Page images
PDF
EPUB

government, how is it that gentlemen, after enumerating the griev ance, propose to rest content without redress? No guarantee of slavery will silence agitation, or the pulpit or the press, or incendiary publications, or incitements to revolt, or the organized invasion of States. Yet so important is this topic considered, that one of the gentlemen who signed the minority report, in default of adequate proof, argued the ineradicable hostility of the North to slavery, and their resolution to exterminate it in spite of every constitutional guarantee-even those which would "restore peace and harmony to our people"-because their party platforms opposed it, and they were honorable men, and therefore must, in the face of their disclaimers and denials, and of the very declarations of the platform itself, consistently go on and-despite the Constitution and contrary to its provisions-attempt to break up the relation of master and slave in the slave States.

Mr. Speaker, I suppose that if, as the gentleman who made that argument said, they are honorable men, then of course their word is to be taken rather than the inference from a doubtful political platform. Political platforms are entitled to small respect from any quarter. They are, sir, nothing but sails spread to catch the popular breeze. It depends upon the pilot whether the ship shall sail before the wind, or close-hauled and in a different direction. Least of all does it become gentlemen who first agreed that a Territory should be allowed to regulate its own institutions in its own way, and then considered the forcing of the Lecompton Constitution on the people against their will a fair execution of that policy, to argue that any very rigid consistency between the platform and the policy of a party is to be expected in the course of political strife; yet to such shifts are gentlemen driven in their efforts to show-in spite of the resolutions of the majority of the Committee of Thirty-three and their unanimous disavowal-that the Northern people do contemplate disturbing slavery in the States. The importance of retaining that impression is not overestimated; for if it be yielded, the revolutionists will have few followers, and peace and harmony will be restored to our people. in spite of every effort to disturb them.

[The following, owing to interruptions, was not delivered in the House of Repsentatives :]

A more marvelous contrast awaits us.

The minority report with great elaboration depicts the rise of

a purely sectional party, determined to rule the Southern States by the Northern votes, united by hostility to slavery alone; declared that its triumph reduces the people of the South from citizens to subjects; and that by the late election the work of sectionalism was completed, to the apprehension of the people of the South; and if that apprehension be not speedily removed, the days of the Republic are numbered. They find countenance for this view in the South Carolina and Alabama ordinances. Read the

remarkable recital of the Alabama ordinance:

Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States by a sectional party avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama, following upon the heels of many and dangerous infractions of the Constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security."

The revolutionists of Alabama for those causes tear themselves away from the government; the minority of the committee reiterate the complaint, and leave it unredressed. They are silent on the remedy for the great grievance the accomplished fact of sectional domination—the inauguration of a party bent on reducing the people of the South from citizens to subjects-that great political wrong of so "insulting and menacing a character," the election of a President "by a sectional party avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions, peace, and security of the people" of the South. They leave it unredressed—unless a right to expand into new territory be a compensation for the right of self-government, or absolute security for existing rights touching slavery be an indemnity for the loss of "a voice in the management of the national affairs, in which they have a common interest with their Northern brethren.”

Sir, that is impossible. We know that the Southern people. and those gentlemen who signed the report count the right of self-government infinitely above all rights of property and all personal security. If they really feared such a domination, they would spurn accommodation on any terms.

Sir, the majority must rule. Particular interests will aggregate in particular localities, and parties will group themselves around interests; the East will be manufacturing, the West agricultural,

New York commercial, and Pennsylvania interested in iron and coal; Alabama will grow cotton, and Louisiana sugar; Virginia will grow tobacco, wheat, and corn; but a coalition of such interests to oppress others is without example in our history, and if effected, could be only temporary. Such a coalition of the free States is absolutely absurd. The South has always been able by its one common interest to impose on the divided North its policy and views; the North has no bond of Union, no one pervading and common interest so controlling as to concentrate its power and dictate its policy. It unites only in the negative interests of repelling the intrusion of slavery on its borders. It never united for that defensive purpose till the South united to invade the domain secured to it by the Missouri Compromise. This defensive and reluctant union, only partially effected, is the pretext for these exaggerated and sombre pictures of political subjection. Webster, failing to unite them in defense of their interests, exclaimed, "There is no North." Southern politicians have created a North. Let us trace the process and draw the moral.

The laws of 1850 calmed and closed the slavery agitation; and President Pierce, elected by the almost unanimous voice of the States, did not mention slavery in his first two messages. In 1854, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, at the instance of the South, reopened the agitation.

Northern men, deserted by Southern Whigs, were left to unite for self-defense.

The invasion of Kansas in 1855 and 1856 from Missouri; the making a Legislature and laws for that Territory by the invaders still farther united the Northern people. The election of 1856 measured its extent.

The election of Mr. Buchanan and his opening policy in Kansas soothed the irritation, and was rapidly demoralizing the new party, when the pro-slavery party in Kansas perpetrated, and the President and the South accepted the Lecompton fraud, and again united the North more resolutely in resistance to that invasion of the rights of self-government.

peo

The South for the first time failed to dictate terms, and the ple vindicated by their votes the refusal of the Constitution. Ere this result was attained, the opinions of certain judges of the Supreme Court scattered doubts over the law of slavery in the Territories; the South, while repudiating other decisions, in

stantly made these opinions the criterion of faithfulness to the Constitution, while the North was agitated by this new sanction of the extremest pretensions of their opponents.

The South did not rest satisfied with their judicial triumph.

Immediately the claim was pressed for protection by Congress to slavery, declared by the Supreme Court, they said, to exist in all the Territories.

This completed the Union of the free States in one great defensive league, and the result was registered in November. That result is now, itself, become the starting-point of new agitationthe demand of new rights and new guarantees. The claim to access to the Territories was followed by the claim to congressional protection, and that is now followed by the hitherto unheard-of claim to a constitutional amendment establishing slavery, not merely in territory now held, but in all hereafter held from the line of 36° 30' to Cape Horn, while the debate foreshadows in the distance the claim of the right of transit and the placing of property in slaves in all respects on the footing of other property-the topics of future agitation. How long the prohibition of the importation of slaves will be exemplified from the doctrine of equality it needs no prophet to tell.

In the face of this recital, let the imputation of autocratic and tyrannical aspirations cease to be cast on the people of the free States; let the Southern people dismiss their fears, return to their friendly confidence in their fellow-citizens of the North, and accept as pledges of returning peace the salutary amendments of the law and the Constitution offered as the first fruits of reconciliation.

ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION, OCTOBER 16, 1861.

IMMEDIATELY upon the election of Mr. Lincoln, and on the news of the first movement toward rebellion in South Carolina, efforts were made by those parties in Maryland who approved of or sympathized with those movements to induce Governor Hicks to call an extraordinary session of the General Assembly. As he knew the views and wishes of very many of such parties, and there was an intention expressed, by even the more moderate of them, of associating this state in any action which might be taken by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and as he felt convinced, from his own knowledge and observation, as well as from the numerous counter-memorials (against such call), that the great majority of the people of the state were opposed to such a session at that time, he steadily refused to yield. He also declined to take any part in any joint action, conference, or league with the States of Mississippi and Alabama, whose commissioners visited Annapolis to confer with him. When it was found the governor was not likely to yield to these, a "State Conference Convention" was called and held, by parties in favor of such assembling of the Legislature, on the 18th of February, in Baltimore. This Convention issued an address to the people of the state, declaring it to be the duty of Maryland, if conciliation should fail, to follow such course as might be adopted by Virginia. Some members of this Convention reassembled on the 12th of March, and, after reiterating their resolutions of the 18th of February, appointed a committee of six to visit and confer with the Virginia Convention.

Amid increasing excitement throughout the country, the rebel batteries erected in Charleston Harbor opened their fire against the United States garrison in Fort Sumter on the 12th of April.

On the news of that disgrace the North and West arose. The President issued (April 15th) his call for seventy-five thousand volunteers, and called the Congress of the United States for the 4th of July.

On the same day Mr. Davis announced that he "would be a candidate for the Thirty-seventh Congress, on the basis of an unconditional support of the Union and the government; but that if his fellow-citizens of like views should declare in favor of any other candidate on that basis, it was not his intention to embarrass them."

« PreviousContinue »