'?r&^zZL 15^L^>^ 
 
> i; \ I EON 
 
 DELIVERED ON THE 
 
 FOURTH DAY OF JULY, 1861, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 CAPITOL, AUSTIN, TEXAS. 
 
 BY 
 
 H ON. A. W. T E R RELL, 
 
 AUSTIN: 
 
 TRIKTED BY JOHN MARSHALL & CO., AT 4< GAZETTE " OFFICE 
 
 1861. 
 

 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 Austin, July 5th, 1861. 
 Hon. A. W. Teerell : 
 
 The undersigned committee respectfully 
 request, on behalf of the citizens of Travis county, a copy of 
 your eloquent oration delivered on yesterday, for publication. 
 Very respectfully, your obedient serv'ts, 
 N. G-. Shelley, 
 Jno. M. Swisher, 
 H. H. Haynie, 
 C. S. West, 
 F. T. DuFFAir, 
 T. D. Moseley, 
 Committee of Arrangements, 
 
 Austin, July 6th, 1861. 
 To Messrs. N. G. Shelley, Jno. M. Swisher, et als. 
 
 Gentlemen : In answer to your communication, of the 5th inst, 
 I transmit my address, delivered to the citizens of Travis county. 
 You are at liberty to make such use of it as you may desire. 
 
 Verv Respectfully, 
 
 a. w. teerell; 
 
O R ^L T T 1ST 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen — 
 
 Every people who in the providence of God have been bl» 
 with the enjoyment of freedom, have hailed with exultation and 
 Joy the annual return of some day which marked a bright epoch 
 in their history; and you, the mingled sons and daughters of 
 many States, have with patriotic zeal come forth to celebrate 
 this, the birth-day of American Independence. 
 
 With a unanimity of purpose and a glow of feeling, such as 
 yuo did not, and could not feel in the later and worse days 
 of the Republic, you have assembled to do honor to the great 
 ♦ cause of Constitutional Freedom; to hear yet once moe read tie 
 Declaration of Independence; to bow down before the" God of 
 a free people, and invoke his aid in their behalf. 
 
 As the sea fareing man, who for many days has been tossed 
 npon a dangerous sea, will when the stars shine out, take his 
 reckoning to see whether he has drifted from his true course, so 
 we who have so lately journeyed over the billows of political 
 strife, now that the voice of dissension is no longer heard, 
 should e'er we wrestle with a blacker pterin, makeonr reckoning, 
 to see whether we have drifted away from the faith bequeathed 
 to us by the apostles of 76. Or as the christian, who desires 
 to strengthen his faith, daily contemplates the pure system of 
 morality which his God gave him, so we, though we may not 
 be instructed, may strengthen our faith, and derive profit and 
 encouragement by reviewing the history of the declaration which 
 we have just heard read, and tracing its consequences even to 
 the present hour. 
 
 The first permanent settlers of the thirteen colonies sought 
 an asylum in the new world, not so much in the beginning, for 
 the enjoyment of civil as religious freedom. The persecuted 
 Catholic sought the shores of Maryland, and invited the Protes- 
 
'tan t to come and enjoy -with i&hn, liberty of conscience. The 
 brave Huguenot, driven by t'he Eevocation of the Edict of 
 IS antes irom his native land, found an asylum on the shores of 
 South Carolina; the grim Puritan in a more northern land, and 
 each laid broad and deep in the solitudes of a new world, the 
 (foundations of their future power. 
 
 It pertains not to the present occasion to detail minutely the 
 iprivatioiis which each colony endured., and the persecutions for 
 conscience sake, which were both endured and inflicted by the 
 •people of New England. The last is important to be 
 remembered, only that we may trace thus early the germ of that 
 spirit of intolerance which has since culminated so fearfully. 
 The twenty-five thousand puritans, who during the first ten 
 years of the settlement of Massachusetts, found there a refuge 
 'from the persecutions of Charles, had scarcely established 
 • themselves in their new home ibefbre they began the w ork of 
 intolerance and prescription among themselves. Roger Wil- 
 liams and bis followers, for their religious faith, were banished 
 to the wilderness; the Quakers were driven forth or hung; 
 Episcopal emigrants from England were not permitted to land 
 and establish homes among them, while in Connecticut, none 
 were admitted to the privileges of free Tien, for many years, but 
 such as were members ot the Puritan church. 
 
 Fir different was the spirit of toleration which marked the 
 early settlement of Maryland, Ehode Island, the Carolihas and 
 Georgia. The Oatholic and Protestant, the Scotch Presbyte- 
 rian and the Cavalier tolerated in others that freedom of con- 
 science which they enjoyed themselves, and invited the persecu- 
 ted of every land to come and partake with them of its benefits. 
 
 For nearly two hundred years the early colonists of America 
 and their descendents, with, varied vicissitudes of fortune strug- 
 gled with the hardships of the wilderness. Though acknowl- 
 edging their allegiance to the British crown, they were far 
 removed from the corrupting influences of the Court, and saw 
 not the tinsel ornaments and glittering gewgaws of Eoyalty. 
 They learned habits of self reliance in the school of stern neces- 
 sity and derived strength from their conflicts with adversity. 
 Secure in their very poverty from the exactions of arbitrary 
 power, they learned to prize the blessings of social order, regu- 
 lated by law; and thus, while the nations of the old world were 
 contending through the weary lapse of ages only to accomplish 
 a change of masters, the colonists all unconscious of their high 
 destiny, were silently learning the lessons of -civil freedom. 
 
Nor in learning those lessons, were they destitute of beacon 
 lights in the past, furnished by their own proud ancestry. They 
 remembered that the sturdy Barons of Runnymede had five hun- 
 dred years before, wrung from a reluctant king the concessions 
 ol Magna Charta; and though they had been sometimes almost 
 forgotten in the civil wars which convulsed the British isles, 
 they were remembered in the new world by those who were soon 
 to peril all in their defense. They remembered that there were 
 rights pertaining to all who had shown capacity for self govern- 
 ment, higher than crowns or parchment grants — inherent and 
 unalienable rights, which pertained to the intelligent man, by 
 virtue of his rank in the creation. And the time came when the 
 people, in the strength of these great truths, were tn rise, even 
 in the midst of peace, plenty and prosperity, and vindicate them 
 in an* s against the first power upon earth. 
 
 And here, my fellow-citizens, it may he well for us to pause 
 and remind ourselves of the true cause for which that memora- 
 ble struggle for independence was begun. On the 6th day of 
 February, I76.>, the British Parliament passed the Stamp act, 
 which provided for the collection oi impost duties on all stamped 
 paper to be used in the colonies. The tax was insignificant and 
 pecuniarily would not be felt, but the right which was claimed 
 to impose it, when the corresponding right to representation was 
 denied, roused the slumbering spirit of the Colonies and upon 
 their remonstrance, it was promptly repealed. In the year 1767 
 another act was passed by Parliament, imposing duties nj*on all 
 tea, oaper, glas*. paints, and lead that should be imported into 
 the Colonies. Though the grievances complained of in the 
 Declaration of Independence all had an existence in '76, we must 
 not forget that they were nearly all inflicted after active prepa- 
 rations for war had been begun by the, Colonists. The passage 
 of the tax bill and the effort to enforce it, backed by the decla- 
 ration of thy British Government that the right existed in the 
 mother country to bind the Colonies in all cases whatsoever, was 
 the cans: , and the one great cause which prompted resistence to 
 the British Crown. Every other cause set forth was subordi- 
 nate to this, and few others had an existence until after war had 
 begun. 
 
 For more than a year the thunder of contending armies had 
 been heard in the land, when the delegates from the thirteen 
 Colonies, calling themselves a Congress, met together in 
 Convention to take counsel together concerning the honor and 
 safety of their native land. A declaration by the Colonies of 
 their independence was about to be published to the world by 
 
6 
 
 fhe first statesmen of the age. The connection with the mother 
 country was about to be dissolved by the once feeble colonies, 
 who now proudly aspired to the position of sovereign States. — • 
 They were about to launch the lives and fortunes of the people 
 on the doubtful sea of revolutionary strife, against their own 
 kindred, who spoke a common language, and gloried in the 
 achievements of a common ancestry. They were about to grap- 
 ple with the prejudice of ages, and baptize with blood their 
 devotion to an idea. They were revolting against a govern- 
 ment, then the freest and proudest upon earth. They were to 
 contend against a flag which they had often followed in the red 
 path of battle. In four wars with France, the triumphal pro- 
 gress of the British flag, over this continent, could be trailed 
 by the bleaching bones of the brave colonists who had followed 
 it. Only fifteen years before, thirty thousand of them had sealed 
 their .devotion to the British crown by lying down in their last 
 sleep under the shadow of the British flag. In that struggle, 
 the colonies voluntiily expended fifteen millions of money to 
 assist the mother country against France. Nor was this all, 
 they were contending against a people who rejoiced in the glo- 
 ries of a British Constitution, and that Constitution our fathers 
 of '76 had delighted to honor. 
 
 Oh ! my countrymen, the dangers of the tented field, the 
 desolations of war and the destruction of fortune, moved not so 
 deeply the springs of feeling in our patriot sires, as did the 
 clustering memories " of their own past history, which bound 
 them in the links of a common brotherhood to their Briton 
 fues. 
 
 And now on the fourth day of July, 1776, the delegates from 
 thirteen colonies are about to publish to the world their decla- 
 ration of independence. They are about to claim for their 
 respective colonies the position of sovereign States; and yet 
 they knew that all the world beside and thousands in their 
 midst denied to them every attribute of sovereignty. With no 
 bond of Union but a common hope, a common danger and a 
 common destiny; with no organized government to provide for 
 their safety; without money, without powder, and almost with- 
 out arms; knowing no flag, under which their proud hearts had 
 ever burned but the one upon which they were about to war, we 
 can all see how desperate must have been the hope that they 
 would make that declaration good. 
 
 Nor was this all, for while they had much to excite their 
 fear, they had abundant reason to hope that a struggle might 
 be avoided by delay. They knew that the sympathies of a 
 
powerful party in the mother country were with them; that the 
 elder Pitt and the gifted Burke weie even then making the 
 hails of Parliament resound with eloquent vindications of their 
 cause, and surely they were not without reason to hope, that 
 under the lead of such champions, the right would triumph, that 
 the blind advisers of the crown would soon be hurled from power, 
 and the protection of a restored Constitution once more extend- 
 ed over then. But all these considerations were but as " wafted 
 dust upon the balances" when they remembered, that the sword 
 and purse of Britain were controlled even tor an hour by those 
 who were bent on violating the British Constitution to their 
 prejudice. They had studied too well the history of the past to 
 believe that the grasp of tyrany was ever relaxed by temporising 
 expedients, and they knew that the spirit of a people was already 
 crushed when they could contemplate in silence the prospect of 
 their degradation. 
 
 Knowing all this, they no longer hesitated, but boldly pub- 
 lished to the world their declaration that the 13 colonies "were 
 and of right ought to be free, sovereign and independent States, 
 and for the support of that declaration with a firm reliance on 
 the protection of Divine Providence, they mutually pledged to 
 each other, their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor." 
 
 We may search the pages of history in vain for the consum- 
 mation of another work like this. It was the advent of the 
 politic il Shiloh, whose coming had been expected through the 
 ages of tyrany and darkness; it was the babe in the manger, 
 whilst idolatry was upon the throne. # Then was proclaimed to 
 the world the great truth that all government derived its just 
 powers from the consent of the governed, and that whenever 
 any form of government became destructive of the unalienable 
 rights of the people, it was their right to alter or abolish it, and 
 to institute new government, laying its foundation on such prin- 
 ciples and organizing its powers in such form as to them, the 
 people, should seem most likely to effect their safety and hap- 
 piness. Nor is this the only great lesson which was taught, 
 the Congress of delegates, bv their declaration, published it to 
 the world as their deliberate judgment, that whenever a govern- 
 ment evinced a design to reduce the people to the sway of des- 
 potism, it was not only their right, but their duty to throw off 
 such government and provide new guards for their future safety. 
 They promulgated no Utopian theory of freedom as alike ap- 
 plicable to every race, whatever its condition or capacity; but 
 claimed only for themselves the right to assume among the na- 
 tions of the earth that separate and equal station to which 
 
8 
 
 the laws of nature and nature's God entitled them. They 
 sought not to make white that which God had created black; but 
 charged it upon Briton's king as one of their grievances, that 
 he had endeavored to incite domestic insurrection among their 
 slaves. They did not advise that the established forms of gov- 
 ernment should be blindly worshiped until the designs of des- 
 potism weie consummated, and that then the people should strike 
 to regain their lost independence; they taught a better and a bolder 
 doctrine. They taught us by their example, that whenever the 
 purpose to usurp authority was avowed, the work of arming for 
 resistance should begin; and they taught by their declaration, 
 that whenever the designs of despotism were manifest, it was 
 the duty of the people to form a new government to secure their 
 happiness and safety. Let this lesson sink to day yet deeper 
 into the southern heart, that we and our children may remem- 
 ber never to wait until the chains of d-.spotism are riveted on 
 our unresisting limbs, but strike wheT ever power evinces the 
 hostile and settled purpose to accomplish the overthrow of our 
 reserved rights. Is it urged that this doctrine is the parent of 
 Anarchy ? When, let me ask, would Freedom ever have gained 
 one triumph if her votaries had listened to the cry that anarchy 
 would follow in her footsteps ? Why is it, let me ask you,. 
 in the language of the declaration, all experience has shown 
 that "men are more disposed to sutler, while evils are sufferaole 
 than to right themselves by abolishing established forms to which 
 they are accustomed?" it is because the minions of Absolutism have 
 in every age alarmed their distempered fears with the argument 
 that anarchy would follow upon that effort to right themselves. 
 Here it will be well for us not to forget one instructive lesson 
 in the history of the past. During the months that preceded 
 the declaration, thousands upon thousands of pure patriots be- 
 lieved that the time for action had not come. Dreading the 
 issue of a revolutionary experiment, they prefered to wait and 
 hope for a reformation of evils endured, rather than fly to others 
 that they knew not of. But when the sword was drawn, and 
 England sent her squadrons to consumate the work of coercion, 
 those same men showed that their caution was not the result of 
 craven fear, but rushed with alacrity to the front of danger, and 
 stood side by side with those who had precipitated the conflict. 
 And no one asked in the day of trial whether his comrade was 
 the first or last to determine on resistance. It was enough that 
 he responded to his country's call, and stood ready to seal, if 
 need be, with his blood, the cause weich his prudence had once 
 condemned. 
 
We who contemplate, after so great a lapse of time, the his- 
 tory of that memorable struggle, can but faintly conceive the 
 danger and suffering — the privation, and agonizing disaster, 
 which, for seven long years, tortured the hopes of a brave peo- 
 ple! But they had chosen one for their leader, the bare mention 
 of whose name still awakens those emotions in the heart which 
 constitute his most fitting eulogy. Among all the nations of 
 men there was but one Washington, and none other like him; 
 and from the bosom of the Old Dominion he issued forth to lead 
 the people in the people's cause. Alike unmoved by the praises 
 of the world, or the censures of his own countrymen, he moved 
 calmly forward to the accomplishment of the great work which 
 Providence had assigned him. Whether we regard him after a 
 victorious battle, receiving the congratulations of a whole peo- 
 ple, or see him sustaining the censure of his followers for the 
 consummate skill which would not peril all for temporary suc- 
 cess—whether upon his bended knees, asking aid of Heaven or 
 charging at the head of a shattered column, under the burning 
 sun of Monmouth — whether denounced as one who aspired to the 
 dictatorship, or blessed by both sexes as the savior of his coun- 
 try, he was always the same gifted and pure man! — God's 
 champion in the van of Freedom! 
 
 His armies were worthy of their leader. They were animated 
 with the same stern daring that animated his own soul. On 
 them he leaned for support with steadfast trust, and they repaid 
 his confidence with a devotion that never faltered. On the 
 heights of King's Mountain, on the blood-stained snows of 
 Trenton, in the trenches of Yorktown, and more than all, when 
 environed by the gaunt horrors of Valley Forge, our fathers 
 have learned us how to struggle, to endure, and to conquer. 
 
 There were, indeed, a few who could not forget that they had 
 been the subjects of Britain; that they had rejoiced in her glory, 
 praised the freedom of her laws, and followed her standaid in 
 days that had gone. Yielding to the seductive memories of the 
 past, they tamely crouched before the minions of her power; 
 and to-day the name of Tory lives only in the "festering infamy 
 of years." But the spirit of those who resisted remained un- 
 broken, and they illustrated by their sacrifices how much may 
 be endured by man, when he protects his freedom and his home. 
 
 While the army sustained its leader, they, in turn, were en- 
 couraged and sustained by the people. No speculating vampire 
 hounded a suffering soldiery to fatten from their necessities. No 
 Shylock was found, in the ranks of freedom, w r ho could calmly 
 weigh, in one scale the value of Independence, and in the other 
 
10 
 
 the cost of establishing it. No prophet of evil repaired to the 
 camp to croak in the ears of 1he soldiery the raven notes of his 
 despair. The luxuries of life were abandoned by a frugal people; 
 fashion clothed herself in homespun; and the concentrated 
 hopes, and prayers, and energies, of all, were given to the great 
 cause. And thus it triumphed. 
 
 And when the victory had been gained, the voice of rejoicing 
 went up from the glad hearts of a redeemed people. All the 
 privatim, the suffering, the desolation, and disasters of the 
 past were forgotten, in the great joy of that hour. The once 
 feeble colonies, each of which had been, by name, recognized by 
 Great Britain as a sovereign and independent State, now stood 
 proudly forth to claim their rank among the sisterhood of na- 
 tions. 
 
 But a great work was yet before them. Warned by all past 
 experience, that distracting jealousy, and fierce contention, had 
 worked the overthrow of all petty neighboring republics, it was 
 determined that the States should be more perfectly united, "to 
 establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the 
 common defence, and promote the general welfare of them all." 
 For the accomplishment of these great ends, giant intel- 
 lects labored; and if we, their descendants, must now fail to 
 enjoy the fruition of their hopes, it is from no inherent defect in 
 the system of government which they left us, but from the dark 
 and damning fanaticism of those who were to be, equally with 
 ourselves, its beneficiaries. 
 
 In tracing the consequences of the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence, ere we glance at those events now uppermost in the 
 minds of all, let us bestow a passing thought on the early splen- 
 dors of the Union that has passed; let us remember it to love 
 it only as it was when it came from the hands of its architects, 
 ere the withering influence of a false philosophy had blasted the 
 growth of its branching promises to man. 
 
 We viewed the Union as our fathers viewed it: not as an idol 
 set up for men to woiship and adore, but as the legitimate off- 
 spring of a written Constitution, which spoke it into being; as 
 the creature of an organic law which created the government, 
 and limied its p >wers, and upon which the people and the 
 ruler should alike look as the pillar of fire to guide them in their 
 wanderings. 
 
 Upon that Constitution the eyes of all were fixed with admi- 
 ration and bouyant hope. To it the descendant of the grim 
 Puritan and the Cavalier looked with a common faith; and he 
 who, with his rifle in his hand, standing upon the summit of the 
 
11 
 
 Blue Ridge, had been gazing westward and southward, caught 
 the inspiration of the hour, and bore with him into unpeopled 
 solitudes, that spiiit of freedom, regulated and controlled by- 
 constitutional law, which is this <ay warming the hearts and 
 nerving the arms of his posterity. 
 
 The Constitution and the Union, — one the parent, the other 
 the offspring — one the written will of sovereign States, the other 
 the garment in which their joint power clothed itself, — these 
 were the strong motors to the wheels of progress. Who has 
 not felt his heart bound with joy when he contemplated the 
 early achievements of that Government, while yet the Constitu- 
 tion was reverenced and obeyed by those who controlled her 
 destinies! The wilderness bowed down before the energy of her 
 pioneers; the nations clothed themselves with the productions of 
 her soil: and whilst the shadow of her power rested upon dis- 
 tant lands, the citizen of every State could stand erect, with the 
 pride of conscious freedom, when he remembered that the Gov- 
 ernment was his — that it was not his master, but his servant: 
 that he and his peers had made it, without exhausting their 
 power, and that they could unmake it, if ever it should cease to 
 protect either their lives, their liberty, or their property, against 
 foreign or domestic violence. 
 
 With that spiiit animating the people, the march of progress 
 was unexampled. The States warred not among themselves, 
 but leaned against each other for support against the banded 
 nations; whilst, under the protecting iEgis of a Federal Consti- 
 tution, the oppressed children of earth everywhere hastened to 
 find rest, and strength, and safety. This was a spectacle on 
 which an assembled universe might have gazed with the silent 
 rapture of a great joy. 
 
 There Science, wandering, found her cho en scat, 
 And spread her store of blessings at tin ir feet ; 
 Wheeled their broad commerce o'er each distant deep — 
 Even sent their thoughts upon the Lightning's leap: 
 Traversed their Union with her iron hands. 
 And helped them labor with her thousand hands; 
 With Art, her sister, walked through every State, 
 To help them prosper, and to make them great. 
 
 We love to remember the early glories of the Union that has 
 gone, because we love the principles of regulated freedom which 
 created it. We love to rejoice over its earlier, and better days, 
 because to our fathers it was the shadow of a great rock in the 
 desert; and we even clung to its lifeless form long after its vital 
 spirit had departed, and when it promised us nothing — nothing, 
 
12 
 
 in the approaching future, but the vertical rays of a sectional 
 tyranny worse than death. 
 
 The glories of that Union have long since departed. The 
 bloom of youth was yet upon her cheek, and the strength of a 
 giant manhood in her arms, when the fingers of intolerance and 
 fanaticism were silently loosening the chords of her existence. 
 
 The fell spirit which drove Roger Williams to the wilderness, 
 which denied a laiiding to the churchman of England, and which 
 burned women for witches at the stake, had not died, but slept. 
 It would sometimes rouse from its restless slumber, to mutter its- 
 edicts in favor of Millerism; to explain the mysteries of free 
 love; to make strong-minded women unsex themselves; to 
 astound its followers with the wonders of clairvoyance, or start 
 spirits to rapping, and writing, for their instruction: but its 
 greatest achievement was reserved for the hour of its awakening, 
 when.it should come, refreshed from its slumber, to make Infi- 
 delity and Religion shake hands over a desecrated Constitution, 
 and a broken Union. 
 
 For thirty years, a feeling of jealousy and hatred had been 
 intensifying between ourselves and those who dwell by the shores 
 of New England, and their descendants who had immigrated 
 along the frozen lakes. For thirty years the halls of a common 
 congress had echoed to the fierce defiance of the sections. A 
 Government of co-equal and independent States contained dis- 
 tinct types of civilization, clearly marked by a geographical line 
 traversing their center. South of that line the States, impelled 
 by the laws of climate and production, found that they had 
 solved the great problem which the statesmen of Europe had 
 essayed in vain, and that capital and labor harmonised in their 
 borders. North of that line a morality, higher than that of the 
 Bible, was taught alike by the preacher and the infidel; and the 
 disciple of Him who had exhorted slaves to the duty of obedi- 
 ence, clasped, in the bonds of " equality and fraternity," the 
 prowling thief who, in the name of "liberty," had stolen the 
 property of his southern neighbor. A law higher than the Con-* 
 stitution, yet conflicting with it, was promulgated, and that 
 great charter of our rignts was denounced as " a league with 
 hell, and a covenant with death." 
 
 The power of the north bowed down befi re this new philo- 
 sophy, and her States, at its command, nullified and spurned, 
 the laws which the Constitution had commanded for our protec- 
 tion. 
 
 It was not enough that they were permitted, unmolested, to 
 strain the overworked sinews of the fair-haired maid and the 
 
IS 
 
 helpless age of their own kindred, amid the ceaseless hum of 
 their Vast factories; it was not enough that they were permitted, 
 'without hindrance, to doom to endless poverty the suffering mil- 
 lions of their owu race under the crushing power of concen- 
 trated capital: they longed for more extended fields of usefulness. 
 They looked away to the regions of the South, and beheld their 
 brethren sunk in moral depravity and mental blindness, and 
 they aspired to a guardianship over the morality of fifteen 
 States; to prescribe the conditions of their safety, and determine 
 the laws of their expansion. 
 
 It was not enough that their commerce was sustained by the 
 products of our soil, their enterprise enriched by the collection of 
 revenue Under partial laws, and that we, with a spirit of forbear- 
 ance unknown in the history of man. had, for long years, en- 
 dured their hatred and their taunts; the Sharp's rifle must be 
 sent to drive us from the common property, and sanctimonious 
 villains come around our hearth-stones to incite to the butchery 
 of our women and children. 
 
 A conflict had begun between the moral forces, and their great 
 leader had told us that it should be " irrepressible;" that they 
 had driven us from the Territories, aud that they would soon 
 invade us in the States, unless we yielded to their demands, and 
 secured equality to our slaves. A sectional President must be 
 •elected, whose great recommendation was, that he had announced 
 his hatred for our institutions. 
 
 Representation was indeed to be allowed us, but it was to be 
 the representation of the minority against a hostile majority, — 
 the representation of the weak, in tha hostile camp of the strong, 
 — upon a question that had been prejudged against us. which 
 involved, directly, our right to regulate onr local affairs, and, 
 indirectly, fifteen hundred millions worth of property. 
 
 In vain the Constitution was invoked to protect the reserved 
 rights of the States and the people: that was the "covenant with 
 death ." The Union — the Union, had become their only idol: the 
 child had strangled its parent; the garment was worshipped for 
 the God. In vain we pointed to a Supreme Court, the highest 
 tribunal upon earth, its Chief Justice the chosen friend of. Jack- 
 son, and venerable from age, and implored them to spare us the 
 degradation of being ruled over by a President who would dis- 
 regard their decision, already pronounced in our favor. All, all 
 was in vain! The designs of sectional despotism were manifest. 
 We knew that the same sectional spirit which could, in Novem- 
 ber, elect its President, could, in Jane, hurl its armed mercena- 
 ries on the soil of Missouri, to butcher her citizens if she trusted 
 
14 
 
 to its clemency. We knew that the same States that cauld vio- 
 late the Constitution by extending liberty to our escaped slaves, 
 could, in June, force their President to spurn the writ of habeas 
 corpus* when issued by the Chief Justice for the benefit of a 
 white man, and a Marylander, in chains. 
 
 All experiences had taught us that the approaches of sec- 
 tionan aggression were gradual; that it concealed its hand of 
 iron in a glove of velvet, whilst its footsteps werp upon prece- 
 denfc of its own making. The lessons of the past were not 
 forgotten; the language of the Declaration of Independence had , 
 not been left us in vain; we remembered that wherfever a Gov- 
 ernment ceased to answer the ends for which it was made, it was 
 not only the right but the duty of the people to " establish new 
 Government, laying its foundations on such principles, and or- 
 ganizing its powers in such form as to them should seem most 
 likely to effect their happiness and safety." 
 
 We have established new guards for our future safety by 
 separating from those who sought to use the powers of Gov- 
 ernment for our destruction. We have asserted our independ- 
 ence of the old Union for causes before the magnitude of which 
 the collection of a tax on tea dwindles into insignificance. Who 
 can charge upon the South that she was ever untrue to the Con- 
 stitution or the Union under it, so long as her equal rights 
 were observed and respected. Upon many a bloody field, 
 wherever the sleet of battle had thickest fallen, — wherever the 
 red harvest of war's sleepers was thickest strewn, than her chiv- 
 alry had charged in upholding the honor of the flag they 
 loved. But, ay, but even as the young Washington, who upon 
 the bloody field of Monongahela charged again, and yet again, 
 to redeem the wavering standard of Britain's royalty, received 
 from Freedom's hand another flag, when the old one flaunted 
 over the hosts of coercion, even so the men of the South, now 
 that their once loved banner is borne by an invading foe, will 
 baptize in the smoke of battle another flag which shall be the 
 true emblem of their equal rights. 
 
 We are to-day engaged in the second Avar for independence, 
 resisting the demands of centralization, fighting battles tor self- 
 g verrmient, and upholding the cause of constitutional freedom. 
 Old men have long told us that the hour of our trial would come. 
 The first shriek of fanatieisrn over the admission of Missouri 
 fell upon the startled ear of the author of the Declaration of Im- 
 pendence, like the alarm of a fire-bell in the watches of the night. 
 Let us then eease to wonder that the army of the Crusa er 
 Many a red Peter has for years preached that the 
 
15 
 
 Lamb of Peace must be worshipped in blood, and taught the 
 multitude in the name of God to war upon his providence in 
 destroying the social relations He has established. In resisting 
 this crusade, we are yielding to a God-given impulse, which 
 he lodged in the breast of man when He made him, and which 
 prompts even the worm to turn and sting the foot that spurns it. 
 You, who are about to devote yourselves first to the service of 
 your country, will be nerved and animated by the reflection that 
 you ar- not fighting for the shadowy and unsubstantial phan- 
 toms of the past, but to preserve your high estate in the living 
 present That you, are not periling your lives in behalf of 
 usurpation, infidelity and sectional tyranny, but for your country 
 home and civilization. Remember that the hopes and bless- 
 ings of gentle woman will attend ycu ; that the hour of your 
 danger will be the hour of her pale, proud agony, when she will 
 clasp her tender nestling to her bosom, and shuddering, think 
 upon her docm if youi footsteps should turn backward inthe strife 
 You upon whom at home will rest the responsibility of pre- 
 serving a sound public sentiment, have a fearful trust, for which 
 God and posterity will judge you. Let the language of crimi- 
 mmation and recrimination cease in our midst; let the devil of 
 party strife be bin ied under our feet with his face downwards. 
 Count him a bad adviser who will tell you that past opinion shall be' 
 the measure of present patriotism, and take by the hand as a brother 
 and a friend, evon as your grandsiies did, all who will stand by 
 their country in the hour of her peril, and defend the soil that feeds 
 them. Let us remember to preserve the military subordinate to 
 the civil power, and cherish a reverential regard for the suprem- 
 acy of the law. Shall we, who cast oft the tyranny of higher- 
 lavvism at the North, bow down before the grim Moloch, when 
 he stalks upon our ownsoil? The written law, made by ourselves, 
 must be the power before which we bend; if that be over- 
 thrown, then, indeed, would Anarchy, with her serpent brood 
 come among us, from whom would spring absolutism, to estab- 
 lish order at the expense of freedom. I urge you, as I have 
 ever done, to suspend the hand of violent in our midst, except 
 when it strikes at the command of the law, or in the sacred 
 cause of self defence. Spurn with contempt that bastard states- 
 manship which would persuade you that a stronger government 
 can alone secure stability. The centralization of power was 
 advocated by many who framed the old Constitution ; their 
 proselytes have existed in every subsequent stage of our 
 progress, and should now be watched with sleepless vigilance, 
 If they have lately been more bold than before, it is because 
 
16 
 
 their hopes were excited hy sudden and convulsive changes; 
 lout if they have failed to make proselytes among the peo- 
 ple, it should cheer us with the assurance of their weakness. 
 The fossil demagogues who haunt the scenes of their former 
 .power to slander and defame all who M this crisis will discharge 
 their duty, may indeed think their advancement can be secured 
 •only by some other medium than the elective franchise, and 
 may already be desiring and predicting the establishment of a 
 stronger government; but the hopes of a glorious future depend 
 not on them or their sycophants, but upon the bone and sinew 
 of this land, wno dwell on your prairies and in your valleys, who 
 •are devoted to the cause of free government, and will be for 
 ever. 
 
 We have not destroyed, but have shown our ability to pie- 
 serve republican institutions. As a chastened people in olden 
 time carried with them through strange afflictions the Ark of 
 the Covenant, so we have clung through every trial to the Con- 
 stitution of our country; and when we departed fom those who 
 for this faith persecuted us, we brought it with us as the ark of 
 our safety, and are to-day struggling as a people for the enjoy- 
 ment of all that it secures. 
 
 If the spirit of all shall be crushed by submitting to the exac- 
 tions of arbitrary power, under the forms of violated law — if 
 these States now contending ior the right of self government, 
 shall be overborne and stricken down by invading foes, then in- 
 deed will absolutism gain a triumph in our midst. And 
 is any one so blind as now to hope that either submission 
 or conquest would not be followed by the destruction of 
 -every right that the freemen values? How could the conquered 
 States be governed, except by a powerful standing army quar- 
 tered among the people ? How could they expect either justice 
 «or protection from a people who had conquered and subdued 
 them? how look for equality of right from those whose hate 
 "would be inflamed by conflicts and carnage? Despotism— 
 the despotism of military force, the worst of all, would be our 
 fate. Who would desire to restore the Government of 
 the past with a fate like that before him? As well might 
 you expect the first estate of bliss in Heaven would return by 
 restoring Lucifer and his fallen hosts, all hot and smoking 
 from the lowest deep, with their sins unrepented, as to expect 
 that a reconstruction of the past would bring either peace, safety 
 or happiness to the South. Your Senators, no longer erect with 
 the proud consciousness that they spoke for the sovereignty of 
 States, would bow their heads before their Northern conquerors^ 
 
17 
 
 and supplicate for every crumb of favor that the hand of power 
 would grant — your women looking around for their neighbors 
 among enfranchized slaves, would scorn you for degrading them 
 and their children to negro equality; your sons growing tc 
 man's estate, deprived ot the elective franchise, would cower 
 before their conquerors with the craven soul of the provincial sub- 
 ject With State rights shipwrecked, and northern, official* 
 lording it over you, under laws suited to territorial vassalage, your 
 folly would only be equalled by your infamy. No gloomy pro- 
 phet of the present could then take comfort over the dark fulfill- 
 ment of his predictions, but upon all would rest the shadow of 
 disgrace and the mark of the serf. The heart sickens and revolts 
 at the disgusting picture. 
 
 But a brighter, a more glorious destiny awaits us; it will 
 oome through carnage — it may come after the fires of desolation 
 have swept the land — but it will surely come. I predict not 
 to that cold being, with soul all rusted and shrivelled by devot- 
 ing six days and a half to his great god Dollar, half of a day to 
 his Christ, and no hour to his country, but I speak to th« living 
 and glowing spirit of the South, which is to-day bristling the land 
 with its crop of armed men. The clay of our deliverance and 
 triumph will surely come. 
 
 Already the Old Dominion stands like a grim lioness at Lay in 
 the gaps of the Alleghanies, guarding her progeny of the South, 
 and as often as her cry shall come to us for help, it v/ill go, in 
 long and living waves, crested with glittering steel. It may be 
 that, overborne for a time, her sons may fall back for increased 
 strength, but the cause of God, Civilization $nd Country must 
 at last triumph, and the wave of conquest flow back to cover 
 again the loved old land consecrated to Freedom. 
 
 In view of all the lessons of the past, and the issues of the 
 present, we may reassure ourselves with the conviction that we 
 have not departed from the faith bequeathed to us by the men 
 of Seventy-Six. Constitutional liberty expelled from most Gov- 
 ernments upon earth, finds now her abiding place among the 
 Confederate States of America, and so long as they are true to 
 the principles that now govern and control them, so long will 
 the fourth day of July be held in grateful remembrance.