deed, it has been in your own, or at least in friendly hands. You only fear-being in the minority-that it will aggress, because it has now fallen under the control of those, who, you believe, have the temptation, the will, and the power to aggress. But this plan of adjustment proposes to take away the power; and of what avail will the temptation or the will then be, without the power to execute? Both must soon perish.

And why cannot you, of the Republican party, accept it? There is not a word about slavery in it, from beginning to end: I mean in the amendments. It is silent upon the question. South of 36° 30′, and east of the Rio Grande, there is scarce any territory which is not now within the limits of some existing State; and west of that river, and of the Rocky Mountains, as well as north of 36° 30' and east of those mountains, though any new State should establish slavery, still her vote would be counted in the Senate and in the electoral colleges with the non-slaveholding section to which she would belong; just as if, within the limits of the South, any State should abolish slavery, or any new State not tolerating slavery should be admitted, the vote of such State would also be cast with the section of the South. However slavery might be extended, as a mere form of civilization or of labor, there could be no extension of it as a mere aggressive political element in the Government. If the South only demand that the Federal Government shall not be used aggressively to prohibit the extension of slavery; if she does not desire to use it herself, upon the other hand, positively to extend the institution, then she may well be satisfied; and if you of the Republican party do not really mean to aggress upon slavery where it now exists; if you are not, in fact, opposed to the admission of any more slave States; if, indeed, you do not any longer propose to use the powers of the Federal Government positively and aggressively to prohibit slavery in the Territories, but are satisfied to allow it to take its natural course, according to the laws of interest or of climate, then you, too, may well be content with this plan of adjustment, since it does not demand of you, openly and publicly, to deny, abjure, and renounce, in so many words, the more moderate principles and doctrines which you have this session professed. And yet, candor obliges me to declare, that this plan of settlement, and every other plan, whatsoever, which is of the slightest value-even the amendment of the gentleman from Massachuseets, [Mr. ADAMS,] is a virtual dissolution of the Republican party, as a mere sectional and anti-slavery organization; and this, too, will, in my judgment, be equally the result, whether we compromise at all, and the Union be thus restored, or whether it be finally and forever dissolved. The people of the North and the West will never trust the destroyers-for destroyers, indeed, you will be, if you reject all fair terms of adjustment—the destroyers of our Government, and such a Government as this, with the Administration and control of any other. You have now the executive department, as the result of the late election. Better, far better, reorganize and nationalize your party, and keep the Government for four years in peace, and with a Union of thirty-four States, than with the shadow and mockery of a broken and disjointed Union of sixteen or nineteen States, ending, at last, in total and hopeless dissolution.

Having thus, sir, guarded diligently the rights of the several States and sections, and given to each section also the power to protect itself inside of the Union from aggression, I propose next to limit and to regulate the alleged right of SECESSION, since this, from a dormant abstraction, has now become a practical question of tremendous import. As long, sir, as secession remained an untried and only menaced experiment, that confidence without which no Government can be stable or efficient, was not shaken, because it was believed that actual secession would never be tried; or if tried, that it must speedily and ingloriously fail. The popular faith, cherished for years, has been that the Union could not be dissolved. To that faith the Republican party was indebted for its success in the late election; and we who predicted its dissolution were smitten upon the cheek and condemned to feed upon bread of affliction and water of affliction, like the prophet whom Ahab hated. But partial dissolution has already occurred. Secession has been tried and has proved a speedy and a terrible success. The practicability of doing it and the way to do it, have both been established. Sir, the experiment may readily be repeated. It will be repeated. And is it not madness and folly, then, to call back, by adjustment, the States which have seceded, or to hold back the States which are threatening to secede, without providing some safeguard against the renewal of this most simple and disastrous experiment? Can foreign nations have any confidence hereafter in the stability of a Government which may so readily, speedily, and quietly be dissolved? Can we have any confidence among ourselves?

If it be said that it would have availed nothing to check secession in the Gulf States, even had there been a constitutional prohibition of it, I answer, perhaps not,

21

if it had been total and absolute, for there would have been no alternative but submission or revolution; and hence I propose only to define and restrain and to regulate this alleged right. But I deny that, if a particular mode of secession had been prescribed by the Constitution, and thus every other mode prohibited, it would have been possible to have secured, in any of the seceding States-no, not even in South Carolina-a majority in favor of separate State secession, or secession in any other way than that provided in the Constitution. No, sir; it was the almost universal belief in the cotton States in the unlimited right of secession-a doctrine recognized by few in the free States, but held to by a great many, if not very generally, all over the slave States-which made secession so easy. It is hard to bring any considerable number of the people of the United States-suddenly, at least-up to the point of a palpable violation of the Constitution; but it is easy, very easy, to draw them into any act which seems to be only the exercise of one right for the purpose of securing and preserving the higher rights of life, liberty, person, and property for a whole State or a whole section. Sir, it is because of this very idea or notion among the people of the Gulf States, that they were exercising a right reserved under the Constitution, that secession there, and the establishment of a new confederacy and provisional government, have been marked by so much rapidity, order, and method, all through the ballot-box, and not with the halter, or at the point of the bayonet, over oppressed minorities; and, for the most part, with so few of the excesses and irregularities which have characterized the progress of other revolutions. I would not prohibit totally the right of secession, lest violent revolutions should follow; for where laws and constitutions are to be overleaped, and they who make the revolution avow it to be a revolution, and claim no right except the universal rights of man, such revolutions are commonly violent and bloody within themselves; and even if not, they cannot be resisted by the established authorities except at the cost of civil war; while, if submitted to in silence, they tend to demoralize all government. It is of vital importance, therefore, every way, in my judgment, that the exercise of this certainly quasi revolutionary right should be defined, limited, and restrained ; and accordingly, I propose that no State shall secede without the consent of the Legislatures of all the States of the section to which the State proposing to secede may belong. This is obviously a most reasonable restraint; and yet, of its sufficiency no man can doubt, when he remembers that, in the present crisis of the country, had this provision existed, no State could have obtained the absolute consent, at least, of even one-half of the States of the South.

Such, Mr. Speaker, is the plan which, with great deference, and yet with great confidence, too, in its efficiency, I would propose for the adjustment of our controversies, and for the restoration and preservation of the Union which our fathers made. Like all human contrivances, certainly, it is imperfect, and subject to objection. But something searching, radical, extreme, going to the very foundations of government, and reaching the seat of the malady, must be done, and that right speedily, while the fracture is yet fresh and reunion is possible. Two months ago, when I last addressed the House, imploring you for immediate action, less, much less, would have sufficed; but we learned no wisdom from the lessons of the past; and now, indeed, not poppy, nor mandragora, nor other drowsy sirup is of any value to arrest that revolution, in the midst of which we are to-day-a revolution the grandest and the saddest of modern times.

APPENDIX.

The following are the amendments to the Constitution proposed by Mr. VALLAN'

DIGHAM:

JOINT RESOLUTION.

Whereas the Constitution of the United States is a grant of specific powers delegated to the Federal Government by the people of the several States, all powers not delegated to it nor prohibited to the States being reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people; and whereas it is the tendency of stronger Governments to enlarge their powers and jurisdiction at the expense of weaker Governments, and of majorities to usurp and abuse power and oppress minorities, to arrest and hold in check which tendency compacts and constitutions are made; and whereas the only effectual constitutional security for the rights of minorittes, whether as people or as States, is the power expressly reserved in constitutions of protecting those rights by their own action; and whereas this mode of protection by checks and guarantees is recognized in the Federal Constitution, as well in the case of the equality of the States in representation and in suffrage in the Senate, as in the provision for overruling the veto of the President and for amending the Constitution, not to enumerate other examples; and whereas, unhappily, because of the vast extent and diversified interests and institutions of the several States of the Union, sectional divisions can no longer be suppressed ; and whereas it concerns the peace and stability of the Federal Union and Government that a division of the States into mere slaveholding and non-slaveholding sections, causing hitherto, and from the nature and necessity of the case, inflammatory and disastrous controversies upon the subject of slavery, ending already in present disruption of the Union, should be forever hereafter ignored; and whereas this important end is best to be obtained by the recognition of other sections without regard to slavery, neither of which sections shall alone be strong enough to oppress or control the others, and each be vested with the power to protect itself from aggressions: Therefore,

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, (two-thirds of both Houses concurring.) That the following articles be, and are hereby, proposed as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of said Constitution when ratified by conventions in three-fourths of the several States:

ARTICLE XIII.

SEC. 1. The United States are divided into four sections, as follows:

The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and all new States annexed and admitted into the Union, or formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any of said States, or by the junction of two or more of the same, or of parts thereof, or out of territory acquired nor h of said States, shall constitute one section, to be known as the NORTH.

The States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Kansas, and all new States annexed or admitted into the Union, or erected within the jurisdiction of any of said States, or by the junction of two or more of the same, or of parts thereof, or out of territory now held or hereafter acquired north of latitude 36° 30′, and east of the crest of the Rocky Mountains, shall constitute another section, to be known as the WEST.

The States of Oregon and California, and all new States annexed and admitted into the Union, or formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any of said States, or by the junction of two or more of the same, or of parts thereof, or out of territory now held or hereafter acquired west of the crest of the Rocky Mountains and of the Rio Grande, shall constitute another section, to be known as the Pacific.

The States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, and all new States annexed and admitted into the Union, or formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any of said States, or by the junction of two or more of the same, or of parts thereof, or out of territory acquired east of the Rio Grande and south of latitude 36° 30′, shall constitute another section, to be known as the SOUTH.

SEC. 2. On demand of one-third of the Senators of any one of the sections on any bill, order, resolution, or vote, to which the concurrence of the House of Representatives may be necessary, except on a question of adjournment, a vote shall be had by sections, and a majority of the Senators from each section vot. ing shall be necessary to the passage of such bill, order, or resolution, and to the validity of every such

vote.

SEC. 3. Two of the electors for President and Vice-President shall be appointed by each State in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, for the State at large. The other electors to which each State may be entitled, shall be chosen in the respective congressional districts into which the State may, at the gular decennial period, have been divided, by the electors of each district, having the qualifications reisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature. A majority of all the electors In each of the four sections in this article established, shall be necessary to the choice of President and Vice-President; and the concurrence of a majority of the States of each section shall be necessary to the choice of President by the House of Representatives, and of the Senators from each section to the choice of Vice-President by the Senate, whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them respectively. SEC. 4. The President and Vice-President shall hold their office each during the term of six years; and neither shall be e igible to more than one term, except by the votes of two-thirds of all the electors of each section, or of the States of each section, whenever the right of choice of President shall devolve upon the House of Representatives, or of Senators from each section whenever the right of choice of Vice-President shall devolve upon the Senate.

SEC. 5. The Congress shall by law provide for the case of failure by the House of Representatives to choose a President, and of the Senate to choose a Vice-President, whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them respectively, declaring what officer shall then act as President; and such officer shall act accordingly until a President shall be elected. The Congress shall also provide by law for a special election for President and Vice-President in such case to be held and completed within six months from the expiration of the term of office of the last preceding President, and to be conducted in all respects as provided for in the Constitution for regular elections of the same officer, except that if the House of Repre sentatives shall not choose a President, should the right of choice devolve upon them, within twenty days from the opening of the certificates and counting of the electoral votes, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. The term of office of the President chosen under such special election shall continue six years from the fourth day of March preceding such election.

ARTICLE XIV.

No State shall secede without the consent of the Legislatures of the States of the section to which the State proposing to secede belongs. The President shall have power to adjust with seceding States all questions arising by reason of their secession; but the terms of adjustment shall be submitted to the Congress for their approval before the same sha'l be valid.

ARTICLE XV.

Neither the Congress nor a Territorial Legislature shall have power to interfere with the right of the citizens of any of the States within either of the sections to migrate upon equal terms with the citizens of the States within either of the other sections to the Territories of the United States: nor shall either the Congress or a Territorial Legislature have power to destroy or impair any rights of either person or property in the Territories.

New States annexed for admission into the Union, or formed or erected within the jurisdiction of other States, or by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States; and States formed, with the consent of the Congress, out of any territory of the United States, shall be entitled to admission upon an equal footing with the original States, under any constitution establishing a government republican in form which the people thereof may ordain, whenever such States, if formed out of any territory of the United States, shall contain, within an area of not less than sixty thousand square miles, a population equal to the then existing ratio of representation for one member of the House of Representatives.

A card, from which the following is extracted, was published by Mr. VALLAN' DIGHAM in the Cincinnati Enquirer, on the 10th of November, 1860-a few days after the presidential election :

"And now let me add that I did say, not in Washington, not at a dinner-table, not in the presence of 'fire eaters,' but in the City of New York, in public assembly of northern men, and in a public speech at the Cooper Institute, on the 2d of November, 1860, that, if any one or more of the States of this Union should, at any time, secede for reasons of the sufficiency and justice of which, before God and the great tribunal of history, they alone may judge-much as I should deplore it, I never would, as a Representative in the Congress of the United States, vote one dollar of money whereby'one drop of American blood should be shed in a civil war.' That sentiment, thus uttered in the presence of thousands of the merchants and solid men of the free and patriotic city of New York, was received with vehement and long-continued applause, the entire vast assemblage rising as one man and cheering for some minutes. And I now deliberately repeat and reaffirm it, resolved, though I stand alone, though all others yield and fall away, to make it good to the last moment of my public life. No menace, no public clamor, no taunts, nor sneers, nor foul detraction, from any quarter, shall drive me from my firm purpose. Ours is a Government of opinion, not of force; a Union of free will, not arms; and coercion is civil war; a war of sections, a war of States, waged by a race compounded and made up of all other races; full of intellect, of courage, of will unconquerable, and, when set on fire by passion, the most belligerent and most ferocious on the globe; a civil war full of horrors, which no imagination can conceive and no pen portray. If Abraham Lincoln is wise, looking truth and danger full in the face, he will take counsel of the 'old men,' the moderates of his party, and advise peace, negotiation, concession; but if like the foolish son of the wise king, he reject these wholesome counsels, and hearken only to the madmen who threaten chastisement with scorpions, let him see to it, lest it be recorded at last that none remained to serve him 'save the house of Judah only.' At least, if he will forget the secession of the Ten Tribes, will he not remember and learn a lesson of wisdom from the secession of the Thirteen Colonies?"