir, I have readit somewhat carefully. I listened to it as it was read at the desk; and, if I understand it--and I think I do--it is this: South Carolina hasjust cause for seceding from the Union; that is the first proposition. The second is, that she has no right to secede. The third is, that wehave no right to prevent her from seceding. That is the President'smessage, substantially. He goes on to represent this as a great andpowerful country, and that no State has a right to secede from it; butthe power of the country, if I understand the President, consists inwhat Dickens makes the English constitution to be--a power to do nothingat all. 

Now, sir, I think it was incumbent upon the President of the UnitedStates to point out definitely and recommend to Congress some ruleof action, and to tell us what he recommended us to do. But, in myjudgment, he has entirely avoided it. He has failed to look the thingin the face. He has acted like the ostrich, which hides her head andthereby thinks to escape danger. Sir, the only way to escape dangeris to look it in the face. I think the country did expect from thePresident some exposition of a decided policy; and I confess that, for one, I was rather indifferent as to what that policy was that herecommended; but I hoped that it would be something; that it would bedecisive. He has utterly failed in that respect. 

I think we may as well look this matter right clearly in the face; andI am not going to be long about doing it. I think that this state ofaffairs looks to one of two things: it looks to absolute submission, noton the part of our Southern friends and the Southern States, but of theNorth, to the abandonment of their position, --it looks to a surrenderof that popular sentiment which has been uttered through the constitutedforms of the ballot-box, or it looks to open war. We need not shut oureyes to the fact. It means war, and it means nothing else; and the Statewhich has put herself in the attitude of secession, so looks upon it. She has asked no council, she has considered it as a settled question, and she has armed herself. As I understand the aspect of affairs, it looks to that, and it looks to nothing else except unconditionalsubmission on the part of the majority. I did not read the paper--I donot read many papers--but I understand that there was a remedy suggestedin a paper printed, I think, in this city, and it was that the Presidentand the Vice-President should be inaugurated (that would be a greatconcession!) and then, being inaugurated, they should quietly resign!Well, sir, I am not entirely certain that that would settle thequestion. I think that after the President and Vice-President-elect hadresigned, there would be as much difficulty in settling who was to taketheir places as there was in settling it before. 

I do not wish, sir, to say a word that shall increase any irritation;that shall add any feeling of bitterness to the state of things whichreally exists in the country, and I would bear and forbear before Iwould say any thing which would add to this bitterness. But I tell you, sir, the plain, true way is to look this thing in the face--see where weare. And I avow here--I do not know whether or not I shall be sustainedby those who usually act with me--if the issue which is presented isthat the constitutional will of the public opinion of this country, expressed through the forms of the Constitution, will not be submittedto, and war is the alternative, let it come in any form or in any shape. The Union is dissolved and it cannot be held together as a Union, ifthat is the alternative upon which we go into an election. If it ispre-announced and determined that the voice of the majority, expressedthrough the regular and constituted forms of the Constitution, will notbe submitted to, then, sir, this is not a Union of equals; it is a Unionof a dictatorial oligarchy on one side, and a herd of slaves and cowardson the other. That is it, sir; nothing more, nothing less. * * *

ALFRED IVERSON, OF GEORGIA. (BORN 1798, DIED 1874. )

ON SECESSION; SECESSIONIST OPINION;

IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, DECEMBER 5, 1860

I do not rise, Mr. President, for the purpose of entering, at any lengthinto this discussion, or to defend the President's message, whichhas been attacked by the Senator from New Hampshire. * I am not themouth-piece of the President. While I do not agree with some portionsof the message, and some of the positions that have been taken by thePresident, I do not perceive all the inconsistencies in that documentwhich the Senator from New Hampshire has thought proper to present. 

It is true, that the President denies the constitutional right of aState to secede from the Union; while, at the same time, he also statesthat this Federal Government has no constitutional right to enforce orto coerce a State back into the Union which may take upon itself theresponsibility of secession. I do not see any inconsistency in that. The President may be right when he asserts the fact that no State has aconstitutional right to secede from the Union. I do not myself place theright of a State to secede from the Union upon constitutional grounds. Iadmit that the Constitution has not granted that power to a State. It isexceedingly doubtful even whether the right has been reserved. Certainlyit has not been reserved in express terms. I therefore do not placethe expected action of any of the Southern States, in the presentcontingency, upon the constitutional right of secession; and I am notprepared to dispute therefore, the, position which the President hastaken upon that point. 

I rather agree with the President that the secession of a State isan act of revolution taken through that particular means or by thatparticular measure. It withdraws from the Federal compact, disclaims anyfurther allegiance to it, and sets itself up as a separate government, an independent State. The State does it at its peril, of course, becauseit may or may not be cause of war by the remaining States composing theFederal Government. If they think proper to consider it such an actof disobedience, or if they consider that the policy of the FederalGovernment be such that it cannot submit to this dismemberment, why thenthey may or may not make war if they choose upon the seceding States. Itwill be a question of course for the Federal Government or the remainingStates to decide for themselves, whether they will permit a State togo out of the Union, and remain as a separate and independent State, orwhether they will attempt to force her back at the point of the bayonet. That is a question, I presume, of policy and expediency, which will beconsidered by the remaining States composing the Federal Government, through their organ, the Federal Government, whenever the contingencyarises. 

But, sir, while a State has no power, under the Constitution, conferredupon it to secede from the Federal Government or from the Union, eachState has the right of revolution, which all admit. Whenever the burdensof the government under which it acts become so onerous that it cannotbear them, or if anticipated evil shall be so great that theState believes it would be better off--even risking the perils ofsecession--out of the Union than in it, then that State, in myopinion, like all people upon earth has the right to exercise thegreat fundamental principle of self-preservation, and go out of theUnion--though, of course, at its own peril--and bear the risk of theconsequences. And while no State may have the constitutional right tosecede from the Union, the President may not be wrong when he says theFederal Government has no power under the Constitution to compel theState to come back into the Union. It may be a _casus omissus_ in theConstitution; but I should like to know where the power exists in theConstitution of the United States to authorize the Federal Governmentto coerce a sovereign State. It does not exist in terms, at any rate, inthe Constitution. I do not think there is any inconsistency, therefore, between the two positions of the President in the message upon theseparticular points. 

The only fault I have to find with the message of the President, is theinconsistency of another portion. He declares that, as the States haveno power to secede, the Federal Government is in fact a consolidatedgovernment; that it is not a voluntary association of States. I deny it. It was a voluntary association of States. No State was ever forced tocome into the Federal Union. Every State came voluntarily into it. It was an association, a voluntary association of States; and thePresident's position that it is not a voluntary association is, in myopinion, altogether wrong. 

But whether that be so or not, the President declares and assumes thatthis government is a consolidated government to this extent: that allthe laws of the Federal Government are to operate directly upon eachindividual of the States, if not upon the States themselves, and mustbe enforced; and yet, at the same time, he says that the State whichsecedes is not to be coerced. He says that the laws of the United Statesmust be enforced against every individual of a State. 

Of course, the State is composed of individuals within its limits, and if you enforce the laws and obligations of the Federal Governmentagainst each and every individual of the State, you enforce them againsta State. While, therefore, he says that a State is not to be coerced, hedeclares, in the same breath, his determination to enforce the laws ofthe Union, and therefore to coerce the State if a State goes out. Thereis the inconsistency, according to my idea, which I do not see how thePresident or anybody else can reconcile. That the Federal Government isto enforce its laws over the seceding State, and yet not coerce her intoobedience, is to me incomprehensible. 

But I did not rise, Mr. President, to discuss these questions inrelation to the message; I rose in behalf of the State that I represent, as well as other Southern States that are engaged in this movement, toaccept the issue which the Senator from New Hampshire has seen fit totender--that is, of war. Sir, the Southern States now moving in thismatter are not doing it without due consideration. We have looked overthe whole field. We believe that the only security for the institutionto which we attach so much importance is secession and a Southernconfederacy. We are satisfied, notwithstanding the disclaimers upon thepart of the Black Republicans to the contrary, that they intend touse the Federal power, when they get possession of it, to put down andextinguish the institution of slavery in the Southern States. I do notintend to enter upon the discussion of that point. That, however, ismy opinion. It is the opinion of a large majority of those with whom Iassociate at home, and I believe of the Southern people. Believing thatthis is the intention and object, the ultimate aim and design, of theRepublican party, the Abolitionists of the North, we do not intend tostay in this Union until we shall become so weak that we shall not beable to resist when the time comes for resistance. Our true policy isthe one which we have made up our minds to follow. Our true policy is togo out of this Union now, while we have strength to resist any attempton the part of the Federal Government to coerce us. * * *

We intend, Mr. President, to go out peaceably if we can, forcibly if wemust; but I do not believe, with the Senator from New Hampshire, thatthere is going to be any war. If five or eight States go out, they willnecessarily draw all the other Southern States after them. That is aconsequence that nothing can prevent. If five or eight States go outof this Union, I should like to see the man that would propose adeclaration of war against them, or attempt to force them into obedienceto the Federal Government at the point of the bayonet or the sword. 

Sir, there has been a good deal of vaporing on this subject. A greatmany threats have been thrown out. I have heard them on this floor, andupon the floor of the other House of Congress; but I have also perceivedthis: they come from those who would be the very last men to attemptto put their threats into execution. Men talk sometimes about theireighteen million who are to whip us; and yet we have heard of cases inwhich just such men had suffered themselves to be switched in theface, and trembled like sheep-stealing dogs, expecting to be shot everyminute. These threats generally come from men who would be the last toexecute them. Some of these Northern editors talk about whipping theSouthern States like spaniels. Brave words; but I venture to assert noneof those men would ever volunteer to command an army to be sent downSouth to coerce us into obedience to Federal power. * * *

But, sir, I apprehend that when we go out and form our confederacy--asI think and hope we shall do very shortly--the Northern States, or theFederal Government, will see its true policy to be to let us go in peaceand make treaties of commerce and amity with us, from which they willderive more advantages than from any attempt to coerce us. They cannotsucceed in coercing us. If they allow us to form our government withoutdifficulty, we shall be very willing to look upon them as a favorednation and give them all the advantages of commercial and amicabletreaties. I have no doubt that both of us--certainly the SouthernStates--would live better, more happily, more prosperously, and withgreater friendship, than we live now in this Union. 

Sir, disguise the fact as you will, there is an enmity between theNorthern and Southern people that is deep and enduring, and you nevercan eradicate it--never! Look at the spectacle exhibited on this floor. How is it? There are the Republican Northern Senators upon that side. Here are the Southern Senators on this side. How much social intercourseis there between us? You sit upon your side, silent and gloomy; we situpon ours with knit brows and portentous scowls. Yesterday I observedthat there was not a solitary man on that side of the Chamber came overhere even to extend the civilities and courtesies of life; nor did anyof us go over there. Here are two hostile bodies on this floor; and itis but a type of the feeling that exists between the two sections. Weare enemies as much as if we were hostile States. I believe that theNorthern people hate the South worse than ever the English people hatedFrance; and I can tell my brethren over there that there is no love lostupon the part of the South. 

In this state of feeling, divided as we are by interest, by ageographical feeling, by every thing that makes two people separate anddistinct, I ask why we should remain in the same Union together? We havenot lived in peace; we are not now living in peace. It is not expectedor hoped that we shall ever live in peace. My doctrine is that whenevereven man and wife find that they must quarrel, and cannot live inpeace, they ought to separate; and these two sections--the North andSouth--manifesting, as they have done and do now, and probably will evermanifest, feelings of hostility, separated as they are in interests andobjects, my own opinion is they can never live in peace; and the soonerthey separate the better. 

Sir, these sentiments I have thrown out crudely I confess, and upon thespur of the occasion. I should not have opened my mouth but that theSenator from New Hampshire seemed to show a spirit of bravado, as ifhe intended to alarm and scare the Southern States into a retreat fromtheir movements. He says that war is to come, and you had better takecare, therefore. That is the purport of his language; of course thoseare not his words; but I understand him very well, and everybody else, I apprehend, understands him that war is threatened, and therefore theSouth had better look out. Sir, I do not believe that there will be anywar; but if war is to come, let it come. We will meet the Senatorfrom New Hampshire and all the myrmidons of Abolitionism and BlackRepublicanism everywhere, upon our own soil; and in the language of adistinguished member from Ohio in relation to the Mexican War, we will"welcome you with bloody hands to hospitable graves. "

BENJAMIN WADE, OF OHIO, (BORN 1800, DIED 1878. )

ON SECESSION, AND THE STATE OF THE UNION; REPUBLICAN OPINION;

SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, DECEMBER 17, 1860. 

MR. PRESIDENT:

At a time like this, when there seems to be a wild and unreasoningexcitement in many parts of the country, I certainly have very littlefaith in the efficacy of any argument that may be made; but at thesame time, I must say, when I hear it stated by many Senators in thisChamber, where we all raised our hands to Heaven, and took a solemn oathto support the Constitution of the United States, that we are on theeve of a dissolution of this Union, and that the Constitution is to betrampled under foot--silence under such circumstances seems to me akinto treason itself. 

I have listened to the complaints on the other side patiently, and withan ardent desire to ascertain what was the particular difficulty underwhich they were laboring. Many of those who have supposed themselvesaggrieved have spoken; but I confess that I am now totally unable tounderstand precisely what it is of which they complain. Why, sir, theparty which lately elected their President, and are prospectively tocome into power, have never held an executive office under the GeneralGovernment, nor has any individual of them. It is most manifest, therefore, that the party to which I belong have as yet committed no actof which anybody can complain. If they have fears as to the course thatwe may hereafter pursue, they are mere apprehensions--a bare suspicion;arising, I fear, out of their unwarrantable prejudices, and nothingelse. 

I wish to ascertain at the outset whether we are right; for I tellgentlemen that, if they can convince me that I am holding any politicalprinciple that is not warranted by the Constitution under which we live, or that trenches upon their rights, they need not ask me to compromiseit. I will be ever ready to grant redress, and to right myself wheneverI am wrong. No man need approach me with a threat that the Governmentunder which I live is to be destroyed; because I hope I have now, andever shall have, such a sense of justice that, when any man showsme that I am wrong, I shall be ready to right it without price orcompromise. 

Now, sir, what is it of which gentlemen complain? When I left my home inthe West to come to this place, all was calm, cheerful, and contented. I heard of no discontent. I apprehended that there was nothing tointerrupt the harmonious course of our legislation. I did not learnthat, since we adjourned from this place at the end of the last session, there had been any new fact intervening that should at all disturb thepublic mind. I do not know that there has been any encroachment uponthe rights of any section of the country since that time; I came here, therefore, expecting to have a very harmonious session. It is very true, sir, that the great Republican party which has been organized ever sinceyou repealed the Missouri Compromise, and who gave you, four years ago, full warning that their growing strength would probably result as ithas resulted, have carried the late election; but I did not suppose thatwould disturb the equanimity of this body. I did suppose that every manwho was observant of the signs of the times might well see that thingswould result as they have resulted. Nor do I understand now thatanything growing out of that election is the cause of the presentexcitement that pervades the country. 

Why, Mr. President, this is a most singular state of things. Who is itthat is complaining? They that have been in a minority? They that havebeen the subjects of an oppressive and aggressive Government? No, sir. Let us suppose that when the leaders of the old glorious Revolution metat Philadelphia eighty-four years ago to draw up a bill of indictmentagainst a wicked King and his ministers, they had been at a loss whatthey should set forth as the causes of their complaint. They hadno difficulty in setting them forth so that the great article ofimpeachment will go down to all posterity as a full justification of allthe acts they did. But let us suppose that, instead of its being theseold patriots who had met there to dissolve their connection with theBritish Government, and to trample their flag under foot, it hadbeen the ministers of the Crown, the leading members of the BritishParliament, of the dominant party that had ruled Great Britain forthirty years previous: who would not have branded every man of them as atraitor? It would be said: "You who have had the Government in your ownhands: you who have been the ministers of the Crown, advising everythingthat has been done, set up here that you have been oppressed andaggrieved by the action of that very Government which you have directedyourselves. " Instead of a sublime revolution, the uprising of anoppressed people, ready to battle against unequal power for theirrights, it would have been an act of treason. 

How is it with the leaders of this modern revolution? Are they in aposition to complain of the action of this Government for years past?Why, sir, they have had more than two-thirds of the Senate for manyyears past, and until very recently, and have almost that now. You--whocomplain, I ought to say--represent but a little more than one-fourth ofthe free people of these United States, and yet your counsels prevail, and have prevailed all along for at least ten years past. In theCabinet, in the Senate of the United States, in the Supreme Court, inevery department of the Government, your officers, or those devoted toyou, have been in the majority, and have dictated all the policies ofthis Government. Is it not strange, sir, that they who now occupy thesepositions should come here and complain that their rights are strickendown by the action of the Government?

But what has caused this great excitement that undoubtedly prevails in aportion of our country? If the newspapers are to be credited, there isa reign of terror in all the cities and large towns in the southernportion of this community that looks very much like the reign of terrorin Paris during the French revolution. There are acts of violence thatwe read of almost every day, wherein the rights of northern men arestricken down, where they are sent back with indignities, where they arescourged, tarred, feathered, and murdered, and no inquiry made as tothe cause. I do not suppose that the regular Government, in times ofexcitement like these, is really responsible for such acts. I know thatthese outbreaks of passion, these terrible excitements that sometimespervade the community, are entirely irrepressible by the law of thecountry. I suppose that is the case now; because if these outragesagainst northern citizens were really authorized by the Stateauthorities there, were they a foreign Government, everybody knows, ifit were the strongest Government on earth, we should declare war uponher in one day. 

But what has caused this great excitement? Sir, I will tell you what Isuppose it is. I do not (and I say it frankly) so much blame the peopleof the South; because they believe, and they are led to believe by allthe information that ever comes before them, that we, the dominant partyto-day, who have just seized upon the reins of this Government, aretheir mortal enemies, and stand ready to trample their institutionsunder foot. They have been told so by our enemies at the North. Theirmisfortune, or their fault, is that they have lent a too easy ear to theinsinuations of those who are our mortal enemies, while they would nothear us. 

Now I wish to inquire, in the first place, honestly, candidly, andfairly, whether the Southern gentlemen on the other side of the Chamberthat complain so much, have any reasonable grounds for that complaint--Imean when they are really informed as to our position. 

Northern Democrats have sometimes said that we had personal libertybills in some few of the States of the North, which somehow trenchedupon the rights of the South under the fugitive bill to recapture theirrunaway slaves; a position that in not more than two or three cases, so far as I can see, has the slightest foundation in fact; and even ifthose where it is most complained of, if the provisions of their law arereally repugnant to that of the United States, they are utterly void, and the courts would declare them so the moment you brought them up. Thus it is that I am glad to hear the candor of those gentlemen on theother side, that they do not complain of these laws. The Senator fromGeorgia (Mr. Iverson) himself told us that they had never suffered anyinjury, to his knowledge and belief, from those bills, and they carednothing about them. The Senator from Virginia (Mr. Mason) said the samething; and, I believe, the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Brown). You all, then, have given up this bone of contention, this matter ofcomplaint which Northern men have set forth as a grievance more thananybody else. 

Mr. Mason. Will the Senator indulge me one moment. 

Mr. Wade. Certainly. 

Mr. Mason. I know he does not intend to misrepresent me or othergentlemen. What I said was, that the repeal of those laws would furnishno cause of satisfaction to the Southern States. Our opinions of thoselaws we gave freely. We said the repeal of those laws would give nosatisfaction. 

Mr. Wade. Mr. President, I do not intend to misrepresent anything. Iunderstood those gentlemen to suppose that they had not been injured bythem. I understood the Senator from Virginia to believe that they wereenacted in a spirit of hostility to the institutions of the South, andto object to them not because the acts themselves had done them anyhurt, but because they were really a stamp of degradation upon Southernmen, or something like that--I do not quote his words. The otherSenators that referred to it probably intended to be understood in thesame way; but they did acquit these laws of having done them injury totheir knowledge or belief. 

I do not believe that these laws were, as the Senator supposed, enactedwith a view to exasperate the South, or to put them in a position ofdegradation. Why, sir, these laws against kidnapping are as old as thecommon law itself, as that Senator well knows. To take a freeman andforcibly carry him out of the jurisdiction of the State, has ever been, by all civilized countries, adjudged to be a great crime; and in most ofthem, wherever I have understood anything about it, they have penallaws to punish such an offence. I believe the State of Virginia has oneto-day as stringent in all its provisions as almost any other of whichyou complain. I have not looked over the statute-books of the South; butI do not doubt that there will be found this species of legislation uponall your statute-books. 

Here let me say, because the subject occurs to me right here, theSenator from Virginia seemed not so much to point out any specific actsthat Northern people had done injurious to your property as, what hetook to be a dishonor and a degradation. I think I feel as sensitiveupon that subject as any other man. If I know myself, I am the last manthat would be the advocate of any law or any act that would humiliate ordishonor any section of this country, or any individual in it; and, onthe other hand, let me tell these gentlemen I am exceedingly sensitiveupon that same point, whatever they may think about it. I wouldrather sustain an injury than an insult or dishonor; and I would beas unwilling to inflict it upon others as I would be to submit to itmyself. I never will do either the one or the other if I know it. 

 * * * * *

I know that charges have been made and rung in our ears, and reiteratedover and over again, that we have been unfaithful in the execution ofyour fugitive bill. Sir, that law is exceedingly odious to any freepeople. It deprives us of all the old guarantees of liberty that theAnglo-Saxon race everywhere have considered sacred--more sacred thananything else. 

 * * * * *

Mr. President, the gentleman says, if I understood him, that thesefugitives might be turned over to the authorities of the State fromwhence they came. That would be a very poor remedy for a free man inhumble circumstances who was taken under the provisions of this bill ina summary way, to be carried--where? Where he came from? There is no lawthat requires that he should be carried there. Sir, if he is a free manhe may be carried into the market-place anywhere in a slave State; andwhat chance has he, a poor, ignorant individual, and a stranger, of asserting any rights there, even if there were no prejudices orpartialities against him? That would be mere mockery of justice andnothing else, and the Senator well knows it. Sir, I know that from thestringent, summary provisions of this bill, free men have been kidnappedand carried into captivity and sold into everlasting slavery. Will anyman who has a regard to the sovereign rights of the State rise here andcomplain that a State shall not make a law to protect her own peopleagainst kidnapping and violent seizures from abroad? Of all men, Ibelieve those who have made most of these complaints should be thelast to rise and deny the power of a sovereign State to protect her owncitizens against any Federal legislation whatever. These liberty bills, in my judgment, have been passed, not with a view of degrading theSouth, but with an honest purpose of guarding the rights of their owncitizens from unlawful seizures and abductions. I was exceedingly gladto hear that the Senators on the other side had arisen in their placesand had said that the repeal of those laws would not relieve the casefrom the difficulties under which they now labor. 

 * * * * *

Gentlemen, it will be very well for us all to take a view of all thephases of this controversy before we come to such conclusions as seem tohave been arrived at in some quarters. I make the assertion here that Ido not believe, in the history of the world, there ever was a nation ora people where a law repugnant to the general feeling was ever executedwith the same faithfulness as has been your most savage and atrociousfugitive bill in the North. You yourselves can scarcely point out anycase that has come before any northern tribunal in which the law has notbeen enforced to the very letter. You ought to know these facts, and youdo know them. You all know that when a law is passed anywhere to bindany people, who feel, in conscience, or for any other reason, opposedto its execution, it is not in human nature to enforce it with the samecertainty as a law that meets with the approbation of the great mass ofthe citizens. Every rational man understands this, and every candid manwill admit it. Therefore it is that I do not violently impeach you foryour unfaithfulness in the execution of many of your laws. You have inSouth Carolina a law by which you take free citizens of Massachusettsor any other maritime State, who visit the city of Charleston, and lockthem up in jail under the penalty, if they cannot pay the jail-fees, ofeternal slavery staring them in the face--a monstrous law, revoltingto the best feelings of humanity and violently in conflict withthe Constitution of the United States. I do not say this by way ofrecrimination; for the excitement pervading the country is now so greatthat I do not wish to add a single coal to the flame; but nevertheless Iwish the whole truth to appear. 

 * * * * *

Now, Mr. President, I have shown, I think, that the dominant majorityhere have nothing to complain of in the legislation of Congress, or inthe legislation of any of the States, or in the practice of the peopleof the North, under the fugitive slave bill, except so far as they saycertain State legislation furnishes some evidence of hostility to theirinstitutions. And here, sir, I beg to make an observation. I tell theSenator, and I tell all the Senators, that the Republican party of theNorthern States, so far as I know, and of my own State in particular, hold the same opinions with regard to this peculiar institution ofyours that are held by all the civilized nations of the world. We do notdiffer from the public sentiment of England, of France, of Germany, ofItaly, and every other civilized nation on God's earth; and I tell youfrankly that you never found, and you never will find, a free communitythat are in love with your peculiar institution. The Senator from Texas(Mr. Wigfall) told us the other day that cotton was king, and that byits influence it would govern all creation. He did not say so in words, but that was the substance of his remark: that cotton was king, and thatit had its subjects in Europe who dared not rebel against it. Here letme say to that Senator, in passing, that it turns out that they arevery rebellious subjects, and they are talking very disrespectfully atpresent of that king that he spoke of. They defy you to exercise yourpower over them. They tell you that they sympathize in this controversywith what you call the black Republicans. Therefore, I hope that, sofar as Europe is concerned at least, we shall hear no more of this boastthat cotton is king; and that he is going to rule all the civilizednations of the world, and bring them to his footstool. Sir, it willnever be done. 

But, sir, I wish to inquire whether the Southern people are injured by, or have any just right to complain of that platform of principles thatwe put out, and on which we have elected a President and Vice-President. I have no concealments to make, and I shall talk to you, my Southernfriends, precisely as I would talk upon the stump on the subject. I tellyou that in that platform we did lay it down that we would, if we hadthe power, prohibit slavery from another inch of free territory underthis Government. I stand on that position to-day. I have arguedit probably to half a million people. They stand there, and havecommissioned and enjoined me to stand there forever; and, so help meGod, I will. I say to you frankly, gentlemen, that while we hold thisdoctrine, there is no Republican, there is no convention of Republicans, there is no paper that speaks for them, there is no orator that setsforth their doctrines, who ever pretends that they have any right inyour States to interfere with your peculiar institution; but, on theother hand, our authoritative platform repudiates the idea that we haveany right or any intention ever to invade your peculiar institution inyour own States. 

Now, what do you complain of? You are going to break up this Government;you are going to involve us in war and blood, from a mere suspicion thatwe shall justify that which we stand everywhere pledged not to do. Would you be justified in the eyes of the civilized world in takingso monstrous a position, and predicating it on a bare, groundlesssuspicion? We do not love slavery. Did you not know that before to-day, before this session commenced? Have you not a perfect confidence thatthe civilized world is against you on this subject of loving slaveryor believing that it is the best institution in the world? Why, sir, everything remains precisely as it was a year ago. No great catastrophehas occurred. There is no recent occasion to accuse us of anything. But all at once, when we meet here, a kind of gloom pervades the wholecommunity and the Senate Chamber. Gentlemen rise and tell us that theyare on the eve of breaking up this Government, that seven or eightStates are going to break off their connection with the Government, retire from the Union, and set up a hostile government of their own, andthey look imploringly over to us, and say to us: "You can prevent it; wecan do nothing to prevent it; but it all lies with you. " Well, sir, whatcan we do to prevent it? You have not even condescended to tell us whatyou want; but I think I see through the speeches that I have heard fromgentlemen on the other side. If we would give up the verdict of thepeople, and take your platform, I do not know but you would be satisfiedwith it. I think the Senator from Texas rather intimated, and I thinkthe Senator from Georgia more than intimated, that if we would take whatis exactly the Charleston platform on which Mr. Breckenridge was placed, and give up that on which we won our victory, you would grumblingly andhesitatingly be satisfied. 

Mr. Iverson. I would prefer that the Senator would look over my remarksbefore quoting them so confidently. I made no such statement as that. Idid not say that I would be satisfied with any such thing. I would notbe satisfied with it. 

Mr. Wade. I did not say that the Senator said so; but by construction Igathered that from his speech. I do not know that I was right in it. 

Mr. Iverson. The Senator is altogether wrong in his construction. 

Mr. Wade. Well, sir, I have now found what the Senator said on the otherpoint to which he called my attention a little while ago. Here it is:

"Nor do we suppose that there will be any overt acts upon the part ofMr. Lincoln. For one, I do not dread these overt acts. I do not proposeto wait for them. Why, sir, the power of this Federal Government couldbe so exercised against the institution of slavery in the SouthernStates, as that, without an overt act, the institution would not lastten years. We know that, sir; and seeing the storm which is approaching, although it may be seemingly in the distance, we are determined to seekour own safety and security before it shall burst upon us and overwhelmus with its fury, when we are not in a situation to defend ourselves. "

That is what the Senator said. 

Mr. Iverson. Yes; that is what I said. 

Mr. Wade. Well, then, you did not expect that Mr. Lincoln would commitany overt act against the Constitution--that was not it--you were notgoing to wait for that, but were going to proceed on your suppositionthat probably he might; and that is the sense of what I said before. 

Well, Mr. President, I have disavowed all intention on the part of theRepublican party to harm a hair of your heads anywhere. We hold tono doctrine that can possibly work you an inconvenience. We havebeen faithful to the execution of all the laws in which you have anyinterest, as stands confessed on this floor by your own party, and as isknown to me without their confessions. It is not, then, that Mr. Lincolnis expected to do any overt act by which you may be injured; you willnot wait for any; but anticipating that the Government may work aninjury, you say you will put an end to it, which means simply, thatyou intend either to rule or ruin this Government. That is what yourcomplaint comes to; nothing else. We do not like your institution, yousay. Well, we never liked it any better than we do now. You mightas well have dissolved the Union at any other period as now, on thataccount, for we stand in relation to it precisely as we have everstood; that is, repudiating it among ourselves as a matter of policyand morals, but nevertheless admitting that where it is out of ourjurisdiction, we have no hold upon it, and no designs upon it. 

Then, sir, as there is nothing in the platform on which Mr. Lincoln waselected of which you complain, I ask, is there anything in the characterof the President-elect of which you ought to complain? Has he not liveda blameless life? Did he ever transgress any law? Has he ever committedany violation of duty of which the most scrupulous can complain? Why, then, your suspicions that he will? I have shown that you have had thegovernment all the time until, by some misfortune or maladministration, you brought it to the very verge of destruction, and the wisdom of thepeople had discovered that it was high time that the scepter shoulddepart from you, and be placed in more competent hands; I say that thisbeing so, you have no constitutional right to complain; especially whenwe disavow any intention so to make use of the victory we have won as toinjure you at all. 

This brings me, sir, to the question of compromises. On the first day ofthis session, a Senator rose in his place and offered a resolution forthe appointment of a committee to inquire into the evils that existbetween the different sections, and to ascertain what can be done tosettle this great difficulty. That is the proposition substantially. Itell the Senator that I know of no difficulty; and as to compromises, Ihad supposed that we were all agreed that the day of compromises was atan end. The most solemn compromises we have ever made have beenviolated without a whereas. Since I have had a seat in this body, one ofconsiderable antiquity, that had stood for more than thirty years, wasswept away from your statute-books. When I stood here in the minorityarguing against it; when I asked you to withhold your hand; when I toldyou it was a sacred compromise between the sections, and that when itwas removed we should be brought face to face with all that sectionalbitterness that has intervened; when I told you that it was a sacredcompromise which no man should touch with his finger, what was yourreply? That it was a mere act of Congress--nothing more, nothingless--and that it could be swept away by the same majority that passedit. That was true in point of fact, and true in point of law; but itshowed the weakness of compromises. Now, sir, I only speak for myself;and I say that, in view of the manner in which other compromises havebeen heretofore treated, I should hardly think any two of the Democraticparty would look each other in the face and say "compromise" without asmile. (Laughter. ) A compromise to be brought about by act of Congress, after the experience we have had, is absolutely ridiculous. 

 * * * * *

I say, then, that so far as I am concerned, I will yield to nocompromise. I do not come here begging, either. It would be an indignityto the people that I represent if I were to stand here parleying as tothe rights of the party to which I belong. We have won our right to theChief Magistracy of this nation in the way that you have always won yourpredominance; and if you are as willing to do justice to others as toexact it from them, you would never raise an inquiry as to a committeefor compromises. Here I beg, barely for myself, to say one thing more. Many of you stand in an attitude hostile to this Government; that is tosay, you occupy an attitude where you threaten that, unless we do so andso, you will go out of this Union and destroy the Government. I sayto you for myself, that, in my private capacity, I never yielded toanything by way of threat, and in my public capacity I have no rightto yield to any such thing; and therefore I would not entertain aproposition for any compromise, for, in my judgment, this long, chroniccontroversy that has existed between us must be met, and met upon theprinciples of the Constitution and laws, and met now. I hope it may beadjusted to the satisfaction of all; and I know no other way to adjustit, except that way which is laid down by the Constitution of the UnitedStates. Whenever we go astray from that, we are sure to plunge ourselvesinto difficulties. The old Constitution of the United States, althoughcommonly and frequently in direct opposition to what I could wish, nevertheless, in my judgment, is the wisest and best constitutionthat ever yet organized a free Government; and by its provisions Iam willing, and intend, to stand or fall. Like the Senator fromMississippi, I ask nothing more. I ask no ingrafting upon it. I asknothing to be taken away from it. Under its provisions a nation hasgrown faster than any other in the history of the world ever did beforein prosperity, in power, and in all that makes a nation great andglorious. It has ministered to the advantages of this people; and nowI am unwilling to add or take away anything till I can see much clearerthan I can now that it wants either any addition or lopping off. 

 * * * * *

The Senator from Texas says--it is not exactly his language--we willforce you to an ignominious treaty up in Faneuil Hall. Well, sir, youmay. We know you are brave; we understand your prowess; we want no fightwith you; but, nevertheless, if you drive us to that necessity, wemust use all the powers of this Government to maintain it intact in itsintegrity. If we are overthrown, we but share the fate of a thousandother Governments that have been subverted. If you are the weakest thenyou must go to the wall; and that is all there is about it. That isthe condition in which we stand, provided a State sets herself up inopposition to the General Government. 

I say that is the way it seems to me, as a lawyer. I see no power in theConstitution to release a Senator from this position. Sir, if therewas any other, if there was an absolute right of secession in theConstitution of the United States when we stepped up there to take ouroath of office, why was there not an exception in that oath? Why didit not run "that we would support the Constitution of the United Statesunless our State shall secede before our term was out?" Sir, there isno such immunity. There is no way by which this can be done that I canconceive of, except it is standing upon the Constitution of the UnitedStates, demanding equal justice for all, and vindicating the old flagof the Union. We must maintain it, unless we are cloven down by superiorforce. 

Well, sir, it may happen that you can make your way out of the Union, and that, by levying war upon the Government, you may vindicate yourright to independence. If you should do so, I have a policy in my mind. No man would regret more than myself that any portion of the people ofthese United States should think themselves impelled, by grievances oranything else, to depart out of this Union, and raise a foreign flag anda hand against the General Government. If there was any just causeon God's earth that I could see that was within my reach of honorablerelease from any such pretended grievance, they should have it; butthey set forth none; I can see none. It is all a matter of prejudice, superinduced unfortunately, I believe, as I intimated before, morebecause you have listened to the enemies of the Republican party andwhat they said of us, while, from your intolerance, you have shut outall light as to what our real principles are. We have been called andbranded in the North and in the South and everywhere else, as John Brownmen, as men hostile to your institutions, as meditating an attack uponyour institutions in your own States--a thing that no Republican everdreamed of or ever thought of, but has protested against as often as thequestion has been up; but your people believe it. No doubt they believeit because of the terrible excitement and reign of terror that prevailsthere. No doubt they think so, but it arises from false information, or the want of information--that is all. Their prejudices have beenappealed to until they have become uncontrolled and uncontrollable. 

Well, sir, if it shall be so; if that "glorious Union, " as we call it, under which the Government has so long lived and prospered, is now aboutto come to a final end, as perhaps it may, I have been looking around tosee what policy we should adopt; and through that gloom which has beenmentioned on the other side, if you will have it so, I still see aglorious future for those who stand by the old flag of the nation. 

But, sir, I am for maintaining the Union of these States. I willsacrifice everything but honor to maintain it. That glorious old flag ofours, by any act of mine, shall never cease to wave over the integrityof this Union as it is. But if they will not have it so, in this new, renovated Government of which I have spoken, the 4th of July, with allits glorious memories, will never be repealed. The old flag of 1776will be in our hands, and shall float over this nation forever; and thiscapital, that some gentlemen said would be reserved for the Southernrepublic, shall still be the capital. It was laid out by Washington;it was consecrated by him; and the old flag that he vindicated in theRevolution shall still float from the Capitol. 

I say, sir, I stand by the Union of these States. Washington and hiscompatriots fought for that good old flag. It shall never be hauleddown, but shall be the glory of the Government to which I belong, aslong as my life shall continue. To maintain it, Washington and hiscompatriots fought for liberty and the rights of man. And here I willadd that my own father, although but a humble soldier, fought in thesame great cause, and went through hardships and privations sevenfoldworse than death, in order to bequeath it to his children. It is myinheritance. It was my protector in infancy, and the pride and gloryof my riper years; and, Mr. President, although it may be assailed bytraitors on every side, by the grace of God, under its shadow I willdie. 

JOHN JORDON CRITTENDEN, OF KENTUCKY. (BORN 1787, DIED 1863. )

ON THE CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE;

UNITED STATES SENATE, DECEMBER 18, 1860. 

I am gratified, Mr. President, to see in the various propositions whichhave been made, such a universal anxiety to save the country fromthe dangerous dissensions which now prevail; and I have, under a veryserious view and without the least ambitious feeling whatever connectedwith it, prepared a series of constitutional amendments, which I desireto offer to the Senate, hoping that they may form, in part at least, some basis for measures that may settle the controverted questions whichnow so much agitate our country. Certainly, sir, I do not proposenow any elaborate discussion of the subject. Before presenting theseresolutions, however, to the Senate, I desire to make a few remarksexplanatory of them, that the Senate may understand their general scope. 

The questions of an alarming character are those which have grown outof the controversy between the northern and southern sections of ourcountry in relation to the rights of the slave-holding States in theTerritories of the United States, and in relation to the rights ofthe citizens of the latter in their slaves. I have endeavored by theseresolutions to meet all these questions and causes of discontent, andby amendments to the Constitution of the United States, so that thesettlement, if we happily agree on any, may be permanent, and leave nocause for future controversy. These resolutions propose, then, in thefirst place, in substance, the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, extending the line throughout the Territories of the United Statesto the eastern border of California, recognizing slavery in all theterritory south of that line, and prohibiting slavery in all theterritory north of it; with a provision, however, that when any of thoseTerritories, north or south, are formed into States, they shall then beat liberty to exclude or admit slavery as they please; and that, in theone case or the other, it shall be no objection to their admission intothe Union. In this way, sir, I propose to settle the question, both asto territory and slavery, so far as it regards the Territories of theUnited States. 

I propose, sir, also, that the Constitution be so amended as to declarethat Congress shall have no power to abolish slavery in the Districtof Columbia so long as slavery exists in the States of Maryland andVirginia; and that they shall have no power to abolish slavery in any ofthe places under their special jurisdiction within the Southern States. 

These are the constitutional amendments which I propose, and embrace thewhole of them in regard to the questions of territory and slavery. Thereare other propositions in relation to grievances, and in relation tocontroversies, which I suppose are within the jurisdiction of Congress, and may be removed by the action of Congress. I propose, in regardto legislative action, that the fugitive slave law, as it is commonlycalled, shall be declared by the Senate to be a constitutional act, instrict pursuance of the Constitution. I propose to declare that ithas been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to beconstitutional, and that the Southern States are entitled to a faithfuland complete execution of that law, and that no amendment shall be madehereafter to it which will impair its efficiency. But, thinking that itwould not impair its efficiency, I have proposed amendments to it in twoparticulars. I have understood from gentlemen of the North that thereis objection to the provision giving a different fee where thecommissioner decides to deliver the slave to the claimant, from thatwhich is given where he decides to discharge the alleged slave; the lawdeclares that in the latter case he shall have but five dollars, whilein the other he shall have ten dollars--twice the amount in one casethan in the other. The reason for this was very obvious. In case hedelivers the servant to his claimant he is required to draw out alengthy certificate, stating the principle and substantial grounds onwhich his decision rests, and to return him either to the marshal or tothe claimant to remove him to the State from which he escaped. It wasfor that reason that a larger fee was given to the commissioner, wherehe had the largest service to perform. But, sir, the act being viewedunfavorably and with great prejudice, in a certain portion of ourcountry, this was regarded as very obnoxious, because it seemed to givean inducement to the commissioner to return the slave to the master, ashe thereby obtained the larger fee of ten dollars instead of the smallerone of five dollars. I have said, let the fee be the same in both cases. 

I have understood, furthermore, sir, that inasmuch as the fifth sectionof that law was worded somewhat vaguely, its general terms had admittedof the construction in the Northern States that all the citizens wererequired, upon the summons of the marshal, to go with him to hunt up, as they express it, and arrest the slave; and this is regarded asobnoxious. They have said, "in the Southern States you make no suchrequisition on the citizen"; nor do we, sir. The section, construedaccording to the intention of the framers of it, I suppose, onlyintended that the marshal should have the same right in the executionof process for the arrest of a slave that he has in all other cases ofprocess that he is required to execute--to call on the _posse comitatus_for assistance where he is resisted in the execution of his duty, orwhere, having executed his duty by the arrest, an attempt is made torescue the slave. I propose such an amendment as will obviate thisdifficulty and limit the right of the master and the duty of the citizento cases where, as in regard to all other process, persons may be calledupon to assist in resisting opposition to the execution of the laws. 

I have provided further, sir, that the amendment to the Constitutionwhich I here propose, and certain other provisions of the Constitutionitself, shall be unalterable, thereby forming a permanent andunchangeable basis for peace and tranquillity among the people. Amongthe provisions in the present Constitution, which I have by amendmentproposed to render unalterable, is that provision in the first articleof the Constitution which provides the rule for representation, including in the computation three-fifths of the slaves. That is tobe rendered unchangeable. Another is the provision for the delivery offugitive slaves. That is to be rendered unchangeable. 

And with these provisions, Mr. President, it seems to me we have a solidfoundation upon which we may rest our hopes for the restoration of peaceand good-will among all the States of this Union, and all the people. I propose, sir, to enter into no particular discussion. I have explainedthe general scope and object of my proposition. I have provided further, which I ought to mention, that, there having been some difficultiesexperienced in the courts of the United States in the South in carryinginto execution the laws prohibiting the African slave trade, alladditions and amendments which may be necessary to those laws to renderthem effectual should be immediately adopted by Congress, and especiallythe provision of those laws which prohibit the importation of Africanslaves into the United States. I have further provided it as arecommendation to all the States of this Union, that whereas laws havebeen passed of an unconstitutional character, (and all laws are ofthat character which either conflict with the constitutional actsof Congress, or which in their operation hinder or delay the properexecution of the acts of Congress, ) which laws are null and void, andyet, though null and void, they have been the source of mischief anddiscontent in the country, under the extraordinary circumstances inwhich we are placed; I have supposed that it would not be improper orunbecoming in Congress to recommend to the States, both North and South, the repeal of all such acts of theirs as were intended to control, orintended to obstruct the operation of the acts of Congress, or which intheir operation and in their application have been made use of for thepurpose of such hindrance and opposition, and that they will repealthese laws or make such explanations or corrections of them as toprevent their being used for any such mischievous purpose. 

I have endeavored to look with impartiality from one end of our countryto the other; I have endeavored to search up what appeared to me to bethe causes of discontent pervading the land; and, as far as I am capableof doing so, I have endeavored to propose a remedy for them. I am farfrom believing that, in the shape in which I present these measures, they will meet with the acceptance of the Senate. It will besufficiently gratifying if, with all the amendments that the superiorknowledge of the Senate may make to them, they shall, to any effectualextent, quiet the country. 

Mr. President, great dangers surround us. The Union of these Statesis dear to the people of the United States. The long experience of itsblessings, the mighty hopes of the future, have made it dear to thehearts of the American people. Whatever politicians may say, whateverof dissension may, in the heat of party politics, be created amongour people, when you come down to the question of the existence of theConstitution, that is a question beyond all politics; that is a questionof life and death. The Constitution and the Union are the life of thisgreat people--yes, sir, the life of life. We all desire to preservethem, North and South; that is the universal desire. But some of theSouthern States, smarting under what they conceive to be aggressions oftheir Northern brethren and of the Northern States, are not contented tocontinue this Union, and are taking steps, formidable steps, towards adissolution of the Union, and towards the anarchy and the bloodshed, Ifear, that are to follow. I say, sir, we are in the presence of greatevents. We must elevate ourselves to the level of the great occasion. Noparty warfare about mere party questions or party measures ought nowto engage our attention. They are left behind; they are as dust in thebalance. The life, the existence of our country, of our Union, isthe mighty question; and we must elevate ourselves to all thoseconsiderations which belong to this high subject. 

I hope, therefore, gentlemen will be disposed to bring the sincerestspirit of conciliation, the sincerest spirit and desire to adjust allthese difficulties, and to think nothing of any little concessions ofopinions that they may make, if thereby the Constitution and the countrycan be preserved. 

The great difficulty here, sir--I know it; I recognize it as thedifficult question, particularly with the gentlemen from the North--isthe admission of this line of division for the territory, and therecognition of slavery on the one side, and the prohibition of it on theother. The recognition of slavery on the southern side of that line isthe great difficulty, the great question with them. Now, I beseech youto think, and you, Mr. President, and all, to think whether, for sucha comparative trifle as that, the Union of this country is to besacrificed. Have we realized to ourselves the momentous consequences ofsuch an event? When has the world seen such an event? This is a mightyempire. Its existence spreads its influence throughout the civilizedworld. Its overthrow will be the greatest shock that civilization andfree government have received; more extensive in its consequences; morefatal to mankind and to the great principles upon which the liberty ofmankind depends, than the French revolution with all its blood, and withall its war and violence. And all for what? Upon questions concerningthis line of division between slavery and freedom? Why, Mr. President, suppose this day all the Southern States, being refused this right;being refused this partition; being denied this privilege, were toseparate from the Northern States, and do it peacefully, and then wereto come to you peacefully and say, "let there be no war between us;let us divide fairly the Territories of the United States"; could thenorthern section of the country refuse so just a demand? What would youthen give them? What would be the fair proportion? If you allowed themtheir fair relative proportion, would you not give them as much as isnow proposed to be assigned on the southern side of that line, and wouldthey not be at liberty to carry their slaves there, if they pleased? Youwould give them the whole of that; and then what would be its fate?

Is it upon the general principle of humanity, then, that you (addressingRepublican Senators) wish to put an end to slavery, or is it to be urgedby you as a mere topic and point of party controversy to sustain partypower? Surely I give you credit for looking at it upon broader andmore generous principles. Then, in the worst event, after you haveencountered disunion, that greatest of all political calamities to thepeople of this country, and the disunionists come, the separating Statescome, and demand or take their portion of the Territories, they cantake, and will be entitled to take, all that will now lie on thesouthern side of the line which I have proposed. Then they will havea right to permit slavery to exist in it; and what do you gain for thecause of anti-slavery? Nothing whatever. Suppose you should refuse theirdemand, and claim the whole for yourselves, that would be a flagrantinjustice which you would not be willing that I should suppose wouldoccur. But if you did, what would be the consequence? A State north anda State south, and all the States, north and south, would be attemptingto grasp at and seize this territory, and to get all of it that theycould. That would be the struggle, and you would have war; and notonly disunion, but all these fatal consequences would follow from yourrefusal now to permit slavery to exist, to recognize it as existing, on the southern side of the proposed line, while you give to the peoplethere the right to exclude it when they come to form a State government, if such should be their will and pleasure. 

Now, gentlemen, in view of this subject, in view of the mightyconsequences, in view of the great events which are present before you, and of the mighty consequences which are just now to take effect, isit not better to settle the question by a division upon the line of theMissouri Compromise? For thirty years we lived quietly and peacefullyunder it. Our people, North and South, were accustomed to look at itas a proper and just line. Can we not do so again? We did it then topreserve the peace of the country. Now you see this Union in the mostimminent danger. I declare to you that it is my solemn conviction thatunless something be done, and something equivalent to this proposition, we shall be a separated and divided people in six months from this time. That is my firm conviction. There is no man here who deplores it morethan I do; but it is my sad and melancholy conviction that that will bethe consequence. I wish you to realize fully the danger. I wish youto realize fully the consequences which are to follow. You can giveincreased stability to this Union; you can give it an existence, aglorious existence, for great and glorious centuries to come, by nowsetting it upon a permanent basis, recognizing what the South considersas its rights; and this is the greatest of them all; it is that youshould divide the territory by this line, and allow the people south ofit to have slavery when they are admitted into the Union as States, andto have it during the existence of the territorial government. That isall. Is it not the cheapest price at which such a blessing as this Unionwas ever purchased? You think, perhaps, or some of you, that there is nodanger, that it will but thunder and pass away. Do not entertain such afatal delusion. I tell you it is not so. I tell you that as sure as westand here disunion will progress. I fear it may swallow up even oldKentucky in its vortex--as true a State to the Union as yet exists inthe whole Confederacy--unless something be done; but that you will havedisunion, that anarchy and war will follow it, that all this will takeplace in six months, I believe as confidently as I believe in yourpresence. I want to satisfy you of the fact. 

 * * * * *

The present exasperation; the present feeling of disunion, is theresult of a long-continued controversy on the subject of slavery andof territory. I shall not attempt to trace that controversy; it isunnecessary to the occasion, and might be harmful. In relation to suchcontroversies, I will say, though, that all the wrong is never on oneside, or all the right on the other. Right and wrong, in this world, and in all such controversies, are mingled together. I forbear now anydiscussion or any reference to the right or wrong of the controversy, the mere party controversy; but in the progress of party, we now cometo a point where party ceases to deserve consideration, and thepreservation of the Union demands our highest and our greatestexertions. To preserve the Constitution of the country is the highestduty of the Senate, the highest duty of Congress--to preserve it and toperpetuate it, that we may hand down the glories which we have receivedto our children and to our posterity, and to generations far beyond us. We are, Senators, in positions where history is to take notice of thecourse we pursue. 

History is to record us. Is it to record that when the destruction ofthe Union was imminent; when we saw it tottering to its fall; when wesaw brothers arming their hands for hostility with one another, we stoodquarrelling about points of party politics; about questions which weattempted to sanctify and to consecrate by appealing to our conscienceas the source of them? Are we to allow such fearful catastrophes tooccur while we stand trifling away our time? While we stand thus, showing our inferiority to the great and mighty dead, showing ourinferiority to the high positions which we occupy, the country may bedestroyed and ruined; and to the amazement of all the world, the greatRepublic may fall prostrate and in ruins, carrying with it the very hopeof that liberty which we have heretofore enjoyed; carrying with it, inplace of the peace we have enjoyed, nothing but revolution and havoc andanarchy. Shall it be said that we have allowed all these evils to comeupon our country, while we were engaged in the petty and small disputesand debates to which I have referred? Can it be that our name is to restin history with this everlasting stigma and blot upon it?

Sir, I wish to God it was in my power to preserve this Union byrenouncing or agreeing to give up every conscientious and other opinion. I might not be able to discard it from my mind; I am under no obligationto do that. I may retain the opinion, but if I can do so great a good asto preserve my country and give it peace, and its institutions and itsUnion stability, I will forego any action upon my opinions. Well, now, my friends (addressing the Republican Senators), that is all that isasked of you. Consider it well, and I do not distrust the result. Asto the rest of this body, the gentlemen from the South, I would say tothem, can you ask more than this? Are you bent on revolution, bent ondisunion. God forbid it. I cannot believe that such madness possessesthe American people. This gives reasonable satisfaction. I can speakwith confidence only of my own State. Old Kentucky will be satisfiedwith it, and she will stand by the Union and die by the Union if thissatisfaction be given. Nothing shall seduce her. The clamor of norevolution, the seductions and temptations of no revolution, willtempt her to move one step. She has stood always by the side of theConstitution; she has always been devoted to it, and is this day. Giveher this satisfaction, and I believe all the States of the South thatare not desirous of disunion as a better thing than the Union and theConstitution, will be satisfied and will adhere to the Union, andwe shall go on again in our great career of national prosperity andnational glory. 

But, sir, it is not necessary for me to speak to you of the consequencesthat will follow disunion. Who of us is not proud of the greatness wehave achieved? Disunion and separation destroy that greatness. Oncedisunited, we are no longer great. The nations of the earth whohave looked upon you as a formidable Power, and rising to untold andimmeasurable greatness in the future, will scoff at you. Your flag, thatnow claims the respect of the world, that protects American propertyin every port and harbor of the world, that protects the rights ofyour citizens everywhere, what will become of it? What becomes of itsglorious influence? It is gone; and with it the protection of Americancitizens and property. To say nothing of the national honor whichit displayed to all the world, the protection of your rights, theprotection of your property abroad is gone with that national flag, and we are hereafter to conjure and contrive different flags for ourdifferent republics according to the feverish fancies of revolutionarypatriots and disturbers of the peace of the world. No, sir; I want tofollow no such flag. I want to preserve the union of my country. We haveit in our power to do so, and we are responsible if we do not do it. 

I do not despair of the Republic. When I see before me Senators of somuch intelligence and so much patriotism, who have been so honored bytheir country, sent here as the guardians of that very union which isnow in question, sent here as the guardians of our national rights, andas guardians of that national flag, I cannot despair; I cannot despond. I cannot but believe that they will find some means of reconciling andadjusting the rights of all parties, by concessions, if necessary, soas to preserve and give more stability to the country and to itsinstitutions. 

ROBERT TOOMBS, OF GEORGIA. (BORN 1810--DIED 1885. )

ON SECESSION; SECESSIONIST OPINION;

IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, JANUARY 7, 1861. 

MR. PRESIDENT AND SENATORS:

The success of the Abolitionists and their allies, under the name of theRepublican party, has produced its logical results already. They havefor long years been sowing dragons' teeth, and have finally got a cropof armed men. The Union, sir, is dissolved. That is an accomplished factin the path of this discussion that men may as well heed. One of yourconfederates has already, wisely, bravely, boldly, confronted publicdanger, and she is only ahead of many of her sisters because of hergreater facility for speedy action. The greater majority of those sisterStates, under like circumstances, consider her cause as their cause; andI charge you in their name to-day, "Touch not Saguntum. " It is not onlytheir cause, but it is a cause which receives the sympathy and willreceive the support of tens and hundreds of thousands of honestpatriotic men in the non-slave-holding States, who have hither-tomaintained constitutional rights, and who respect their oaths, abide bycompacts, and love justice. And while this Congress, this Senate, andthis House of Representatives, are debating the constitutionality andthe expediency of seceding from the Union, and while the perfidiousauthors of this mischief are showering down denunciations upon a largeportion of the patriotic men of this country, those brave men are coollyand calmly voting what you call revolution--ay, sir, doing better thanthat: arming to defend it. They appealed to the Constitution, they appealed to justice, they appealed to fraternity, until theConstitution, justice, and fraternity were no longer listened to in thelegislative halls of their country, and then, sir, they prepared for thearbitrament of the sword; and now you see the glittering bayonet, andyou hear the tramp of armed men from your Capitol to the Rio Grande. Itis a sight that gladdens the eyes and cheers the heart of other millionsready to second them. 

Inasmuch, sir, as I have labored earnestly, honestly, sincerely, withthese men to avert this necessity so long as I deemed it possible, andinasmuch as I heartily approve their present conduct of resistance, Ideem it my duty to state their case to the Senate, to the country, andto the civilized world. 

Senators, my countrymen have demanded no new government; they havedemanded no new constitution. Look to their records at home and herefrom the beginning of this national strife until its consummation inthe disruption of the empire, and they have not demanded a single thingexcept that you shall abide by the Constitution of the United States;that constitutional rights shall be respected, and that justice shall bedone. Sirs, they have stood by your Constitution; they have stood byall its requirements; they have performed all its duties unselfishly, uncalculatingly, disinterestedly, until a party sprang up in thiscountry which endangered their social system--a party which theyarraign, and which they charge before the American people and allmankind, with having made proclamation of outlawry against four thousandmillions of their property in the Territories of the United States; withhaving put them under the ban of the empire in all the States in whichtheir institutions exist, outside the protection of Federal laws; withhaving aided and abetted insurrection from within and invasion fromwithout, with the view of subverting those institutions, and desolatingtheir homes and their firesides. For these causes they have taken uparms. I shall proceed to vindicate the justice of their demands, thepatriotism of their conduct. I will show the injustice which they sufferand the rightfulness of their resistance. 

I shall not spend much time on the question that seems to give myhonorable friend (Mr. Crittenden) so much concern--the constitutionalright of a State to secede from this Union. Perhaps he will find outafter a while that it is a fact accomplished. You have got it inthe South pretty much both ways. South Carolina has given it to youregularly, according to the approved plan. You are getting it just belowthere (in Georgia), I believe, irregularly, outside of the law, withoutregular action. You can take it either way. You will find armed men todefend both. I have stated that the discontented States of thisUnion have demanded nothing but clear, distinct, unequivocal, well-acknowledged constitutional rights; rights affirmed by the highestjudicial tribunals of their country; rights older than the Constitution;rights which are planted upon the immutable principles of naturaljustice; rights which have been affirmed by the good and the wise of allcountries, and of all centuries. We demand no power to injure any man. We demand no right to injure our confederate States. We demand no rightto interfere with their institutions, either by word or deed. We haveno right to disturb their peace, their tranquillity, their security. Wehave demanded of them simply, solely--nothing else--to give us equality, security, and tranquillity. Give us these, and peace restores itself. Refuse them, and take what you can get. 

I will now read my own demands, acting under my own convictions, and theuniversal judgment of my countrymen. They are considered the demands ofan extremist. To hold to a constitutional right now makes one consideredas an extremist--I believe that is the appellation these traitors andvillains, North and South, employ. I accept their reproach rather thantheir principles. Accepting their designation of treason and rebellion, there stands before them as good a traitor, and as good a rebel as everdescended from revolutionary loins. 

What do the rebels demand? First, "that the people of the United Statesshall have an equal right to emigrate and settle in the present or anyfuture acquired territories, with whatever property they may possess(including slaves), and be securely protected in its peaceable enjoymentuntil such Territory may be admitted as a State into the Union, with orwithout slavery, as she may determine, on an equality with all existingStates. " That is our territorial demand. We have fought for thisTerritory when blood was its price. We have paid for it when goldwas its price. We have not proposed to exclude you, though you havecontributed very little of blood or money. I refer especially to NewEngland. We demand only to go into those Territories upon terms ofequality with you, as equals in this great Confederacy, to enjoy thecommon property of the whole Union, and receive the protection of thecommon government, until the Territory is capable of coming into theUnion as a sovereign State, when it may fix its own institutions to suititself. 

The second proposition is, "that property in slaves shall be entitled tothe same protection from the Government of the United States, in all ofits departments, everywhere, which the Constitution confers the powerupon it to extend to any other property, provided nothing hereincontained shall be construed to limit or restrain the right nowbelonging to every State to prohibit, abolish, or establish and protectslavery within its limits. " We demand of the common government to useits granted powers to protect our property as well as yours. For thisprotection we pay as much as you do. This very property is subject totaxation. It has been taxed by you and sold by you for taxes. The titleto thousands and tens of thousands of slaves is derived from the UnitedStates. We claim that the Government, while the Constitution recognizesour property for the purposes of taxation, shall give it the sameprotection that it gives yours. Ought it not to be so? You say no. Everyone of you upon the committee said no. Your Senators say no. Your Houseof Representatives says no. Throughout the length and breadth of yourconspiracy against the Constitution, there is but one shout of no! Thisrecognition of this right is the price of my allegiance. Withhold it, and you do not get my obedience. This is the philosophy of the armedmen who have sprung up in this country. Do you ask me to support agovernment that will tax my property; that will plunder me; thatwill demand my blood, and will not protect me? I would rather see thepopulation of my native State laid six feet beneath her sod than theyshould support for one hour such a government. Protection is the priceof obedience everywhere, in all countries. It is the only thing thatmakes government respectable. Deny it and you cannot have free subjectsor citizens; you may have slaves. 

We demand, in the next place, "that persons committing crimes againstslave property in one State, and fleeing to another, shall be deliveredup in the same manner as persons committing crimes against otherproperty, and that the laws of the State from which such persons fleeshall be the test of criminality. " That is another one of the demands ofan extremist and rebel. The Constitution of the United States, articlefour, section two, says:

"A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, whoshall flee from justice and be found in another State, shall, on demandof the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be deliveredup to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime. " But thenon-slave-holding States, treacherous to their oaths and compacts, havesteadily refused, if the criminal only stole a negro, and that negro wasa slave, to deliver him up. It was refused twice on the requisition ofmy own State as long as twenty-two years ago. It was refused by Kent andby Fairfield, Governors of Maine, and representing, I believe, eachof the then Federal parties. We appealed then to fraternity, but wesubmitted; and this constitutional right has been practically a deadletter from that day to this. The next case came up between us and theState of New York, when the present senior Senator (Mr. Seward) wasthe Governor of that State; and he refused it. Why? He said it was notagainst the laws of New York to steal a negro, and therefore he wouldnot comply with the demand. He made a similar refusal to Virginia. Yetthese are our confederates; these are our sister States! There isthe bargain; there is the compact. You have sworn to it. Both theseGovernors swore to it. The Senator from New York swore to it. TheGovernor of Ohio swore to it when he was inaugurated. You cannot bindthem by oaths. 

Yet they talk to us of treason; and I suppose they expect to whipfreemen into loving such brethren! They will have a good time in doingit!

It is natural we should want this provision of the Constitution carriedout. The Constitution says slaves are property; the Supreme Court saysso; the Constitution says so. The theft of slaves is a crime; they area subject-matter of felonious asportation. By the text and letter of theConstitution you agreed to give them up. You have sworn to do it, andyou have broken your oaths. Of course, those who have done so look outfor pretexts. Nobody expected them do otherwise. I do not think Iever saw a perjurer, however bald and naked, who could not invent somepretext to palliate his crime, or who could not, for fifteen shillings, hire an Old Bailey lawyer to invent some for him. Yet this requirementof the Constitution is another one of the extreme demands of anextremist and a rebel. 

The next stipulation is that fugitive slaves shall be surrendered underthe provisions of the fugitive-slave act of 1850, without being entitledeither to a writ of _habeas corpus_, or trial by jury, or other similarobstructions of legislation, in the State to which he may flee. Here isthe Constitution:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the lawsthereof, escaping into an-other, shall, in consequence of any law orregulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shallbe delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor maybe due. "

This language is plain, and everybody understood it the same way for thefirst forty years of your government. In 1793, in Washington's time, anact was passed to carry out this provision. It was adopted unanimouslyin the Senate of the United States, and nearly so in the House ofRepresentatives. Nobody then had invented pretexts to show that theConstitution did not mean a negro slave. It was clear; it was plain. Not only the Federal courts, but all the local courts in all the States, decide that this was a constitutional obligation. How is it now? TheNorth sought to evade it; following the instincts of their naturalcharacter, they commenced with the fraudulent fiction that fugitiveswere entitled to _habeas corpus_, entitled to trial by jury in the Stateto which they fled. They pretended to believe that our fugitive slaveswere entitled to more rights than their white citizens; perhaps theywere right, they know one another better than I do. You may chargea white man with treason, or felony, or other crime, and you do notrequire any trial by jury before he is given up; there is nothing todetermine but that he is legally charged with a crime and that hefled, and then he is to be delivered up upon demand. White peopleare delivered up every day in this way; but not slaves. Slaves, blackpeople, you say, are entitled to trial by jury; and in this way schemeshave been invented to defeat your plain constitutional obligations. * * *

The next demand made on behalf of the South is, "that Congress shallpass effective laws for the punishment of all persons in any of theStates who shall in any manner aid and abet invasion or insurrection inany other State, or commit any other act against the laws of nations, tending to disturb the tranquillity of the people or government of anyother State. " That is a very plain principle. The Constitution of theUnited States now requires, and gives Congress express power, todefine and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the laws of nations. When the honorable anddistinguished Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas) last year introduceda bill for the purpose of punishing people thus offending under thatclause of the Constitution, Mr. Lincoln, in his speech at New York, which I have before me, declared that it was a "sedition bill "; hispress and party hooted at it. So far from recognizing the bill asintended to carry out the Constitution of the United States, it receivedtheir jeers and jibes. The Black Republicans of Massachusetts electedthe admirer and eulogist of John Brown's courage as their governor, andwe may suppose he will throw no impediments in the way of John Brown'ssuccessors. The epithet applied to the bill of the Senator from Illinoisis quoted from a deliberate speech delivered by Lincoln in New York, for which, it was stated in the journals, according to some resolutionpassed by an association of his own party, he was paid a couple ofhundred dollars. The speech should therefore have been deliberate. Lincoln denounced that bill. He places the stamp of his condemnationupon a measure intended to promote the peace and security of confederateStates. He is, therefore, an enemy of the human race, and deserves theexecration of all mankind. 

We demand these five propositions. Are they not right? Are they notjust? Take them in detail, and show that they are not warranted by theConstitution, by the safety of our people, by the principles of eternaljustice. We will pause and consider them; but mark me, we will not letyou decide the question for us. * * *

Senators, the Constitution is a compact. It contains all our obligationsand the duties of the Federal Government. I am content and have everbeen content to sustain it. While I doubt its perfection, while I donot believe it was a good compact, and while I never saw the day that Iwould have voted for it as a proposition _de novo_, yet I am bound to itby oath and by that common prudence which would induce men to abide byestablished forms rather than to rush into unknown dangers. I have givento it, and intend to give to it, unfaltering support and allegiance, but I choose to put that allegiance on the true ground, not on the falseidea that anybody's blood was shed for it. I say that the Constitutionis the whole compact. All the obligations, all the chains that fetterthe limbs of my people, are nominated in the bond, and they wiselyexcluded any conclusion against them, by declaring that "the powers notgranted by the Constitution to the United States, or forbidden by it tothe States, belonged to the States respectively or the people. " Now Iwill try it by that standard; I will subject it to that test. The lawof nature, the law of justice, would say--and it is so expounded by thepublicists--that equal rights in the common property shall be enjoyed. Even in a monarchy the king cannot prevent the subjects from enjoyingequality in the disposition of the public property. Even in a despoticgovernment this principle is recognized. It was the blood and themoney of the whole people (says the learned Grotius, and say all thepublicists) which acquired the public property, and therefore it isnot the property of the sovereign. This right of equality being, then, according to justice and natural equity, a right belonging to allStates, when did we give it up? You say Congress has a right to passrules and regulations concerning the Territory and other property of theUnited States. Very well. Does that exclude those whose blood and moneypaid for it? Does "dispose of" mean to rob the rightful owners? You mustshow a better title than that, or a better sword than we have. 

But, you say, try the right. I agree to it. But how? By our judgment?No, not until the last resort. What then; by yours? No, not until thesame time. How then try it? The South has always said, by the SupremeCourt. But that is in our favor, and Lincoln says he "will not stand thatjudgment. " Then each must judge for himself of the mode and mannerof redress. But you deny us that privilege, and finally reduce us toaccepting your judgment. The Senator from Kentucky comes to your aid, and says he can find no constitutional right of secession. Perhaps not;but the Constitution is not the place to look for State rights. If thatright belongs to independent States, and they did not cede it to theFederal Government, it is reserved to the States, or to the people. Askyour new commentator where he gets the right to judge for us. Is it inthe bond?

The Northern doctrine was, many years ago, that the Supreme Court wasthe judge. That was their doctrine in 1800. They denounced Madisonfor the report of 1799, on the Virginia resolutions; they denouncedJefferson for framing the Kentucky resolutions, because they werepresumed to impugn the decisions of the Supreme Court of the UnitedStates; and they declared that that court was made, by the Constitution, the ultimate and supreme arbiter. That was the universal judgment--thedeclaration of every free State in this Union, in answer to the Virginiaresolutions of 1798, or of all who did answer, even including the Stateof Delaware, then under Federal control. 

The Supreme Court have decided that, by the Constitution, we have aright to go to the Territories and be protected there with our property. You say, we cannot decide the compact for ourselves. Well, can theSupreme Court decide it for us? Mr. Lincoln says he does not care whatthe Supreme Court decides, he will turn us out anyhow. He says this inhis debate with the honorable member from Illinois [Mr. Douglas]. I haveit before me. He said he would vote against the decision of the SupremeCourt. Then you did not accept that arbiter. You will not take myconstruction; you will not take the Supreme Court as an arbiter; youwill not take the practice of the government; you will not take thetreaties under Jefferson and Madison; you will not take the opinion ofMadison upon the very question of prohibition in 1820. What, then, willyou take? You will take nothing but your own judgment; that is, you willnot only judge for yourselves, not only discard the court, discard ourconstruction, discard the practice of the government, but you will driveus out, simply because you will it. Come and do it! You have sapped thefoundations of society; you have destroyed almost all hope of peace. Ina compact where there is no common arbiter, where the parties finallydecide for themselves, the sword alone at last becomes the real, if notthe constitutional, arbiter. Your party says that you will not take thedecision of the Supreme Court. You said so at Chicago; you said so incommittee; every man of you in both Houses says so. What are you goingto do? You say we shall submit to your construction. We shall do it, if you can make us; but not otherwise, or in any other manner. That issettled. You may call it secession, or you may call it revolution; butthere is a big fact standing before you, ready to oppose you--that factis, freemen with arms in their hands. The cry of the Union will notdisperse them; we have passed that point; they demand equal rights; youhad better heed the demand. * * *

SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX, OF OHIO. (BORN, 1824-DIED, 1889. )

ON SECESSION; DOUGLAS DEMOCRATIC OPINION;

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 14, 1861. 

MR. CHAIRMAN:

I speak from and for the capital of the greatest of the States of thegreat West. That potential section is beginning to be appalled at thecolossal strides of revolution. It has immense interests at stake inthis Union, as well from its position as its power and patriotism. Wehave had infidelity to the Union before, but never in such a fearfulshape. We had it in the East during the late war with England. Even solate as the admission of Texas, Massachusetts resolved herself out ofthe Union. That resolution has never been repealed, and one would infer, from much of her conduct, that she did not regard herself as bound byour covenant. Since 1856, in the North, we have had infidelity to theUnion, more insidious infractions of the Constitution than byopen rebellion. Now, sir, as a consequence, in part, of these veryinfractions, we have rebellion itself, open and daring, in terrificproportions, with dangers so formidable as to seem almost remediless. ** *'

I would not exaggerate the fearful consequences of dissolution. It isthe breaking up of a federative Union, but it is not like the breakingup of society. It is not anarchy. A link may fall from the chain, andthe link may still be perfect, though the chain have lost its length andits strength. In the uniformity of commercial regulations, in mattersof war and peace, postal arrangements, foreign relations, coinage, copyrights, tariff, and other Federal and national affairs, this greatgovernment may be broken; but in most of the essential liberties andrights which government is the agent to establish and protect, theseceding State has no revolution, and the remaining States can havenone. This arises from that refinement of our polity which makes theStates the basis of our instituted labor. Greece was broken by thePersian power, but her municipal institutions remained. Hungary losther national crown, but her home institutions remain. South Carolina maypreserve her constituted domestic authority, but she must be content toglimmer obscurely remote rather than shine and revolve in a constellatedband. She even goes out by the ordinance of a so-called sovereignconvention, content to lose by her isolation that youthful, vehement, exultant, progressive life, which is our NATIONALITY! She foregoesthe hopes, the boasts, the flag, the music, all the emotions, all thetraits, and all the energies which, when combined in our United States, have won our victories in war and our miracles of national advancement. Her Governor, Colonel Pickens, in his inaugural, regretfully "looksback upon the inheritance South Carolina had in the common gloriesand triumphant power of this wonderful confederacy, and fails to findlanguage to express the feelings of the human heart as he turns from thecontemplation. " The ties of brotherhood, interest, lineage, and historyare all to be severed. No longer are we to salute a South Carolinianwith the "_idem sententiam de republica_, " which makes unity andnationality. What a prestige and glory are here dimmed and lost in thecontaminated reason of man!

Can we realize it? Is it a masquerade, to last for a night, or a realityto be dealt with, with the world's rough passionate handling? It is sadand bad enough; but let us not over-tax our anxieties about it as yet. It is not the sanguinary regime of the French revolution; not the ruleof assignats and guillotine; not the cry of "_Vivent les Rouges! A mortles gendarmes!_" but as yet, I hope I may say, the peaceful attemptto withdraw from the burdens and benefits of the Republic. Thus it isunlike every other revolution. Still it is revolution. It may, accordingas it is managed, involve consequences more terrific than any revolutionsince government began. 

If the Federal Government is to be maintained, its strength must notbe frittered away by conceding the theory of secession. To concedesecession as a right, is to make its pathway one of roses and not ofthorns. I would not make its pathway so easy. If the government has anystrength for its own preservation, the people demand it should be putforth in its civil and moral forces. Dealing, however, with a sensitivepublic sentiment, in which this strength reposes, it must not be rudelyexercised. It should be the iron hand in the glove of velvet. Firmnessshould be allied with kindness. Power should assert its own prerogative, but in the name of law and love. If these elements are not thus blendedin our policy, as the Executive proposes, our government will proveeither a garment of shreds or a coat of mail. We want neither. * * *

Before we enter upon a career of force, let us exhaust every effortat peace. Let us seek to excite love in others by the signs of love inourselves. Let there be no needless provocation and strife. Let everyreasonable attempt at compromise be considered. Otherwise we have aterrible alternative. War, in this age and in this country, sir, shouldbe the _ultima ratio_. Indeed, it may well be questioned whether thereis any reason in it for war. What a war! Endless in its hate, withouttruce and without mercy. If it ended ever, it would only be after afearful struggle; and then with a heritage of hate which would foreverforbid harmony. * * *

Small States and great States; new States and old States; slave Statesand free States; Atlantic States and Pacific States; gold and silverStates; iron and copper States; grain States and lumber States; riverStates and lake States;--all having varied interests and advantages, would seek superiority in armed strength. Pride, animosity, and glorywould inspire every movement. God shield our country from such afulfilment of the prophecy of the revered founders of the Union! Ourstruggle would be no short, sharp struggle. Law, and even religionherself, would become false to their divine purpose. Their voice wouldno longer be the voice of God, but of his enemy. Poverty, ignorance, oppression, and its hand-maid, cowardice, breaking out into mercilesscruelty; slaves false; freemen slaves, and society itself poisonedat the cradle and dishonored at the grave;--its life, now so fullof blessings, would be gone with the life of a fraternal and unitedStatehood. What sacrifice is too great to prevent such a calamity? Issuch a picture overdrawn? Already its outlines appear. What means theinaugural of Governor Pickens, when he says: "From the position we mayoccupy toward the Northern States, as well as from our own internalstructure of society, the government may, from necessity, becomestrongly military in its organization"? What mean the minute-menof Governor Wise? What the Southern boast that they have a rifle orshot-gun to each family?

What means the Pittsburgh mob? What this alacrity to save Forts Moultrieand Pinckney? What means the boast of the Southern men of being thebest-armed people in the world, not counting the two hundred thousandstand of United States arms stored in Southern arsenals? Already Georgiahas her arsenals, with eighty thousand muskets. What mean these lavishgrants of money by Southern Legislatures to buy more arms? What meanthese rumors of arms and force on the Mississippi? These few facts havealready verified the prophecy of Madison as to a disunited Republic. 

Mr. Speaker, he alone is just to his country, he alone has a mindunwarped by section, and a memory unparalyzed by fear, who warns againstprecipitancy. He who could hurry this nation to the rash wager ofbattle is not fit to hold the seat of legislation. What can justify thebreaking up of our institutions into belligerent fractions? Better thismarble Capitol were levelled to the dust; better were this Congressstruck dead in its deliberations; better an immolation of every ambitionand passion which here have met to shake the foundations of societythan the hazard of these consequences! * * * I appeal to Southern men, whocontemplate a step so fraught with hazard and strife, to pause. Cloudsare about us! There is lightning in their frown! Cannot we direct itharmlessly to the earth? The morning and evening prayer of the people Ispeak for in such weakness rises in strength to that Supreme Rulerwho, in noticing the fall of a sparrow, cannot disregard the fall of anation, that our States may continue to be as they have been--one; onein the unreserve of a mingled national being; one as the thought of Godis one!

JEFFERSON DAVIS, OF MISSISSIPPI. (BORN 1808, DIED 1889. )

ON WITHDRAWAL FROM THE UNION; SECESSIONIST OPINION;

UNITED STATES SENATE, JANUARY 21, 1861. 

I rise, Mr. President, for the purpose of announcing to the Senate thatI have satisfactory evidence that the State of Mississippi, by a solemnordinance of her people in convention assembled, has declared herseparation from the United States. Under these circumstances, of coursemy functions are terminated here. It has seemed to me proper, however, that I should appear in the Senate to announce that fact to myassociates, and I will say but very little more. The occasion doesnot invite me to go into argument, and my physical condition would notpermit me to do so if it were otherwise; and yet it seems to becomeme to say something on the part of the State I here represent, on anoccasion so solemn as this. 

It is known to Senators who have served with me here, that I have formany years advocated, as an essential attribute of State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union. Therefore, if I had notbelieved there was justifiable cause; if I had thought that Mississippiwas acting without sufficient provocation, or without an existingnecessity, I should still, under my theory of the Government, because ofmy allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound byher action. I, however, may be permitted to say that I do think that shehas justifiable cause, and I approve of her act. I conferred with herpeople before that act was taken, counselled them then that if the stateof things which they apprehended should exist when the convention met, they should take the action which they have now adopted. 

I hope none who hear me will confound this expression of mine withthe advocacy of the right of a State to remain in the Union, and todisregard its constitutional obligations by the nullification of thelaw. Such is not my theory. Nullification and secession, so oftenconfounded, are indeed antagonistic principles. Nullification is aremedy which it is sought to apply within the Union, and against theagent of the States. It is only to be justified when the agent hasviolated his constitutional obligation, and a State, assuming to judgefor itself, denies the right of the agent thus to act, and appealsto the other States of the Union for a decision; but when the Statesthemselves, and when the people of the States, have so acted as toconvince us that they will not regard our constitutional rights, then, and then for the first time, arises the doctrine of secession in itspractical application. 

A great man who now reposes with his fathers, and who has been oftenarraigned for a want of fealty to the Union, advocated the doctrine ofnullification, because it preserved the Union. It was because of hisdeep-seated attachment to the Union, his determination to find someremedy for existing ills short of a severance of the ties which boundSouth Carolina to the other States, that Mr. Calhoun advocated thedoctrine of nullification, which he proclaimed to be peaceful, to bewithin the limits of State power, not to disturb the Union, but only tobe a means of bringing the agent before the tribunal of the States fortheir judgment. 

Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to bejustified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. There was atime when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a bettercomprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienablerights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denyingthat each State is a sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which ithas made to any agent whomsoever. 

I therefore say I concur in the action of the people of Mississippi, believing it to be necessary and proper, and should have been bound bytheir action if my belief had been otherwise; and this brings me to theimportant point which I wish on this last occasion to present to theSenate. It is by this confounding of nullification and secession thatthe name of the great man, whose ashes now mingle with his mother earth, has been invoked to justify coercion against a seceded State. The phrase"to execute the laws, " was an expression which General Jackson appliedto the case of a State refusing to obey the laws while yet a member ofthe Union. That is not the case which is now presented. The laws are tobe executed over the United States, and upon the people of the UnitedStates. They have no relation to any foreign country. It is a perversionof terms, at least it is a great misapprehension of the case, whichcites that expression for application to a State which has withdrawnfrom the Union. You may make war on a foreign State. If it be thepurpose of gentlemen, they may make war against a State which haswithdrawn from the Union; but there are no laws of the United Statesto be executed within the limits of a seceded State. A State findingherself in the condition in which Mississippi has judged she is, inwhich her safety requires that she should provide for the maintenance ofher rights out of the Union, surrenders all the benefits (and they areknown to be many), deprives herself of the advantages (they are knownto be great), severs all the ties of affection (and they are close andenduring) which have bound her to the Union; and thus divesting herselfof every benefit, taking upon herself every burden, she claims to beexempt from any power to execute the laws of the United States withinher limits. 

I well remember an occasion when Massachusetts was arraigned before thebar of the Senate, and when then the doctrine of coercion was rife andto be applied against her because of the rescue of a fugitive slave inBoston. My opinion then was the same that it is now. Not in a spirit ofegotism, but to show that I am not influenced in my opinion because thecase is my own, I refer to that time and that occasion as containingthe opinion which I then entertained, and on which my present conductis based. I then said, if Massachusetts, following her through a statedline of conduct, chooses to take the last step which separates her fromthe Union, it is her right to go, and I will neither vote one dollar orone man to coerce her back; but will say to her, God speed, in memoryof the kind associations which once existed between her and the otherStates. 

It has been a conviction of pressing necessity, it has been a beliefthat we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathersbequeathed to us, which has brought Mississippi into her presentdecision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are createdfree and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her socialinstitutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has beeninvoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races. ThatDeclaration of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances andpurposes for which it was made. The communities were declaring theirindependence; the people of those communities were asserting that no manwas born--to use the language of Mr. Jefferson--booted and spurred toride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal--meaning themen of the political community; that there was no divine right to rule;that no man inherited the right to govern; that there were no classes bywhich power and place descended to families, but that all stations wereequally within the grasp of each member of the body-politic. These werethe great principles they announced; these were the purposes forwhich they made their declaration; these were the end to which theirenunciation was directed. They have no reference to the slave; else, howhappened it that among the items of arraignment made against George III. Was that he endeavored to do just what the North had been endeavoringof late to do--to stir up insurrection among our slaves? Had theDeclaration announced that the negroes were free and equal, how was thePrince to be arraigned for stirring up insurrection among them? Andhow was this to be enumerated among the high crimes which caused thecolonies to sever their connection with the mother country? When ourConstitution was formed, the same idea was rendered more palpable, forthere we find provision made for that very class of persons as property;they were not put upon the footing of equality with white men--not evenupon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation wasconcerned, were discriminated against as a lower caste, only to berepresented in the numerical proportion of three-fifths. 

Then, Senators, we recur to the compact which binds us together; werecur to the principles upon which our Government was founded; and whenyou deny them, and when you deny to us the right to withdraw from aGovernment which, thus perverted, threatens to be destructive of ourrights, we but tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim ourindependence, and take the hazard. This is done not in hostility toothers, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our ownpecuniary benefit; but from the high and solemn motive of defending andprotecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our sacred duty totransmit unshorn to our children. 

I find in myself, perhaps, a type of the general feeling of myconstituents towards yours. I am sure I feel no hostility to you, Senators from the North. I am sure there is not one of you, whateversharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I cannot nowsay, in the presence of my God, I wish you well; and such, I am sure, is the feeling of the people whom I represent towards those whom yourepresent. I therefore feel that I but express their desire when I sayI hope, and they hope, for peaceful relations with you, though we mustpart. They may be mutually beneficial to us in the future, as they havebeen in the past, if you so will it. The reverse may bring disasteron every portion of the country; and if you will have it thus, we willinvoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of thelion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, puttingour trust in God, and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we willvindicate the right as best we may. 

In the course of my service here, associated at different times witha great variety of Senators, I see now around me some with whom Ihave served long; there have been points of collision; but whatever ofoffense there has been to me, I leave here; I carry with me no hostileremembrance. Whatever offense I have given which has not been redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been demanded, I have, Senators, inthis hour of our parting to offer you my apology for any pain which, in heat of discussion, I have inflicted. I go hence unencumbered of theremembrance of any injury received, and having discharged the duty ofmaking the only reparation in my power for any injury offered. 

Mr. President, and Senators, having made the announcement which theoccasion seemed to me to require, it only remains for me to bid you afinal adieu.