would have been well and consistent enough, no doubt, if the States were totally disconnected, or if the Federal Government could have been kept down equally low, simple, and democratic. Certainly, this is the true idea of a strictly democratic form and administration of government; and the nearer it is approached, the purer and better the system—in theory at least. But the experiment having been fairly tried, and the fact settled, that in a country so large, wealthy, populous, and enterprising as ours is, it is impossible to reduce down, or to keep down, the central Government to one of economy and simplicity; it is the true wisdom and policy of the States to see to it that their own separate governments are not rendered any more insignificant, at least, than they are already. Such, sir, I repeat, then, is the central Government of the United States, and such its great and tremendous powers and honors and emoluments. With such powers, such honors, such patronage, and such revenues, is it any wonder, I ask, that everything, yes, even virtue, truth, justice, patriotism, and the Constitution itself, should be sacrificed to obtain possession of it? There is no such glittering prize to be contended for every four or two years, anywhere throughout the whole earth; and accordingly, from the beginning, and every year more and more, it has been the object of the highest and lowest, the purest and the most corrupt ambition known among men. Parties and combinations have existed from the first, and have been changed and reorganized, and built up and cast down, from the earliest period of our history to this day, all for the purpose of controlling the powers, and honors, and the moneys of the central Government. For a good many years parties were organized upon questions of finance or of political economy. Upon the subjects of a permanent public debt, a national bank, the public deposits, a protective tariff, internal improvements, the disposition of the public lands, and other questions of a similar character, all of them looking to the special interests of the moneyed classes, parties were for a long while divided. The different kinds of capitalists sometimes also disagreed among themselves-the manufacturers with the commercial men of the country; and in this manner party issues were occasionally made up. But the great dividing line at last, was always between capital and labor-between the few who had money and who wanted to use the Government to increase and " protect" it, as the phrase goes, and the many who had little but wanted to keep it, and who only asked Government to let them alone. Money, money, sir, was at the bottom of the political contests of the times; and nothing so curiously demonstrates the immense power of money as the fact that in a country where there is no entailment of estates, no law of primogeniture, no means of keeping up vast accumulations of wealth in particular families, no exclusive privileges, and where universal suffrage prevails, these contests should have continued, with various fortune, for full half a century. But at the last the opponents of Democracy, known at different periods of the struggle by many different names, but around whom the moneyed interests always rallied, were overborne and utterly dispersed. The Whig party, their last refuge, the last and ablest of the economic parties, died out; and the politicians who were not of the Democratic party, with a good many more, also, who had been of it, but who had deserted it, or whom it had deserted, were obliged to resort to some other and new element for an organization which might be made strong enough to conquer and to destroy the Democracy, and thus obtain control of the Federal Government. And most unfortunately for the peace of the country, and for the perpetuity, I fear, of the Union itself, they found the nucleus of such an organization ready formed to their hands-an organization odious, indeed, in name, but founded upon two of the most powerful passions of the human heart: SECTIONALISM, which is only a narrow and localized patriotism, and ANTI-SLAVERY, or love of freedom, which commonly is powerful just in proportion as it is very near coming home to one's own self, or very far off, so that either self-interest or the imagination can have full power to act. And here let me remark, that it had so happened that almost, if not quite, from the beginning of the Government, the South, or slaveholding section of the Union-partly because the people of the South are chiefly an agricultural and producing, a non-commercial and non-manufacturing people, and partly because there is no conflict, or little conflict, among them between labor and capital, inasmuch as to a considerable extent capital owns a large class of their laborers not of the white race; and it may be also because, as Mr. Burke said many years ago, the holders of slaves are "by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom," and because the aristocracy of birth and family, and of talent, is more highly esteemed among them than the aristocracy of wealth-but 11 no matter from what cause, the fact was that the South for fifty years was nearly always on the side of the Democratic party. It was the natural ally of the Democracy of the North, and especially of the West. Geographical position and identity of interests bound us together; and till this sectional question of slavery arose, the South and the new States of the West were always together; and the latter, in the beginning at least, always Democratic. Sir, there was not a triumph of the Democratic party in half a century which was not won by the aid of the statesmen and the people of the South. I would not be understood, however, as intimating that the South was ever slow to appropriate her full share of the spoils-the opima spolia of victory, or especially that the politicians of that great and noble old Commonwealth of Virginia-God bless her— were ever remarkable for the grace of self-denial in this regard-not at all. But it was natural, sir, that they who had been so many times, and for so many years, batlled and defeated by the aid of the South, should entertain no very kindly feelings towards her. And here I must not omit to say, that all this time there was a powerful minority in the whole South, sometimes a majority in the whole South, and always in some of the States of the South, who belonged to the several parties which, at different times, contended with the Democracy for the possession and control of the Federal Government. Parties in those days were not sectional, but extended into every State and every part of the Union. And, indeed, in the convention of 1787, the possibility, or at least the probability, of sectional combinations seems, as I have already said, to have been almost wholly overlooked. Washington, it is true, in his Farewell Address warned us against them, but it was rather as a distant vision than as a near reality; and a few years later, Mr. Jefferson speaks of a possibility of the people of the Mississippi valley seceding from the East; for even then a division of the Union, North and South, or by slave lines, in the Union or out of it, seems scarcely to have been contemplated. The letter of Mr. Jefferson upon this subject, dated in 1803, is a curious one; and I commend it to the attention of gentlemen upon both sides of the House. So long, sir, as the South maintained its equality in the Senate, and something like equality in population, strength, and material resources in the country, there was little to invite aggression, while there were the means, also, to repel it. But, in the course of time, the South lost its equality in the other wing of the Capitol, and every year the disparity between the two sections became greater and greater. Meantime, too, the anti-slavery sentiment, which had lain dormant at the North for many years after the inauguration of the Federal Government, began, just about the time of the emancipation in the British West Indies, to develop itself in great strength, and with wonderful rapidity. It had appeared, indeed, with much violence at the period of the admission of Missouri, and even then shook the Union to its foundation. And yet how little a sectional controversy, based upon such a question, had been foreseen by the founders of the Government, may be learned from Mr. Jefferson's letter to Mr. Holmes, in 1829, where he speaks of it falling upon his ear like "a fire bell in the night." Said he: "I considered it, at once, as the death knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political," Sir, it is this very coincidence of geographical line with the marked principle, moral and political, of slavery, which I propose to reach and to obliterate in the only way possible; by running other lines, coinciding with other and less dangerous principles, none of them moral, and, above all, with other and conflicting Interests "A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, 'once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated, and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper." * * * * * * * * "I regret that I am now to die in the belief that 'the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and 'unworthy passions of their sons; and that my only consolation is to be that I shall 'not live to weep over it." Fortunate man! He did not live to weep over it. To-day he sleeps quietly beneath the soil of his own Monticello, unconscious that the mighty fabric of Government which he helped to rear-a Government whose foundations were laid by the hands of so many patriots and sages, and cemented by the blood of so many martyrs and heroes-hastens now, day by day, to its fall. What recks he, or that other great man, his compeer, fortunate in life and opportune alike in death, whose dust they keep at Quincy, of those dreadful notes of preparation in every State for civil strife and fraternal carnage; or of that martial array which already has changed this once peaceful capital into a beleagured city? Fortunate men! They died while the Constitution yet survived, while the Union survived, while the spirit of fraternal affection still lived, and the love of true American liberty lingered yet in the hearts of their descendants. Sir, the antagonism of parties founded on money or questions of political economy having died out, and the balance of power between the North and the South being now lost, and the strength and dignity, and the revenues and disbursements-the patronage and spoils of the Federal Government having grown to an enormous size, was anything more natural than the organization, upon any basis peculiar to the stronger section, of a sectional party, to secure so splendid and tempting a prize? Or was anything more inevitable, than that the "marked principle, moral and political," of slavery, coinciding with the very geographical line which divided the two sections, and appealing so strongly to northern sentiments and prejudices, and against which it was impossible for any man or any party long to contend, should be revived? Unhappily, too, just about this time, the acquisition of a very large territory from Mexico, not foreseen or provided for by the Missouri compromise, opened wide the door for this very question of slavery, in a form every way the most favorable to the agitators. The Wilmot proviso, or congressional prohibition--now indeed exploded, but which, nevertheless received, in some form or other, the indorsement of every free State then in the Union-it was proposed to establish over the whole territory thus acquired, as well south of 36° 30' as north of that lattitude. The proposition, upon the other hand, to extend the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific, was rejected by the votes of almost the entire Whig party, and of a large majority, I believe, of the Democratic party of the free States. That, sir, was the fatal mistake of the North; and in tribulation and anguish will she and the other sections of the Union, and our posterity, too, for ages, it may be, weep tears of bloody repentance and regret over it. This controversy, however, sir, after having again shaken the Union to its center, was at last, though with great difficulty, adjusted through the compromise measures of 1850, by the last of the great statesmen of the second period of the Republic. But four years afterwards, upon the bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, upon the principles of the legislation of 1850, the imprisoned winds-Eurus, Notusque, creberque procellis Africus-were all again let loose with more than the rage of a tropical hurricane. The Missouri restriction, which for years had been denounced as a wicked and atrocious concession to slavery, and which, some thirty years before, had consigned almost every free State Senator or Representative who supported it to political oblivion, became now a most sacred compact which it was sacrilege to touch. A distinguished Senator, late the Governor of Ohio, who had entitled his great speech against the adjustment measures of 1850, "Union and Freedom without Compromise," now put forth his elaborate defense, four years later, of the Missouri restriction, with the rubric or text, in ambitious characters, "Maintain Plighted Faith." But, right or wrong, wise or unwise, at the time, as the repeal of that restriction may have seemed, subsequent acts and events have made it both a delusion and a snare. Yes, sir, I confess it. I who, as a private citizen, was one of its earliest defenders, make open confession of it here, to-day. It was this which gave a new and terrible vitality, to the languishing element of abolitionism, and which precipitated, at least, a crisis which, I fear, was nevertheless, sooner or later, inevitable. It is the crisis of which the President eleet spoke three years ago. It is, indeed, reached. Would to God it were passed, also, in peace. But, sir, whether the leaders of the movement against the repeal of the Missouri restriction were consistent or inconsistent, honest or dishonest, the great mass of the people of the free States were roused for a time to the highest indignation by it; and inasmuch as the Whig party was just then falling to pieces, wicked, or reckless, or short-sighted men, cagerly seized upon this unsettled condition of the public mind, to reorganize the Free Soil party of 1848, under a new and captivating name, but very nearly upon the principles of the Buffalo platform of that year; thus abandoning the extreme abolition sentiments of the Liberty party, and bringing up the great majority of the Whig party, and not a few of the Democratic party also, to the Free-Soil and non-slavery extension principle; and by this compromise, forming and consolidating that powerful party, which, for the first time in our history, by a mere sectional plurality in a minority in fact by a million of votes--has obtained possession of the power and 13 patronage of the central Government. Sir, if all this had happened solely by accident, and were likely never to be repeated, portentous as it might be of present evil, it would have caused, and ought to have caused, none of the disasters which have already followed. But the DREAD SECRET once disclosed, that the immense powers and revenues and honors and spoils, of this great and mighty Republic, may be easily won, by a mere sectional majority, upon a popular sectional issue, will never die; and new aggressions and new issues must continually spring from it. This is the philosophy and the justification of the alarm and consternation which have shaken the South from the Potomac to the Gulf. It is the philosophy and the justification, too, of the amendment of the gentleman from Massachusetts, [Mr. ADAMS,] and of all the other propositions for new adjustments and new guarantees. Sir, the gentleman from New York, [Mr. SEDGWICK,] was right when he said that there er was any great event which did not spring from some adequate cause. The South is afraid of your sectional majority, organized and consolidated upon the abstract principle of hostility to slavery generally, and the practical application of that principle to the exclusion of slavery from all the Territories, and its restriction by the power of that sectional majority, to where it now exists. And if this be not the fundamental doctrine of the Republican party, I shall be greatly obliged to some gentleman of that party to tell me what its fundamental doctrine is. But unjust and oppressive as the South feel their exclusion from the common territories of the States to be, they know well, also, that the propelling power of a great moral and religious principle, as it is regarded in the North, added to the still more enduring, persistent, and prudent passion of ambition, of thirst for power and place, for the honors and emoluments of such a Government as ours, with its half a million of dependents and expectants, and its eighty millions of revenues and disbursements, all, all to be secured by the Aladdin's lamp of a sectional majority, cannot be arrested or extinguished by anything short of the suppression of the power which makes it potent for mischief. And nothing less than this, be assured, will satisfy any considerable number of even the more moderate of the people of the border slave States, and certainly without it there is not the slightest hope of the return of the States upon the Gulf, and thus of a restoration of the Union as it existed but three months ago. The statesmen and the people of all of these States well know, also, that by the civil law of every country among individuals, and by the law of nations, as between sovereign and foreign States, the power to aggress, along with the threat and the preparation to aggress, is a good cause why an individu or a State should be required to give some adequate assurance that the power shall not be used to execute the threat; or, otherwise, that the power shall itself be taken away. Apply now, sir, these principles to the case in hand. The North has the power; that power is in the hands of the Republican party, and already, they have resolved to use it for the exclusion of the South from all the Territories. There shall be no more extension of slavery. More than this, the leaders of the partymany of them leaders and founders of the old Liberty Guard, the original Abolition party of the North-the very men who brought the masses of the Whig part y and many of the Democratic party from utter indifference and non-intervention, years ago, upon the question of slavery up to the point of no more slavery extension, and persuaded them, in spite of the warning voice of Washington, in the very face of the appalling danger of disunion, to unite for this purpose, in a powerful sectional party, for the first time in the history of the Government-these self-same leaders proclaim now, not indeed as present doctrines or purposes of the Republican party ; but as solemn abstract truths, as fixed, existing facts, that there is a "higher law than the Constitution, and an "irrepressible conflict" of principle and interest between the dominant and the minority sections of the Union; and that one or the other must conquer in the conflict. Sir, in this contest with ballots, who is it that must conquer the section of the minority or the section of the majority? " And now, sir, when sentiments like these are held and proclaimed-deliberately, solemnly, repeatedly proclaimed-by men, one of whom is now the President elect, and the other the Secretary of State of the incoming Administration, is it at all surprising that the States of the South should be filled with excitement and alarm, or that they should demand, as almost with one voice they have demanded, adequate and complete guarantees for their rights and security against aggression? Right or wrong, justifiably or without cause, they have done it: and I lament to say that some of the States have even gone so far as to throw off wholly the authority of the Federal Government, and withdraw themselves from the Union. Sir, I will not di cu s the right of secession. It is of no possible avail, now, either to maintain or $ to condemn it: yet it is vain to tell me that States cannot secede. Seven States have If, then, Mr. Speaker, I have justly and truly stated the causes which have led to these most disastrous results; if indeed the control of the immense powers, honors, and revenues-the spoils-of the Federal Government; in a word, if the possession of power and the temptation to abuse it be the primary cause of the present dismemberment of the United States, ought not every remedy proposed to reach at once the very seat of the disease? And why, sir, may not the malady be healed? Why cannot this controversy be adjusted? Has, indeed, the Union of these States received the immedicable wound? I do not believe it. Never was there a political crisis for which wise, courageous, and disinterested statesmen could more speedily devise a remedy. British statesmen would have adjusted it in a few weeks. Twice certainly, if not three times, in this century, they have healed troubles threatening a dissolution of the monarchy and civil war; and each time healed them by yielding promptly to the necessities which pressed upon them, giving up principles and measures to which they had every way for years been committed. They have learned wisdom from the obstinacy of the King who lost to Great Britain her thirteen colonies, and have been taught by that memorable lesson to concede and to compromise in time, and to do it radically; and history has pronounced it statesmanship, not weakness. In each case, too, they yielded up, not doctrines and a policy which they were seeking for the first time to establish, but the ancient and settled principles, usages, and institutions of the realm; and they yielded up these to save others yet more essential, and to maintain the integrity of the empire. They did save it, and did maintain it; and to-day Great Britain is stronger and more prosperous and more secure than any Government on the globe. Sir, no man had for a longer time, or with more inexorable firmness, opposed Catholic emancipation than the Duke of Wellington. Yet, when the issue came at last between emancipation or civil war, the hero of a hundred battle-fields, the conqueror at Waterloo, the greatest military commander, except Napoleon, of modern times; yes, the IRON DUKE, lost not a moment, but yielded to the storm, and himself led the party which carried the great measure of peace and compromise through the very citadel of conservatism-the House of Lords. Sir, he sought no middle ground, no half-way measure, confessing weakness, promising something, doing nothing. And in that memorable debate he spoke words of wisdom, moderation, and true courage, which I commend to gentlemen in this House; to our Wellington outside of it, and to all others anywhere, whose parched jaws seem ravenous for blood. He said: "It has been my fortune to have seen much of war-more than most men. I have 'been constantly engaged in the active duties of the military profession from boyhood ' until I have grown gray. My life has been passed in familiarity with scenes of death and human suffering. Circumstances have placed me in countries where the ' war was internal-between opposite parties in the same nation; and rather than a ( country I loved should be visited with the calamities which I have seen, with the unutterable horrors of civil war, I would run any risk; I would make any sacrifice; I would freely lay down my life. There is nothing which destroys property and prosperity, and demoralizes character, to the extent which civil war does. By it, 'the hand of man is raised against his neighbor, against his brother, and against his 'father; the servant betrays his master, and the master ruins his servant. Yet this is 'the resource to which we must have looked, these are the means which we must have applied, in order to have put an end to this state of things, if we had not embraced the • option of bringing forward the measure for which I hold myself responsible.” |