Glass 1 *1 \JL Book »fe •II ' &> A <<& / ' •/ NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1867. •33% Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven, by Harper & Brothers, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. The friends of the late Henry Winter Davis have thought it due to his memory, and to the remembrance of the public service which he fulfilled both in the Congress of the United States and before the people of Maryland, especially in behalf of emancipa- tion, that all such adequate and proper account of it as could be had should be put into some convenient shape, and published, as a contribution to the history of the times, as well as constituting a suitable record of that service. To this end they have collected all the reports and accounts of the speeches and addresses delivered by him, and, upon examina- tion of them, it was resolved to publish all such as were regularly and correctly reported, and which he had gathered or retained, precisely as they were printed and as he left them, without cor- rection and without omission, except in two instances alone, where direct allusion by name was made to persons, which allu- sions they believe Mr. Davis would have omitted if he had lived to correct these speeches for the press. In this collection have also been included such documents and reports as were wholly written by him, although the course rec- ommended in such papers was not adopted, or the measures or men condemned thereby were approved, by the party he support- ed or by the people to whom he appealed. For it has not been thought admissible to correct any part of the account, nor to with- hold any part of it, unless by reason of an insufficient and inade- quate report it was plainly no true record of what was said. It is to be regretted, of course, that these speeches and docu- iy PREFACE. ments should not have received final revision by the author's hand ; but, in the absence of that, the only proper emendation, it has been thought improper to substitute the corrections of any other. They have gladly used the permission of the Hon. Mr. Cress- well to include here, as a sketch of the life and services of Mr. Davis, the admirable Oration delivered by him in the hall of the LTouse of Representatives on the occasion of -the commemorative services held there by the senators and representatives on the 22d of February, 1866. Short notes have been prefixed or annexed to each speech or paper, explanatory of the allusions made in it — recalling contem- porary events, or the circumstances under which, and the time at which, it was delivered. The intention has been to confine those notes to that purpose alone ; and the statements made have been verified by a recurrence to the daily record of such events printed or made at the time of their occurrence. CONTENTS. THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OP HENRY WINTER DAVIS. An Oration delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives by Hon. John A. J. CresSwell, on the 22d of February, 18G6 .' Page 9 SPEECHES AND ADDKESSES. A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY AGAINST THE SECTIONS. A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, August 7th, 1S5G 30 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1S5G) — THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 6th, 1857 G3 , AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, March 30th, 1858 83 REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE EASTERN FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE. An Address delivered in Baltimore, Md., November 16, 1858 104 THE REOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. An Article written for a Daily Journal in August, 1859 115 THE QUESTION IN THE TERRITORIES. — UNION OF ALL OPPOSED TO THE DE- MOCRACY. An Article addressed to the Editor of the N. Y. Tribune in November, 1859... 1 19 ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE ON AC- COUNT OF MR. DAVIS'S VOTE FOR MR. SPEAKER PENNINGTON. A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, February 21st, I860 125 SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND. A Speech addressed to the Electors of the Fourth Congressional District of Maryland during the Presidential Campaign of 18G0 14G vi CONTENTS. ADDRESS TO THE VOTERS OP THE FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. A Letter addressed to the Constituents of Mr. Davis, January 2d, 18Gl...Page 1S7 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, February 7th, 18G1 199 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE ON THE STATE OF THE NATION IN THE AUTUMN OF '61. A Speech delivered in Baltimore, Md., October 16th, 18G1 222 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. A Speech delivered in Brooklyn, N. Y., November, 18G1 258 CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF THOSE ENGAGED IN REBELLION. Two Letters addressed to the Hon. Justin S. Morrill, a Representative in Con- gress from Vermont, June Gth, 1862 292 THE DEMOCRATIC HUE AND CRY A SHAM.— CONFISCATION AND EMANCIPATION. A Speech delivered in Concert Hall, Newark, N. J., October 30th, 1862 303 NO PEACE BEFORE VICTORY. A Speech delivered in Concert Hall, Philadelphia, September 24th, 1863 307 REMARKS AT THE RECEPTION OF RUSSIAN NAVAL OFFICERS. A Response to a Toast, delivered in the Astor House, New York, October 12th, 1863 338 NO PEACE TILL AFTER REBEL SUBMISSION. An Address delivered in the Cooper Institute, New York, October 9th, 1863.... 341 CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY. A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 14th, 1864 f 343 DRAFT AND COMMUTATION.— COLORED TROOPS. Extracts from Speeches delivered in the House of Representatives, February 10th and 11th, 1864 . 351 FREEDMEN'S BUREAU DISPOSITION TO BE MADE OF FREE NEGROES. A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 25th, 1S64 353 REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, March 22d, 1864 368 ON EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND. A Speech delivered in the Maryland Institute, Baltimore, April 1st, 1864 384 CONTENTS. v ji THE EMPIRE OP MEXICO. A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, April 4th, 1864 Page 395 EXPULSION OP MR, LONG, OF OHIO. A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, April 11th, 1864 397 THE ENROLLMENT BILL. A Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, July 1st, 1864 410 THE PRESIDENT'S SUPPRESSION OF THE BILL FOR RECONSTRUCTION IN THE REBELLIOUS STATES. An Address to the People, known as the "Wade-Davis Manifesto," published August 8th, 1864 415 VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS. A Speech delivered in National Hall, Philadelphia, October 25th, 1864 427 JOINT RESOLUTION ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS. \| A Report and Resolution addressed to the House of Representatives, June, 1864.. 456 assed by that or another Congress, adopted, and incorporated into the acts for the settlement of the Mexican conquests ! I neither affirm the correctness or the incorrectness of this view. I simply urge the fact which Northern Democrats pleaded against the Southern Democrats. But, said my honorable friends upon the Democratic side of this hall to their friends from the North — for there is where the defec- . tion arose ; there is where the strength of the Eepublican party comes from — out of their own side came that portentous creation whence comes this sin and all our woe into our happy world. " We say that we have reversed all that, and those laws and com- AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 51 promises are void by reason of being inconsistent with the compro- mise measures of 1850. Those measures have repealed it." "Ah ! but," said their Northern Democratic friends, continuing their re- monstrance, " the law which organized the boundary of Texas declared in so many words that nothing therein contained should be construed to repeal or modify any thing contained in that very clause of the Texas resolutions." These Northern Democrats still farther mercilessly press their Democratic brethren, as if to leave my honorable friends on my left no escape from the most awkward of dilemmas. If it be true that the principle of popular sovereignty was settled by the com- promise measures of 1850, how came it to be omitted in the legis- lation of 1853, since the acts of 1850 were enacted ? The Con- gress of 1853, with a great Democratic majority, organized the Territory of Washington out of a territory over which the or- dinance of 1787 had been by them in 1848 extended ; and that Congress, in the year of grace 1853, and of the era of the new dis- pensation of the 3d, not merely failed to remove that restriction, but declared that the laws of Oregon should be enforced in the Territory of Washington, which laics included slavery by special enactment, in flagrant conflict with the principles which they now declare to have been the very vital principle embodied in and pervading the acts of 1850. You know as well as we do that these compromise measures of 1850 have always been regarded and treated as a finality — the end of controversy ; that this last compromise, this great compromise of 1850, was settled on the basis of all the preceding compromises. On the assumption and the concession, as stated by Mr. Web- ster, that every foot of territory in the United States was finally settled by laws irrepealable, and that it was only on that suppo- sition that the laws of 1850 became laws at all, only last session you passed a bill creating a government over all the territory now embraced in the Kansas and Nebraska Act, without opposi- tion, merely by common consent ; and no man of any party dis- covered, or, if he had discovered, revealed, still less attempted to declare the novel dogma of a latent principle, not even expressed in an act, being effectual to annul another law enacted on another principle. From argument they passed to entreaty and pathetic appeal. These thirty years we have lived under this law ; it has injured no man. No Southern state protested against its enact- a n v\ FOB tSE COUNTS! .: none in L850 demanded its repeal] many Southern men its < \ . the Pacific; no Southern state now do- ids it : bo tern] tates the popular mind which its repeal tal necessity compels the statesman, in i tread this ontrod path. You :-.-.\ your object is not a now slave state; then lei it be as it is. 5 . • .. . . Northern tide of emigration will insure its freedom, . why do the j set of repealing a '..o\ which chai \v..\ disturb the peace of the country by this wound Northern brethren? Di the Abolitionists The*j ore et er the on s] [ L860, We stood by ,1 . a uo^ ? Well, sir. this bill passed,] come bo the d le s< [uel i \ sas. The executive, ibined fat N IS ve been doublj careful to have ■ i the Nov:': or South who was far above .. ,o q pri> ate, personal, and pecuniary consid .-.-. -■ tab d s ■ 3 friend £ . w in my eye, The] should.] cenaman . nen a < and hone! be moved by promises, They should ...\. .. . with military expert* agh to n: b battalion in the field — whose he) d not Ld h«\ e said to all invaders s or maraud* \ would have seen that : i of stan ery was i ... .'. and sun, and a truncheon swi .-.-. the sound of my \ ... would have cut offtheir i ad rather than ow of a '. dered to eked in* feeder's ........ j was deride eluded: men who would I ave I itten < at their I i .- fess " - i ared by Gh Reeder u Presi Ld have held . b the posed foreign m AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 53 : a faithful but obnoxious instrument out of the way, to avoid the scandal of a public dismissal, and the greater scandal of a con- fession of blunders worse than crimes, and weakness worse than wickedness. If there were no such men within the party, it is unfit to guide the destinies of the country ; and if there were, then are they thrice unworthy to hold a power they have so grossly abused. Sir, that scene in the executive mansion — the proconsul of the President narrating that he let the life-blood of the province he ruled run unavenged and unstanched, the very flowers of her franchises be trampled down at the sacred ballot-box, marauders from either pole run a muck over her peaceful population, him- self buried to the eyes and ears in private speculations in public lands over which he ruled of questionable legality and of unques- tionable evil example, and deaf to the cry of helpless agony that rang through his domain, content to leave his people to their en- emies, if the protector and the President could agree on the color to be put on the scandal and adjust the division of the responsi- bility, confessing these things to the President of the republic, and that President driving a bargain for a foreign mission instead of instant and ignominious expulsion from office, and the negotia- tion failing, dismissing him gently for illegal speculation, silent as the tomb to the civil war that he allowed to rage, the outraged law he failed to avenge, the rights of suffrage violated with im- punity, and the yoke of a legislation born in violence and fraud by his judgment fastened on the necks of American freemen — these things, established by a vast mass of resistless testimony, form a new and melancholy chapter in the history of the republic. Sir, the party whose policy, however well intended, has given occasion to stain the American name with civil blood by the re- peal of the Missouri Compromise, is not likely to stand well with the men of the North, whose brethren have been the sufferers. Their denial of the outrages, their extenuations, their apologies, day after day, in this House, till the stupendous mass of the com- mittee's evidence overwhelmed them, and their cavils at the evi- dence — to my judgment unimpeached, and, if so, of crushing weight — scarcely tends to improve the odor of the Democratic party in the Northern nostrils. That is my opinion of the result of the Kansas investigation : I dare not impute perjury to men by the hundred ; the concurrence of so many is itself conclusive 54 A TLEA FOR THE COUNTRY against the hypothesis of fabrication ; and I must be pardoned if my legal habits will not allow me to weigh partisan denials against testimony sworn in the face of cross-examination. I make no plea for some strained or one-sided inferences which my friend from Ohio has drawn from that evidence. I tender no apology for the one-sided results drawn by my friend from Mis- souri. I am here, sir, for no party. I am speaking this day for the Constitution and the Union ; I am pleading for the great rights of American citizens; I am pleading for the honor and in- tegrity of the American government and the American name. I will set down no word in malice that would tinge the honor of the country, or hide one dark trait which the people of the coun- try ought to know. The reason that the North is opposed to the Democratic party is that they have done these things. Now, sir, perhaps we begin to see why the Northern people will not support Mr. Buchanan. Why will they not support him ? Why will not the Conservative vote be given for him ? — for there is a Conservative majority. They will not vote for the Democratic party, or for the Democratic nominee, because they have been guilty of these things. They will not vote for them because they have never repented in sackcloth and ashes. They will not vote for them because they have denied the wrongs be- fore the proof, and defended them after the proof. The}'- will not vote for them because they have reiterated the insult. They will not vote for them because they have blazoned on their banner the very words of the ambiguous oracle of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the very cause and declaration of war, now no longer deluding any one, but plainly, and in bloody letters, interpreted on the fields of Kansas. These are reasons they think sufficient, and the}* are likely to continue to think them sufficient. If Mr. Fillmore were in that position they would not vote for him. Ay, sir, even a conserva- tive Northern man, tempted by a spirit of revenge and retaliation, would have to argue with himself a long time before he could bring himself down to vote for this man, who has outraged all the feelings with which these men have been brought up. The best and most conservative of them — thousands of degrees from abolitionism — men who are supporting the Constitution and the Union — men who are willing to support and defend the institu- tion of slavery — men like those of Boston, who execute the Fugi- AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 55 tive Slave Law, marched down the streets of that city with loaded arms to shoot down their own citizens, that you, men of the South, might be protected — these arc the men you have driven from you. Where will they go if Mr. Fillmore were not offered to them as the symbol of peace ? Sir, I put it to my honorable friends to apply to them the ar- guments they hold valid at the South. The Northern men arc of like passions with us, moved by insult, not above revenge, and not given to prefer, in a sectional contest, the candidate of their opponents. My Democratic friends from every hustings in the South exhort the people to vote for Mr. Buchanan because he is the Southern candidate — because he is for the Kansas- Nebraska Act — because he is against compromise in a Southern sense — because he is the strongest man opposed to the Northern sectional candidate ; and by this sort of argument they admit that the sectional candi- date at the North represents the same class of men at the North that they represent at the South — men who are no more unrea- sonable in a Northern than they in a Southern sense. As they appeal to the South, so do the men who support Mr. Fremont appeal to the North. Gentlemen of the Democratic party, judge ye how far they are entitled to weight. Arc they conclusive? Do they compel me to yield my political preferences ? Is it right that I shall go for Mr. Buchanan ? Am I bound to bow the knee to him? Is it so desperate a case that I must stomach the slurs and imputations which were hurled on me and the American party during two or three months of this session? Shall I, for these considerations of a merely sectional character, because he is, as you say, the candidate of my section, abandon those who stood by us? I pray you to recall to your memories, and weigh well the obloquy cast on the American party. We were, you say, an unconstitutional party — yea, the very enemies of the Constitution. We were opposed to civil and religious liberty ; we were for de- priving men of equal rights ; we were for driving the honest for- eigners from our shores ; we were midnight assassins, stained with the blood and dirt of riotous mobs ; we had taken unconstitution- al oaths not to obey the Constitution ; we could not be touched in the speaker's contest; no compromise could be made with us; no exchange of candidates could be thought of for a moment. The honorable gentleman from Pennsjdvania (Mr. Fuller), who better accords with their notions on slavery, in theory and in 56 A PEEA FOR THE COUNTRY practice, than the honorable member from Illinois, so long their candidate, could not be touched. The very meeting in Conven- tion — the very meeting in caucus — ay, sir, the very meeting for open consultation, was scorned, and flung back in our faces. They could not touch such political lepers. A plurality rule was an alternative they preferred, knowing the consequences of the vote would be to place the present speaker in the chair. Such was their conduct to us — so conciliatory, so amiable, so loving, so winning ; yet, in the face of this rough wooing, they urge us, because of our connection with the South, to abandon Mr. Fillmore, the choice of our hearts, for Mr. Buchanan, because Mr. Buchanan is the safe and strong man for the South, the representa- tive of Southern interests. So intensely did they hate us — so much more did they hate us than the gentleman from Massachusetts (the speaker) ; yet so paramount do they regard the allegiance to the sectional candidate that they ask us to sacrifice our personal preferences, our political connections, our outraged dignity, for their triumph. Be it so. Is that the intensity of their sectional devotion ? I ask them to apply the argument north of Mason and Dixon's line, and tell me who, if he is not utterly abandoned and degraded, can, under these circumstances, vote for that candidate who holds the position their candidate holds at the South, and toward the South. I make here no argument of my own. I take honorable gentle- men upon their principles. I commend to their lips the chalice they mixed and poisoned for mine, and I dare them to the task. I know that my friends, in rashness and in hot party strife, have done many things to endanger the Constitution. I do not believe they wish to elect Fremont ; but, sir, if they had been bent di- rectly on that purpose, no man could find out any manner which would more directly and more inevitably accomplish that result than that which has been pursued. I wish to free it from all collateral issues, and put this one great argument before the country, so that there shall be an end ; to get rid of Mr. Fillmore by this appeal to Southern prejudices, I wish to deal with that and nothing else to-night. I sa}', sir, if Mr. Fillmore be not supported by the South, the whole North, and every state of it, must and will, conservative men and mad- men, vote for Mr. Fremont, by the very same reason that South- ern Democrats urge to induce Southern gentlemen to abandon AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 57 Mr. Fillmore for Mr. Buchanan. There needs but these words to accomplish it: "Fillmore is deserted by the South he saved." That one line would be a quietus undoubtedly of this contest. Democrats must accept that result of their own reasoning. They claim every Southerner in the name of sectional interest. The Republicans will claim every Northern man in the name of Northern interests. If he must obey, they must obey. Is the North, will the Democrats admit, less excitable, less hostile than themselves? If not, the sectional feeling must press them at least equally. Will they be likely to listen more readily to rea- sons for Mr. Buchanan than Southern men to reasons for Mr. Fremont? Or will not both be more accessible to arguments for Mr. Fillmore than either? Do they suppose the Northern laborer to be less interested than the Southern planter in the question of free and slave labor? or is he more cool and unprejudiced, when his livelihood and personal dignity are involved, than the South- ern planter, whose property only is affected ? The argument, therefore, must be abandoned, or it must be ad- mitted as unquestionably true that the logical result is to drive the whole North, not into the arms of Mr. Buchanan, but into the arms of Mr. Fremont. The Democratic party at the North has melted away into the Fremont party. They form its strength. They have done so because they were specially grieved by the use made of their rep- resentatives in the Kansas-Bill conflict. They had always been what in other people the Southern Democrats called Free Soil. That shone out in the remarks of the honorable gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Loiter), whose series of resolutions for fifteen years spoke the language — beginning in the Democratic Conventions and ending in the Republican Conventions — with a unity of sen- timent and language defying the detection of the point where the Democrat shaded off into the Republican. It is for this reason that this blow has been so fatal to the Democratic party of the North — that the hatred of the North is so deadly against it, and yet is confined to it, and yet so sagaciously under control, so much of method in their madness, that they will not allow a chance to Mr. Buchanan of the election by pluralities, but will defeat that by any combination. This view should determine the South to disentangle its cause from the fragments of the broken, powerless, and obnoxious Dem- 58 A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY ocrats. The Democratic party are no longer fit mediators be- tween the North and South. How can they exact performance of the Texas Compromise? how protest against a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law? how demand that the Wilmot Proviso be not extended to all the Territories ? how claim the admission of more slave states ? Their mouth is sealed on these topics before the revenge of the Eepublicans. By the law of retaliation, these things would be natural and just punishments to that party which has swept away the compromises and denied the principles on which all these rights rested. The Eepublican closes his mouth with the reply, "You (the Democratic part}') have no right to ap- peal to us." It is only in the name of the Southern people — of the men who do not join in the outrage — that these dire consequences can be surely avoided. The repudiation of the Democratic party is the first condition and best security for peace and safety. It silences the plea of revenge and retaliation. The people of the South owe it to themselves and to their future as completely to discard the Democrats as the people of the North have withdrawn from them their confidence. But there are Democratic gentlemen who anticipate the success of the argument in driving every body to support Mr. Fremont, and who speculate on the consequences. There are men who go about the country declaiming about the inevitable consequences of the election of Mr. Fremont, and the question is asked whether that simple fact is not sufficient, not merely to justify, but to re- quire a dissolution of the Union. The question has been asked of me to-day. That is a question which I do not regard as even a subject of discussion. It never will be done while men have their reason. It never will be done until some party, bent upon ac- quiring party power, shall again, and again, and again exasperate, beyond the reach of reason, Northern and Southern minds, as my Southern friends have now exasperated the Northern minds. It would be an act of suicide, and sane men do not commit suicide. The act itself is insanity. It will be done, if ever, in a tempest of fury and madness which can not stop to reason. Dissolution means death — the suicide of Liberty without the hope of resurrec- tion — death without the glories of immortality, with no sister to mourn her fate, none to wrap her decently in her winding-sheet and bear her tenderly to her sepulchre — dead Liberty left to the AGAINST THE SECTIONS. 59 horrors of corruption, a loathsome thing, with a stake through the body, which men shun, cast out naked on the highway of nations, where the tyrants of the earth, who feared her living, will mock her dead — passing by on the other side, wagging their heads and thrusting their tongue in their cheek at her, saying, Behold her ! how she that was fair among nations is fallen ! is fallen ! — and only the few wise men who loved her, out of every nation, will shed tears over her body to quiet her manes, while we, her children, stumble about her ruined habitations, to find dis- honorable graves wherein to hide our shame. Dissolution ! How shall it be ? Who shall make it ? Do men dream of Lot and Abraham parting, one to the east, one to the west, peacefully, because their servants strive? That states will divide from states, and boundary-lines will be marked by com- pass and chain ? Sir, that will be a portentous commission that will settle that partition, for cannon will be planted at the cor- ners, and grinning skeletons be finger-posts to point the way. It will be no line gently marked on the bosom of the republic — some meandering vein whence generations of her children have drawn their nourishment — but a sharp and jagged chasm, rending the hearts of great commonwealths, lacerated and smeared with fraternal blood. On the night when the stars of her constellation shall fall from heaven, the blackness of darkness will settle on the liberties of mankind in this Western world. This is dissolution. If such, sir, is dissolution, as seen in a glass darkly, how terrible will it be face to face? They who reason about it are half crazy now; they who talk of it do not mean it r and dare not mean it. They who speak in earnest of a dissolution of this Union seem to me like children or madmen. He who would do such a deed as that would be the maniac, without a tongue to tell his deed or reason to arrest his steps ; an instrument of a mad impulse, im- pelled by one idea — to smite his victim. Sir, there have been maniacs who have been cured by horror at the blood they have shed. Gentlemen ask, " If Mr. Fremont be elected, how will Maryland go? what will Maryland do?" I do not allow that question to be asked. She knows but one country and but one Union. Her glory is in it ; her rights are bound up in it. Her children shed their blood for it, and they will do it again. Beyond it she knows 60 A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY nothing. She does not reckon whether there is more advantage in the Union to the North or to the South ; she does not calcu- late its value ; nor does she cast up an account of profit and loss on the blood of her children. That is my answer to that ques- tion. But, sir, it is portentous to hear the members of a party contesting for the presidency menace dissolution and revolution as the penalty they will inflict on the victors for defeating them. People who do not hold the Union worth four years' deprivation of office are scarcely safe depositaries of its powers. But if these are to be the bloody consequences of a successful concentration of the Northern vote for Mr. Fremont r will not my Democratic friends, as the result of the argument, allow the mod- erate and conservative men of the North and South a chance to cling to those around who, being open to reason, yet doubt how they shall vote, and reiterate in their ears reasons why they should not drive this dangerous issue to a decision ? They sup- pose that because, in the wreck of parties, they must go to the wall or to the bottom unless Mr. Fillmore can be gotten rid of, that which is necessary to save them is necessary to save the Union. " We are the state;' 1 '' what is good for us, therefore, is good for the state, is their reasoning, and the Kansas Act and civil war is the conclusion. Self-love, party devotion, have misled them. Their safety and their success involve great danger to the repub- lic, and in their ruin lies the safety of the republic. Sir, they boast at the South, and it is their Io triumphe, that they have defeated and overthrown abolition. Is it from this great struggle, then, that the Democratic ranks are weak, and wan, and thin ? Why, sir, the Abolition party fell beneath the blows of Millard Fillmore, leading the conservative men of all parties — the Clays, the Websters, the Footes, the Bentons of that great era of 1850, and was laid in a tomb inscribed with those acts, and bearing on its base the words Millard Fillmore fecit, Their leaders covered the journals of the Senate with their pro- tests against those wise but obnoxious concessions which laid the evil spirit. But when the monster was overthrown and the field deserted, they dug up the dead body, and laid it at the feet of the South, and claimed their reward : " Lo our trophy ! Io our scalp ! to you be the spoil of our sword and spear." Why, sir, they " fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock." When Prince Hal made Percy food for worms, Falstaff counter- AGAINST THE SECTIONS. Q\ feited death ; and when the fight was over and the victor gone, Falstaff, thus soliloquizing — "Zounds, I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. Therefore I'll make him sure ; yea, and I'll swear I killed him. Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me" — stabbed the dead body in the thigh, shouldered it, and cast it at the feet of the victor : "There is Percy; if your father will do me any honor, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself. / look to be either earl or duke, lean assure you." The prince turned away, Falstaff following : "I'll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God reward him !" Mr. Chairman, I have but a few words more to say. Whose cause am I pleading? I speak here in behalf of that vilified par- ty, representing the great mass of the American people in revolt against the domination of effete parties, which is willing, irre- spective of the chances of defeat or success, like its great leader, to devote itself to the Constitution and the Union. I am bound to see, and will see that contending factions do not make the for- eign vote the balance of power in this country. I have resolved that, so far as in me lies, religion shall be banished from politics, and no man shall attempt to invoke the religious prejudices of any man. Sir, I will devote myself to weeding out these transac- tions, with the Secession party of the South, with the Abolition party of the North, with religious parties aspiring to political power, be they Methodist or Catholic, with foreign votes that can be bought, with the venal of all parties, who play the game of power with the interests of the people, and light the war of sec- tional interests that they may be sutlers to the camp. And whether we succeed to-day or not until to-morrow, time is for us, the future is ours. The young American cries the name of the American party, and imbibes its principles, in his earliest and pristine vigor. These sentiments will not die out for a genera- tion, and in less than a generation the republic can be saved. I, sir, shall abide by that candidate who has been selected by this party to protect the interests of this country. Between the candidates of rival factions I will not select. I can accept no statesman of twenty days, whose only principle is the forcing of the Topeka Constitution on the necks of the Kansas people, without pledges to the future for good behavior, or a past to read the future by. I marvel at my Republican friends, still Q2 A PLEA FOR THE COUNTRY AGAINST THE SECTIONS. smarting under the experience of what one unknown man may do, walking with their eyes open into the same trap. I can accept no man whose tortuous career touches alternately each extreme of the political sphere, his political life merged in a party plat- form, and chosen of the leader of the Democratic party to torment the North to madness, and to follow in the footsteps of this admin- istration on the bloody ground of Kansas. I have no preference between two men who dispute the doubtful honor of applying the torch to the temple of the Constitution. No law can quiet Kansas unless a soothing administration soft- en the exacerbated feelings of the people. With such an admin- istration no law is needed. If Mr. Buchanan be elected, he will follow the bloody policy of this administration, whose sins and glories — Greytown, Ostend, Kansas, and all — decorate and oppress him. If Mr. Fremont be elected, he will be the hero of a counter- revolution, fierce and merciless as is the retaliation of the op- pressed — the sport of fierce passions, to which he will owe his power, and which he can not and dare not control. I shall, in this crisis, adhere to Millard Fillmore, who knows not where the South ends or the North begins, equally above fear or flattery, decorated with the glory of an illustrious administra- tion, saluted " Pacificator" by the acclaim of the people, and now alone capable of restoring peace to this distracted land. He has been tried on each extreme of fortune. He has passed through the torrid zone of heady and tempestuous youth without excess ; he has trod the temperate zone of matured manhood, where am- bition burns with strongest flame, and reason stands ready to minister to its bidding, unswayed by any temptation ; and now, near the close of a great career, in that last zone when the head is covered with the snows of many winters and the sun of reason knows no setting, when there is no mist to cloud the eye and no passion to lead astray the heart, the past of life is more than the future, temptation jeopards more than it can promise, and only posterity and the throne of God are before him, he can do justice in the face of temptation, and between contending factions who can not do justice to themselves. To him I shall adhere in every extremity. To him I summon my countrymen in the name of the Union he saved. And in this great issue I put myself on God and my country. THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1856).— THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. Mr. Davis took an active part in favor of Mr. Fillmore in the canvass preceding the election for President held in November, 1856, and which resulted in the choice of Mr. Buchanan. At the following (third) session of the Thirty-fourth Congress (December, 1856, to March, 1857) Mr. Davis was named on the Special Committee of Investigation into alleged corrupt practices of certain members, and took part in the Plouse in the debates on the reports and conclusions of that Committee ; on the bill to guard against corruption and corrupt practices in legislation, and on the bill to refund duties on goods destroyed in (United States) warehouses by fire. On the 6th of January, 1857, the question of referring the President's Message to the Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union being under consideration, Mr. Davis, of Maryland, said : Mr. Speaker, — Grave perplexities have arisen in interpreting the teachings of the late election. A singular diversity of views has been revealed. Gentlemen of the same party have differed as widely as those of opposite parties. The gradually widening circle of debate has drawn in great numbers on every side. As Democrat and Republican have been crippled in the conflict, fresh friends have poured in to the rescue; and the result of every addition has been that doubt has been piled upon doubt, confu- sion has become worse confounded, until he who attempts to read the recent election by the recent debate in this House will find himself with authorities for any opinion, with testimony for any fact, with views confounded and unintelligible, in endless mazes lost. The gentlemen of the administration have exhibited some sens- itiveness on the question who opened the debate. Wherever the responsibility rests, the great differences of opinion that it has elicited more than justify me, now that the debate has raged for weeks, in reviewing the field, summing up the results, and point- ing the attention of the people to the great diversity with which the question they have decided, and the judgment they are supposed to have pronounced, has been interpreted. Sir, this 64 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1356). discussion was not opened either by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Campbell] or by another gentleman in the other wing of the Capitol, now not far distant [Senator Wilson]. It origin- ated neither in this House nor in the Senate. Its first word is found in the President's Message. He was justly fearful that the people might mistake their approval for a rebuke; that their unaided vision might not discover the comfort under the castiga- tion, nor be quite aware that behind a frowning Providence they hid a smiling nice ; and therefore he wisely availed himself of his constitutional privilege to lead their tottering steps in the wa}>- he would have them go'. So witless is the fling, that the 'van- quished have reopened a closed controversy ! Far be it from me to imitate the spirit which breathes through that extraordinary document. They only can fitly apologize for it who can estimate the bitterness of a spirit broken by such a fall ! I do not care to open any controversy either with its state- ments, its reasonings, or its scoldings ; but I may be allowed to use it for instruction, and the country to profit by its. teachings. It re- veals some facts of sinister import. The President first teaches us : "That as senators represent their respective states, and members of the House of Representatives their respective constituencies in each of the states, so the Presi- dent represents the aggregate population of the United States .'" Napoleon Bonaparte said to an insubordinate assembly, " You are only the deputies of single provinces — I represent the nation /" Thus to compare small things with great, our President respect- fully assigns us our lower sphere, wherein we should behave not unseemly. Be it so, Mr. Speaker. Amid all the diversities, there is one fact which no one has controverted. It was fairly stated by the gentleman from Tennessee, and is apparent on every return of the aggregate vote. Mr. Buchanan ascends the chair of state against the will of a majority of about four hundred thousand of the people of the United States. If, therefore, the President represents the aggregate population of the Union, Mr. Buchanan does not represent, but misrepresents the people of the United States ! The President farther instructs us in what the people have decided in the election of Mr. Buchanan. " They have asserted," he sa} 7 s, " the constitutional equality of each and all of the states of the Union, as states.^ He means that they who by their votes elected Mr. Buchanan, voted for that principle contested by their THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 55 opponents, or he means nothing. If it has settled that principle, it proves that a majority of the people of the United States are opposed to the equality of the states I " They have affirmed," says the President, " the constitutional equality of each and all of the citizens of the United States as citizens, whatever their religion, "wherever their birth or their residence." If so, then it proves that a great majority of the people of the United States deny the equality of the United Slates — deny their equality by reason of their religion — deny their equality by reason of their residence — deny their equality by reason of their birth ! " They have asserted," says the President, " the inviolability of the constitutional rights of the different sections of the Union." Then a majority of the people of the United States have in the late contest been inimical to the constitutional rights of the states, and have been endeavoring to break them down ! The President farther informs us that " they have proclaimed their devoted and unalterable attachment to the Union and the Constitution, as objects of interest superior to all subjects of local or sectional controversy, as the safeguard of the rights of all, as the spirit and the essence of the liberty, peace, and greatness of the republic." If so, then a majority of the people of the United States have declared against those great principles ; they are inimical to the existence of this Constitution ; they are inimical to the rights of some great sections of the country ; they are bent on war and not on peace ; for a great majority of the people have voted against the man who, the President says, is the symbol of this decision. Sir, if the President's opinion is right, that those great and vital principles were in contest, then the vote of the people is more full of awful portent than any they have ever cast, and the day of our dissolution draws nigh. If they were not in contest, then that message is the most ungracious -sarcasm ever flung by a President on the people who lifted him above his fellows. It is of evil example for the President to have departed, in the language of his message, from the severe courtesy, the respectful reserve, the passionless dignity observed by his predecessors in alluding to the conduct of sovereign states, or the motives of great bodies of the people in the highest function of their sover- eignty. It is of all things most deplorable that, elevated above E QQ THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1S5G). the turbulent atmosphere of a popular canvass, the President should have stooped to the region of the storm, been swayed by the passions of the strife whose excesses it was his high duty to have restrained, and that, stung by the great condemnation of the vote of the people, should have poured out the bitterness of his heart in sharp vituperation of his judges, forgotten the President in the partisan, and inflamed the passions already consuming the vitals of the republic. But, Mr. Speaker, the people have taught some lessons worthy of being learned — not those the President -would inculcate, nor such as arc grateful to Democratic hearts — yet fruitful of warning and admonition, and quite visible to the dullest eye. It proves that a minority of the people desired to see Mr. Buchanan President of the United States. Nobody ever doubted that. It proves that a minority of the people were in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Nobody ever questioned that, It proves that a minority of the people approve of President Pierce's administration. Nobody ever doubted that ; but nobody knows how small that minority is. It proves that a minority of the people are content that his system of misrule may be prolonged for another four years. Nobody ever doubted that. It proves that the minority which preferred Mr. Buchanan was so located in various states, that under the Constitution it could cast a majority of the votes of the electoral college; and this is the only point touching that minority about which there was ever much doubt. It proves, farther, Mr. Speaker, that a majority of the people have condemned the Democratic party. It proves that a majority of the people arc opposed to that ad- ministration of President Pierce, which a minority propose to continue for four years. It proves that a majority of people of the country think it time that the misgovernment of Kansas should cease. It proves that no diversity of interpretation can extort any thing but condemnation of the principles and the purposes of the Kansas-Nebraska Act from a majority of the people of the country. It proves that Mr. Buchanan comes into power with a decided majority of the people against him; with every proposed princi- THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. (57 pie of his administration condemned beforehand; with the great Democratic majority in the Senate narrowed to the very verge of a bare working mnjority ; with the House of Representatives, so far as any experience teaches, against him ; with only about one third of the representatives from the North in his favor, and they chiefly representing minorities, and chosen by the divisions of their opponents ; and thus that, for all his cherished purposes of mischief, his administration is paralyzed before its birth. Still more, sir, it dissipates the sweet delusion of the dead he- roes of the Nebraska Act, that there was a day of resurrection for them. It demonstrates that the blast which prostrated its friends in the North was no passing squall ; that no sober second thought has changed their first thought; but that a settled and unchange- able hostility through all the North condemns them to a hopeless and pitiable minority. The death-wound, I rather think, has been dealt to that party which insolently boasted itself a perpetual plague to the republic, but now — worse than the scotched snake — staggers to its grave like a wounded gladiator, whose fall, even in the arms of victory, wins for him neither pity nor a crown. These are some of the lessons about which I think there can be very little difference of opinion. They need only the teaching of numbers. They need only to count the results of the ballot- box. They depend on no adjustment of the difference of princi- ple between the different portions of the party. They are irre- spective of the question whether the approval of President Pierce's administration was made or evaded north of Mason and Dix- on's line. They still stand, no matter what meaning was assign- ed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act any where. On a simple count of the voices of the judges — even admitting a Northern and a Southern Democrat to mean the same thing — it appears that the great majority of the country are tired of its men, are hostile to its principles, condemn its measures, mock at its blunders, are weary of its agitations, abhor its sectional warfare, and have order- ed hue and cry to be made against every thing bearing the name of Democrat as a disturber of the public peace. Instead of re- pentance and reform under the discipline administered two years ago, the majority of the people of the country have beheld with alarm every element of electioneering torture applied to wring from the terrors of the country an approval, real or apparent, of the conduct of the administration ; and they have by this great 08 T1IE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (185G). vote indicated their abiding hostility to a policy which has brought the republic to the verge of ruin. This, I take it, is the judg- ment of the American people — only they were so unfortunate as to differ as to the measures of redress ; and the penalty of this blunder is die continuance of that domination in the executive chair for four years more. Thus condemned by the popular vote, these gentlemen of the minority arc ingenious in extracting an approval of their policy and principles, but in the vain effort they have revealed that the minority itself is divided as much with itself as from its oppo- nents. While claiming an approval of their principles by the country, the minority is itself wrangling as to what those princi- ples are. The world has long known that they were divided on every question of domestic policy — that their harmonious ranks included protectionists and anti-protectionists. The last session exhibited great internal improvement bills passed over the veto by Demo- cratic votes. But still they boasted that on the slavery question — the shibboleth of their faith — Democrats were every where the same faithful friends of the Southern and Northern rights — alone at the North worthy of trust. They passed the Kansas Act to vin- dicate the right of the South to enter Territories with their slaves ; they, therefore, alone, are worthy of Southern countenance! They have wrung from the country the approval of the principles of that act; they have vindicated the equality of the states; they have asserted the right of the people of a Territory to frame their own domestic institutions ; and for these things the country has conferred power on them ! Sir, the Kansas Act was an enigma till read by the light of the late election. What my opinions of it are is immaterial. I de- sire now to deal with it historically — to deducie some conclusions from the discussion that has rolled around me for so long. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill was introduced, it is said, to vindi- cate the equality of the states, and the right of the South to carry their slaves into the Territories. That act conferred on the Ter- ritorial Legislature power " over all proper subjects of legislation ;" and its framers, for fear that there might be one subject of legis- lation that was withdrawn from their consideration, in extending over them the laws of the United States, said, " Excepting the law of 1820, which, being inconsistent with the principles of the THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. QQ legislation of 1850, is hereby declared inoperative and void, it being the true intent and meaning of this act" — as if there might have been doubt in the mind of the country as to what that act intended to confer on the people — " it being the intent of this act to leave the people of the Territory [ay, sir, 'of the Territory'] perfectly free to form their own institutions to suit themselves." Early in the last session of Congress it became apparent that there was a diversity as to the object and effect of that act. As the session progressed, that diversity grew wider. Those same words were carried into the Democratic platform ; they were carried into the discussions before the people ; and I now desire to ask, in the face of gentlemen, how far there is any conformity of views be- tween the two wings of the Democratic party ? I aver at the outset that they are as widely divided as is the Republican party from the Democratic party, and upon exactly the same question of constitutional power that rests at the bottom of the words of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. There can be no controversy, I presume, among gentlemen here as to this great fact, that the language of the Kansas-Ne- braska Act confers by grant, as the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Stephens] so accurately described it this morning, upon the peo- ple of the Territories all the legislative powers that Congress can confer; and as the Constitution says that "all legislative power herein granted is vested in the Congress, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives," it is plain that, unless the doctrine of squatter sovereignty as expounded by the gentleman from Georgia be accurate, then this Congress has conferred all the power upon the people of the Territories which can exist under the Constitution, and that they have, and can have, no power from any other source. Now the pinch arises. One set of gen- tlemen say, " Oh, that bill does not authorize the people of the Territories to exclude slavery." Another set of gentlemen say, "Oh, that bill does authorize the people to exclude slavery." Then we have explanations from the Southern wing of the party that it authorizes them to exclude it only when they come to form their state Constitution. " No," say Democratic gentlemen from the North, "the language is universal; it authorizes the people of the Territories to exercise all legislative power consistent with the Constitution, and we say that they can exercise it now, in their Territorial condition." As a mere question of legal interpretation, 70 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1856). there can be no dispute as to the meaning of the words. There may arise a question whether Congress have power to confer that authority ; but if Congress have it, then unquestionably it has been conferred. There is, therefore, a difference between the two wings of the Democratic party. It is not, Mr. Speaker, a mere difference of interpretation. It is not a mere dispute about the legal meaning of the words they have used. It is not a mere accident of legis- lation which a scratch of the pen could change. It is not some- thing which has been sprung upon them by accident, of which they had no notice before its arrival. But upon that most deli- cate of all questions — that one on which the minority boast them- selves the special defenders of the South, and in reference to which they say their Northern brethren are more faithful than other gentlemen at the North — on that question, and not upon the in- terpretation of the language of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, there is a radical, inherent, profound difference, splitting them from top to bottom, as irreconcilable as any other diversity of party views that can be exhibited in the history of the republic. It can not be pushed aside as a mere diversity of opinion on the Kansas- Nebraska Act, because it is carried back to the very foundation of the Constitution. And then we can understand, what other- wise, perhaps, we might not so well be able to understand, how it is that the Northern gentlemen of the Democratic party have sup- ported the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and have united in the ckction of a President. Why, Mr. Speaker, the propriety of that act was not submitted to the people now at this election. That question was passed upon in the election of this Congress : and this side of the IIousc gives the answer of the whole North as to whether it ought or ought not to have been passed. No one proposed its repeal, and the restoration of the compromise, but Mr. Dunn, and that was made a ground of attack by North- ern Democrats on Republicans. The question at the North was one of reprisal and retaliation, revenge and conquest — not defense and restoration ; and Democrats and Republicans onty argued the question, which of the two best represented the North in that con- test for the Territories. But then another question arose, whether there could not be such an interpretation put upon that act as would enable gentle- men at the North still to stand with the Democratic party, and THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 71 cast their votes for the same man, although differing in principle and pursuing a policy not merely different from, but hostile to, the purpose of the Southern Democrats. Therefore it is, that while at the South we have heard a universal interpretation that that act does not confer upon — that there is no power in the peo- ple of a Territory to exclude slavery — and I speak now in the face of a great majority of Southern gentlemen who were active in the canvass, and who can correct me if wrong — I say there was a unanimous interpretation by Democratic gentlemen through- out the South as to the purpose, meaning, and effect of the Kan- sas-Nebraska Act — we can understand how it was that, while throughout the whole South that law was claimed as a great Southern triumph, not merely in point of principle, but in point of policy and fact, as opening a hitherto barred territory to slavery, and giving a chance for another slave state to restore the dis- turbed equilibrium of the Union — as something to bind the South to the Democratic party forever for the great boon conferred upon them, the Democrats of the North could say, " We will accept with them that measure, not that we would have dared to have voted for it — not that we would have dared to have advocated it ; but now that the thing is done and can not be undone, preferring the Democratic party to any other party, and seeing their strength at the South, we are willing to aid that party at the South, and we are willing to adopt the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska Act — with a gloss, yielding none of our principles, not admitting, for a single instant, that Congress has not the power to legislate upon the subject of slavery in the Territories — not breathing such a suggestion, yet we are willing to abide by the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska Act as we shall interpret it." How interpret it ? " It is the best measure for freedom ; it breaks down all the com- promises ; it leaves the question open ; it confers legislative power upon the people of the Territorj'-. We will agree that the people of a Territory have power over the question of slavery. You will never hear of another slave state : we will make Kansas a free state ; and therefore we are willing to abide by the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, because, although it ought not to have been passed, it perhaps will do no harm. While our South- ern brethren say it is a Southern triumph, we will claim it as a Northern one. That will enable us to maintain our position at the North in the party, and give us the full advantage of our 72 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1856). overwhelming power to vote slavery from the Territories." Why, sir, in more than one handbill, and in more than one newspaper, how many it boots not to inquire, it has been seen — yea, I have seen with my own eyes, in Pennsylvania and New York, Repub- licans taunted by Democrats with being opposed to freedom for having voted for Dunn's bill. I saw in more than one place — in more than one handbill — proclaimed " Buchanan, Breckinridge, and Free Kansas I" and the resjult of the colloquy which took place upon this floor between two gentlemen from Illinois the other day, shows how far authorities can agree as to what posi- tion was assumed by the Democratic party in that state. I have nowhere here heard it asserted that it was any where maintained as an accepted dogma of that party at the North, that Congress had no power over the question of slavery in the Terri- tories ; that the people had no power over it in the Territories ; lhat the people ought not to exclude slavery from the Territory of Kansas ; that they were opposed to the people doing it ; and unless there be gentlemen who can reconcile and justify all those things, then there is as great and wide a gulf in point of policy, as there is in point of constitutional principle, between the Demo- crats of the North and the Democrats of the South. For what matters it to the South that Congress shall not interfere if another instrument is substituted which will interfere ? Is it more humili- ating to the South to have a line of fair division, like that of 1820, giving part to the South and part to the North — aline and bound- ary of peace forever established here by the Congress of the United States — than to be rudely expelled by a Congress of Kan- sas squatters ? — here, where she is represented by her eloquent sons ; in the Senate, where she is protected by her equal vote * by the President, armed with the veto against all oppression, rather than there, where she is not represented, has no voice, and no veto ? Or are her interests more likely to be tenderly dealt with by the rude backwoodsman or the European Red Republi- can ? Or, if she may be excluded, is it so much more to her taste, or does it better comport with her dignity, that a few ram- bling emigrants get together in a log cabin by our authority — ay, under that bulwark of Southern rights, the Kansas Act — and, to improve the price of land, proclaim that slavery shall not exist — that at the line a man in a hunting-shirt, with a rifle on his shoulder and a bowie-knife at his belt, shall flaunt a blotched THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 73 copy of the Wilmot Proviso in the face of the Southern emigrant, and bid him back in the name of the squatter kings — than that here, on solemn consultation, such partition be made that peace, and not war, may reign in the republic ? Does that mode of set- tling the matter touch the dignity of the South less ; or, rather, does it not touch it more? Or is justice more or less likely to be done ? " Oh, but it's of no consequence at all," say the gentlemen from Tennessee and South Carolina, "for if the people are opposed to slavery they won't protect it!" Indeed ! then it is only more ap- parent that the only point of agreement between the Northern and Southern Democrats is in the fact that directly or indirectly, by law or without law, they both admit slavery may be excluded. One would suppose the South had small favor to be grateful for. A right without a remedy is the lawyer's absurdity ; yet for Hiis the country has been brought to the verge of civil war! Prostrated in one effort, they try their limping logic on another. Their merit and unity consist in their assertion of the equality of the states and the right of the people of a Territory to form their own domestic institutions — the principles of the acts of 1850 vio- lated by that of 1820, and restored and reinaugurated by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, its vivifying principle. Sir, the President libeled the living, and his friends rob the dead to cover his nakedness. The very purpose and principle of the act of 1820 were to vindicate the equality of the states, ami the right of the people to form their own Constitution without control ; it was signed by Mr. Monroe for that very reason ; and they doubly blunder in law and history when under pretense of those principles they repeal it. The acts of 1850 inaugurated no new principle. They were acts of compromise — giving and taking, like that of 1820 — wisely suited to the present necessity, leaving unrepealed the laws of the central government of Mexico, and, if Congress could pass them, in full force as laws of Congress, just as the French and Spanish laws were left in full force in Florida and Louisiana when repeal- ed north of 36 deg. 30 min. by the act of 1820. If the acts of 1850 provided for the admission of states with or without slavery as the people might prefer, then that was the very principle consecrated forever as the law of the republic by the act of 1820 ; for the one purpose of the law of 1820 was to divide the 74 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1856). territory between the North and the South, and by the same au- thority to make one part slave and the other part free territory, while a Territon 1 - ; and the other thing settled in that law — and from that day down to the Kansas-Nebraska Act never assailed or controverted by any party known to the history of the repub- lic, and remaining now the accepted and conceded law of the Con- stitution every where, except among a few wild abolitionists of the Garrison and Beecher school — was, that the people of the Ter- ritory could, and alone could, frame their own institutions when they come to form their state Constitution ; and that Congress could neither impose a condition precedent, nor bind by a compact their absolute sovereignty over the matter. The effort in the Missouri contest was to place an inhibition on the State of Mis- souri — to cause the people of that Territory to provide specialh 7 in their Constitution against the existence of slavery. It was that which was voted down — voted down, as I have said before, on the immortal argument of William Pinckney, of Maryland, who then stood as Maryland would alwa} T s have her sons to stand, defend- ing the constitutional rights of the weaker against the agressions of the stronger ; whose words of glory, vindicating the absolute equality of the states against the usurpation of the United States, form the fit prelude to that equal argument of the man of Massa- chusetts, who, ten years after, maintained the supremacy of the United States against the encroachments of the states. On those Cyclopean foundations have ever rested, and still unshaken rest, those two pillars of the Constitution, "the absolute and inalienable equality of the states in their sovereign functions, and the equally absolute supremacy of the United States within the sphere of their conceded powers ; the one unquestioned except by the Democrats of the State-rights and Secession school, the other never violated except — by whom ? — by the Democratic party in their Texas reso- lutions, which imposed, carelessly or deliberately, but expressly, upon future states — yes, states by name and not by implication — the very inhibition which Pinckney and Clay excluded from the statute-book by the act of 1820 — the gentlemen of that party who now impeach that great act, and its great authors, of violating the equality of the states, and invading the right of the people to form their own Constitutions ; for, unless the act of 1820 did those things, the Kansas-Nebraska Act is defenseless and senseless. Sir, are they not content to have pulled down the monument and decorate THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 75 themselves with its rifled trophies, without staining the memory of the great dead with the reproach of the very thing they pre- vented others from doing ? But, they say, if there be differences, yet we agree in this — not to agitate the question in Congress — forsooth where their divisions are inconveniently visible, and bring scandal at the South — but to refer it to the Territories, where the two wings can privately fight it out ! How will the two divisions of the minority silence the majority ? Or is the President's Message an illustration of their silence? or do they expect the North to keep silence before it? or are they ignorant that they would die of silence in a year? ' These were not the purposes of the Kansas Act, Mr. Speaker, in my opinion. I think it was an electioneering manoeuvre. That has been, at least, its effect, and its only effect. To the South it has secured neither a Territory, nor a state, nor a constitutional principle, nor peace. Its authors tear each other about its mean- ing, and pursue diametrically opposite purposes under its cover. They have accomplished nothing but to reopen a dangerous agi- tation — to bring themselves into hopeless minority, crippled by internal divisions. There is another lesson taught by this election. The Demo- cratic party has ceased to be a homogeneous body. It is bound together by no unity of principle. It is a conglomerate of incon- gruous materials — Whigs and State-rights men, and Secessionists, and Democrats, and Free-Kansas Democrats, and Free-Soilers, and Union men — not a mosaic, for that is a work of art — but huddled together by the confusion of the conflict. The Irish brigade stood firm, and saved them from annihilation ; and the foreign recruits in Pennsylvania turned the fate of the day. They have elected, by these foreigners, by a minority of the American people, a Presi- dent to represent their divisions ! The first levee of President Buchanan will be a curious scene. lie is a quiet, simple, fair-spoken gentleman, versed in the by- paths and indirect crooked ways whereby he met this crown, and he will soon know how uneasy it sits upon his head. Some fu- ture Walpole may detail the curious greetings, the unexpected meetings, the cross purposes, and shocked prejudices of the gen- tlemen who cross the threshold. Some honest Democrat of the South will thank God for the Union preserved. A gentleman of the disunionist school will congratulate the President on the de- 76 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE (185C). feat of Mr. Fillmore, whose quiet administration might have post- poned the inevitable day. The slavery propagandist will vaunt his triumph over the unwieldy North, and boast of conquered Kansas ; while the Northern gentlemen will whisper " Buchanan, Breckinridge, and free Kansas" in the presidential ear, and beg without scandal the confirmation of their hopes. Some Whig will remind him of the California letter, and exact the Pacific Rail- road at his hands; while the strict construction Democrat will execrate the usurpation, and cast sinister innuendoes against the mail which would not reveal its contents this side the Pacific. Pennsylvania will be touching in the cause of iron, and plead the merits of the October election ; while Democrats from the South and West plot the treason of free railroad iron, and carefully ad- just the loss and gain in votes. The Ostend Manifesto will be respectfully spoken of, and a Northern and Southern Democrat in a corner will nicely balance free trade against a slave state, and suggest that an imprudent steamer may favor the application of the principles of the manifesto, the President the while repeating to some enthusiastic Free-Soiler his resolution of 1819, to " pre- vent the existence of slavery in any of the Territories or states which may be erected uy Congress /" But how to divide the spoils among this motley crew — ah ! there's the rub. There are gentlemen who have united from every creed and every paily, and who make up this conglomerate of the present Democratic party, having changed no principles, still holding jealously the position of allies, not being, embodied into the party, but maintaining their own individuality. Sir, I envy not the nice and delicate scales which must distribute the patronage amid the jarring elements of that conglomerate — as fierce against each other as clubs in cards are against spades — which must decide whether the gentlemen of the Whig party who only acted as allies should be received and accepted as candidates for high office ; whether gentlemen of the Free-Soil school should sit down with gentlemen of the Cincinnati school ; whether the past shall be rasa tabula, or the criterion of acceptance or exclu- sion. There will be required a nice discrimination and a careful adjustment by some skillful accountant in party politics, in that curious chancery for the distribution of the spoils, to determ- ine the shares of Northern Democrats who were faithful, but failed, and Northern Free-Soilers who were heretics, but useful ; THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 77 of the Whig convert and the Whig ally ; of Whig gentlemen of name — leaders who left their followers in their transition; of Whig leaders in states where they were zealous but not needed, and in states where they were zealous and needed, but powerless. And long ere this can be adjusted the clamors of the foreign legion will add to the interest of the scene — the vision of King George's judgment over again : " There crashed a sturdy oatli of stout Jolin Bull, Who damned away his eyes as heretofore. Here Paddy brogued ' by Jasus.' ' What's your wull ?' The temperate Scot exclaimed ; and, 'mid the war, The voice of Jonathan was heard to express, ' Our President is going to war, I guess.' " They may not be disregarded, for but for them Pennsylvania was lost, and with, it the day. Yet what will satisfy those indis- pensable allies, now conscious of their power? That, sir, is tlic exact condition of things which will be found in the antechamber — exorbitant demands, limited means, irreconcilable divisions, strife, disunion, dissolution — whenever the President shall have taken the solemn oath of office, and darkened the doors of the White House. And there are lessons taught to the Republican gentlemen of this House as well as to the Democrats. They have been taught that, great as was the wrong; blundering as was the policy of the Kansas and Nebraska act; earnest as are the Northern people against the extension of slavery ; resolved as they arc. that no more slave territory shall be added to this country, they have like- wise shown that there is still one principle which they will not sanction. They will not sanction a merely sectional canvass for the presidency, nor intrust with the government a party whose whole power is confined to one half the states, whateVer their purposes may be. They will not sanction retaliation as the spirit in which wrongs is to be redressed ; they will not allow wrongs committed by a party of the South and of the North to be visited on all their Southern brethren, nor sanction retaliation as a fit political remedy. They have settled the polic} r , that if wrong has been done, reciprocal wrong is not redress. They have put the seal of their condemnation on revenge as a principle of legislation, and have refused letters of marque and reprisal against the South for wrong legally done, and requiring the remedy to be pursued 78 THE PRESIDENTS MESSAGE (185G). by other means than a raid against Southern institutions. They think that the evils of civil war are greater than the evils of an- other slave Territory ; and the policy of the Eepublican party, while it did not justify, did tend to kindle civil war. They have resolved that there shall be no attempt to grasp the reins of power on principles which tend to exclude every Southern gentleman from office, and necessitate a decision by the country of the great question whether one half of the people of the Union will be gov- erned by the other half — for that was the only practical result of the success of the Republican party. Honest though their pur- pose may have been — as devoted to the Union as the friends of Mr. Buchanan, their position was unsocial, and their success dan- gerous. The great argument at the South has been — and there is no Democratic gentleman here who has not heard it, and I will ven- ture to say there are very few who have not used it — the argu- ment every where used at the South was, that it was a question of independence, and not of administration ; that it was a question, not whether the majority should rule according to the great con- stitutional principle, but whether a majority obtained under the forms of the Constitution, in such a manner as practically ex- cluded all Southern gentlemen from a participation in the con- duct of affairs, ought to be submitted to? Not that there were no friends of Mr. Fremont to fill the offices, for his fifteen hundred votes would pretty well answer that purpose ; nor that there was any reason which peremptorily forbade any one from accepting office, though inclined so to do ; nor that, in point of fact, it was at all certain that there could not be found men enough who would fill them — Northern emigrants would fulfill that condition ; but because the condition on which alone any party can fitly and safely be" intrusted with the government is the possession of pow- er, and friends enough every where to carry on the government with the men of the state to be governed, so that a domestic government shall not assume the form of a foreign domination. Instruments of any power may always every where be found ; but the office in such hands partakes of the nature of despotism, and such men alone were at the disposal of the Eepublican party in one half the states of the Union. They would doubtless have tendered high office to men of high position in the South, but the condition precedent of conformity of political views and princi- THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 79 pies was "wanting. They could not aid in forming an administra- tion to whose creation and whose policy they were radically op- posed. Thus, practically, the Kepublican party must have em- ployed Southern men who represented no body of Southern sup- porters, or Northern men, to conduct the government ; and that is what is meant by a purely sectional party — their radical and incurable defect. They, by the simple statement of their position, confined themselves to the free states. Equal candor would have equally confined the Democratic party to the Southern States ; for the objects and principles of the Southern Democrats found, so far as I can see, no supporters in the North. They owe their little remaining power there to a common name and an ambiguous res- olution covering a radical hostility of purpose and principle ; but, honestly or not, they fulfilled that indispensable condition of car- rying on the government, that in most of the Northern States there were a minority content to vote for the candidate of the coalition of the Northern and Southern Democrats, and to be silent about their differences — the sole distinction between the sec- tionalism of the Democrat and the sectionalism of the Kepublican. The great lesson is taught by this election that both the parties which rested their hopes on sectional hostility stand at this day condemned by the great majority of the country as common dis- turbers of the public peace of the country. The Kepublican party was a hasty levy, en masse, of the North- ern people to repel or revenge an intrusion by Northern votes alone. With its occasion it must pass away. The gentlemen of the Republican side of the house can now do nothing. They can pass no law excluding slavery from Kansas in the next Congress, for they are in a minority. Within two years Kansas must be a state of the Union. She will be admitted with or without slavery, as her people prefer. Beyond Kansas there is no question that is practically open. I speak to practical men. Slavery does not exist in any other Territory — it is excluded by law from several, and not likely to exist any where ; and the Kepublican party has nothing to do, and can do nothing. It has no future. Why cumbers it the ground ? Between these two stand the firm ranks of the American party, thinned by desertions, but still unshaken. To them the eye of the country turns in hope. The gentleman from Georgia saluted the Northern Democrats with the title of heroes — who swam vi°r- 80 THE PRESIDENT'S MESSx^GE (185G). orously down the current. The men of the American party faced, in each section, the sectional madness. They would cry neither free nor slave Kansas, but proposed a safe administration of the laws, before which every right would find protection. Their voice was drowned amid the din of factions. The men of the North would have no moderation, and they have paid the penalty. The American party elected a majority of this House ; had they' of the North held fast to the great American principle of silence on the negro question, and, firmly refusing to join either agitation, stood by the American candidate, they would not now be writhing, crushed beneath an utter overthrow. If they would now destroy the Democrats, they can do it only by returning to the American party. By it alone can a party be created strong at the South as well as at the North. To it alone belongs a prin- ciple accepted wherever the American name is heard — the same at the North as at the South, on the Atlantic or the Pacific shore. It alone is free from sectional affiliations at cither end of the Union which would cripple it at the other. Its principle is silence, peace, and compromise. It abides by the existing law. It allows no agitation. It maintains the present condition of affairs. It asks no change in any Territor} 7 , and it will countenance no agitation for the aggrandizement of either section. Though thousands fell off in the day of trial — allured by ambition or terrified by fear — at the North and at the South, carried away by the torrent of fa- naticism in one part of the Union, or driven by the fierce onset of the Democrats in another, who shook Southern institutions by the violence of their attack, and half waked the sleeping negro by painting the Republican as his liberator, still a million of men, on the great day, in the face of both, factions, heroically refused to how the hnee to either Baal. They knew the necessities of the times, and they set the example of sacrifice, that others might profit by it. They now stand the hope of the nation, around whose firm ranks the shattered elements of the great majority may rally and vindicate the right of the majority to rule, and of the native of the land to make the law of the land. The recent election has developed, in an aggravated form, every evil against which the American party protested. Again, in the war of domestic parties, Republican and Democrat have rivaled each other in bidding for the foreign vote to turn the balance of a domestic election. Foreign allies have decided the government THE TEACHINGS OF THE LATE ELECTION. 81 of the country — men naturalized in thousands on the eve of the election — eagerly struggled for by competing parties, mad with sectional fury, and grasping any instrument which would pros- trate their opponents. Again, in the fierce struggle for supremacy, men have forgotten the ban which the republic puts on the intru- sion of religious influence on the political arena. These influ- ences have brought vast multitudes of foreign-born citizens to the polls ignorant of American interests, without American feelings, influenced by foreign sympathies, to vote on American affairs; and those votes have, in point of fact, accomplished the present result. The high mission of the American party is to restore the influ- ence of the interests of the people in the conduct of affairs — to ex- clude appeals to foreign birth or religious feeling as elements of power in politics ; to silence the voice of sectional strife — not hy joining either section, but by recalling the people from a profitless and maddening controversy which aids no interests, and shakes the foundation not only of the common industry of the people, but of the republic itself; to lay a storm amid whose fury no voice can be heard in behalf of the industrial interests of the country, no eye can watch and guard the foreign policy of the government, till our ears may be opened by the crash of foreign war waged for the purposes of political and party ambition, in the name, but not by the authority nor for the interests, of the American people. Eeturn, then, Americans of the North, from the paths of error to which in an evil hour, fierce passions and indignation have seduced you, to the sound position of the American party — silence on the slavery agitation. Leave the Territories as they are — to the operation of natural causes. Prevent aggression by excluding from power the aggressors, and there will be no more wrong to redress. Awake the national spirit to the danger and degradation of having the balance of power held by foreigners. Eecall the warnings of Washington against foreign influence — here in our midst — wielding part of our sovereignty ; and with these sound words of wisdom let us recall the people from paths of strife and error to guard their peace and power ; and when once the mind of the people is turned from the slavery agitation, that party which waked the agitation will cease to have power to disturb the peace of the land. This is the great mission of the American party. The first F 82 THE PKESIDENT'S MESSAGE (1856). condition of success is to prevent the administration from having a majority in the next Congress ; for, with thai, the agitation will be resumed for very different objects. The Ostend Manifesto is full of warning; and they who struggle over Kansas may wake and find themselves in the midst of an agitation compared to which that of Kansas was a summer's sea ; whose instruments will be, not words, but the sword. AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. . In November, 1857, Mr. Davis was elected (for the second time) to the Thirty-fifth Congress. Mr. Orr, of South Carolina, was chosen Speaker, and by him Mr. Davis was again named on the Committee of Ways and Means. Pie was heard during that session on the Treasury-note Bill, on the Pacific Railroad Bill, on the bill relating to the reappointment of officers dropped or retired by the Naval Board of Incpiiry, and who had not been restored by the Revising Board, and on the Report of the Kan- sas Conference Committee. In that debate he stated correctly, and proved, from the records and from the argument of William Pinckney, of Maryland, the point settled by the Missouri Compromise — to wit, "That it assumed that there could be a restriction upon a Territory while it remained a Territory, and it settled that there could be no restriction, no condition imposed upon a state, not merely upon the subject of slavery, but upon any subject." He also spoke on the Ohio Contested Election Case, the Washington City Election Bill, and on the Civil and Legislative Appropriations. On the 30th of March, 1858, he spoke as follows against the admis- sion of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution : Mr. Chairman, — The earlier explorers in high northern lati- tudes were perplexed at beholding great icebergs mysteriously making their way to the north against current, and wind, and tide. Philosophers in the closet divined from the strange phenomenon the existence of an under current running counter to that of the surface, that bore them along. The disinterested spectator, Mr. Chairman, of the course of this debate, ignorant of our history for four years, and of who now holds the helm, would find himself similarly perplexed, and perhaps he might surmise a similar so- lution. That an administration which professes to be the godfather of "popular sovereignty" should oppose the submission of a Consti- tution to the popular vote ; that an administration which is in name Democratic should propose to impose upon the majority the will of the minority ; that an administration elevated to power by the South, against the will of the North, should urge, as the $4 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. shortest way to accomplish the great purpose of making Kansas a free state, her admission as a slave state ; that the administration, w*hich professes anxiety to preserve the peace of the country, should say that the shortest way to restore the broken peace is, not to remove, but to fasten, by irrevocable laws, in the form of a sta.te Constitution guaranteed by the united power of the country, that hateful oligarchy upon a people, whose neck was too tender to bear the weight of their, territorial yoke, which Congress could at any moment alleviate ; that these methods should be taken to accomplish these purposes, may well puzzle the speculator in ex- ploring the hidden reasons that drive men thus contrary to what apparent reason — the ordinary method of guiding the common- wealth, the ordinary propelling powers of the government — would seem to dictate. And possibly, Mr. Chairman, he might not be very far from solving the problem if he were to assume that the question is, not so much how to accomplish the pacification of Kansas, or to make legislation square with the dogma of "popular sovereignty" or to secure the right of the people to form their own domestic institutions in their own way, which we are taught to believe is a new revelation of the year of grace eighteen hundred and fifty-four — not so much any of those reasons as to prevent the administration, which boasted itself the omnipotent pacificator, from being brought to lick the dust, now, ere the termination of the first session of its first Congress — to lick the dust before the will of that majority which it is defying in one of the Territories — before the will of that majority of the people of the United States, against which Mr. Buchanan ascended the presidential chair, and amid the irreconcilable diversities of opinion of the people who were combined to elevate Mr. Buchanan to the Presidency — but here that men and parties are brought face to face — can no longer coalesce in the policy he would have them pursue. We are debating the recognition of an independent state. The administration produce a piece of parchment with a form of government written on it, and a certificate of one John C. Cal- houn, that it is the Constitution adopted at Lecompton by a Con- vention of the people of Kansas ; and on this evidence the Presi- dent and his friends demand the recognition of the State of Kansas. "We respectfully ask for the proof that the piece of parchment contains the will of the people of Kansas. AGAINST THE LECOHPTON FRAUDS. 85 "We are told the Territorial Legislature took, by law, the sense of the people, and 2670 voted to call a Convention ; that 2200 persons voted, in all, for the members of the Convention ; that the Convention, whose journal no one here has seen, voted the Con- stitution ; that it was not submitted to the people for their ratifi- cation, and that the vote of the 4th of January, of 10,000 against it, is of no legal relevancy to the question before us. On this state of facts, Mr. Chairman, we are besought, on behalf of the administration, to vote for the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution for the sake of the principle involved. Sir, I confess myself the servant of principle ; and I respectfully ask gentlemen what principle they ask me to sanction ? Is it that a minority in a Territory constitute the people, and so must make their will the law over the majority ? If so, I respect- fully dissent from the principle. Is it that the people of a Territory, with or without previous authority of Congress, have a legal right themselves to take the initiative, and to lay upon your table a Constitution which they are entitled to demand at our hands that we shall accept ? If so, then I respectfully dissent from the principle. Is it, on the part of our Southern friends, that any Constitution which may be laid upon our table containing, no matter how put there, a clause sanctioning slavery, is to shut the eye to every other circumstance connected with it, and to drive us to the ad- mission of that people as a state merely because that provision is in the Constitution? If so, then I respectfully dissent from the principle. Is it that they mean that gentlemen may look into the Consti- tution for the purpose of seeing that slavery is there, and when they find it there are bound to vote for the admission ? If so, then the gentlemen upon the other side of the house, by exactly the same reason, may look into that Constitution to see that slavery is there ; and, if they think it the more logical conclusion, may vote to refuse admission upon that ground. But as I do not un- derstand the gentlemen on the other side to admit the latter al- ternative as one fit to be embraced, they will indulge me in the logical consequence of not regarding the former as a proper con- sideration to weigh at all with me upon the question that is before the House. That slavery is embraced in that Constitution, is certainly, Mr. 86 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. Chairman, in my opinion, no ground at all for the rejection — no ground at all for any difficulty about admission. If put there by the will of the people, it ought not to weigh with the weight of the dust in the balance upon the question ; for to allow that to be a ground of exclusion, while it would be within the legislative discretion of Congress, would be, in my judgment, unwise, tend- ing directly to consequences that all of us are most anxious to avoid, and would exhibit' an unsocial disposition in behalf of the majority which might come to such a conclusion, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully, the past history of the nation teaches us only too well will lead to nothing but disastrous civil collisions ; which, in their result, if not immediately, will first undermine, and then bring down in ruin, the whole fabric of our liberties. Then, if these be not the principles which ought to commend themselves to the judgment of a right-judging man, is there any other? Is it that because the Territory has proceeded under a law of a Territorial Legislature, with all the regularity and for- mality, as the President tells us, that any territory has ever pro- ceeded, we are hound to accept what they send to us, blindly and without looking beyond it ? Is it the principle of this govern- ment not only that we may stop, but that we are bound to stop, at what the Territory sends to us ? Then, Mr. Chairman, I do not assent to that proposition ; and it is to that proposition that I de- sire chiefly to draw your attention now. Upon that question I am freer than most of the gentlemen upon either side of this House. I voted with my Southern friends against the Topeka Constitution, being a free Constitution form- ally sent here by the majority of the then inhabitants of the Territory. I am, therefore, free to raise the question whether there is legal authority at the bottom of that Constitution now presented to us? They protested against the admission of Cali- fornia because there was no evidence that a majority of its people had assented ; because there was no formality of law preceding its Constitution ; because there were no protections to the ballot-box. I am, therefore, now free to ask those who did protest to join me in inquiring whether there be here legal authority ; whether here the ballot-box has been protected ; whether here we have the will of the people ascertained in legal form which we not only may accept, but which we are bound to accept? This assumes the validity of the laws of the Territorial Legis- AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 87 lature calling the Convention, and the proceedings under them in point of law ; and that the legal effect of those proceedings is to clothe this parchment with all the attributes of a state Constitu- tion, and that we are not entitled to inquire who voted for or against it ; how many staid from the polls, or why they did so ; nor whether fraud or force have decided the result ; but that the legal certificates preclude inquiry into every thing beyond. I respectfully deny the validity in point of law, and farther say that if they were as valid as if authorized by act of Congress, they could to no extent exclude the legislative discretion of Con- gress as to the fitness of recognizing the new state. Mr. Chairman, in my judgment, all that is necessary to the ad- mission of a state is a concurrence of the will of the people of a Territory and of Congress. Prior to such concurrence there is no state. After that concurrence there is a state. The application of a Territory to be admitted as a State is only a petition upon your table — an offer upon their part which we may accept or which we may reject at our pleasure. After that concurrence it has been ingrafted into the living body politic of the county, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, to share with us for good or evil, to the end of time, the blessings or misfortunes of the repub- lic — to be severed by nothing except that external violence which shall lop off some living limb of the republic, or that civil strife which the chief of the republic is so rashly provoking. Enabling acts, whether contained in the organic law of the Territory, or in special acts authorizing the formation of a Con- stitution, providing for the formalities of election, the protection of the polls, the expression of the popular will under the forms of law, are only the guarantees that Congress in its wisdom throws around the expression of the popular will. They are only methods of ascertaining that will ; and when that will is ascertained, Con- gress has every thing that' is indispensable, and all the Territorj^ can supply. The will of Congress to concur with the will of the people is expressed in the act of Congress admitting the state ; and it is that concurrence, no matter how ascertained, by what forms, or with the omission of what forms, which makes the dis- tinction, and alone makes the distinction between a Territory of the United States and a state of the United States. There is no such thing in our system as an incipient state — a state whose federal relations are undefined, a state of uncertain 88 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. federal relations, as Mr. Calhoun once expressed himself. I re- spectfully submit that there is no intermediate condition between a Territory and a state ; that a state whose federal relations are undefined is a state of which the Constitution of the United States knows nothing. Uncertain federal relations are no federal rela- tions. Unless the state be in this Union, the state is out of this Union. Unless the state be bound by the Constitution, the state is independent of the Constitution. Unless the state have a right to be here represented, the state has no right to be represented any where. It is a state under the Constitution, or it is a state independent. If, therefore, any proceeding create a state which does not simultaneously bring it within, and make it one of, the United States, that state may as well form an alliance with the incipient confederacy of Canada and New Brunswick as enter this confederacy. It may levy war against the United States, and you can not punish its people for treason. It may appropriate the territory of the United States, and it is beyond your power. In a word, by the public law of the United States, all the terri- tory within their jurisdiction is either a Territory of the United States or a state of this Union. If, then, that be the case, we are brought at once to the ques- tion of the relation of Congress to the Territories in the formation of states. What are the respective parts belonging to the people of the Territory and to the Congress in the creation of a new state ? With the dogma of sovereignty I do not deal here. I leave that to the schools or to the gentlemen who meddle with meta- physical disquisitions. What sovereignty is I shall not attempt to define. The word is not used in our laws; it is not found among the wise words of our Constitution. It is the Will of the Wisp, which they who follow will find a treacherous guide through fens and bogs. We are not engaged in defining that " popular sovereignty" with which gentlemen on the other side have been so much plagued for the last year or two. Popular sovereignty is only a demagogue's name for the foundation principle of all our institutions. It is only a demagogue's name for the right of the people to govern themselves — not that popular sovereignty which is limited by, and springs from, an act of Congress — not that mush- room growth, bred in the hot-bed of political corruption as a dainty delicacy for the people's palate, under the sedulous care of my hon- AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 89 orable friends opposite — which, now that it is grown, is found to be nothing but toad-stools, whereof the body politic is now sick — but that right of the people to govern themselves, recognized by the fundamental law as the very corner-stone of the republic, which in this case the President violates and denies. I here this day would deal in legal language ; and in legal lan- guage there is such a thing as the people of the United States, of which the people of a Territory form the subjects. And there is known in the law of the United States such a thing as the right of the people of a state to form their own government. And it is assumed that every state which can form, at any time, a part of these United States, shall have emanated spontaneously from the people, whose affairs it regulates, and shall have been received voluntarily into the United States by the authority of Congress. Now, sir, what is the relation of Congress to the Territories ? Have the Territories — I do not say any natural right, for I am not here upon a philosophical dissertation — have they any legal right to initiate proceedings to form a Constitution? I do not ask whether they may not come here and ask, by petition, Con- gress to receive them, for that does not meet the difficulties of the case ; but I ask whether the people of any Territory, by their simple volition, can meet in Convention, and assume to themselves such legal powers as shall compel Congress to recognize them as a legal body. Certainly those gentlemen who protested against the admission of California because there had been no preceding law can not maintain that proposition. Certainly gentlemen who voted against the Topeka Constitution can not maintain that prop- osition. Certainly the gentlemen who signed what purported to be a report of the Committee of Investigation of this House can not maintain that proposition. Certainly the President, who de- voted a great part of his message to demonstrate that it is only through legal channels, by legal forms, and under legal authorities that a Constitution could be formed, can not maintain that propo- sition. Neither can we, in point of sound sense and reason, maintain it, because that assumes there is a power in the people of some portions of the Territory not derived from the Constitution of the United States — since the Constitution says nothing upon the sub- ject, except that Congress may admit new states. And if they have any inherent power, by the same reason they have all power; 90 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. in other words, we are ujdoii revolutionary ground, and not legal ground. It is to confound a right by law under the Constitution with the natural right mentioned in the Declaration of Independ- ence, of people to alter and change their government to suit them- selves. But we are not dealing with revolutionary, but with legal rights. We live and were born under the Constitution, and to us that is the ultimate criterion of legal rights ; it is our embodiment of natural right in a living practical form of government ; beyond it we recognize no natural right as a source of legal right, and he who can not deduce his claim of right under it has none. I sub- mit, therefore, that by the law of the United States the people of a Territory have no original right or authority to form a state government. No public man of position and character of any party has ever ventured to maintain such a proposition distinctly. The distinguished head of the State Department has fallen into expressions which seem to imply it ; he has hastened to repel the inference, but, in his haste, has involved himself and his opinions in inexplicable perplexity and mystification, whence nothing can rescue him. Then, if there be no inherent legal right in the people of a Ter- ritory to form a state government, how is it to be accomplished ? They must form it ; Congress can not do it for them ; yet Con- gress is the only legal authority, the only source of law for the Territories. Where, then, does it exist ? I maintain that, so far as legal authority is asserted of, or essential to, any proceeding for a Convention, it must flow from Congress, because here only is any government over the Territories in the eye of the law of the United States. The Supreme Court, which even State-rights gen- tlemen nowadays regard as the ultimate arbiter upon all ques- tions, has settled some other things besides the relation of slavery to the Territories, and among them it has settled that Congress, alone governs the Territories — whether under the clause which authorizes them to make all needful rules and regulations for the Territory of the United States, or under some unwritten clause implied by the strict constructionists, it is needless here to inquire. It can flow from nowhere else, because a state, in the view of the Constitution of the United States, means a body of people within a particular Territory, and that Territory belongs to the people of the United States ; and the people who live upon a particular portion of that Territory have no right to assume to themselves, AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 91 without our assent, any portion of it. A state involves the idea of a certain population inhabiting and possessing a certain Terri- tory ; and if the people can not get the Territory without the as- sent of Congress, they can not make themselves a State without the assent of Congress, nor take any steps toward it essential to its existence, which can exclude the control of Congress. Gon- gress, it is true, can not make a Constitution for a Territory. It can only throw around the people of a Territory a legal protec- tion, authorize them to proceed, and give them the guarantees of law in their proceedings ; but beyond that I apprehend Congress can do nothing, and, excepting Congress, nobody can do that. What I wish here to maintain is, that that is the fundamental principle of all the legislation of Congress upon that subject. All the history of the republic is in its favor ; it has all authority in its favor; and there is no precedent which raises even a doubt against it. Now, sir, I ask the attention of the Committee very briefly to the law — for I rose to-day to deal with the legal position of gen- tlemen on the other side. They have not been willing to enter the controversy with their opponents on the question of fraud in the formation of the Constitution, or whether it be the fair and bona fide expression of the will of the people. They have insisted that these things were concealed from them by a screen of legal technicalities, and it is to tear down that screen that I now ad- dress myself. In the absence, therefore, of any special act of Congress, author- izing a Convention, the only question is the construction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 185-1. Does that act confer on the Ter- ritorial Legislature power to call a Convention to form a Consti- tution ? There have been many states admitted into the Union, and under diverse circumstances, but much the greater number of them have been admitted under the express and precedent au- thority of laws of Congress. And, sir, you will perceive at once — if the authority can only come from Congress to take the initia- tive steps — that it is immaterial whether that authority be con- tained in the organic act or in a special act. In either case it is our authority that they are exercising. In every instance they are our agents. In every instance they have only the authority that we give them. And, therefore, it comes exactly to the same 92 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. thing whether there was an enabling act to authorize the Terri- tory to proceed to form a state Constitution and government, or whether the authority was given under its organic act. This can never be a judicial question; but it is settled by every form of political authority. The states of Vermont, Kentucky, Maine, anfl Texas have been admitted into the Union, but not, as has been erroneously stated, without precedent legislation. If it were so, it would not affect the argument, for they were never Territories of the United States. But the assumption is histori- cally erroneous. Vermont went through the Eevolution without any defined relations to the other colonies, claiming independence at the time of the Revolution under no colonial government; and as a state by its own inherent power, it acceded to and adopted the Constitution of the United States, exactly as the other states did. It is no case of the formation of a state out of a Territory of the United States. Texas was likewise an independent repub- lic, acknowledged by the United States, and afterward received into the Union. Kentucky proceeded under a law of the State of Virginia, whose territory it then was, and on that authority formed its Constitution, and was admitted into the Union. Maine proceeded under the authority of a law of Massachusetts, whose territory it was, and by that means formed its state government and was admitted into the Union. But the argument is irrelevant ; for the question is not whether Congress may in its discretion recognize constitutions formed by the people without authority of law, but whether a Territorial Legislature was in point of law authority to legalize the election of a Convention, to give the Convention itself a legal existence, to vest it with legal power to bind not merely the people, but the Congress. No one denies the power of Congress to admit Ten- nessee and Florida, yet nobody ever asserted any legal validity in their proceedings before admission. The language of the organic acts and the proceedings of Con- gress thereupon are decisive. The Territories divide themselves into two great classes. In Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Michigan, the Legislatures had "power to make laws in all cases for the good government of the people of the said Territory not repugnant to or inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States." AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 93 In Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon, Florida, Iowa, the power of the Legislatures were declared to extend — in the identical words of the Kansas-Nebraska Act — "to all rightful subjects of legisla- tion not inconsistent with the Constitution and Laws of the United States." Congress has construed both forms of expression by passing en- abling acts for both classes. Not only for Ohio, Louisiana, Mis- souri, Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, but also for "Wiscon- sin, Minnesota, and Oregon, did Congress pass acts specially authorizing them to call a Convention and form a state govern- ment; and in every instance, excepting Wisconsin, these bills provided all the details of the Convention, the number of delegates, its time of assembling, the modes under which the delegates should be elected. It is plain Congress thought the power " to make laws in all cases" necessarily extended it " to all rightful sub- jects of legislation." It is plain Congress thought neither form of expression authorized the temporary Territorial government to create a Convention to form a Constitution which would begin to operate only after the Territorial Legislature itself had ceased. Its power to govern was confined to the Territory — a temporary contrivance for a temporary purpose — involved in all the local interests and conflicts of Territorial politics — and not safely to be intrusted with the providing for a Constitution. In a word, they were authorized to make laws to govern the Territory; but a law for a Constitution was no law for governing a Territory at all. The case is stronger under the Kansas Act, for it reserves to Congress the power to make two or more states or Territories out of that Territory; and if Congress have the right to make two states, it is absurd to suppose it gave the Legislature power to make one state of it. But there are cases of Territories which have spontaneously petitioned for admission under Constitutions framed without an enabling act, and they are fruitful of authority. The proceedings for the admission of Arkansas, Michigan, and Iowa — where there were no acts of Congress authorizing Conven- tions — are decisive. The law admitting Arkansas declared the boundaries of the state. That, I suppose, establishes the fact that nobody then maintained that there was any authority in her Constitution prior to her ad- mission. The territorial limits of a state are essential to her 94; AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. existence ; till they are defined there can be no state ; after there is a state, Congress can not determine its right of territory. On the Territory depend the counties, the election districts, the judi- cial divisions, the apportionments of representation, the very peo- ple who are entitled to be heard on the adoption of the Consti- tution. If the Territorial law can authorize a Convention which can adopt a Constitution having any legal force prior to the recogni- tion of Congress, it must have the right to define and appropriate the territory of the state it creates ; and if it have not this power, it can not create a state in the eye of the law at all; for Congress may destroy its identity by taking away a half, or two thirds, or all its territory, and give it to another state. Congress recognized the State of Michigan upon the condition that her people should accept the boundaries Congress prescribed ; and on their acceptance only was Michigan admitted. Iowa was declared to be admitted as a state in 1845, under her Constitution of 1844, Congress declaring her boundaries, and re- quiring the assent of her people to them. But in August, 1846, Congress prescribed by law other boundaries for Iowa, and by that law recognized the validity of the proceedings of the Legislature of the Territory of Iowa of the 17th of January, 1846, submitting the boundary between the Territory and Missouri to the Supreme Court; and finally, in December, 1846, Congress declared Iowa admitted into the Union under a Constitution formed in May, 1846, and with the boundaries of the law of 1846. The case of Wisconsin is still more decisive. The Territorial legislative power extended to all proper subjects of legislation ; yet Congress passed an enabling act, and it defined the bounda- ries of the future state, on the 6th of August, 1846. The people formed a Constitution, on the 16th of December, 1846, and Con- gress admitted the state on condition the people assented to other boundaries. Instead of merely assenting to the boundaries, they formed a new Constitution on the 1st of February, 1848, and on their application were admitted as a state with the boundaries of the enabling act, on the 29th of May, 1848. These cases demonstrate that, whether a Constitution be formed by the people, under or without an enabling act, the Constitution has no force oflaio, over either person or territory, till the final and complete admission of the state. Till her senators and represent- AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 95 atives are entitled to their seats, the Territorial authorities con- tinue, the organic law is operative and supreme, the Territorial Legislature retains its legislative power, Congress can absolutely dispose of the Territory, assign its limits, and -exercise its discre- tion whether to admit the people as a state or to retain them as they are. In a word, these cases display the great fact lost sight of in this controversy, that, till actual and final admission as a state, the Constitution is not a law; it is merely a proposition which will be- come operative only when Congress recognizes the existence of the state. "With reference to Michigan, a controversy arose in the Senate which elicited some salutary opinions. We have first of all the statement of his excellency the President, then in the Senate. When Michigan was applying for recognition, the exact question arose whether there was a legal power in the Territorial Legisla- ture to proceed, their powers being as I have stated them. Mr. Buchanan then said : ' ' We have pursued this course [that is, to disregard informalities] in regard to Tennessee, to Arkansas, and even to Michigan. No senator will pretend that their Territorial Legislatures had any right whatever to pass laws enabling the peojile to elect delegates to a Convention for the purpose of forming a state Constitution. It was an act of usurpation on their part." This was said in the hearing of the whole Senate, that no sen- ator would contend that they had legal authority, and he asserted that it was an act of usurpation ! And, so far as the record shows, no man rose to controvert the authority of this distinguished expositor of Democratic doctrines of that day. Well, sir, that covers the three cases of proceedings by Territorial Legislatures without authority from Congress by special act. That destroys the whole argument which has been attempted to be founded upon them. With reference to Arkansas, I am protected by the authority of a name dear to the party which he founded. The governor of that Territory applied to General Jackson to know whether the Territorial Legislature had any authority to pass an act for the purpose of taking the sense of the people on the sub- ject of a state Constitution. General Jackson took the opinion of his attorney general, Mr. Butler, and the opinion of that distin- guished lawyer, acquiesced in by the whole administration, was, that there was no legal authority in the Territorial Legislature, but that it was beyond their temporary functions ; that there was 96 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. no authority inherent in the people, but that they were subordi- nate to the power of Congress, governed, as he says, under that clause of the Constitution which gives Congress power to make all needful rules and regulations for the territory of the United States. The new lights had not risen in their day. And, as if no authority should be wanting entitled to command respect with every division of the various opinions that are entertained now in this House, we have the farther authority of a gentleman from whom, in many respects, it is my misfortune to have differed in political opinion, but who, in my judgment, was one of the ablest gentlemen that ever graced the councils of this country — more conservative, manly, and upright in his views, and convictions, and conduct, than almost any man of his party ; always ready to sacrifice party allegiance upon the altar of truth ; always follow- ing the dictates of an independent judgment, as well in his votes as in his reasoning, and, for that reason, justly the worshiped idol of the great Southern section of this country. ' I suppose that the strict constructionist gentlemen of this House will not accuse me of any sympathy for dangerous dogmas from Federal quarters when I quote the authority of Mr. Calhoun : "My opinion was," said he, "and still is, that the movement of the people of Michigan in forming for themselves a state Constitution, without waiting for the assent of Congress, was revolutionary — " "What docs the incumbent of the executive chair say to that now ? Why were not the military forces of the United States directed, instead of guarding and protecting the Lecompton Con- vention, to turn them out, as they were directed to turn out the Topcka Convention, equally illegal or equally legal ? Mr. Calhoun proceeds to assign the reason : "As it threw off the authority of the United States over the Territory." That he regarded as necessarily involved in the very idea of their assuming to themselves to take the first step, in a legal form, toward the establishment of a state government. He proceeds to say : "And that we were left at liberty to treat the proceedings as revolutionary, and to remand her to her Territorial condition." For doing which, with reference to Kansas, we are now threat- ened with the direst consequences by the gentlemen who then concurred in this opinion : " Or to waive the irregularity." AGAINST THE LECOMl'TON FRAUDS. 97 Now all the argument of our friends on the other side is to. follow the regular course, and break down the irregular course — only they have agreed to call the regular course that which Mr. Calhoun called the irregular course. lie proceeds to say : "And to recognize what was done as rightfully done — as our authority alone was concerned — my impression teas that the former was the proper course; but I also thought that the act remanding her back should contain our assent in the usual man- ner for her to form a Constitution, and thus leave her free to become a state. And so a distinguished gentleman in another place [Mr. Crit- tenden] thought, not long since, and possibly there are some here who may think like him. Well, sir, no gentlemen can rise here and cite any administra- tion- that has ever existed in this republic, down to the beginning of Mr. Buchanan's administration, that has ever so flagrantly vio- lated the laws of the republic as to recognize any proceeding of a Territorial Legislature on this subject as having authority of law. No man can name any high officer of the government that has ever said so, as no man can show any vote of Congress that has ever looked to such a recognition. It was, sir, the first blunder — to be followed up consecutively and logically by other blun- ders in law, in policy, as well as in morals — that this administra- tion made when it recognized the legal authority of the Lccomptou Convention, assembled under the Legislature of Kansas. It was the last of the novelties which have been palmed on the country as sound law, to break the fall to which the inventors of the Kansas-Nebraska Act have been staggering for the last four years. Sir, it was new in this administration. No member of cither house of Congress, at the last Congress, thought that there was any authority in the act of 1854 for the people to proceed, or for the Territorial Legislature to proceed. That law reserved to Con- gress the right to divide the Territory. How, then, could it au- thorize the people of that Territory to form themselves into one state? Did it contemplate that the wandering rabble that was there when that law was passed had then the right? And if they had not the right, pray how and when was the construction of the law changed, so far as the legal meaning is concerned, by the ac- cession of population? Did President Pierce, when he requested Congress to settle the difficulties of Kansas by passing a law authorizing them to form a state Constitution when they should have ninety-three thousand G 98 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. inhabitants, think the people of Kansas then had that authority? Did the gentleman [Mr. Toombs] who, in another place, during the last Congress, moved a bill authorizing them, when they should have ninety-three thousand inhabitants, to form a Consti- tution, and providing all the detailed organization of the Conven- tion, think that without that law they had the authority then ' Diil this House, when it passed Mr. Dunn's bill, suppose they were doing then what the Territorial Legislature had the right already to do, although that bill postponed the exercise of the au- thority it conferred until their population had reached the requi- site point? If they did not, then we have the concurrent opinions of all departments of the government during the last administra- tion — nay, of every member of the last Congress of both sides, Democratic and Republican, as well as of all previous administra- tions — of the statute-book speaking for itself no less than the reason and nature of the proceeding against the possibility of any legal validity being imparted to the Convention and its proceed- ings by virtue of the Territorial laws ; and those things of them- selves ought to be sufficient, in my judgment, to settle the principle that there is no legal authority in the Territorial Legislature to proceed in the matter. But it is perfectly clear that the law of the Legislature of Kan- sas itself has not been executed. It required a census to be taken in all the counties. It was not taken in half of them. It required the appointment of delegates to be made after the census was "completed" and "returned." It was made before the census was more than half taken. The law contemplated an apportion- ment on the basis of a completed census of the whole Territory, and of course, till that was done, there w T as no authority to make any apportionment. The causes of failure arc immaterial to the legal point, but they are certified official ty, by the governor and secretary, to have been the neglect of the local officers, and not the hostility or opposition of the people. It required the apportion- ment to be made by the governor and the secretary : it was made by the secretary alone, who was acting governor at the time. It required counties not having population enough for a delegate to be attached to some district. The fourteen counties excluded from the census were not attached to any district; they, there- fore, had neither vote nor representation, actual or constructive, in the Convention. This failure to execute the law alone is fatal to every idea of legal validity in the proceedings. AGAINST THE LECOMl'TON FRAUDS. 99 If there was no legal authority in the Legislature, then I sup- pose that the fabric of my honorable friends on the other side tumbles about their ears. What becomes of the argument that we can not look behind the certificates ? Why, the certificates have no legal authority. What becomes of the argument that these people who staid at home authorized those who voted to vote for them? If there was no legal election, they were not bound by it. If there was no law requiring them to attend, stay- ing at home was their duty. They were only not participating in a usurpation. The foundation for a presumption of the assent of those who staid at home is, that the law required them to bo at the polls. The good old law of Virginia, as my honorable friend in my eye will remember, made it a punishable offense to stay away from an election ; and though there may be no law punishing it, yet it is a violation of law, and of the duty of the citizen, to stay away from an election. It is the duty of the citi- zen to cast his vote ; and if the citizen docs not cast it, he is held to authorize those who do ; but that can not be where the pro- ceeding has no legal validity — that presumption can not arise where it is merely a voluntary collection of a portion of the peo- ple of the Territory to signify their willingness to admit a certain form of Constitution without their having any authority to bind any body else. I suppose, then, that in that point of view, the whole argument upon the other side is in ruins. All their bar- riers of laws and certificates, presumptions against fact, and ac- quiescences extorted from protests and denials, are swept away. We are at liberty to see that only two thousand six hundred and seventy people voted on calling a Convention ; that only two thousand two hundred people elected the Convention ; that the census shows only nine thousand two hundred and fifty-one vot- ers, and twenty-four thousand seven hundred and eighty people in the Territory which has transformed itself into a state. And if they who hitherto insisted on confining us to legal returns and certificates now suggest the imperfections of the census and regis- try, I agree we may go farther and sec that there may be twelve thousand voters, and from thirty-seven thousand to forty-two thousand people in the Territory ; but of them not three thousand voters modestly ask the powers of a state government against the votes often thousand, and the protest of seven thousand. Nay, sir, emancipated from every trammel, we are at liberty and bound 100 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. to go farther, and to inquire whether there has been in this Ter- ritory such fierce collisions, such hostile passions, so much of re- bellion against the regular government, such an absolute division of the people with reference to their government, so much of civil bloodshed, so much of military control, such an absence of the ordinary political virtues, of calmness, of consideration, of delibera- tion as the President describes; whether an overwhelming ma- jority of the people arc opposed to the thing that is now sought to be forced or foisted upon them and devoted to another form of government. It relieves us from the fear of encountering the dangers intimated and vaguely hinted at by gentlemen upon the other side in the event of our venturing to do our duty. It leaves us free to determine whether, under all these circumstances, it is not a fair case for legislative discretion to pause and ask the peo- ple again what they say, upon "a sober second thought," about it — to see whether the people are likely to submit or likely to re- sist — whether any such great good is to be accomplished by now forcing this Constitution upon them that inevitable civil war will be compensated by it. We arc told by the President that this is the shortest way to settle the agitation. Mr. Chairman, I confess myself astonished at such an opinion from a gentleman who has seen so much of public service, has so long filled distinguished positions, and also knows, or ought to know, so much of human nature. Why, what has been the difficulty in that unfortunate Territory ? Was it not that their Territorial Legislature was usurped? Is not that the reason that, from the foundation of the Territory to last October, the people refused to recognize any authority under the laws emanating from that Legislature? Ilavc they not been quieted only by the earnest efforts and warm appeals, backed by the mili- tary power, of Governor Walker? Were they not quieted alone by the assurance which he gave them that they should have an opportunity of expressing their opinion on the law which was to govern them ? Did they not join in the October election because they had confidence in his assurances? Was it not the first time that the people of that Territory had ever met, face to face, in an American manner, at the common ballot-box? Was it not the first time that they had stood in any other attitude except that of hostility, with arms in their hands and hatred in their hearts? And arc wc to be told by the President that the way to pacify AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. 101 tlicm is to subject them permanently to the hateful domination of the handful of men from whose hands they would have wrest- ed the government — as the President tells us — but for the United States troops ; that the whole sanctity and authority of a state government shall remove them from all the power of Congress to redress their grievances ; that they shall be admitted as a state, and thereby be delivered over to the legal authorities under the Constitution which they protest against, which Congress can not repeal, and will be bound to enforce if resisted? for, if the state be admitted, Congress has then no discretion but to follow the legal line of authority, and to put down every thing else as rebel- lion. But has not the President learned enough from the expe- rience of the last three years to make him pause ere he pushed the country upon this dangerous experiment, or is he madly bent on a party triumph at the risk of civil war, forced on people of Anglo-Saxon blood as the only alternative to a tame surrender of their right of self-government? The President's policy is high treason against the right of the people to govern themselves. His apology for his conduct is in- sulting to the victims of his usurpation. Is it true that the dividing line is between those who are loyal to this Territorial government and those who endeavored to de- stroy it by force and usurpation ? Then the Jailer have been no parties to the proceedings for a Convention, yet are to be subject to the Constitution. Is it true that the Territorial government would long since have been subverted had it not been protected from their assaults by the troops of the United States ? Then the stronger part of the people is against the proceeding for a Constitution, and it is to the weaker part the President proposes to confide the powers of state government over the stronger. Is not this to deliver the state into the hands of its enemies? or will the rebels submit when the United States withdraw its troops ? or arc they to guar- antee the new usurpation? Is it true that Secretary Stanton was obliged to summon the Legislature as the only means whereby the election of the 21st of December could be conducted without collision and bloodshed? Then why was Mr. Stanton dismissed for summoning them ? Was it in furtherance of the same policy which then refused the peo- ple an opportunity to speak, and, now that they have spoken, re- 102 AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FRAUDS. fuses to bear them ? Or, if that election could not be conducted without collision and bloodshed because the people were subject- ed to an authority they defied, is it the purpose of the President to insure the collision and bloodshed Stanton avoided by forcing on them a government which they have protested and remon- strated against, and are ready to defy and destroy ? Is that the readiest method of settling the Kansas question ? Is it the truth that, up till the present moment, the enemies of the enabling government adhere to their Topeka revolutionary Constitution ? Then they are not likely to receive the Lecompton Constitution. Is the reason the people refused to vote for delegates to the Convention that they have ever refused to sanction or recognize any other Constitution than that of Topeka? Then surely they are not among those who sanction the Lecompton Constitution. It is not by their will it is put over them. It was not from acqui- escence they refrained from voting. Their silence is their dissent; the President tells us so. He says they would have voted against it had it been submitted. Surely, then, silence is as instructive as their voice. Sir, in my judgment, the passage of this law is a declaration of civil war. The history of the last three years in Kansas leaves no doubt that the people will not submit to this Constitution. It can not legally be changed before 1864. I think it a fair case for disregarding the form of law and the substance of law. If the constitutional authorities should concur in the change, peace may be preserved. I trust they will concur, and that peace will be preserved. But if they do resist the change which the mass of the people will demand, if we now refuse to listen to their protest, then, in my judgment, the shortest remedy is the best. Free government is a farce if men are required to submit to usurpation such as has here been perpetrated, and I fear the peo- ple of Kansas are not in a mood to assist at the farce. They will turn it into tragedy. Having heretofore resisted, we ought to suppose they will resist again. We ought to act wisely and care- fully, and, if we have discretion now, we will not drive this people upon revolutionary courses. Give them a mode of relief, and allow them to follow that peaceful course which they are inclined to follow, according to all reports from that Territory. Give them the opportunity of expressing their will as to the law under which AGAINST THE LECOMPTON FEAUDS. 1Q0 they are to live; and, having expressed their will-whether it be matenal-allow them to come in at a proper time, with a proper population and with reasonable boundaries and a rich dower a one of the sister states r>f tV, Q ,.^„u 1 .-_ uower, as one of the sister states of the republic. REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE EASTERN FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE. DELIVERED IN BALTIMORE, MD., NOV. 1G, 185S.* Young Ladies of the Graduating Class: When the devotee of the Ganges would seek the favor of her God, at eventide she commits to the current of the river a lighted lamp, and watches with beating heart its course and its fate. If it sinks she returns sorrowing, for her God is not with her ; if it floats till lost in the distance and darkness, she returns rejoicing, for her offering is accepted. You are those lamps which the people of Maryland have com- mitted to the stream of time, their offering to that God who rules its current, to test his favor for this their highest sacrifice before him. If you shall fail, amid the temptations or the trials of life stray from the paths of truth and virtue, their offerings will stand condemned; but if, so long as life shall last, your lights shall shine on your fluctuating voyage, the examples of virtue, the guide of innocence, the illuminators of youth, then will the people of Mary- land know that their sacrifice was well pleasing to the God of nations. Before him they offer this their service in the cause of morals, light, and religion ; and by its fruits they shall divine whether it be a true or false way which they have chosen to serve him. To your conduct is committed this great religious service ; at your hands will the future demand it. And you, Fathers, Mothers, Friends of these maidens, to whose bosoms the state now restores them, how do you receive them? tarnished or purified? dimmed or brightened ? For these are the fruits of our " infidel" free-schools. These are fruits of that smattering education, that surface-culture, that varnish over poor material, whose only tendency is to beget vanity, to engen- * Mr. "Davis was invited to address the graduating class of young ladies at this Commencement. REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT, ETC. 105 der self-conceit, to turn the head with teaching above their station, to unfit them for the duties of the matron, and consign them to the life of the butterfly till they sink soiled into corruption ! Then let the system be judged by these its fruits. This is an American spectacle ; the image of the national gen- ius; the handiwork of the utilitarian republic. Well, let England glory in her Crystal Palace and its industrial splendors. Let France boast the camps of Boulogne and the mir- acles of her Cherbourg: we of this republic prefer to polish these diamonds. They are from our mine. "We first discovered that gold lies rather in the plains than on the mountains. We first explored the levels of creation for nature's richest treasures. We first dis- covered the hidden value of the common mind. We first pro- claimed that the impartial hand of the Almighty had sown his precious pearls of reason and affection in every vale as well as on the hills, as he did his dew, it may be in darkness, yet awaiting only the rising sun to reveal each blade of grass, however lowly, flashing with its morning offering of beauty. We first saw that the beauty was all there, and that, though the sun touched the hills first and the vales last, he touched all in his course ; and we are now displaying to the world the treasure we have found, some deep in the vales, which otherwise would never have been known. And what say you for the culture — its breadth, its depth, its purity, its genuineness. Is it likely to promote the cause of knowledge, of patriotism, of domestic virtue, of holy religion in life and works? If you have followed these exercises with as quick an ear, as appreciating a mind, as lively an interest as I have, you can now answer that question. The tree has shown its blossoms and its fruits — are the former only beautiful, and the latter bitter? Surely these exercises have revealed a comprehensiveness and a thoroughness of instruction, a degree of attainment, and a mod- esty of bearing seldom combined. They who have traced before us here this evening, with steady hand, the succession of "historic cities" from buried Nineveh, through ruined Athens and the lone mother of dead empires, to the teeming abodes of our republican glory ; or, treading the " starry path to the Temple of Truth," have reviewed the great results of Herschel or of Franklin ; or, alive to the glories of mechanical skill, have pointed out with ac- 106 REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE curacy what has been accomplished by their countrymen's enter- prise ; or have touched with caustic finger the enervating follies of the day with equal judgment and wit; or embodied in poetic numbers, with accuracy and ease, at once poetic thought and graceful pleasantry — are no smatterers in knowledge ; and any lady in the laud may well be proud of daughters who can write their native tongue with simplicity and grace characteristic of the compositions we have heard; and if the hand of the master may have purified them from occasional errors, the tone and cadence of the recital, the enunciation and pronunciation are at least their own, and the first were just and spirited, and as to the latter, if there was more than one word mispronounced, my ear was not quick enough to catch it. Not only were Milton and Byron aptly quoted by some, but the tone and style of sentiment pervading the productions re- vealed the influence of such companionships. Nor are knowledge and intellectual culture all, but these, the future matrons of the republic, even now give evidence of fitness for their high mission as prophets of patriotic inspiration to the 3'oung men of the land; for who did not hear in those glowing words on the "March of Mind" the tramp of patriotic hosts fired by their enthusiasm in defense of the republic? And when, with kindling eye and earnest voice, she devoted to execration the crav- ens who should allow the fabric of our liberties to be torn asun- der, did we not see in her all of that matron who bade her son, going forth to battle, return with his shield or upon it ? Nor did the sterner virtues exclude the womanly virtues ; for what do we recognize as worthy of the woman in every station, from motherly tenderness and domestic duties up to their source in religious inspiration and trust in God, which was not comprised in that touching portraiture of " The True Woman," which fitly and beautifully closed this farewell to girlhood ? That outpouring of pious feeling expressed in words what the sacred anthems which every voice joined to swell had sent in music to the skies. They were the infidelity inculcated by our public schools ! ! They are infidel, because the clergy are excluded from incul- cating sectarian dogmas, just as our republic is anarchy, because kings are not invited to teach us civil obedience ! The objection comes from no republican lips. It reveals a EASTERN FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE. 107 profound ignorance of the foundations of our republic. They who utter it have yet many a fathom deep to penetrate ere they sound the depth of the American principle of the freedom of thought, the freedom of religion, the right of every citizen to un- checked freedom in forming his religious opinions, and the deep interest of the state in securing him not only freedom, but the means of enlightened judgment, and that greater, deeper, and ho- lier faith in the sufficiency of every enlightened mind to read for himself in the Word of God the will of God, whose practice is religion. We of America have our own peculiar mode of cultivating re- ligion as well as of guiding the state, and that is freedom. There are other methods which older nations have tried and still cling to, but we have discarded them; and they who assail our system would bring us back to those. It is well to know what they are. There is one which assumes the supremacy of the spiritual over the civil power; asserts the right of the Church to define and of the state to enforce the true faith; prohibits free judgment, or punishes its errors as crimes. This was the law of old Europe; the principle has never been abandoned ; the perversity of modern times has greatly limited its enforcement. It is still the law of Italy, Spain, and Turkey. There is another which professes toleration for all opinions, de- clares the state the patron of all the sects whose ministers it pays and controls as a part of the machinery of government, and seeks the quiet of the state in the stagnation of opinion and the heredi- tary descent of creeds. This is the system of England and Prussia, and, since the Eev- olution, of France and Belgium. It is the boasted system of tol- eration. There is a third system which asserts the right of each man to absolute freedom in belief and worship, which denies to the state and to the Church all power to coerce in matters of religion, which declares absolute freedom of thought the only security for religion. It is not toleration, for that implies indulgence, a privilege which may be regulated or revoked. It is freedom of the individual in matters of religion. It denies to the state all power over it except the necessary right to determine the limits of the domain of conscience and the state. L08 REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE This is oui American freedom of religion. It proclaims to every conscience freedom for its worship, but not freedom to control any other conscience, nor to exclude any other conscience, young or old, from seeking in its own way its own satisfaction. It does Dot recognize in the parent any more than in the stale any right, to 0061*06 the convictions of the ohild, to exclude itffrora the light, to impair its freedom in matters of religion. On the contrary, it pledges to all alike, of every ago, equal freedom; offers to all the moans of thought and education; but forces none, and allows none to be forced, either into dark* uess or light It is the profound idea of the American people, which those not roared under its influence find it diffioult to conceive. It is peculiar to this people. It is OUT principle, and wo alone profess it, and we alone practice it : we alone have staked the very ex- istence of the government on its truth. We have boldly released religion from the control of the state, and the state from the con- trol of the Church, and the people from the control of the clergy; declared not merely the right, but the duty of all men to worship God according to their own conscience, and offered to every hu- man being the freedom and the means of SO doing, with a firm eonvietion that God has conferred on every mind power to un- derstand his duties toward llim not less than toward his neigh- bor, that each human being has within him the capacity for him- self to learn the path of duty from that book which God gave to be the guide of all men, ami not merely to teach the clergy to guide them. The Ameriean principle is not neutrality between religion and irroligion, between faith and infidelity. It is not merely abstinence from state control in affairs of religion, leaving the people to the power and control of the clergy or of the Church. On the contrary, the American people, by their laws and Constitu- tions, every where avow themselves for religion ami against irre- ligion. They every where assert the freedom of each conscience as well from clerical as state control, the capacity of each man for himself to determine his religious condition, and they deny the right, not merely of the state, but of the Church or the clergy, to dictate his belief and exact conformity to their rules. This is the logical consequence of the freedom of speech and of the press, the freedom of thought and religion as expressed or implied in our laws; and it is illustrated by every statute-book. EASTERN FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE. 109 and l>y every Constitution in the United State:-:, not merely in the freedom they assert, but in the bulwarks they every where throw up for it; protection against not merely the power of the state, hut the undue spiritual influence of the clergy and the Church. Nor do the American people content themselves with barren declarations. Every where; the public schools attest then- efforts to make freedom of thought ami religion not merely the right, hut the habit of the nation. The State throws Open the field of knowledge, and declares the right of every one freely to enter and enjoy its fruits. Strange and inconsistent would it be if, where every science and all history find a roice, and the children are to he trained for the, public service, the Bible alone were silent. The common fountain of every creed,in either version a fertile source of religious life, the American people see no departure from ' their ideas of religious freedom in opening if: simple text in the public schools. If add;-: no sectarian exposition ; that it leaves to the. discretion of the parent. It listens to no sectarian complaint at its admission ; for it is asserting the right of the child to the means of forming its own judgment, and freedom of thought is a farce without knowledge. Do any maintain that ignorance is betterthan knowledge with- out sectarian teaching? Then the American people thinl. other wise. They can regard no such protest without abandoning the holy cause of live instruction, without surrendering their faith in the sufficiency of every mind to learn the path of duty in the Word of God. A right to deprive children of all instruction not sectarian is not a right of conscience in the American sense, and they who fin t declared the principle may well be allowed to con- strue and apply if. As well elevate absolute ignorance to the dignity of a religious dogma, and in its name call on the state to close the public schools, [fthe interests of .any sect suffer by fr< e invei tigation, it is its misfortune, but confers no right to keep men in ignorance; for the state asserts the right of freedom of thought and religion against all who impeach it — as a right of man against the arrogant usurpations of those who would rule them. Far from admitting the right of any one to object to free in- struction, the principle of freedom is asserted in opposition to that very assumption. It is to elevate to the dignity of a religious right the very power over the human mind against which we HO REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE protest, and which drove our fathers into exile. As soon suspend the Habeas Corpus Act that some sect may perform the religious duly of coercing its members. As soon fail to punish those who, in the name of spiritual discipline, imprison a citizen of the re- public, or devoutly burn a witch or a heretic. If the state yield the freedom of instruction to one sectarian prejudice, it must yield it to all ; and that is to abandon the education of the children of the state for the education of the children of the sects by the sects. Nay, more, it is an abandonment of the right of the people to freedom of thought, of opinion, and of instruction ; for the state yields to the sectarian only because he denies the right of the state to teach any thing he disapproves. It is a confession that there is something which the people have no right to know — at least without its antidote. Our principle is the right of each in- dividual to know all things, to prove all things, and to hold fast what to him seems good. If nothing can be taught which any sect would rather not have taught, narrow indeed would be the Held. There are few on whose history there is no blot, and scarcely one which, left to itself, would not tear out some page of history, expunge some scientific truth, or close some department of discovery. How many would protest against geology, because they fear it conflicts with the books of Moses? One sect might insist that Newton's system of the heavens be excluded, or taught merely as a hypoth- esis and not as a truth, because they think the Bible teaches that the earth is stationary and the sun moves ; or others exclaim against a book on moral philosophy, which teaches the freedom of the will — in conflict with their views of predestination taught in the Bible. While one may object to classic authors, because in conflict with Christian morals, another will ostracize half of English literature by referring to the Index Expurgatorius as the criterion of the lawful ; and the Atheist may join the chorus of complaints for the invasion of the rights of conscience, and insist that the name of God shall be suppressed, or taught only as a myth. The state asserts the right of her children to judge of all these things fir themselves — to know the evidence on which they rest. It teaches no dogmas, to be received on authority blindl}-, but it aspires to place in every hand the means of judging everything; and while it will enforce or teach no creed or worship, it will rec- EASTERN FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE. 1X1 ognizc no right in any one to exclude any department of knowl- edge from the teachings of the public schools. The people re- serve to themselves the sole right of defining the limits of the domain of conscience and of the state, to be determined by the common conscience of mankind, and in the honest purpose of promoting human freedom. The people must adhere to this free system of state education, or abandon the education of the people of the Church. All history can not show the mass of any people ever educated by any Church. Schools have been frequently recommended, and sometimes established under the shadow of the Church, but they have never gathered within them the mass of the children of the people; they have been partial, exceptional, inadequate — a part of the Church machinery, and never dedicated to freedom of thought; and the mass of every people remained in ignorance till America set the example which churchmen now carp at. They who would know what education under Church auspices is can learn it in Italy, or England, or Spain. Let them who are in love with it.adoptit. For ourselves, we glory in having both proclaimed the principle and perfected the system of free instruc- tion. And if, the purpose being the same, the objection be varied, and the system be impeached for irreligion because no creed is taught, then the American people reply religion is one thing and creeds arc another thing. The republic cherishes religion ; it has no concern with sectarianism but to see that it docs no mischief. It remembers it rather as the instigator to strife than to love, the' cause of wars and bloodshed, the fruitful source of heart-burnings and alienation among fellow-citizens — the opposite in all things to that religion which is pure, and peaceful, and gentle, which is the inspiration of public virtue and the best guardian of the pub- lic peace ; and thus remembering the historic character of relig- ious sects, it has no interest in promoting either at the expense of the other, and will not subsidize universal war among them by recognizing them as elements in the adjustment of its system of public schools. The American system proceeds on the assumption of the ca- pacity of each man and each woman to learn the will of God from the Word of God. The American people place their faith, not in teachers of religion, or in speculative or traditional creeds, but in 112 REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE the nature of man and the good inspiration of God. They spread the Bible before the youthful mind, and when it is read they close it ; and they look for spiritual nourishment to flow as freely from it to the open mind, as the milk from the mother's breast to the infant that clings there. They think that the sun is visible with- out telescopes, and that the colored glasses of sectarian instructors may impair, its glory, but can not add to its brightness or its warmth. They cherish religion such as it blazes from the heav- ens, such as it is reflected from the Bible, shining info the heart of man from either source, needing no creed to define it, allowing no sectarian anathema to limit it — cheerfully greeting it wherever the life exemplifies the spirit of the Bible, however the. disciple may stammer in the recital of crabbed catechisms or stumble in the darkness of theological metaphysics. And while the Ameri- can people profess to be a religious people, and would shrink with horror from any system which encouraged irreligion, yet they re- member that their republican government has been assailed on the same ground. They feel that their system of liberty and re- ligion must flourish or fall together; and whether, they now flour- ish or languish, they will judge only by the fruits. We are no wiser than the apostles, who knew that their religion was univers- al, because they saw its fruits among the Gentiles who professed it. We do the like. We point to the churches that every where decorate the land — the thousands who daily crowd them for hum- ble worship — to the spontaneous and free reverence for things divine, which bows every head and bends every knee before the Supreme — to the perpetual fountain of pious teaching which flows from the mother's lips — to the orderly march of free millions, with no guide but their conscience and the law, in peace and order — to the overflowing charities which every where attest the reality of Christian love — these things arc the proofs of the religion which the American people cherish ; and they are the proofs that it docs flourish and not languish. We think these better tests than a theological inquiry as to how many believe in predestination, or transubstantiation, or episcopal succession. This is the reply of the American people to those who impeach their system for infidelity. To these results they point to prove that religion flourishes better when free than when controlled — under the air of heaven than in sectarian hot-houses or under the deadly shadow of state protection, and the reply is decisive. EASTERN FEMALE HIGH SCHOOL OF BALTIMORE. Hg They respect the ministers of religion of every sect — seek will- ingly and freely their spiritual aids and consolations ; but they do not regard them as either the sole or the best instructors of youth, whether in matters of religion or matters of science. They have a firm conviction of the sufficiency of laymen to regulate affairs of education, and they prefer to confine the minister to the service of the altar. They think the less their children are taught why they turn their backs on each other when they pray to the same God, the better for them. They look to other sources of religious instruction for the young, which they are careful to provide. They think the first lispings of infant piety are best poured forth at the mother's knee ; that the first inspirations of spiritual truth flow best from the mother's lips ; that the earliest guides in religious conduct are the living examples of the mother's walk and conversation, aided by the free Sunday-schools conducted by the people, and not by the clergy. They think that the best in- struction for a religious life flows directly from the Bible, which God gave to guide men, and which He therefore supposed them able to understand. This the American people spread before the minds of the young, without note or comment, and in either ver- sion, that its teachings, instilled in earliest youth, may influence the life and conduct long ere the maturity of mind tends to theo- logical speculations, and instruct and comfort thousands who may never comprehend a single sectarian theory. But this free system can exist only where cultivated and pious mothers preside over the family. That is the purpose of this be- neficent institution at whose celebration we have been this even- ing assisting, and these maidens are its flowers, woven by its hands into a crown worthy of the brow of Eve. These maidens are the missionaries of the state. Yes, it is to you, future mothers of the republic, that its destinies arc committed. This high cultivation has been bestowed on you, not to promote vanity or frivolous dissipation, or the rivalries of social ambition, but to make you the lights and guides of the next generation in the paths of religious and civil prudence. You are not called to mingle in the turmoil of public life, nor to assist at the wrangling of synods, nor to flame in the front of war, but you are the sent to outwatch the stars for the safety of the life of the republic, the virtue and truth, the patriotism and devotion, the re- H 114 REMARKS AT THE COMMENCEMENT, ETC. ligion and morals of those to whom the destinies of the republic are committed — the people who will constitute and rule it. Your life and station find their fittest symbol in that glorious path which spans the arch of night, thick sown with blazing stars, but more beautiful still by the clouds of trembling light amid which they shine — the blended beams of innumerable but invisible stars, deep hidden* in the recesses of the heavens till explored by the great astronomers of modern times. It is not yours to glitter in the eye of the world as those leaders of the starry host which first arrest the gazer's eye, or guide the mariner on the deep ; but, hid- den within the heaven of your homes, invisible to every eye but those who penetrate there, the pathway of the republic will glow with your light, a visible halo from invisible stars, whose glory is not to be seen, but to wrap all things else in your light. So, when in after ages the eye of the world shall marvel at the dazzling destinies of the republic culminating in splendor and triumph, let them be taught that it is not the glory of industry, or arts, or arms, but the light which the matrons of a nation shed around its path. THE EEOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. The case of the slave-trader Wanderer, and the harangues of Messrs. Spratt, of South Carolina, Yancey, Euffin, and other extremists in the South in favor of repealing the United States enactments against the slave-trade ; the exhibition, at an agricultural fair in South Carolina, of an " imported laborer of African origin," to whose owner was awarded a silver prize ; the serious discussions as to the necessities of the South for a class of " immigrants from Africa*' suited to her climate and pro- ductions, and the boldly-declared doctrine of the " divinity*' of slavery, and the rightfulness and Christian duty of its extension and increase, had begun to awaken the fears of even the least thoughtful. In August, 1859, Mr. Davis wrote for a daily journal the following article on the reopening of the slave-trade. It is time that the insidious advances toward this nefarious and unchristian traffic which a large and influential party are making should attract the attention of Maryland. Her people should not be taken unawares, as they were by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise under the same false pretexts. The {reparation of men's minds for the grand end has already begun, either con- sciously or unconsciously. The grand and humane policy of Maryland — the colonization scheme — is insinuated to have failed. The ideas and sentiments from which it springs are said to have been shown false. Jour- nals talk of the great revulsion of public opinion among the lead- ing men of England on the question of emancipation, which has no existence out of their imaginations, to lend respectability to the change of men's opinions of the honesty, morality, humanity, and policy of the slave-trade, already begun, and which they wish to foster. While they do not venture to recommend the reopen- ing of it, they suggest that it exists now, in fact, more than ever, though we are deprived of its benefits. That the fleets of England and the United States do not pre- vent or suppress, but aggravate it. That interest which would be equal to humanity in securing good treatment to the candi- dates for civilization and heaven, is now expressed by terror, and 116 THE REOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. converted into cruelty by the fear of capture, the ignominy of exposure, the menace of punishment. It is plausibly argued that the removal of the cruisers would remove the terrors of the trader, and the captive, no longer a source of danger to the thief, would become an object of interest. Good food, water, and air, all the delights of a pleasure voyage, would obliterate the ill renown of the "middle passage;" and, after a charming voyage of a few days or a week, the neophytes of Christianity would land on the celestial shores of the New "World disenthralled from barbarism, and, under the training of Christian masters and ministers, learn at once the way to cultivate cotton and the Christian life. The question of morals is passed in silence. These ingenious gentlemen assume the existence of the trade, and their philanthropic purpose is to ameliorate the con- dition of the slaves. In aid of this argumentation, others insist strenuously on the entire unfitness of the negro for freedom ; for of course, if he is nowhere lit for freedom, he must be slave to somebody, and if any body's, why not ours, the Southern fire-eaters will in due time exclaim. Of course, this view is expressed with great moderation, great candor, great independence — nay, philosophically, simply as an ethnological question ; or piously, as an attempt to purchase the divine counsels touching the negro race, and to become the hum- ble instrument of His will, which, of course, can be only good! His will is learned, not in the Bible, but in the British West Indies. The great English experiment of emancipation is loudly proclaimed a failure. The opinion of English statesmen is said to have changed. The very emancipationists are claimed as con- verts to the system they ignorantly overthrew. Statistics are paraded to corroborate the proof of failure, and adjective is piled on adjective to describe how, in the lowest deep of slavery, a low- er deep of ignorance, idleness, worthlessness, was found in freedom by the English experiment. If the writers draw no conclusion, every reader can draw it without much trouble. It is an ally to the argument of the uni- versal unfitness of the negro for mere personal civil freedom any where ; that is, the mere exercise of the right in subordination to the laws of the land to dispose of his own labor, to enjoy the fruits of his own toil. THE REOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. H7 It is the exact course of reasoning which was heard in the late Slaveholder's Convention in Baltimore. The resolutions proposed to be adopted by the extreme men of that Convention were mere- ly the formal expressions of the above reasoning, yet no such con- clusions are hinted at, but the dissertations usually close with some general and edifying remarks about the inequality of the races, the absurdity of attempting to give negroes equal privileges with whites, about which nobody differs, and could have been de- duced from much more accurate premises than those employed. But the mind of the reader is sent far beyond the conclusions of the writer. If we turn our eyes southward, we shall get more light there. Men's opinions are more pronounced. It is now a political ques- tion. Large masses of the Democratic party openly avow them- selves in favor of reopening the slave-trade, and greater multi- tudes sympathize with them, but prefer the safer course of insinu- ation and circumvention. They assume the Southern disguise which cheated the country into the repeal of the Missouri Com- promise. They suggest, assert, maintain the unconstitutionality of the laws prohibiting the slave-trade. They do it under divers pretexts, but all end in one point. Some merely wish the laws repealed, not to reopen the trade, but to leave it to the several states to say whether they will allow it, just as Congress was to allow each Territory to decide on slavery for itself; others think the laws ought to be repealed because the penalty of death is too severe to be enforced against the innocent, mild, and moral cap- tains and crews of the slavers ; while others, more practical and more logical, say, if the laws be unconstitutional, there is no need of a repeal — they are nullities. Juries, grand and petit, may and must disregard them. The courts have no power to enforce unconstitutional laws — nay, the courts are not even to decide the question of constitu- tionality ; it is too plain for question ; each juror must decide for himself. Grand juries must refuse to find indictments for slave- trading, though the facts be admitted ; petit juries must acquit any one indicted by the usurpation of a grand jury. We have seen within the last year both grand and petit juries in Southern states disregard both evidence, and law, and court, and refuse to find indictments, or, where found, acquit the prisoner in the face of uncontradicted testimony of the officers of the navy making the 118 THE REOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. arrest, and of the jail full of stolen negroes — for the laws arc un- constitutional. The latter is now the view prevalent among the Democrats of the South. The majority in some states arc openly and avowedly of that opinion. In other states the minority arc loudly in favor of it, and the majority is silent and sympathizing, but restrained by prudence until after 1860. In some states it is the question underlying the apparent topics in contest, as in Texas. Mr. Stephens more than insinuates his inclinations toward those views in his late speech. In Mississippi most of her public men have made profession of their faith. The question is upon us, Is it the great Democratic bait to catch the South in 1860, or to concen- trate the /South for an act of rebellion? The repeal of the laws is the legalization of the slave-trade. No law affirming its legality is needed. It revives by the simple repeal, under the law of na- tions. The Democratic party is now ready at the South to make l ho issue — repeal or rebellion. It touches their honor, they say, as they said the Missouri Compromise touched their honor. The laws arc a slur on their institution and on their ancestors, there- fore they will have repeal or blood. "What does Maryland say ? THE QUESTION IN THE TERRITORIES.— UNION OF ALL OPPOSED TO THE DEMOC- RACY. During 1859 Mr. Davis had been active in endeavoring to brins about a union or fusion of the two parties — the Republican in the North- ern and "Western, and the American and Union parties in the Middle and Southern States — equally opposed to the continuance in power of the two factions which, having coalesced under the name of Democratic, had, in consequence, carried the election of 185G, and now claimed, un- der the usual penalty, to be allowed to carry the election in 18G0. In various letters to individuals and to journals, written during that year, he set forth his views as to the necessity, the expediency, and the feasibility of such a union ; and he was unremitting in his efforts to bring about such a state of opinion as should induce those parties in op- position to agree upon a candidate for the presidency in 1800 upon his past record and position, and without any platform or declaration as to legislation in regard to slavery in the Territories. lie was in favor of the nomination, in that way, of Judge Edward Bates, of Missouri ; and he afterward endeavored (in 18G0, at Chicago) to induce the Republican party to offer him as a candidate who could be accepted and voted for by Southern Whigs and the opponents of Southern pro-slavery Democ- racy. In November, 1859, Mr. Davis addressed to the Editor of the New York Tribune the following letter upon this subject : Sir, — The Eepublican party is the expression of the Northern opposition to the extension of slavery into the Territories. All the Territories are now by law, and in fact, free, for there are slaves in none. No law establishing it or regulating it has been passed by Congress, nor by any Territorial Legislature to which Congress has delegated the power; and the act of New Mexico, being in conflict with the decree of Mexico abolishing slavery, is for that reason void. In this state of the case, your Eepublicans insist on declaring it the right and duty of Congress to interdict slavery by law in 120 THE QUESTION IN THE TERRITORIES. a platform, and to make the enactment of such a law a cardinal point of policy in the canvass of 1860. Others, who see in such a policy an end of every hope of union with the Southern opposition, and a strong improbability of unit- ing the Northern opposition in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Indiana for the election of a President in 1860, think that the election of-a President by the opposition, holding the views of Mr. Clay on that question, and in character above the necessity of pledges or platforms, insures every thing that is necessary to satisfy reasonable men to arrest permanently the slave propaganda. To obtain security by legislative restriction, the Republicans must elect a clear majority of both House and Senate, and the President, and hold them long enough to change the Supreme Court. The Republicans must first get a clear majority of the whole House of Representatives. Not merely an opposition ma- jority against the Democrats, but a Republican majority against both the Northern Democrats and the whole body of the vote from the slaveholding states ; and that Republican majority must be more radical than any ever seen in the House of Representa- tives. They must also have a like majority in the Senate, where the free states lose their numerical advantage, and where any two free states in Democratic hands prevent the jDOssibility of success. They must at the same time have the President, for a Demo- cratic President would veto any bill excluding slavery from the Territories. They must, after all those unprecedented conditions, still, in addition, either reorganize the Supreme Court, or hold all that power long enough to change it by appointments not Democratic. This is plainly so ; for, as now constituted, or as hereafter filled by any Democrat, any law of Congress restricting slavery will be declared void. This can not be avoided by districting the country and assign- ing to the free states a number of judges proportioned to their population, for any Democratic President can find discarded anti- Lecomptonites enough to fill the bench from every district for a full generation. Neither can this be avoided by any law, for the appointment of the judges must remain in the President's hand, according to the Constitution. UNION OF THOSE OPPOSED TO THE DEMOCRACY. 121 But if such a reorganization were attempted, it would so rouse or frighten the timid or Conservative men as almost inevitably to restore the Democrats to power. The Eepublicans, then, to restrict slavery by law, must have every department of the government, and hold them long enough to reorganize the Supreme Court, and still hold power to prevent the work being undone. Such majorities they have not now even in the House of Rep- resentatives. The Republicans have no majority at all, not even with the eight anti-Lecompton men, for any such purpose. In the Senate they are in a great minority, and the President is against them. Is there any prospect of their ever within this generation hold- ing such power under the condition above framed? No prudent man can say there is ; and if not, then the attempt to adopt a restriction law is wholly futile. No matter how much men may wish it, the thing is, humanly speaking, impossible. But, on the other hand, the election of a President in 1860, of itself, silences and arrests the slave propaganda, if he be elected by a combination of the opposition in a manner so free as to in- sure a permanent union of the Republican and American voters in the Northern and "Western states. We say the President alone is sufficient, and without him every thing else is perfectly worthless. "With the President an adverse majority in Congress is worth- less. The President appoints the Territorial judges and removes them at his pleasure, as well as the United States attorneys, and the marshals who summon the juries, and the governors of the Territories, and these constitute the Territorial governments in fact. The President appoints the judges of the Supreme Court, and between now and the end of next term a majority of those judges now on the bench must, in the course of nature, be substituted by others. The Dred Scott case is a Democratic case, decided by Demo- cratic judges, resting on Democratic party political views of the Constitution and laws, and inspired by Democratic prejudices and sentiments. It would have been rendered by no judge whom either Harrison, or Taylor, or Fillmore would have appointed. 122 THE QUESTION IN THE TERRITOEIES. It would have been rendered by any Democratic judge appointed by any Democratic President in the last ten years. Now the old Whig view of the relation of slavery to the Terri- tories was this — that it existed only by virtue of the positive law of the land on which it was attempted to be enforced. So that, if forbidden by Congress, or if neither forbidden nor sanctioned by Congress, it did not exist ; and if Congress has no power over the subject at all, then that of itself made all the Territories nec- essarily and forever free, till they both became states and adopted slavery. Now suppose such a man as all the opposition could unite on — a man holding Mr. Clay's views, and honest enough to trust without the distracting pledge of a platform. He will name judges for the Territories holding like constitu- tional views with himself. Mr. Clay, e.g., thought the Mexican laws excluded slavery, and a judge so thinking would declare the law of New Mexico, or any other establishing or so regulating slavery, void. The United States attorneys and marshals would be instructed to institute no prosecutions, and to enforce no laws of that char- acter. In civil suits a master would have no remedy against his slave, for he could institute no suit against him. The marshal and his force would not lend the public force to secure his authority over a slave voluntarily carried into the Territory. No indictment would be preferred for any rescue of such a slave ; and if the negro were not interfered with by the people, it would be merely a question between the claimant's power to guard and his power to go off. If a civil suit for a rescue were instituted, a judgment might be brought to the Supreme Court. In such a case, the Supreme Court, as now constituted, or as constituted by any Democrat, will decide for the master ; but as constituted by any President elected by the opposition, the deci- sion would necessarily be against him. Three new appointments will change the complexion of the court. There are more than three very old men whose places must be filled by the next administration, and that will determine the complexion of the court for the next generation, in all proba- bility, if made by a Democrat. UNION OF THOSE OPPOSED TO THE DEMOCRACY. 123 Now, to accomplish a rehearsal of the Dred Scott folly no pledge is needed, no platform, nothing but a President holding Mr. Clay's views. Judges appointed by such a President will instantly re- pudiate that ridiculous farago of bad history, worse law, and Dem- ocratic partisanship. The decision was made only because the people had been quar- reling for twenty years, and the Democrats had been allowed to hold the President because the people could not agree to turn them out of the presidency, and, like the Democrats, quarrel about matters of policy while sheltered against disaster by the power of the President. "We repeat that, without the President, every thing else is worthless ; with the President, every thing else follows ; for the President gives all the offices at home and abroad ; thus his will inspires every act of the government, even the very courts, on po- litical and constitutional subjects. A majority in Congress with him consecrates his will and that of those who elect him as law, and he executes and construes it in the spirit of its authors. His veto protects his policy against an adverse majority in both houses, and gives his friends time to rally and restore their ma- jority in the next Congress. He is omnipotent against every thing but a two-third's vote of both houses, so that his administration may be censured, but can not be arrested by any less number by law. The possession of the President, except under great abuse of power, draws to it generally the majorities of both houses, from the natural tendency of the people to make a complete govern- ment while they are about it. But, with the President alone in such hands as we have indi- cated, the slave propaganda is forever broken down. It can pass no slave code for its Territories. It can not repeal the laws against the slave-trade. It can not repeat the scenes of Kansas, for President Pierce could at any moment have ended those invasions and those frauds by the ap- pointment of his marshals and governors, or, if necessary, by the troops. Thus paralyzed, the black Democrats could not agitate the country ; the progress of population would settle the condition of the Territories for their transformation into states without any farther legislation. 124 THE QUESTION IN THE TERRITORIES. On these principles the opposition can unite, for they are sim- ply a cessation of the propaganda. They only assume that who- ever the opposition may agree on will be one holding Mr. Clay's views, and known to do so, without any pledges or questions. Such a person only can unite the opposition. Such an administration inaugurated in 1860 gives the Con- servative' body of the people — now unhappily divided on the is- sue, shown above not to be material, i. e., not necessary to be raised in order to accomplish all which moderate men ought to want, and do want — the possession of the government for a gen- eration at least, if wisely conducted. On the other hand, if the opposition fail in 1860, they may roll up the map of the United States for twenty years. ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE ON ACCOUNT OF MR. DAVIS'S VOTE FOR MR. SPEAKER PENNINGTON. At the second session of the Thirty-fifth Congress (December, 1858, to March 4, 1859) Mr. Davis spoke against the proposed resolution to impeach Judge Watrous, of Texas (which was rejected), and on the bills for the Indian, Civil, and Naval Appropriations. In the month of October, 1859, occurred the outbreak at Harper's Ferry, and attack on and capture of the United States Arsenal there by John Brown and his associates, who attempted also to cause and lead an insurrection of the negro slaves. The excitement caused by this invasion of Virginia by twenty men was only less in certain parts of Maryland than the terror it occasioned in the state first named. It was instantly asserted every where as the deliberate act of a great political party in the North, and for which they were responsible, and was held forth as the convincing reason why the only safety of the South was in the party whose excesses had provoked it. Notwithstanding the efforts of the missionaries who preached this new doctrine in Maryland, Mr. Davis was again elected, for the third time, in November, 1859, to the Thirty-sixth Congress, which met on the 5th of December. There were returned to the House one hundred and nine Republicans, one hundred and one Democrats, twenty-six Americans, and one Whig (Mr. Etheridgc, of Tennessee). For the speakership, at first Mr. Bocock was supported by the Demo- crats, Mr. Sherman by the "Republicans, and Mr. Gilmer and Mr. Boteler by the Americans. A resolution was introduced by the Democrats, in hopes of compelling the Americans to side with them, that " no indorser or advocate of the 'Helper Book' (The Impending Crisis of the South, by II. R. Helper, of North Carolina) was proper to be placed in the chair of the House." This was aimed against Mr. Sherman, whose name ap- peared in a list of those who recommended the distribution and reading of that volume. The discussion was long and violent, and after many ineffectual efforts, and the withdrawal of Mr. Sherman and others, on the 31st of January, 18G0, Mr. Davis, when his name was called, voted for Governor Pennington, a member from New Jersey. Governor Pen- nington was a Whig, who had been elected as a Republican, and who 126 ON THE KESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE had been supported as their candidate for the speakership by the Repub- licans only when they found it impossible to elect one of their straitest sect, and " an indorser or advocate of the ' Helper Book.' " This vote gave to Mr. Pennington one hundred and sixteen votes, within one of the required number. This was secured next day, February 1, by the arrival of Mr. Briggs, and thereupon Mr. Pennington was conducted to the chair. There was a furious clamor raised in the Legislature of Maryland, then in session at Annapolis, and attempted to be raised among the people of the state, and of the city of Baltimore especially, upon the announcement of the vote cast by Mr. Davis for Mr. Pennington. The most abusive articles were printed in the daily papers of Balti- more ; insulting and threatening anonymous letters were sent to Mr. Davis, anil violent efforts made to hold him up as " a traitor to the South, and renegade to the political, commercial, and social interests of Balti- more." In the Maryland Legislature enough members were found of the party which had sent Mr. Davis to Congress, and who had been elected from their own counties partly through his efforts, to join with the pro-slav- ery Democracy in denouncing this vote, by resolutions declaring that he had therein misrepresented the sentiments and feelings of the state. After these resolutions had been presented to the House of Represent- atives, Mr. Davis took occasion, on the 21st of February, 18G0 (the House being in Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union), to set forth his opinions of them and their contrivers and supporters in the following speech : Mr. Chairman, — The honorable the Legislature of Maryland has decorated me with its censure. It is my purpose to acknowl- edge that compliment. It is long, sir, since the party which now controls the Legisla- ture of Maryland has been so fortunate as to have a majority in both its branches, and it has so conducted itself that it is proba- ble it will be long ere again it succeeds in getting that control. If one may judge from the course and conduct of that body, the gentlemen who compose it are perhaps more surprised at their present power than their opponents. They do not appear to be less bewildered or more to have changed their original nature than Christophcro Sly, when waking up, after his debauch, in the nobleman's chamber, dazzled with the unaccustomed elegance which surrounded him, he began to question himself thus : " Am I a lord? and have I such a lady? Or do I dream ? or have I dream'd till now? I do not sleep ; I see, I hear, I speak ; BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 127 I smell sweet savors, and I feel soft things ; Upon my life, I am a lord indeed, And not a tinker, nor Christophero Sly. Well, bring our lady hither to our sight : And once ayain, a pot o' the smallest ale." Sudden elevation has never changed the character of the per- son accidentally raised to a position he was never intended by nature to occupy ; and those who imagine it ever can may free themselves from that delusion by looking at the Legislature of Maryland. That majority, which now presumes to represent the people of Maryland, are as much out of place in her legislative halls as was Christophero in the lordly chamber; and they retain and reveal their natural instincts and ability as did Christophero his preference for a pot o' the smallest ale. There is no department of legislation to which, in the brief pe- riod of their power, they have not applied their fingers, and it would be doing them injustice to say that there is any they have adorned. Greatly deficient in that first quality which constitutes the leg- islator — sound practical common sense — they abound in that genius of ignorance which so amazed and delighted Montesquieu's Persian in the Parisian professors — a genius which enabled them to undertake to practice and teach, with the utmost confidence, arts and sciences of which they knew nothing. Inexperienced in the forms of legislation, it was certainly pru- dent that they should be attended in the caucus, where, instead of the committee, their laws are matured, by learned attorneys, not members of either House, for else their blunders might betray their ignorance ; yet, in spite of this wise precaution, this Legisla- ture has worthily earned for itself a place beside that lack-learn- ing Parliament where Lord Coke says there was never a good law passed. Not elevated to the full sense of the dignity and responsibility of their high place by the great memories which surround them in the State House where daily they meet — where once the great Congress. of the Ee volution sat, and where George Washington surrendered his sword, that the law might thenceforth reign — the caucus is the Legislature, the Legislature the recording clerk for the dictates of the caucus ; debate is silenced and consideration is banished. At a suggestion from partisans out of doors, the sacred rights of a great city are sacrificed ; every responsibility surround- 128 ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE ing legislation is gone ; and the result has been such a series of legislative measures as will, perhaps, revive in the memories of the people of Maryland the fading sense of the greatness of the ca- lamity inflicted upon them when Democrats control a majority in both branches of their Legislature. Since, sir, they have seen fit to honor me with their censure, it is fit that this high and honorable body should have the means a little more in detail of appreciating the weight of that censure. Ambitious of the reputation of Justinian, and not enlightened by the great jurists which surrounded his throne, the General Assembly of Maryland, in the first few days, not of their consult- ation, not of their consideration, but of their session, adopted, without reading it, and in profound ignorance of its provision, a code defining the rights of person and of property of every citi- zen of the State of Maryland, and a great part of the residue of the brief period assigned them by the Constitution has been occu- pied in repealing and altering the code they had just adopted. Anxious to overrule the popular will and touch the fruits of political success, where political success is not likely to be attain- ed by the will of the people, they have been exceedingly desirous to empty some of the offices which, in Baltimore, were filled by the popular vote; and evidence having been taken in contests between members of the Legislature and persons claiming their seats, the honorable the committee of the body of which I am speaking, so cognizant of the laws of the land, so aware of the rights of justice, and so anxious to give them full effect, allows that evidence, taken behind the backs of gentlemen whose offices are contested, to be put in against them, upon the witnesses merely identifying their depositions formerly taken. Perhaps they were conscious, Mr. Chairman, that some witnesses can not safely be resworn after the lapse of a reasonable time. In the midst of the excitement in the country upon the Negro Question, it is not surprising that they have some men among them anxious to follow the deplorable example which has been set recently elsewhere, shocking to the sensibilities of the great mass of the people of Maryland, of reducing into slavery the men that our fathers freed. That such a measure is now depending before that Legislature, and receiving such consideration as it can give to any thing, instead of having been instantly rejected, or leave to bring it in refused — this, sir, would be cause of great sur- BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 129 prise in any other Legislature assembled in Maryland. But, sir, I fear that nothing but the unanimous shriek of indignation which rung from one end of Maryland to the other averted the danger of the passage of some such despotic and oppressive measure, and one seriously and rashly unsettling the industrial interests of Maryland. From these few circumstances, perhaps, we may begin to divine something of the character of that honorable body and the scope of its legislative sagacity. They are still more careful of South- ern rights. They boast themselves their sole guardians in Mary- land. They are diligent and not unsuccessful students of the de- bates of this House. They were smitten with, admiration of the resolution offered — and so long debated in this House — by the honorable gentleman, my friend from Missouri [Mr. Clark]. A bill was pending before the Legislature of Maryland for the pur- pose of disfranchising a great city refractory to the Democratic yoke. Certain respectable attorneys, knowing as much of con- stitutional law as is comprised in the art of special pleading, as- pired to apply these microscopic principles of their favorite art to the construction of the Constitution, and the result of that novel application was a bill which annulled by evasion, and repealed by direct enactment of the Legislature, some of the most funda- mental provisions of the Constitution itself. Accepted at the hands of its legal originators by the caucus — if ever read, yet never understood by the majority in either House — it was about to receive the confirmation of the Legislature, when a grave omis- sion was discovered. It said nothing about the Negro Question. That was beyond the province of special pleading; and the Leg- islature rashly tried their 'prentice hand on a proviso. They sol- emnly incorporated in the bill the following clause : "Provided, That no Black Republican, or indorser or supporter of the Helper book, shall be appointed to any office under the said board." Upon its passage, the yeas and nays were called and recorded : but I should not perform a grateful task were I to rescue their names from their native oblivion and spread them on the face of the debates of this House. The proviso was the fit cap and bells for such a bill. Its pro- visions deprived a great city of their constitutional right to self- government by a flagrant usurpation. It was fit that the men who were ambitious of the honor of passing that act should like- I 130 ON THE KESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE wise place in the bill the measure of their capacity, by enacting what they, with the same breath, condemned. Perhaps the most obnoxious portion of Helper's book is the proscription of fellow- citizens for their opinions on slavery ; and the proviso, for the first time in American legislation, excludes by law from a munic- ipal office all the members of the most numerous political party in the United States by their party name, and because of their political opinions ascribed to them by their enemies. The pro- viso does not confine its exclusion to the approvers of Helper's work — itself sufficiently ridiculous — but deprives the honorable gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Corwin] and the Speaker of this House, and the governor of almost every free state, and over a million of voters, from all chance of promotion in the Police Department of Baltimore. Possibly the people might not have selected them, but the Legislature apparently feared that their Board of Commissioners might. Their vigilance having been once awakened, they were not content with having thus protected the institutions of the people of Maryland against the wiles of this great Northern party by excluding them from the high and lucrative position of policemen. They were called upon shortly afterward to pass upon another measure — a city railroad for Baltimore — a dangerous contrivance of Northern ingenuity, which would cover with its network of tracks that great city, on whose cars thousands of people might come in contact daily with the conductors and directors, and by them, if not sound, the subtle poison of anti-slavery sentiment might be diffused through all the streets and alleys of Baltimore, without any body being the wiser. That sagacious and learned body, the Senate, having hurried through the code for the pur- pose of getting at those things which touch the vital interests of the country, having before them this bill for the inauguration of that great modern convenience in the city of Baltimore, thought that there likewise they should protect themselves by law against this poison in the atmosphere. And therefore it was provided, and now stands as a part of that bill, "That no Black Republican, or indorscr or approver of the Ilelper book (laugh- ter) shall receive any of the benefits and privileges of this act, or be employed in any capacity by the said railway company." (Renewed laughter.) I want honorable gentlemen upon this side of the House, the Helperites as well as others, to know, that when they pass home BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 131 through the city of Baltimore they must be prepared, at the car doors, to deny their political principles, or lose the lightning train. (Laughter.) Disappointed office-seekers here can find employ- ment there only by apostasy, and secret trusts alone can secure Black Republican capital in this lucrative investment. Sir, in the course of a few days there was before the Legislature another bill for the purpose of endowing an agricultural society for the state. An energetic, but not discreet representative of the dominant party rose and moved to apply this proviso to that bill. We all know that contamination does not spread so rapidly in the rural districts as in our great cities, and some legislator, more sa- gacious than his brethren, reflected that there are Black Republi- cans who raise Morgan horses, and Durham cattle, and Southdown sheep, and Alderneys, and that occasionally a Black Republican invents a plow, and that these things lessen the burden or enhance the profits of agricultural labor, and in singular contrast to the rest of their conduct, in a lucid interval, they actually voted down the proviso ! But the Senate, having at this point made themselves, as the Frenchman would say, suspected, in spite of their earnest and disinterested guardianship of Southern institutions, even at the expense of making themselves ridiculous, the House of Delegates next assumed the guardianship of the representative upon this floor. They had passed a resolution, prior to the election of speaker, which was intended to condemn beforehand any vote which should not be for some one of the honorable gentlemen from the Democratic party. I knew it was aimed at me ; for they knew that, highly as I respect those gentlemen — eminently fit by knowledge and experience for that position as I know many of them to be — entire as is my confidence in their personal honor, to the extent of trusting my fortune, my life, and my honor in their hands, yet I did not consider them safe depositors for any of the political powers of this government, and that all they could do would not make me waver one hair's breadth from what they knew was my firm resolve. But it is unfortunate that the gentlemen upon that side of the legislative body are more devoted to study the Cincinnati plat- form than Blair's Rhetoric or Whately's Rules of Logic, and they became afflicted with that entire incapacity of saying any thing which has not two meanings which so singularly characterizes the 132 ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE authors of that remarkable platform. They moved a resolution in such ambiguous terms that my honorable friends in the Maryland Legislature thought it was a condemnation of the gentlemen on the administration side of the House for not having elected the gentleman from North Carolina, for whom I cast my vote so per- severingly and so fruitlessly. I had intended to waive the benefit of the ambiguity. I intended to have responded to them in the sense of the gentleman who moved them; but events were so rapid that, before I could have an opportunity to express my opinion of them, I was overwhelmed and oppressed by another. The ele- vation of the gentleman from New Jersey to the speaker's chair instantly revived all their earnestness for the protection of South- ern rights. My vote recalled to them that they were committed by what they had said before to follow it up with an explicit condemna- tion of the act which had now been perpetrated. And thereupon the honorable the House of Delegates of Maryland thus resolved: "Resolved, by the General Assembly of Maryland, That Henry Winter Davis, act- ing in Congress as one of the representatives of this state — " Sir, it is greatly to be regretted that those gentlemen do not act in the. Legislature of Maryland as representatives of Maryland — "by his vote for Mr. Pennington — " They did not. know his Christian name — "the candidate of the Black Republican party — " Think of it, Mr. Chairman ! spread upon the statute-book of Maryland forever ! "of the Black Republican party — " ' ' for the speakership of the House of Representatives, has misrepresented the senti- ment of all parts of this state, and thereby forfeited the confidence of her people." I respectfully tell the gentlemen who voted for that resolution to take back their message to their masters, and say that I speak to their masters face to face, and not through them. Sir, it has always been the striking and marked peculiarity of that party which now accidentally, and only temporarily, predominates in the councils of Maryland, that they will allow no opportunity to pass of what they call " indicating their entire fealty to the South ;" and that, sir, always consists in exciting sectional strife, in mooting matters which men ought not to argue, in libeling their neighbors, in endeavoring to make them hateful and disgust- ing to their fellow-citizens, in giving an advertisement to the whole country that every body that is not a Democrat is an Abo- BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 133 litionist ; and that, if any fanatics shall see fit at any time to come within the limits of a Southern state for the purpose of shaking and unsettling the solid foundations of society, there would be found men who, if they feared to join them, would yet sympa- thize with them. Their whole policy is to poison the minds of our people against every man not a Democrat in the free states, to inspire them with distrust, apprehension, and terror, to teach them to look on the accession to power of any one called by the name of Eepublican as not merely a change of power from one to another political party, differing in principle and policy, but equally loyal to the United States, but as not far removed from such oppression and danger as to furnish just cause of seeking revolutionary remedies. Their hope seems to be to retain power by the fears of one half the people for the existence of slavery, and of the other half for the existence of the Union. Agitation, clamor, vituperation, audacious and pertinacious, are their weapons of warfare. Of this spirit the Legislature of Maryland, as now constituted, is the incarnation. It stands the embodiment of that terrific vision of the Portress of Hell gate, who, to the eye of Milton, "Seemed woman to the waist, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast — a serpent armed With mortal sting ; about her middle round A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing barked With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal ; yet when they list would creep, If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb And kennel there, yet there still barked and howled Within unseen." And they, as false to their mission as the Portress of Hell to hers, stand ready, for the purpose of retaining their hold of power, to let loose on this blessed land the Satan of demoniacal passion. And then, sir, in the midst of these more noisy, boisterous, and disturbing elements, there is a certain number of small, shriveled, restless beings, incapable of wielding the arms of logic or of rea- son, yet skillful to scratch with poisoned weapons. Of such are the honorable gentlemen who contrived the resolution. They supposed that I was so weak before my friends in Mary- land that they could take from me the confidence of that constitu- 134: ON THE RESOLUTIONS OF CENSURE cucy that has stood by me through good report and through evil report, while it blew a storm as well as when it was calm. Sir, I represent My constituents ; and I know the people of Mary- land even beyond the limits of my constituents better than these dabblers in eternal agitation ; and I say that, right or wrong, wise or unwise, honest in its motives or unfaithful in its motives, that vote of mine is, to-day, not only approved, but honored and ap- plauded by every man whose opinion I regard. (Applause in the galleries.) I say that now, this day, I am stronger in my district and in the State of Maryland, in any appeal I may see fit to make to the people, on my vote for speaker, than all the banded body of the Legislature bound into one man. And, sir, unless I am greatly deceived by the press of the Southern opposition, the American members of the Legislature are as little in sympathy with their political friends of the South as they are with the peo- ple of Maryland. Why, sir, what are the circumstances of that election ? I, sir, have no apologies to make. I have no excuses to render. What I did, I did on nry own judgment, and did not look across my shoulder to see what my constituents would think. I told my constituents that I would come here a free man, or not at all ; and they sent me here on that condition. I told them that if they wanted a slave to represent them, they could get plenty, but I was not one. I told them that I had already passed through more than one difficult, complex, dangerous session of Congress ; that I had been obliged, again and again, to do that which is least grateful to my feelings ; to stand not merely opposed to my hon- orable political opponents, but to stand alone among my political friends without the strength and support which a public man re- ceives from being buoyed up breast-high by men of like senti- ments, elected on like principles, and who, if there be error, would stand as a shield and bulwark between him and his responsibility. I foresaw then, exactly as it resulted, that the time would come when I would be obliged again to take that stand ; and I wanted my people to know it, so that if they chose to have another one, who would go contrary to his judgment, and bend like a willow when the storm came, they might pick him out, and choose the material for their work. Mr. Chairman, they sent me here, and I have done what I know was my duty. Sir, it is my proud satisfaction at this mo- BY THE MARYLAND LEGISLATURE. 135 ment that, having given no side-wind reasons, having made no apologetic statement, spontaneously, without asking, I know this day that my constituents approve what I have done ; and that, if not the fit reason for my doing so, is at least a consolation after doing it. The honorable gentlemen of the Legislature presume to know better what my constituents think than I do. They possibly will find out that they do not know so much about the honorable gen- tleman who occupies the speaker's chair as my constituents know. The objection made to me in the Maryland Legislature by the mover of one of the resolutions was, that I had not voted for my friend from North Carolina. The rapidity of the transit of infor- mation from Washington to Annapolis is apparent to any one. The diligence with which these self-constituted judges of my con- duct make themselves acquainted with it, adds greatly to the weight of their condemnation. The care with which they studied the code before its passage leads me to fear that they learn our proceedings chiefly from expurgated editions in their country newspapers, via Alleghany and St. Mary's. Not only no Demo- crat, but no American, could, or ventured, or cared to correct the blunder. Thus ignorant of contemporary events, it were unreasonable to expect them to know events twenty years old — to them a period beyond the memory of man or newspaper — the subject of tradi- tion merely. It is not to be supposed that they could identify the honorable gentleman who so worthily fills the speaker's chair with that Whig governor of New Jersey, whose broad seal was discarded by the Democrats of this House when they wished to usurp the speakership of the House, and had not the votes to do it without rejecting the votes of the New Jersey members. They did not, but my constituents do know that fact; and they think that his elevation is a righteous rebuke, after long delay, for that usurpa- tion. They know — though it can not be supposed the Legislature do — that the Governor of New Jersey of that day was a Whig in the day of Whig greatness. The gentlemen of the Legislature can not be expected to know, but my constituents know, that Gen- eral Taylor appointed to a high office, in his gift, the same dis- tinguished gentleman, and that, though the Senate of the United States unanimously confirmed him, he declined the honor. The rivato visus dum privatus fuit et consensu omnium capax imperii nisi imperasset. Yes, sir, nisi imperasset, James Buchanan might have passed to the grave as one of the men of the republic, equal to every station he filled, and not in- competent for the highest. The acquisition of supreme power has revealed his incapacity, and crowns him with the unenviable honor of the chief destroyer of his country's greatness. We have, Mr. Speaker, this day to deal in a great measure with 204 THE KEPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. the consequences of his incapacity. Persons usurping power in six or seven States have thrown off their allegiance to the United States. It was fondly hoped that it was only temporary — possi- bly a desperate contrivance to restore the chief actors to power ; but we are now authoritatively informed by the response of South Carolina to the kindly messenger from Virginia that their position is permanently fixed ; that they desire to have, and will have no farther political connection with the United States ; and a distin- guished gentleman, until within one month a member of the cab- inet of the United States, recently elected President of the revo- lutionary Convention at Montgomery, has informed us in his in- augural speech that it is their purpose finally to sever their con- nection with the United States, and to take all the consequences of organizing an independent republic. Mr. Speaker, we are driven to one of two alternatives; we must recognize — what we have been told more than once upon this floor is an accomplished fact — the independence of the rebellious States, or we must refuse to acknowledge it, and accept all the re- sponsibilities that attach to that refusal. Eecognize them ! aban- don the Gulf and coast of Mexico ; surrender the forts of the United States ; yield the privilege of free commerce and free in- tercourse; strike down the guarantees of the Constitution for our fellow-citizens in all that wide region ; create a thousand miles of interior frontier to be furnished with internal custom-houses, and armed with internal forts, themselves to be a prey to the next ca- price of State sovereignty ; organize a vast standing army, ready at a moment's warning, to resist aggression ; create upon our south- ern boundary a perpetual foothold for foreign powers whenever caprice, ambition, or hostility may see fit to invite the despot of France or the aggressive power of England to attack us upon our undefended frontier ; sever that unity of territory which we have spent millions, and labored through three generations to create and establish ; pull down the flag of the United States and take a lower station among the nations of the earth ; abandon the high prerogative of leading the march of freedom, the hope of strug- gling nationalities, the terror of frowning tyrants, the boast of the world, the light of liberty, to become the sport and prey of des- pots whose thrones we consolidate by our fall ; to be greeted by Mexico with the salutation, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us ? This is recognition. THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 205 Eefuse to recognize ! We must not coerce a State in the peace- ful process of secession. We must not coerce a State engaged in the peaceful process of firing into a United States vessel to pre- vent the re-enforcement of a United States fort. We must not coerce States which, without any declaration of war or any act of hostility of any kind, have united, as have Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana, their joint forces to seize a public fortress. We must not coerce a State which has planted cannon upon its shores to prevent the free navigation of the Mississippi. We must not coerce a State which has robbed the United States Treasury. This is peaceful secession! Mr. Speaker, I do not design to quarrel with gentlemen about words. I do not wish to say one word which will exasperate the already too much inflamed state of the public mind ; but I say that the Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, must be enforced ; and they who stand across the path of that enforcement must either destroy the power of the United States, or it will destroy them. (Loud applause in the galleries.) I trust in God that any such collision is years, centu- ries, yea, thousands of years off. I see no necessity for it. I think it may be avoided by prudent administration, till the people shall come to themselves. But the laws of the United States provide their own method of enforcement, and when they are enforced, those who resist must take the consequences. I think the revenues may be collected in disaffected ports on board United States ships. I think the laws of commerce may be enforced by allowing no vessel to pass out unless she has papers of the United States on board. The postal routes and arrange- ments may be sustained or suspended, as the interests of the gov- ernment or the disturbed condition of the localities may require. The courts of justice, if needs be, may be supported as they were in Utah ; or we may remove the courts, extend the districts over several States, and locate the courts in States which are not dis- turbed. These are the regular peaceful methods of enforcing the laws of the United States. These methods, if pursued, will allow time for reflection — cooling time to the people excited by a fierce political canvass, and surprised on a sudden unprepared, by revo- lutionary contrivances prepared beforehand. We can await the inevitable time of division, discord, and resistance to taxation and military exactions. 206 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. But the government of the United States is vested by the Con- stitution with adequate power to meet every emergency. It is re- quired to guarantee a republican form of government to every State. A government whose executive Legislature and judicial officers are not sworn to support the Constitution of the United States is mere usurpation, and not a republican government. It will never be recognized for any purpose. If the loyal citizens of any State, whose authorities have usurped the prerogative of repealing the Constitution of the United States, shall see fit to or- ganize for themselves a government, the President can recognize them, and the President can support them. Among the powers granted by the Constitution is the power to suppress insurrection ; it does not except insurrections ordered by State authority, and they will be suppressed as promptly as others. The Constitution au- thorizes Congress to provide for calling forth the militia to enforce the laws, and it makes no exception of those laws which a State may see fit to oppose ; and if to the regular execution of the laws of the United States armed resistance shall be made, the govern- ment has authority to disperse those who oppose the enforcement. The Constitution forbids any State to keep troops or ships of war in time of peace ; and if troops be organized by any State, the United States have power to require them to be disbanded, and to disperse them if they be not disbanded. If ships of war shall be built, they have a right, under the Constitution, to require them to be disposed of, or, if that be refused, they may sink them. Whether that shall be done is a matter of discretion. If States levy troops and attack no one, the United States may well let them eat their own heads off. The cost will soon disperse them. But if they assail the United States, or other States, or loyal citi- zens of the United States in the disaffected State, then the blame of collision rests on those who compelled the United States to re- sistance. In this manner, without any thing like war upon States, without any attempt to do damage to any citizens excepting those who may have arrayed themselves in arms against the United States, the government can vindicate its authority and maintain its power. This is not war. The Constitution calls it enforcing the laws. It is no more war than arresting a criminal is war. It is supporting the civil power by the military arm against unlaw- ful combinations too powerful to be otherwise dealt with. The guilt of the actors is not extenuated by State authority, still less THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 207 by that of the revolutionary conventions. By their sanction they become participators in the guilt, and liable to the punishment of the armed actors. War is the struggle between two powers to do each other the greatest possible harm, subject only to international law. But when the United States suppress an insurrection or en- force the laws, they harm only those actually resisting, and them only so far as to remove their resistance to the civil arm. Its end is their dispersion. The United States carry the Constitution be- fore their arms ; its provisions hedge in their bayonets ; and every weapon sinks when its authority is admitted. Conquest in war is absolute despotism ; the triumph of the United States is the restoration of constitutional liberty. But, Mr. Speaker, the marvel still remains to be explained how it is that, in this free republican land, over so wide a region of ■country, people hitherto loyal to the United States have so sud- denly taken such strange and revolutionary courses. First, sir, it is because there is, and has been for years, a revo- lutionary faction in many of them, disguised by being mingled in the ranks of a great political party, but always working to accom- plish its treasonable purposes. It is because of the tenacity with which defeated politicians — not revolutionists, but acting with them — cling to power, determ- ined to rule or to ruin the government. They have the power to bring these great disasters upon the country only because the popular mind has been aroused and ex- cited by fierce discussions upon the topic of slavery, on which the Southern people are so justly sensitive. By the grossest misrep- resentations of the purposes of the great body of the Northern people, by perpetual and reiterated misrepresentation and exag- geration of their feelings, a hostile state of feeling has been cre- ated throughout a great portion, if not throughout the whole of the South, which borders upon revolution itself. A state of fear, an undefined dread, a sense of insecurity, has been inspired by the course of the political canvass in the South. The mischief has been done at home. The mischief has been done by the violent struggles of parties for supremacy. Both have striven each to blacken their common opponents at the North, by imputing to them opinions and purposes which both execrate ; and one has imputed sympathy with the same opinions to their political oppo- nents at the South. Whatever disturbance exists there, the great, 208 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. the main, the substantial cause of it is not the conduct of the peo- ple of the free States, but the conduct of the political canvass at the South, the course of the debate by Southern gentlemen in this House, the mode in which they have, consciously or unconscious- ly, exaggerated and blackened the purposes of gentlemen upon the other side of the House, and habitually circulated at home inflammatory speeches of certain Northern gentlemen, which I submit they ought to have known did not represent the feelings of the great body of the people of the North, however well they may represent that small faction called there "Abolitionists." I say that is the real, the chief, the exciting cause of the existing disturbances; and, sir, in my judgment, without constitutional amendments, or the passage of one law, if gentlemen will only re- move the impression that they have erroneously left upon their people's minds, if they will only go and say to them what they have heard said again and again on this floor by the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Adams], by the distinguished gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Corwin], so often and by so many of his colleagues upon this floor, and what is now said still more formally by the resolutions adopted by Republican votes in the Committee of Thirty-three, and reported by the distinguished gen- tleman from Ohio, that there exists no purpose, directly or indi- rectly, to disturb or interfere in any manner with, the institution of slavery within the States, and that the only question is whether it shall go into the poor, miserable, worthless Territory of New Mexico or not ; if they will go and tell the people that, there would be peace and quiet throughout the whole South within a month after they made the explanation. But, sir, from the course of debate in this House, I have small hope of that natural, prompt, and honest remedy. They who profit by the error will not cor- rect it. A committee has been raised charged with devising such meas- ures as will at once assuage the existing discontents, avoid the occasions of future irritation, and tender such guarantees to the sensitive interests of the South as, in the absence of those just recantations by politicians of the South, will still give peace, quiet, and security to the Southern people. I desire, Mr. Speaker, to lay before the House, in as plain and brief a manner as I can, the results to which the committee charged with that duty have come; to compare the remedies that the majority and the minority of THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 209 the committee respectively propose, and to contrast the complaints and the remedies of the minority with themselves. The first cause of irritation is the Personal Liberty Bills. Both portions of the committee propose a recommendation that they shall be repealed. The votes of the committee and of the House on that subject ought to remove every trace of dissatisfaction or suspicion. Great irritation has grown out of the obstructions to the exe- cution of the act for the delivery of fugitives from service. The repeal of those bills ought to be accompanied by an amendment of that law. The minority of the committee, headed by the gen- tleman from Louisiana [Mr. Taylor], who took his leave of us the other day, propose on that subject an amendment of the Consti- tution requiring that when fugitives are rescued by violence, the United States shall pay the value to their owner, and have the privilege of suing the county or district permitting the rescue for the amount. Sir, this is to perpetuate, and not to close the slav- ery controversy. The only effect of the adoption of such an amendment of the Constitution would be to make this hall every session, on every bill to pay for negroes rescued, the scene of fierce strife upon the very subject of slavery. Another objection is equally fatal. It brings the United States into direct collision with an organized political division of a State, which the Consti- tution of the United States was most carefully devised to avoid. The right of action against a county for so harsh a cause could scarcely be enforced by any process known to the law. Success would itself cause great discontent among large masses of people, and resistance to their execution could only be removed by armed force. In other words, the amendment prepared by the minority of the committee would plunge us here into the perpetual discus- sion of the Slavery Question, and would require the government to enforce against communities numerous, and powerful, and inno- cent responsibilities for acts which they have not done, but have only failed to prevent. The bill reported by the majority of the committee is very different in its purposes and in its policy. It assumes that the law for the rendition of fugitive slaves ought to be so modified as not to give cause or pretext for the fears which it has occasioned at the North, and then when that exciting cause of discontent is removed, the law can be executed. The danger which the JSTorthen people feel is that their own free resi- O 210 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. dent colored people may, under summary process, be arrested, carried off, and sold into slavery. The law of 1850 provides no remedy for cases of that sort. We propose that where there is a claim of freedom, the negro shall be surrendered to the marshal of the United States, and carried back to the slave State from which he is ascertained to have come, and there shall have the privilege of a trial before a court of the United States in that State. A trial there can not be objected to by Southern gentle- men ; Northern gentlemen ought to be satisfied that his claim to freedom, brought in a formal and public manner before a judicial tribunal of the United States, will be decided according to its merit. Surely no one can hesitate between the cumbersome and anomalous plan of the minority, and the simple and just bill of the majority of the committee. The next subject is that of the Territories. Mr. Speaker, it is certainly marvelous that, having settled this very question touch- ing this very Territory by Mr. Clay's acts in 1850, and no inter- mediate law having been passed by any body excepting the law of 1854 repealing the Missouri Compromise, so as to allow slavery to exist north of the line of 36° 30', the South having boasted of the laws of 1850 as their triumph, and every party in the country having pledged itself to stand by them, it is of all things most strange that we are now told that this Union can not endure un- less those laws themselves are repealed ; and the very principle of the Missouri Compromise, so far as it was objected to by the South, that is, the exclusion of slavery beyond the line which they denounced as unequal, shall be not only restored, but ingrafted forever on the Constitution of the United States ! It was de- nounced and branded by Southern men all through the debate which resulted in its repeal as a badge of inferiority, a mark of inequality, a stain of dishonor to the South. And now they de- mand that it shall be restored, not by a temporary act of legisla- tion, but by the sanction of the people in the supreme law of the laud. A more flagrant, inexplicable, unintelligible case of capri- cious inconsistency is unknown to history. But, sir, the gentle- men who assume to speak for the South have changed their no- tions of equality and honor, and of course the world must change too. The proposal is made on the part of the minority of the committee that there shall be a division of territory, and that all the region north of 36° 30' shall be dedicated to freedom, and in THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 211 all the region south to Cape Horn, slavery of the African race is " hereby recognized as existing" — existing over the whole of Mexico — over all the regions of Central America, skipping Brazil, I sup- pose, where slavery already exists, and going down to the ex- tremist regions of South America by virtue of our Constitution. Now, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman who proposed that ought' to know something of the history of the last few years at least, and if there is one thing which ought to be understood as absolutely impossible, it is ever to get a law through this Ilouse, or even through the Senate, by a simple majority, establishing slavery in any inch of territory where it does not already exist. Be it right or be it wrong, be it liberal or be it illiberal, every gentleman here must know that that is one of the things which are impossi- ble. But in what method do the gentlemen of the minority pro- pose to do this? By a constitutional amendment requiring two thirds of this House — where it could not get one third — and two thirds of the Senate ; and when it has gone through these impos- sible ordeals, it has to go before the people of the United States, and get, not two thirds but three fourths of the Legislatures of the several states. Scale the heavens, if you please, without wings ; pass the abyss which divides heaven from hell, but do not talk about a thing like this. And what in the mean time, Mr. Speaker ? Agitation, violence, recrimination, not merely on the question of the policy of slavery, but compelling the Northern people, wheth- er they will or not, to go into the very question of its merits, moral and religious, not leaving them where they are willing to leave you — as they have said over and over again — within the impassa- ble barriers of the Constitution of the United States, made tenfold higher and tenfold stronger by the provision of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Adams] — but asking the people of the North to declare that they have been hypocritical in their opin- ions that African slavery is not merely impolitic, but immoral; a thing which they ought not to sanction — to reverse all their judg- ment on that subject, and themselves ingraft in the Constitution a doctrine which you accuse them of hating so eternally that they are struggling to destroy it illegally and unconstitutionally. You ask them to save and protect that very thing which, for two years past, you have stood here and denounced them for intend- ing to destroy ; by exciting servile war ; by insidious appeals to the non-slaveholding white people of the South ; by the hands 212 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. of such incendiaries as John Brown. In the most of these ap- peals, while their echo is still ringing in my ears, while I have before me the scenes that I witnessed last year on that side of the House, when men, raging and furious as the revolutionary assem- blies in France, hurled the epithets "traitor" and "incendiary" against their equals from the free states thick as arrows in a Par- thian battle-field, gentlemen now ask those very men, to whom such opinions have been imputed, to turn round and forget all, and, as honest men, conciliatory men, wise men, do the very thing which they have told you for the last eighty years they could not in their consciences do. Very different is the mode of disposing of the territory that has been fallen upon by the majority of the committee, anxious to remove the pretext for contention, and striving as far as they could to avoid the difficulties in the plan demanded of them, and that in no conciliatory tone, but with the air of dictating an ulti- matum ! They propose this. All the territory now held by the United States south of 86° 80' is the Territory of New Mexico extending a little north of it. In that Territory, under the law of 1850, which is now so fiercely assailed, the people within one year have themselves adopted a slave code as rigorous as any in existence in any of the Southern States. The law of 1850 secured to that people the right to admission into the Union with or with- out slavery, as their Constitution might provide. "With eminent liberality, in mere execution and not in repeal of that law, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Adams], whose position on the subject of slavery all the world knows, as if to put forever to silence imputations of any design in any portion of the Northern people to invade the rights of the South, comes forward now and proposes to pass a law creating New Mexico a state. If it see fit to adopt slavery, then it will be a slave state. If it see fit to for- bid it, then it will be a free state. In either event, it removes the subject of controversy. In either event, it puts it beyond the power of any one to touch this domestic institution by constitu- tional guarantees as irrepealable, as unchangeable as the minority demand. That would remove the controversy from Congress, not by a compromise, but by removing the whole subject from Congress and the people forever by a simple majority of this House and of the other House, and the signature of the President, leav- ing the whole subject in controversy to be decided, as Southern THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 213 gentlemen must see it must ultimately be decided, by the Consti- tution of New Mexico. If I am correctly informed by the gen- tleman who has so honorably represented that Territory here, the people arc likely to require a decision themselves within a year ; proceedings are now pending before the Legislature for the pur- pose of asking their recognition. I ask, therefore, whether it is not wise, before we have still farther revolutionary complications forced upon us, to tell them at once to form their Constitution, and thus take away the subject of the controversy now and forever. With regard to the other portion of the territory, Northern gentle- men ask no exclusion of slavery by law or Constitution. The perpetualimputation is that they are for prohibition every where. South Carolina has elevated that to a chief place in her travesty of the Declaration of Independence. During, the two months that we have been here, no gentleman heard such a thing urged as a proposal to exclude slavery from the northern portion of the Territory. If I am rightly informed, the Senate, by a Republican majority, has, within the last two days, passed a bill organizing the western portion of Kansas as a Territory, and there is not one word in it on the subject of slavery, so that the proposition of the gentleman from Massachusetts is to place the Slavery Question beyond the possible reach of Congress south of 36° 30', and in the residue to leave it to the administration of the law. He says : " We all agree as to what that law is. We will not attempt to change it by legislation. And as 3^011 desire the southern portion of it set apart for your patrimony, in God's name take it, and let us be at peace." Any man who is not wholly blind to the great interests at stake would accept such an offer as that as an eternal adjustment, not only in spirit, but in fact, of this whole contro- versy. After that, no imputation of a desire on the part of the North to interfere with slavery ought to pass Southern lips. Sir, I know that these propositions will be received with a shrug of the shoulders, and a suggestion that they are not satis- factory, by gentlemen of the South. But, sir, I tell them that if they do not satisfy them, they will satisfy the x jeo ])le, and that they will find out before they are many months older. The great State of Virginia has told them within the last three days that the heart of the people of the Commonwealth still beats true to this Union ; and though they may for a moment be deluded, they can not be forced into revolutionary violence for the difference 214 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. between the measures of the majority and the minority of the committee. If their representatives here, or at Eichmond, or in their uncon- stitutional Convention, called for unconstitutional purposes, shall, after the adoption of these proposals, venture to advise resort to revolution, they will speak to deaf ears and hard hearts. I do not envy the lot of any one who advocates an ordinance of seces- sion on such grounds. I think he will meet with small favor who, rather than create New Mexico a State, presents to the peo- ple of Virginia the awful alternative of tearing down the fabric built up by our fathers, of making war. upon their Northern brethren, of blotting out the great memories of the past, of strik- ing out their star from the galaxy of this great Confederacy, form- ed under the auspices of Washington, to become the small sun of • a secondary constellation, dependent on the caprice of greater powers for justice and safety. I am under no delusion about the meanings of the vote in Virginia. I think the failure of these measures will create serious disappointment, and gravely aggra- vate existing discontents ; but I am confident that, however poli- ticians may regard them, they will be hailed with delight by the great mass of the people of Virginia, as well as of the other central slave States, and will strip the enemies of the United States of all power for mischief. But, sir, there is one State I can speak for, and that is the State of Maryland. (Applause in the galleries.) Confident in the strength of this great government to protect every interest, grate- ful for almost a century of unalloyed blessings, she has fomented no agitation ; she has done no act to disturb the public peace ; she has rested in the consciousness that, if there be wrong, the Congress of the United States will remedy it ; and that none ex- ists which revolution would not aggravate. Mr. Speaker, I represent here the Fourth Congressional District of Maryland only ; but, though I am not elected by the State of Maryland, I am entitled to speak here, and I will speak what I Jcnow to be the sentiments of the State of Maryland. (Applause on the floor and in the galleries.) Mr. Speaker, I am here this day to speak, and I say that I do speak, for the people of Maryland, who are loyal to the United States; and that when my judgment is contested, I appeal to the people for its accuracy, and I am ready to maintain it before them. (Great applause.) THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 215 In Maryland we are dull, and can not comprehend the right of secession. We do not recognize the right to make a revolution by a vote. We do not recognize the right of Maryland to repeal the Constitution of the United States ; and if any Convention there, called by whatever authority, under whatever auspices, un- dertake to inaugurate revolution in Maryland, their authority will be resisted and defied in arms on the soil of Maryland, in the name and by the authority of the Constitution of the United States. A majority have no more right than a minority. The right of a majority is a constitutional, not a natural right. For the de- struction of the Constitution they can have no right. The whole mass of the nation alone has the right to alter the fundamental law by common consent. The right of resistance to oppression attaches to the oppressed, whether a majority or a minority of a state, a country, or a nation, and success vindicates the right. The assumption of the revolutionary bodies to bind the people of a State by the formalities of a vote is as ridiculous as it is im- potent ; their law directing the vote is a nullity ; and the result expresses the will only of those who concur in it. If by the usur- pation they can beat. down domestic opposition, and defy the United States, they vindicate their right by power; if they fail, the}'- \)Sij the penalty of failure. We in Maryland will submit to no attempt of a minority or a majority to drag us from under the flag of the Union. The Committee of Thirty -three have carefully considered the proposed restrictions on the change of certain ar- ticles in the Constitution of the United States. The minority propose to prohibit by amendment the abolition of slavery in the forts, dock -yards, and District of Columbia, and of the slave-trade between the slave States ; and to make those prohibitions, and also the article touching the ratio of representa- tion and fugitives from labor, unchangeable. But no party from any quarter now proposes to touch them, and the committee thought a simple declaration of that fact more satisfactory and prudent than to open the agitation by asking three fourths of the States to agree not to do what no one pro- poses to do. Those topics are agitated, not at the North, but at the South, and merely for political effect. But the question of the immunity of slavery in the States is very different. It exists by state authority. When established, 216 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. the Constitution guarantees it. And the impression having been studiously made on the minds of the people of the slaveholding states that the North design at some future time to destroy slav- ery, the majority of the committee propose to quiet forever that apprehension, and anew to consecrate the principle of state rights in internal matters by forbidding any change in the Constitution affecting slavery in the States. That guarantee, as proposed by the gentleman from Massachu- setts [Mr. Adams], in my judgment, is more ample and more satis- factory than the corresponding proposition offered by the minori- ty. They propose that no alteration of the Constitution shall be made authorizing Congress to abolish slavey. The proposition of the gentleman from Massachusetts is, that there shall be no amendment affecting the relation of persons held to labor within a State at all, whether directly through the Constitution, or in- directly through the Congress, unless by the consent of all the States, and upon motion of a slave State ; so that, with extreme astuteness, the amendment of the gentleman from Massachusetts guards against that which is really our greatest evil, the begin- ning of agitation for the purpose of varying the Constitution in this respect. The motion can only be made by a slave State. No free State can ever open the question of the repeal, or change that article of the Constitution. I submit, therefore, that the report of the majority, in that respect, is' far more satisfactory than that of the minority. The failure to surrender fugitives from justice, when the crime is connected with slavery, has been a topic of endless crimination. The report of the minority refers to the complaint. But not only does it prepose no remedy, but actually passes in silence the very important bill of the majority of the committee, effectually end- ing the controversy by transferring from the executive of the State to the judiciary of the United States the power and duty of making the surrender. This is a step in the right direction — re- suming by the United States the right to administer its own laws, and freeing itself from all dependence on State officers whom it can not control. There are, Mr. Speaker, other complaints mentioned by the mi- nority of the committee for which they have proposed no reme- dy. We have seen what remedies they propose. And they think the adoption of their propositions ought to give peace and quiet THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 217 to the country. Yet there are other topics treated in their report quite as significant as those ; other grounds of discontent and ap- prehension for which the minority have proposed no remedy, against which they ask no guarantee. The causes of complaint left without redress are vastly more important than those cover- ed by the enactments proposed. They are wholly unaffected by them ; yet the minority of the committee, while devoting whole pages to the development of dangers and outrages consummated or apprehended, leave them without any suggestion for redress or protection. They think " the object aimed at can be accom- plished by the adoption of the series of amendments to the Con- stitution rejected by the committee, and now reported to the House" — that "they afford such a basis of an adjustment as they would all cheerfully accept, with a strong conviction that, if the proposed amendments were adopted by the Northern States, har- mony and peace would be restored to our jDeople." Sir, nothing in legislative history is more instructive than these declarations, compared with the narrative of wrongs and appre- hensions which precede them, and the remedies which I have enumerated. They have complained that the right of transit is refused, yet there is no proposal that it be granted. The gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Taylor] heads the list of wrongs in his report with the refusal to protect slaves upon the ocean and in foreign countries. I presume, to the extent of in- ternational law, they are now so protected ; but whether they are or not, that was not apparently considered of sufficient importance to justify any recommendation on the subject, and the complaint merely swells the list of irritative topics. The minority bitterly complain of the Northern hostility to slavery, the circulation of incendiary pamphlets, the perpetual ap- peal through the pulpit and the press, the never-ceasing activity of the abolition societies, and the doctrine of the irrepressible con- flict so much invoked during the last few years for the purpose and with the effect of heating the public mind. If these com- plaints be true — if they are the causes of the present discontent — if they have shaken the security of Southern society, then how can peace and harmony be restored by measures which have no relation to the cause of discontent and apprehension ? If they have caused the excitement which threatens the integrity of the 213 THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 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 incen- diary publications, or incitements to revolt, or the organized in- vasion 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 op- posed 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 Con- stitution 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 Ter- ritory should be allowed to regulate its own institutions in its own way, and then considered the forcing of the Lecompton Con- stitution on the people against their will a fair execution of that policj r , to argue that any very rigid consistency between the plat- form 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 over- estimated ; 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 Rep- scntatives :] A more marvelous contrast awaits us. The minority report with great elaboration depicts the rise of THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF TIIIRTY-TIIREE. 219 a purely sectional party, determined to rule the Southern States by the Northern votes, united by hostility to slavery alone ; de- clared that its triumph reduces the people of the South from citi- zens to subjects; and that by the late election the work of section- alism was completed, to the apprehension of the people of the South ; and if that apprehension be not speedily removed, the days of the Eepublic are numbered. They find countenance for this view in the South Carolina and Alabama ordinances. Eead 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 infrac- tions 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 reiter- ate the complaint, and leave it unredressed. They are silent on the remedy for the great grievance — the accomplished fact of sec- tional domination — the inauguration of a party bent on reducing the people of the South from citizens to subjects — that great po- litical 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-govern- ment, 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, 220 TIIE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 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, inter- ests to oppress others is without example in our history, and if ef- fected, could be only temporary. Such a coalition of the free States is absolutely absurd. The South has always been able by 4ts 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 tp 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 do- main 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. Web- ster, 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 Kan- sas 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. The South for the first time foiled to dictate terms, and the peo- 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- THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. 221 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 de- fensive league, and the result was registered in November. That result is now, itself, become the starting-point of new agitation — the demand of new rights and new guarantees. The claim to ac- cess 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 86° 30' to Cape Horn, while the debate foreshadows in the distance the claim of the right of transit and the placing of prop- erty in slaves in all respects on the footing of other property — the topics of future agitation. How long the prohibition of the im- portation of slaves will be exemplified from the doctrine of equal- ity 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 ac- cept as pledges of returning peace the salutary amendments of the law and the Constitution offered as the first fruits of reconcilia- tion. 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 con- vinced, from his own knowledge and observation, as well as from the nu- merous 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 Con- ference Convention" was called and held, by parties in favor of such as- sembling 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 Con- vention 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 countiy, the rebel batter- ies 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 Presi- dent issued (April 15 th) 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." ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE, ETC. 223 A Union mass meeting had been called in Baltimore for the 22d of April, when, on the 19th, the mob, incited by some of the secessionists, attacked the troops from Massachusetts (Sixth Regiment) proceeding to Washington in response to the President's call. The track over which the cars containing those troops were to pass was torn up or obstructed, and an assault was made on them with stones and discharges of lire-arms as they attempted to march to the Washington Station. Several per- sons and some of the soldiers were killed, and a number of these who failed to get through to the train for Washington retreated toward Phil- adelphia. The wildest excitement prevailed in the city, and an attempt was made to organize an armed opposition to the passage through Bal- timore of United States troops. In the afternoon the mob and its leaders reigned supreme, and on that night the bridges on the railway leading to Harrisburg and Philadelphia were burned by order of the parties who had assumed control in Balti- more. The telegraph wires were cut, and all communication of the gov- ernment at Washington with the North was intercepted. The Board of Police Commissioners laid restrictions on the commerce of the port, for- bade the display of flags of any description, distributed arms to volun- teers, and appointed a commanding general. It was the evident determ- ination of the secessionists and their friends to prevent the passage of United States troops to Washington through Baltimore. Secession flags were displayed on the 18th on Federal Hill, and on the 20th at the Southern head-quarters on Fayette Street ; and it had previously been hoisted on a merchant-vessel at the Point. The governor returned to Annapolis on the 20th, and, yielding at last to clamor and threats, pro- tested, on the 21st, against the landing there of "Northern troops" (meaning the United States troops who had come down the bay from Perryville, opposite Havre de Grace), gravely proposed to the President to refer all matters then in dispute to the arbitrament of the British min- ister, and finally, next day, issued his call for the General Assembly, which was to meet on the 26th at Frederick. An election of delegates in Baltimore was held on the 24th, while the city was still under the effects of the mob of the 19th, was yet without communication with the seat of government, or with the North and West, and yet under the control of the military authorities appointed by the Police Commissioners. At this election 9249 votes were cast, all for the only set of candidates named. As soon as this result was known affairs began rapidly to mend ; and on the 5th and 13th of May, when the Unit- ed States troops occupied the heights at the Relay, on the Washington Railway, and on Federal Hill, it was seen that the minority was not to determine the fate of Maryland. On the 17th of May Mr. Davis was nominated for Congress, his com- petitor being the Hon. Henry May, who accepted an independent nomi- 224 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE nation as a friend of the Union, in favor of conciliation, compromise, ami settlement, and entirely opposed to the Republican party. Mr. Davis during the canvass openly declared himself in favor of coercion, and the maintenance of the federal authority by force, if necessary, lie boldly avowed that he had voted against the proposed " Crittenden" Compro- mise (which was undoubtedly the preference of the people of Maryland), because he thought it impracticable, and imposed terms to which the free states ought not to be asked to, and could not submit. The election took place on the 13th of June, and Mr. May was elected (8885) over Mr. Davis ((1287) by a majority of 2048. During the summer of 1801 the country suffered the humiliations of Bethel, Manassas, and Ball's Bluff. Then the administration began to perceive the necessity of organization, and of an army that should be of better material than undrilled recruits and parade militiamen. General M'Clellan was appointed to the command in chief, ami the country be- gan to awake to the reality — to a sense of the resources, the valor, and determination oi' the Southern States. These, now completely united among themselves, ana encouraged by the failure of the first federal ef- forts against them, firmly believed they could obtain, and resolutely car- ried on the war for their independence. Mr. Davis was invited in October, by a large number of the principal citizens, merchants, mechanics, and business men, to address them on the condition of affairs. He complied, and spoke on the lGth as follows: Mr. President and Fellow-citizens of the United States (applause), — Time and events, the great instructors, have dispelled many a delusion, stripped off many a mask, and reduced to cer- tainty many things about which men some months ago might have ventured to doubt. "Who now talks of reconstruction as the purpose of secession? "Who now talks of peaceful secession? Who now dreams of secession as a constitutional right to be de- termined at the ballot-box and to be acquiesced in, now that invading armies are trampling down the soil of Kentucky, and marching through and through the territory of Missouri, in spite of the repeatedly expressed will of their people? The mask of hypocrisy has been stripped from those pretenses. There have been expectations, likewise, disappointed. There were those who, when they raised the standard of rebellion against the government of the United States, fondly supposed that cotton was king. (Laughter.) They dreamed that his upstart majesty would bring to their knees Great Britain and France, incapable oi' controlling their laboring population without that aliment of ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 225 their industry. They dreamed that if a blockade should inter- pose an obstruction to the free exit of cotton, English and French fleets would sweep the ships of the Union from before the South- ern ports; that if armies of invasion should venture to touch "the sacred soil" of the cotton-field, that imperative necessity would require that England and France should retaliate by block- ading Boston and New York, and that if these gentle measures were not sufficient, their armed intervention here would be re- quired to secure them peace at home. Whether the six months during which this contest has progressed have been sufficient yet to remove these delusions from the minds of those who fondly re- posed in them as a source of strength, you now can judge. Nay, those who led in that rebellion misled their deluded fellow-citizens into supposing that it was not an organized resistance to tin; gov- ernment in only one portion of the Union, but that disintegration had wrought its work from one end to the other of the republic, and that whenever there should be any attempt on the part of the government to strike a blow for the maintenance of its integrity, it would not be the rebellious States of the South alone that would have to meet the brunt of the contest, but that "the Northern myrmidons of Abraham Lincoln" (laughter), his "hireling men" sent to trample down the South, would be met, arrested, and over- thrown by the faithful Democrats of the North (laughter), sub- servient for a long generation to Southern dictation, as they fondly supposed their allies, not merely in the pursuit of political power by the ballot-box, but also in arms of rebellion, having no purpose but to elevate some man to power, who might share tin; plunder with them, and ready to imbrue their hands in their neighbor's blood rather than allow insurrection to be suppressed by military power. (Applause.) It is probable that, however any other de- lusion may still cling around their vision, that one, at least, has faded away. And then, fellow-citizens, events have taught us something more. Men have waked from the dream of that millennium of a Southern republic peaceful in guise, merciful in disposition, rest- ing upon the unconstrained will of its people, carrying out an in- dustrial theory amid its patriarchal institutions, coercing nobody, doing violence to nobody, peacefully pursuing its commercial and industrial interests ! They who so dreamed and so spoke, and felt P 226 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE a soft inclination toward "our Southern brethren," have had some rather rude instruction upon that topic. (Laughter.) They have inaugurated instead an era of confiscations, proscrip- tions, and exiles. Read their acts of greedy confiscation, their laws of proscription by the thousand. Behold the flying exiles from the unfriendly soil of Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri. Andrew Johnson an exile from Tennessee! (Applause.) Emerson Eth- eridge (great applause) dare not go home for fear of arrest, prose- cution, and death by the hangman, if the swifter and more con- genial assassin leave him to their mercy. Thomas A. R Nelson seized on his transit to the capital of the United States, incarcer- ated, and compelled by threats to his life to forego the allegiance to his native land. John S. Carlisle (great applause) pursued by a writ for his arrest because he would not be a traitor. And the partisans in Maryland of the men who do these things make our streets hideous with their howl about " oppression," and invoke all the principles of the Constitution that their allies have spent now nearly a year in making a dead letter, to secure their immu- nity here and convert this heaven into their hell. (Applause.) Fellow-citizens, these events have worked another and a re- markable change here. They have disposed of nearly the whole of that wretched class of middle-men ; men who are secessionists with Union proclivities (laughter), or Unionists with secession pro- clivities (laughter) ; men who are for the Union and against coer- cion (laughter) ; who are opposed to the dissolution of the Union and equally opposed to having it maintained ; who think the gov- ernment ought to assert its authority if men will submit to it, but if not, that it ought to submit to them ; men who think that rulers do bear the sword in vain ; men who confess with a sigh their al- legiance to the government, but that their hearts are with the South — the men of compromise, the men of concessions, the men of " Southern" feelings, the men of " Southern" proclivities, and sympathies, and inclinations. All that class of men who concealed their treasonable purposes under the flimsy disguises that recent- ly deluded our people no longer deceive any one. The enemy is at the door, and the people of Maryland know that they who are not their friends are their enemies ("That's so." Applause); that they who are not upon the side of the government are against it ("That's so"); that they who are not for repelling the invader mean to invite him here ; that they who do not wish the rebellion ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 227 stamped out in Virginia mean that it shall cross the Potomac into Maryland ; they who do not wish M'Clellan to winter in New Orleans want Jefferson Davis to winter in Baltimore. They have known all along, and we know now, even the most doubting of us, as well as they know, who are our enemies and who are our friends ; and if we have treated some of our enemies to their de- serts, let not those who walk at large and insult the mercy of the government suppose that there is any impassable barrier between them and the companionship of their friends. (Great applause.) They have no right to complain. In the face of the mercy of the government which they perpetually abuse, they insolently meet patient Union men upon the corners of the streets, in their count- ing-rooms, and in the parlor, and on the Merchants' Exchange, and wherever men " most do congregate ;" and while they writhe under the blow that has stricken them down here and taken from them the fruits of their treason before they could fully enjoy them, their only comfort is to appeal to the future, to promise ret- ribution, to intimate that assassination may cut short those who treat them as traitors ; that if ever they get the upper hand the lamp-post will be graced by individuals that they name ; that they will not be as insanely merciful as the government of the United States is; and these things while they venture to impeach the government for harsh and oppressive measures ! Gentlemen, we have great patience. With the liberty of every one of these individuals in the grasp of the government if it choose to close the hand upon them — with their lives at our mercy if we only choose to invoke their precedent and set loose the mob that they organized upon the 19th of April — with the example of their avowed confederates, who have exiled our friends, confiscated their property, outraged and scourged our flying sis- ters — with these provocations, these men have so little of prudence or such profound conviction that loyal men differ from traitors in that they execute the law in mercy and forbearing kindness — these men venture to tell us that our time will come when they get the uppermost. I doubt not, gentlemen ; but when! (Laugh- ter.) When ? " Two weeks" has been the period of expectation of the prophets of the Southern millennium for the last six months (great laughter), and still time drags slowly on to the movable feast of the secession.- Two weeks is marked for the crossing of the Potomac from day to day, and still the water rolls on unpol- 228 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE luted by a traitor's foot. (Applause.) Nay, it is even said that gentlemen traitors, of delicate breeding and aristocratic preten- sions, whose patriotism always assumes the form of a supper (laughter), have already spoiled one through the watches of one long wearisome night in the vain expectation that the lips of the deliverer might taste their wine. (Laughter.) Will these proph- ets tell us when ? Fellow-citizens, the time for doubting men has gone ; even the time for "peace" men has gone. (Laughter.) They have in- voked every thing else, and now they can scarcely find advocates to invoke peace. "Blessed peace" goes begging in the midst of this warlike state. "Blessed peace" can find no advocates now that her advocates are incarcerated. " Blessed peace" is no argu- ment to urge now in the presence of embattled hosts. And why ? Not because there are not people who want peace ; peace, accom- panied even with the triumph of the traitors ; peace at the ex- pense of the integrity of the government ; peace at the cost of every interest of the State of Maryland ; peace, though it soil our national escutcheon with degradation and defeat. There are men who will crawl in the dirt still for peace; but there is nobody now who can be deluded into believing that peace means any thing but humiliation, disgrace, degradation, national dissolution, the end of the republic, the beginning of the scorn and contempt of the world. (Great applause.) Ye men of Maryland who will crawl to the altar of peace, crawl there ; but ye men of Maryland who remember that your forefathers thought seven years of war better than peace with submission and degradation, I appeal to you here this night to revive the recollection of those great days, and act upon their inspiration. (Great applause.) And Maryland, too, is she disloyal ? (No, no.) There are those who say so. There are those who say so in our State ; there are those who say so abroad; there are those in power who believe it, and there are those who are not in power, but who skulk about in the darkness of the alleys of this great city, and carry whisper- ing to the ear of power their slanders on their fellow-citizens, or spread them broadcast by the press all over the country, until Maryland stands almost in as ill repute as if she had lifted her hand in arms against the government that she adores and will maintain ; and because of one deplorable and humiliating event, the result of weakness in some of our rulers and of treachery in ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 229 others, there are those in one great region of this country who treat the State of Maryland as the whole South lately treated the whole North. The time was when one fanatic, inflamed by ha- tred, started out to make war upon the State of Virginia and set its negroes free, with twenty men at his back. (Laughter.) He was seized and hung. All the South with one acclaim laid that dastardly and crazy deed at the door of every man throughout the great regions of the civilized and Christian North ;• and there was no voice from the South in the House of Representatives but one, and that one ventured it at the peril of his political existence, to defend the North from that imputation. (Applause.) And now the city in which he lives has yet to find one defender in all the region of that North from complicity with the equally dastardly crime of the 19th of April. (Applause.) Great masses of men, when their passions are aroused, and when the judgment is asleep, when great events are transpiring, forget the rules of justice and of discrimination, and one portion of the country is just as liberal and just as illiberal as the other under analogous circumstances. I have defended my fellow-citizens of the North. I can venture now to defend my fellow-citizens of Maryland, and demand to be heard elsewhere than here. (Applause.) Is Maryland, then, disloyal? Has she ever, for a moment, hes- itated even ? It is more than can be said for any other State south of Mason and Dixon's line but Delaware. Have the people of Maryland ever hesitated as to the side they should take in this great struggle? ("No, no.") Did she hesitate when the commis- sioners from Alabama and from Mississippi sought to associate her to the plotting of their treason ? Did she hesitate when her gov- ernor resolutely, for three decisive months, refused to convene her traitorous .Legislature (applause), lest they might plunge her into the vortex of rebellion ? Did she ever hesitate when cunning pol- iticians pestered him with their importunities, when committees swarmed from every disloyal quarter of the State, when men of the first position sought him and attempted to browbeat him in his mansion? Did she swerve when they, failing to compel him to call the Legislature, attempted the vain formality of a mock vote throughout the State to call a sovereign Convention by the spontaneous voice of the traitors of Maryland ? Did they hesitate when in almost every county, even in those counties which were strongly secession, at the election for that Convention, the disloyal 230 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE candidates were either defeated or got votes so insignificant as to create nothing but disgust and laughter throughout the State? Did they hesitate when that wretched remnant of a Convention met here, amid the jeers and the scoffs of the people of Baltimore, at the Maryland Institute — to do nothing and go home? What was it that enabled the governor .to resist the pressing applications for frhe convocation of the Legislature ? Are we to suppose that he had courage and resolution to face down and overbear the will of the great majority of the people of Maryland ? Or was it not be- cause, knowing the people who had elected him, their temper and their purposes, he felt that, however severe the pressure might be on him, where one person sought the meeting of the Legislature, there were thousands who stood by him in his refusal to convoke them ? (Applause.) Gentlemen, if the country will only go back to that critical pe- riod, the period of the opening of the electoral votes in the House of Representatives in February, and the inauguration of the Presi- dent on the 4th of March, they who know most about that period will know best that the destiny of the capital of the United States lay in the hollow of the hand of Maryland ? And had Maryland been then as people now presumptuously assert that she is, Abra- ham Lincoln might have taken the oath before a magistrate in the corner of some magistrate's office in Pennsylvania, but he would not have been then inaugurated where his predecessors were in- augurated, in the august presence of the Capitol of the country. I pray gentlemen to reflect, when they think of subsequent events, that if disloyalty had lain as a cankering worm at the heart of Maryland, then was her time. She could have made something by being false then. She could have presented herself before her Southern sisters dowering them with the capital of the country ; and there was no power that could have prevented that gift, how- ever the returning tide of events might have shown it to be as un- wise as it was treacherous. Then, fellow-citizens, what next? The bombardment of Fort Sumter, the uprising of the North, the call for troops which Ma- rylanders stood ready to respond to (applause), when their ardor was damped by the proclamation of the governor, and the disloyal mayor of Baltimore — not the disloyal governor, but the governor and the disloyal mayor of Baltimore ("that is it") — informing the people that no troops should be sent out of the State of Maryland ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 231 for any other purpose than the defense of the capital. That was the equivalent of telling the traitors of Maryland that the loyal men of Maryland were afraid to do their duty, and they acted upon it instantly. That proclamation appeared upon the 18th of April, and on the very evening of that day was held the meeting at which Parkin Scott, and Mr. Carr, and Mr. Burns, and other men of that stamp, prepared the hearts of the mob for the 19th of April. (" True.") And then, gentlemen, came that eternal stain upon the memory of those engaged in it — not a stain upon the memory of Baltimore — not a stain upon the memory of her loyal governor — not a stain upon the. memory of her disarmed loyal citizens — a stain upon those who vilely and perfidiously perverted the trust given to them by the people of Maryland for the preservation of the peace of this city into an instrument of revolution, treacher- ously begun, treacherously carried on, until it fell before the scorn and wrath of the people of Maryland. Then, gentlemen, the governor, with the commissions already signed lying upon his table, with the officers standing around him waiting to receive their commissions — the governor, suddenly smitten by an inexplicable terror, forgetting that the majority of the people of Baltimore were loyal and were around him, and, if summoned, could support and would support him ; forgetting that on Federal Hill the very night before, even after his damaging proclamation of the 3-8th, when some traitors attempted to raise a secession flag there, the loyal working-men pulled it clown and tore it to tatters (great applause) ; forgetting that these men were within five minutes' walk of where he sat, and that their breasts were such a protection as all the secessionists of Baltimore could not have marched over to assail him ; forgetting that ttie voice of authority can paratyze in its incipient stages civil outbreak ; for- getting the great example of which history gives us so many — more especially forgetting the great example of Cardinal Riche- lieu, when the enemy was almost at the gates of Paris, and the populace of Paris thought it was there through his neglect and were calling for his blood, the old cardinal, unarmed and without guards, went to the Hotel cle Ville in the midst of the excited and infuriated multitude, and besought them to come to his aid and not to his overthrow, and every rebellious arm sank before his patriotic appeal — forgetting great examples like these, the govern- or, failing to rise to the height of the occasion, went to the Hotel 232 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE tie Ville, and threw himself into the arms of his enemies, and be- came from that time but their instrument, graced by his presence their disloyal and degrading meeting, stood in their midst while they uttered disloyal sentiments, uttered no word of disapproba- tion' when they, the mayor at their head, falsified events that had occurred under their own eyes that day, and allowed them to treat as -an assault on the people of Baltimore the act of self-defense of our fellow-citizens of Massachusetts against the traitorous assassins that assailed them without warning as they marched peacefully on their way for the defense of the Capitol.' Then came the calling- out of the military, two thirds of them secessionists, under officers many of whom were known then to be traitors, and who have since signalized their treachery by leaving Maryland, in pursuit of military service in the Confederate States. Then it was that here in Baltimore even strong men's hearts failed them for fear. Then it was that we saw the Chief of Police, and the Commission- ers of Police, and Trimble, the "general commanding" (derisive laughter), and his aids innumerable, and his adjutant general (continued laughter), disporting themselves through the streets in gaudy colors, arraying armed men in Monument Square, first their trained volunteers, and then the rabble and the mob not to do their behests, and then arresting the commerce of the port, and then seizing upon the military stores of the United States, and then forbidding the display of the national flag, and then arresting people for spies, cutting off the transit of troops to the Capitol by breaking up the railway communications, arming steamers to ply in the port to arrest the free transit of Maryland commerce — all these things done by the Chief of Police and the members of the police of Baltimore and the organized mob — the loyal men informed that their lives were not safe — men insolently warned to leave the city if they would be safe — men thinking that it was " too good news to be true" that the Virginians were coming down to aid us; com- munication opened, formal embassies sent up to Harper's Ferry to invite John Letcher's 6000 men to come clown and help the Marylanders to be free (laughter), and empty cars mysteriously gliding, in spite of the President, for a whole day toward Harper's Ferry — a peace-offering to our Southern brethren ("that's so") which might prevent their destroying the road and could not em- barrass their march to Baltimore — the correspondence opened with John Letcher for muskets to be put into the hands of our "loyal ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 233 citizens" — quarreling between General Stcuart and certain mem- bers of the Police Board and Mr. Trimble for the possession of the precious deposit of 2000 arms sent down here from Harper's Ferry to keep the peace — Bradley Johnson, with an " invincible legion" of thirty men, rushing to defend Baltimore against "the Northern hordes" (laughter) — Marshal Kane making the mount- ains and the valleys of Virginia and Maryland hideous with his cry for help, which did not come (great laughter) — the Vansville Kangers scattered all along the way, forty men full (renewed laughter), from Washington to Baltimore, to guard the road — "loyal men" from Harford County, in equally overwhelming masses, rushing in to defend Baltimore against "Lincoln's hire- lings" (laughter) — all these things are represented by the intelli- gent Northern press as the doings of i\\o people of Maryland ! And on Wednesday an election was called (great laughter), and it was supposed that the unanimous voice of "an oppressed peo- ple" would signalize this day of their deliverance. -x- -x- -:<- * -x- -x- -x- LTad they not taken every possible pains to " obliterate all past differences" by the organizing of 3000 sharp bayonets to argue with the refractory? Was there not, therefore, every reason to suppose that there would be entire unanimity; naj', that these people, trodden down to the earth, trembling before the advent of " fresh hordes," wishing to place the mild and peaceful gov- ernment of Jefferson Davis between their threatened bosoms and the Northern onslaught, would rush as one man to elect these gentlemen, the symbols of Southern sympathy, as their protectors in the day of their distress? The morning of election came, and one third of the people of Baltimore, under the influence of pres- sure, and persuasion, and delusion, and a little coercion (laughter), signified at an illegal election that they thought and his colleagues fit associates for the rest of the majority of the LTouse of Delegates. (Laughter.) On Thursday morning, when men woke and walked down the streets, they found that a revolution had occurred, although they did not know it. Gone was the elastic step, gone was the uplifted eye of insolence, gone was the jeering scoff with which Secession- ist met Union man, gone was the half menace with which loyal men were met, gone was the nod of fate that told them that their hour was coming. They fell by their victory ; they died of their 234 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE vote ; the silence of two thirds of Baltimore stripped the revolu- tionists of their power, and consigned them to ignominy. (Ap- plause.) Half the votes of a people do not make a revolution. One third may make a rebellion, but two thirds on the spot can put it down ; and they felt it. (" That's so.") Gradually troops disappeared from Monument Square; gradually the arms were placed in their armories ; gradually there were fewer and fewer "orders from head-quarters," " Trimble commanding" (laughter); gradually the steam-tug which constituted the navy of the incipi- ent republic (laughter) ceased to send forth its black smoke, and vessels could venture to leave Baltimore without having a pop- gun fired at them (laughter); and even the Union men that had been frightened awoke to the consciousness that where they thought they were slaves they were masters, and from that day to this there has been nothing in Baltimore to make any man afraid, except one who has violated the laws of the land. B J was seen almost immediately after that election, having accomplished the purpose of his visit, to return to Fred- erick; and on the 9th of May, "the defenders of Maryland," "the defenders of Baltimore," the candidates for immortality in the coming revolution, the men who were to fill the places in the niche of history corresponding to those filled by Williams and Smallwood of the Revolution — those men had tramped way-worn and weary to Frederick, and in that loyal town were guarded by the police through the town on their way to Dixie's land, without airy music accompanying. (Laughter.) And B J , with his thirty heroes, not one fallen in conflict with the " Northern invaders," joined them and marched to defend Harper's Ferry ! Now, upon the simple statement of that series of facts, is there an}'' man who needs any thing else to be told him to convince him that the outbreak of April was a mob and not a revolution ; that it received importance from the fact that the traitorous au- thorities attempted to use it for traitorous purposes ; and without the firing of a gun, without the approach of a Northern soldier, without the menace of force, without the necessity even of a count of noses, without even the advent of an election in the State, they recognized that their time was come and gone ; that they were powerless, and in the hands of the civil authorities; that the}' must gain immunity by good behavior; that Maryland was so loyal that they could not make her even appear to be disloyal ; ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 235 and the arms dropped from their hands, and they began to seek mercy of their traitorous confederates at Frederick by begging and accepting a bill of indemnity for their criminal acts? Look at the counties. Was there any one of them that met to pass resolutions approving of what proceeded in Baltimore, or poured forth their thousands to support the revolution? If there was, let some one better versed in the history of the State than I am name it. If not, how came the whole State, being filled with traitors (!), to be silent when Eichmond was ringing with the joy- ous acclamations that saluted the narrative of ? How is it that Virginia appreciates our " deliverance" more than we do ourselves ? How is it that we can find no tongue to celebrate the glories that they are rejoicing over? Why, gentlemen, not only was there no county that expressed any such approval, but even in St. Mary's, where there are only two hundred and fifty men in the whole county, they were not so deluded as to suppose that they had Maryland in their grasp ; and in Cecil on the 23d of April the people met and passed resolutions such as Cecil has al- ways acted upon, professing not neutrality, as Kentuckians did, not a desire for the removal of "the Northern hordes," not that our soil should not be polluted by any individuals crossing it in arms, but declaring their determination to stand by and maintain the government of the United States (applause), branding as trai- tors the men who had attempted to gain the reputation of patriots, and themselves leading off in the chorus that swept all round the States in one unbroken jubilee over the failure of the attempted revolution. (Great applause.) And immediately following were the resolutions of Alleghany County consigning to the halter their representatives in the Legislature if they should dare to vote for an Ordinance of Secession ; "and then followed the resolutions of Washington County, just preceding their great election — -itself held, I believe, on the second or third of May — declaring their un- alterable devotion to the Constitution and the Union, and their determination to abide by it always, followed up two or three days afterward by casting 2300 out of the 3800 votes of the coun- ty for the Union candidate without opposition. And then follow- ed the great meeting in Frederick ; and intermediate here in our midst, all through our wards, when the Legislature ventured to attempt to fix on us a military despotism in the disguise of a bill of public safety, copying the provisions and the spirit of 236 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE their infernal police law for the city to fix the yoke on the peo- ple of the State, as they fixed that on the neck of the people of this city, our people quietly met in their wards and passed their resolutions, which were followed up in so many of the coun- ties of the State that even the Legislature let drop their infernal machine, and did not venture to put it to a vote. (Applause.) A*nd where were we, fellow-citizens, all this time, for it was dropped on the second or third of May? In whose power was the capital of the United States at that moment, on the hypothe- sis of the disloyalty of Maryland ? There were six hundred reg- ulars there on the 18th of April ; there were one thousand Penn- sylvanians, wholly without drilling and ununiformecl ; and that constituted the protection of the capital of the United States on the 19th of April. On that day one Massachusetts regiment marched through, its last company only having been assailed. From that day until the 26th of April there were no more troops in Washington than I have enumerated. Up to the second of May they could count only about 6000 troops for the defense of the capital, and there were at that time 6000 at Harper's Ferry, and cars there ready to bring them down, and 3000 men armed in the city of Baltimore. Suppose the State of Maryland had been, as men now impu- dently say she is, disloyal, I ask in whose power was the capital of the United States? On that supposition, there can be no doubt that it was ours — ours by a march of forty miles — ours as long as we could hold it, it may be as long as the Southern Confederates have held Bull Eun. And here, gentlemen, I desire to say that it is to the fault of the Confederates themselves, the remarkable lack of that quality which Danton said was the essence of revolu- tion, audacity, audacity, audacity — it is to their failure in that first and indispensable quality of revolutionary leaders, it is to the absence of that quality that we now owe (be Maryland loyal or disloyal) the possession of the capital of the United States. It was not saved by the promptness of Northern volunteers ; it was not saved by the forecast of the administration, that during its first month labored under the delusion that peace and not war was before it ; it was not by the forecast of that wretched old dotard Buchanan (hisses), who now mumbles about energy and activity from his home at Wheatland ; it was neither one nor the other ; but it was because revolutionists had undertaken the work, ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 237 without having the quality of revolutionists, that we still hold it, and that the glorious emblem of the republic floats from its dome. (Applause.) Baltimore, so the myth goes by timid creatures in our city, who whisper to people in Washington and tell their fears for facts, and begrime the reputation of their native city, or spread in still more dangerous form their fancies through the columns of the Northern press to poison the minds of our fellow-citizens against us — these people would fain repeat that here is the very gate of hell ; that its seething and boiling fire bubbles under our feet perpetually, and that nothing keeps it down excepting their sleepless vigilance — fit guardians for such a post! and "Lincoln's myrmidons." (Great laughter.) Where were these gentlemen that were to keep the peace in Baltimore City during that awful period from the 19th of April to the 14th of May? — time enough in the city of Paris, where revolutionists understand their work, to have gone through all the phases of a revolution, installed a new power, tried and beheaded their antagonists, and forgotten the thing as an old event. It was not until the 14th of May that General Butler marched into this "disloyal" city, teeming, as we are now taught to believe, with raging revolutionists, requiring 10,000 men more — so say some men of the last generation — to keep them down. General Butler marched one morning into the southern part of Baltimore, marched up to Federal Hill, com- fortably encamped his men in the rain, issued a proclamation, in which he (understanding Baltimore better than those in it who delight to malign it) appealed to and trusted to the loyal men of Baltimore, having come, as he said, with little more than a bod}-- guard — less than 1000 men in a hostile city of 230,000 inhabit- ants. That was the first appearance of troops here. Now tell me why (if there were the disloyal elements to the extent that is supposed), during all that period, nothing had been clone. Why was there no array to resist his entrance ? Why did it have no other effect excepting that Union men walked down the street and said, "Well, we are afraid it will have the effect of changing some of our weak-kneed brethren." That was the only doubt express- ed about it, except that one despairing individual thought that the hill being in the possession of the troops of the United States would frighten all the market-women away, and we should have no lettuce for some time. (Laughter.) How did the Legislature of Maryland understand the position 238 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE of affairs in the state ? They Lad prayed and besought to be re- called again into existence. Thcv had died a natural death in March the year previous, having signalized their short power by some events which were to form a remarkable antithesis to events to follow them. They had passed almost unanimously a resolu- tion declaring that I, in voting Mr. Pennington into the speaker's chair of the national House of Representatives, in order to pre- vent the then incipient revolution, did not represent the people of Maryland. They had ejected the respectable members from the city of Baltimore in the last hour of their session, in order that they might make room for those who were to follow them, and be more fit companions for the majority. They had previously passed a Police Law, in which they had been careful to provide that " no Black Republican, or approver or indorser of the Help- er book," should ever be a policeman under that law in the city of Baltimore. (Laughter.) And such is the poetical justice of time and Providence, that within a few months past we have seen a man set over the police of Baltimore by a "Black Republican" general, and N. P. Banks's name signed to an order to enforce the law ; and some of the gentlemen who passed that law arc now appreciating that, although a Black Republican could not be a policeman under their law, he might be a policeman over its au- thors and commissioners. (Great laughter.) Thus ends the first act of the Maryland Assembly — more wretched in its character, more ignorant, more unfit for its po- sition, less representing the dignity and the intelligence of the State of Maryland, more begrimed by filthy lucre than any Leg- islature within my memory. Men supposed that it had been car- ried to its burial and buried out of our sight forever, and if not out of our memor}', at least out of our grateful recollection; and, doubtless, one great element in the pertinacity with which the governor refused to recall the Assembly was his distinct remem- brance of their unfitness for their duty, and his unwillingness that the State should be degraded by their again assembling. (Ap- plause.) But in an evil hour he assembled them. For what? According to the unanimous avowal of those who demanded it, to take the sense of the people of Maryland as to whether they wished to remain in the Union or to go out of it. They met, and an elaborate report was prepared and delivered before that body, making great complaifits of divers acts of illegality and op- ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 239 prcssion that had been perpetrated within the territory of Mary- land by President Lincoln, but ultimately coming to the conclu- sion that they were unanimously opposed to the assembling of a Convention at that time. " At the time when the Legislature was called together," says this singular document, " there was certainly but little difference of opinion among its members of all parties as to the propriety of speedily adopting measures to secure the objects referred to. Since that time, the rapid and extraordinary development of events, and of the warlike purposes of the administration, the con- centration of large bodies of troops in our midst and upon our borders, and the actual and threatened military occupation of the State, have naturally enough produced great changes of .opinion and feeling among our citizens." (Laughter.) "They have no hesitation in expressing their belief now that there is almost unanimous feeling in the State against calling a Convention at the present time." (Laughter.) Since when ? It goes on to as- sign the reasons. Now judge: " To the committee, the single fact of the military occupation of our soil by the Northern troops in the service of the govern- ment, against the wishes of our people and the solemn protest of the State executive, is a sufficient and conclusive reason for post- poning the subject to a period when the federal ban shall be no longer upon us." It goes on to say : " The Constitution is silenced by the bayo- nets which surround us, and it is not worth while for us to fancy ourselves beneath its aegis. It would be criminal as well as fool- ish to shut our eyes to the 'fact that we will not be permitted to organize and arm our citizens, let our rights and Constitution be what they may." That is to say, gentlemen, when there were not troops enough in Washington to defend it ; when there were none to be spared from Washington, when there was not a single soldier within the limits of Baltimore, when there were not three or four thousand upon the soil of Maryland all told, these patriots, who tell us that the Constitution is silenced, that our rights arc trampled down, that we are oppressed, think that these are the very reasons why they should not appeal to the people of Maryland for their own protection ! They may be the fit representatives of what is called secession ; they certainly are the representatives of that prudence 240 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE which Maryland secessionists have always substituted for audaci- ty ; who will neither appeal to arms or the ballot-box against, op pression unless the oppressor first slays his hand; but these men are not the representatives of the loyal and Tree men of Maryland, [f affairs were as they represent them, that was the time to appeal to the people of Maryland. It mailers not whence oppression comes, it matters not in what shape it be presented, it matters not how overwhelming may be its force, when oppression shall un- sheathe the sword,.I mistake the tone and temper of the people of Maryland if they would slop any more than the men of Lex- ington and Concord Stopped to count their antagonists in 1775. (Applause.) 1 suppose that it was not the presence of the mil- itary which overawed the Legislature of Maryland; it was that they, like the Police Commissioners, like Marshal Kane, and like "Trimble commanding" (laughter), and like all his supporters and followers, adjutants and aids, had all found that, while the people of Maryland were almost unanimously opposed to calling a Convention, that, unanimity resolved ilself into these elements — a small minority Of the people wanting the majority to vole with them, but knowing they would not, and therefore not want- me a Convention called which would reveal irrefutably their in- significance of numbers, and the overwhelming majority of the people of Maryland, who did not want to be pestered with a vote to put down such wretched revolutionists. (Applause.) Now, am 1 right, or am I wrong in my estimate of the causes? (".Right.") That was in May. On the L8th of June a congressional election was held, to which both the mayor and the governor had referred the people as a tit opportunity to express their devotion to, or their abhorrence of, the government,; and how did they express if? 1 have already told you that the Washington County men voted 4000 out of 5000 votes for their member ol' Assembly, and that Cecil County followed up her resolution at a, speeial election by voting three fourths oi' her vote in favor it, and that is an index ol' what the Stale did. In the great upper district there was no opposition. In Mr. Webster's district there was no opposition. In the district now represented by Mr.Crisficld there was a candidate for peace, who attempted to oppose him. A peace man opposed Mr. Leary. A Union man with Southern sympathies claimed and received the SUffroces ol' the 1th district. There was but one avowed seccs- ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 241 sionist throughout the State of Maryland that ventured to ask a vote, and that was in Mr. Calvert's district, and for the first time in many years one not a Democrat carried the district. (Ap- plause.) How did the voting foot up throughout the whole State? If you give to the secessionists every vote not cast, making no allowance for lukewarm men, no allowance for the doubtful, hesi- tating, floating vote that had not made up its mind whether it would bo for or against the government, the conditional men, all the people who are on this side to-day and on that side to-mor- row, or all the time on both sides (laughter), separating all those men and giving them to the secession side of the question, the Un- ion men of Maryland at that election, with no opposition in two of the districts, and no avowed opposition upon secession grounds any where excepting in one of the districts, cast a great majority of the whole vote of the State. (Great applause.) And, gentle- men, for whom? Not for men who arc pledged to shun responsi- bilities, to avoid votes, to let the government bleed to death if need be, to talk about neutrality in Maryland, to join the govern- or in opposing the transit of Northern troops, but men pledged be- fore their constituents, pledged before the Conventions that nom- inated them, pledged in every way that can bind honorable men to vote every man that the government should demand, and any amount of money that the government should say was needed — not for the purpose of making peace, not for the purpose of hold- ing out the olive-branch, not for the purpose of making treaties with traitors, but to disperse them by arms. (Tremendous cheer- ing.) What followed ? The arrest of Kane. (A voice : "They ought to hang him." Cheers.) They left him in power till after the election. Secessionists who were so fond of the truth can not say that they were frightened and coerced in the election ! It was wise to do so. They fortunately have no excuse of that kind, because at the time of the election there were soldiers at Baltimore and soldiers nowhere else, and it was only in Baltimore that they were partially successful. But, after that was taken out of their mouths, Kane was arrested ; and that was one great out- rage (laughter) ; and then the loyal commissioners, who protested their loyalty, and supposed that other people had memories as short as their own, and had forgotten their acts of war from the 19th to the 24th of April — these gentlemen in the interest of Q 242 ADDKESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE "Peace and Order," when Governor Banks, with wise discrimina- tion, bad stopped at arresting one mischievous man in the hope that other mischievous men, taking warning, would be peaceable — they in the interest of peace and order, or possibly hoping that a great city swarming with bad men, in the period of a great revolution, and with a great deal of revolutionary blood floating through the Irish of the 8th ward (laughter) — these stalwart re- formers, and friends of peace and good government, supposing that all these elements with no police would be much more quiet than when they were aggravated into resistance by a police on their side — they told their policemen that they had no farther use for them at that time; they should continue to draw their pay, but they were not expected to do any duty. (Laughter.) General Banks, being a practical man, interpreted " no- duty" to be any duty that they might see fit to do ; and as they had some train- ing in military matters, and had shown themselves pretty good instruments to begin a revolution, though their masters did not prove so good leaders in it after it was started, came to the very natural conclusion that possibly a vagrant police with nothing to do, with masters equally idle, might find something to do ; and he took care of the masters, and that w T as another great and un- speakable " outrage." (Laughter.) A howl of indignation arose to the pitying heavens against the " outrage" of arresting men who only opened the door to civil discord in a city of 250,000 in- habitants ! Every principle of American liberty was appealed to to insure traitors liberty for mischief; and they wrote their ap- peal to the Legislature, and their appeal to the Legislature found a fitting advocate in the gentleman whose name I have had oc- casion so often to refer to. A long, elaborate, insidious, and dis- ingenuous report was after a while brought forward, in which all the history of the government was read backward ; all the arts of special pleading were applied to the misconstruction of the Constitution ; rash assertions as to the history of the Convention were strewn all through it ; and we were called upon to believe that George Washington had framed and recommended the adop- tion of a Constitution which would be very good if every body would obey it, but would be very worthless if any body should say he did not wish to obey it ;" and that George Washington, and the other wise men who surrounded him in the Convention, hav- ing provided on the face of the Convention for the suppression ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. £48 of insurrection, and declared that every law of a State should be in subordination to the supreme law of the land, the Constitution and the laws of Congress made in pursuance of it, had yet left open this great, wide passage-way for all the evils that they had attempted to exclude, by excepting from that subordination that law which should annul the whole Constitution ; that case in which a faction should get possession of the authorities of a State, should put their treason in the shape of law, array armies for its defense, and defy the government. I have no doubt that the author of that report is a respectable lawyer within a narrow sphere, and I think that those who read the report will come to the conclusion that he has, like a wise lawyer, confined his studies to his department. (Laughter.) That Legislature raised the awful question as to whether the government of the United States could arrest men in arms against its authority! (Laughter.) They did not venture to reorganize the militia of the State. They found that it was dangerous. They could pass laws of indemnity for men who had been guilty of treason, as if an act of indemnity by the State of Maryland would bar an indictment in the United States Court; but that was out of their line of practice. (Laughter.) They thought they could debauch the minds of the people, a law-abiding and law-loving people, habituated to see the law enforced only through the tri- bunals, by the sheriff, the judgment of the court, the constable — unaccustomed to the short and sharp methods of military sup- pression equally constitutional against armed insurrection. They seized every opportunity to mislead the people of Maryland into the supposition that their rights were violated whenever the para- mount law of the safety of the republic, embodied in that clause of the Constitution which authorizes Congress to call forth the militia to suppress insurrection, was required to be acted upon in lieu of the ordinary methods of enforcing the law through the judicial tribunals ; and they attempted to delude and excite the people of Maryland by representing that as a violation of the fundamental law. The people of Maryland were not so ignorant as the major- ity of the Legislature, and understood the construction of their fathers better than the gentlemen of the secession school. They understood that just as the Legislature can take land against the will of the owner for the purpose of making a railway or other public improvement, so the United States can seize railways when 244 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE necessary for the transportation of troops, so they can occupy sites for fortifications, and when men arc in arms against the govern- ment, they can arrest them without process, just as when they see them in serried ranks opposed to them in the open field they can shoot them down without having inquired by a jury whether they be traitors or a loyal man. All their machinations fell harmless before the people of Maryland; and, adjourning from day to day, finally the fatal hour met the Maryland Legislature. It seemed likely to break the law of all things mortal and sit forever, when the administration, impelled by unfounded fear of mischief at their hands, silenced their harmless chattering by taking away their heads, and leaving their tails to writhe. The people of Maryland saw with indifference or delight their dispersion, yet wondered at the importance attached to them. On the policy or legality of that measure I shall at present say nothing. Now, gentlemen, that is the history of secession in Maryland ; it is the whole history ; it is the close of the history. (Applause.) It is going to let the election this fall go by default and by con- fession. It did not venture to nominate a man in this city the other day ; it will not press the election of its candidate for gov- ernor in November; it will have no contestants for the House of Delegates in one half the counties of the State; it will make no contest for the Senate except in two or three counties which arc doubtful, and there only for the purpose of holding a veto on the Union men in the Legislature, and it is that we arc specially bound to take care of. But secession as an active, dangerous, and agita- ting clement, I say, now lies writhing in its last agonies in Mary- land. (Great applause.) I do not doubt that very nearly one third of the people of the State arc disloyal — not that they will take up arms on the secession side, but they will not take up arms on the Union side ; they are disloyal. In my judgment, that is a very large estimate of the strength of the secession faction in Ma- ryland this day. It has found the limits of its power ; the nature of the beast is the same, only it has been deprived of its fangs ; it can now do nothing but mumble false prophecies about the coming of Jefferson Davis, and pray him not to falsify their pre- dictions. Maryland has been true in heart thus far. She has not fur- nished her quota of troops to put down the rebellion within or ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 245 without Maryland. That is partly her fault ; chiefly the fault of her governor, who paralyzed the energies of her citizens when they were ready to respond to the first call of the government. But those charged with military affairs at Washington are not with- out their share of responsibility ; for when the governor refused to call forth the contingent of Maryland, and when the law was pointed out to them under which they could send their orders to any officer of the militia, and the names of officers holding com- missions and ready to obey the orders of the government were laid before them, and the President had drawn in blank the order and directed it to be sent to the Secretary of War, it rested on his table unacted on. When subsequently, after the 14th of May, the governor determined conditionally to call forth the contingent of Maryland, and officers went to Washington and offered themselves ready to respond to the orders of the government, the War De- partment declined to receive them first under the call for men for three months, and when General Kenly offered, himself, to call forth his brigade if it would be accepted as a brigade for the war, that also was declined. (Applause.) It was quite apparent that the Department felt small confidence in the Union men of Mary- land, and were not at pains to conceal their indifference touching their aid. After that, it was not to be supposed that others would be in a hurry to receive such a rebuff. These doubts of our loy- alty were inspired by persons apparently who knew nothing of Maryland or of its men ; who have not the confidence of its peo- ple, and arc unknown in its affairs, and have constituted them- selves the chief advisers at Washington with reference to Mary- land affairs. These things are undoubtedly deplorable. We suffer — our reputation suffers by the conduct of the administration to- ward the State throughout the whole country at this time. It is our misfortune to have such citizens ; it is the fault of the govern- ment to listen to their counsels. (Great applause.) Wc have labored under peculiar disadvantages in common with all the central slave States. The peculiarity of the present crisis is the wonderful activity and energy of the people and the State authorities contrasted with the relative inactivity of the central government. In the free States the governments have been loyal, and they have organized and aided the enthusiasm of the volun- teers. The central slave States, betrayed or deserted by their State governments, have been abandoned by the national govern- 24:6 ADDKESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE ment almost to their unaided resources — disarmed, unorganized, half defended. But, gentlemen, a different state of affairs, I believe, now exists. I think now the ear of power is open to wiser counsels touching the military policy to be pursued in Maryland, and, I trust, in the central slave States generally. I know that now they listen to and act upon the representations of my friend, Mr. Purnell. (Ap- plause.) I know that they now listen to Governor Thomas, of the Upper District. (Renewed applause.) I know that they listen to' the appeals of Mr. Wallace, of Cambridge. (Continued ap- plause.) I know that now they listen to the suggestions of Mr. Dodge, the Chief of Police. (Great applause.) I know that while for long months they refused to arm our Home Guard, even at the solicitations of General Banks, repeatedly pressed, at length they have come to think that it is perhaps a part of the duty of the government, in dealing with a great rebellion, to inquire for, and to organize and arm loyal men for their own defense in disturbed districts ; and now we have the Purnell legion forming at Pikes- ville, Governor Thomas's brigade forming in the upper portion of the State, several regiments organizing around the city, two al- ready in the service of the government, and others forming in the lower part of the State ; and, in my judgment, so soon as the peo- ple shall, in November, have elected a governor and a Legislature that will do for the people of Maryland what every where has been done by the Legislatures of our brethren in the North for their volunteers, give them the aid, and countenance, and pecun- iary assistance of the State, and the outfit that is necessary to facil- itate enlistments, that Maryland will stand in this contest as she has always stood in every other contest, not lagging behind her brethren, but struggling with them for the foremost rank where glory is to be won. (Great applause.) If I may be allowed to criticise the conduct of an administra- tion which I did not help to make, but which I rejoice was formed — for John Bell is a traitor — and for whose success I am more earnestly anxious than for any that has wielded power in my day (applause) — an administration which, weak or strong, is the last and only hope of the American people, which must be supported let whatever else may fail (great applause) — in spite of the con- tempt with which it has treated the people of Maryland, in spite of that lack of magnanimous wisdom which would have taught it ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 247 not to overlook the great body of the central States in high civil and military appointments — however much these things may grate upon our feelings, however much they may tend to dampen the spirits and slacken the energy of our people, however much the administration may find too late that it has weakened its power, however much already they may have expanded the the- atre of war and advanced the frontier of the fight nearer to the national capital — just in proportion as these disastrous conse- quences have followed for that great error in point of public pol- icy, just by so much the more earnest motives are we, men of Ma- ryland, called on to forget the past, to obliterate its bitter recollec- tions, to forbid any thing like pride to arise in our gorges, to put down at the bidding of patriotism every ill spirit that would par- alyze our arms, and, forgetting the past, rush forward to the fu- ture, and take our revenge of those who have slighted us by heaping the coals of fire of repentance upon their head. (Great applause.) That the administration chose to constitute itself on a strictly party basis in its higher department is not a just subject of com- plaint, especially after the President had tendered to Mr. Gilmer, of North Carolina, a place in his cabinet, which he declined. But it is a matter of complaint that the importance of securing sup- port, organizing friends, arming loyal citizens in the great central slave States was so gravely underrated ; and while the other de- partments are filled with men equal to their respective duties, it is a matter of great regret that those departments chiefly and direct- ly charged with the military policy of the administration have fallen below the requirements of the times. ' They spent one month of precious time before apparently they took one step to meet the storm that was blackening the whole heavens before them. Then, while yet war was afar, ere Tennessee had yielded to the gentle pressure of the Southern bayonet, while yet Mis- souri was free from armed invasion, ere secession had grown to rebellion in Kentucky, they let pass the golden opportunity of feeling their way through these great States and finding friends over that great region. They left the friends of the Union not only unable to fight its battles, but unable to defend themselves. They left a majority of the people of Tennessee to be borne down by violence from abroad, and to be disheartened by the desertion of the national government. They allowed disaffection to spread 248 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE in Kentucky, until Kentucky, in spite of her overwhelming Union majority, hung trembling in the balance, and was driven to repel invasion from her soil. They left Missouri without the aid of ad- ditional soldiers, and her own Home Guard only half armed, until she was nearly overrun. They left Maryland without a musket in the hand of one of her sons for four dangerous months after they were in power. Had they sought, as a wise policy w r ould have dictated, friends in the midst of the doubtful States, they could have saved Tennessee; they could have commenced the war upon the northern borders of Alabama and of Georgia, where we know the partisans of the government, though now silenced, swarm by the thousands ; they could have held possession of the great central nucleus of the Alleghany Mountains, filled with its freemen ready to descend in every direction upon the plains be- low, carrying with them the emblem of hope and peace to our oppressed brethren in the cotton districts. Had Maryland been properly armed, had her citizens been called out, had even that despised contingent of the three months' men been accepted, they might not now have been confined to one railway for all their Western communications ; the loyal part of Virginia might have crossed the Alleghany Mountains and stretched to the Blue Ridge. The whole face and aspect of the war would have been changed by timely attention to the first elements of success in dealing with an insurrection — to find out the men on the spot, in the disturbed district, as near as possible to the focus of the rebellion, who are there interested in putting out the flames, and give them at least an opportunity of aiding in their own defense. The event of Bull Run has, I think, made the administration sadder and wiser men. They possibly have reflected that there the despised Maryland contingent might have turned that tide of battle, for it was just four thousand men that converted a victory into a defeat when brought against our exhausted brethren, borne down by the heat of that day's conflict. They have now begun — begun in earnest — I trust begun successfully — (applause) — to organize the men of the great central slave States, who to them are an elemeut of un- told power. Equally brave with their Northern brethren, they are a thousand times more interested in suppressing the rebellion, for it touches their homes, their hearths, their lives. Massachu- setts has her pride in the republic. So have Maryland, and Ken- tucky, and Tennessee, and Missouri, and Delaware. Massachu- ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 249 setts has her interest in the cotton region. So has Maryland, as well as her interest in her own fields. But, beyond all that, we of the central slave States have our liberty at stake ; if we fail we are a conquered people ; we pass from the glories of the American republic to be the suspected, watched, and chained subjects of a power we abhor, and which hates us. Having already traced the position of Maryland, I need now but point your eyes for inspiration to the present condition of Kentucky. Betrayed by her treacherous governor, placed in the disloyal attitude of neutrality by her last Legislature, invaded by an armed force from Tennessee, deserted or assailed by such men as Breckinridge and his associates, she has, as one man almost, through her present Legislature, proclaimed her readiness to do her duty. When her energy was quickened into activity by actual invasion, then her Legislature met; made a loan for two millions of dollars, called out 40,000 volunteers ; and then, as if to cover with contumely the men who speak only of " our South- ern brethren," they passed by overwhelming majorities that touch- ing vote of thanks to the men of Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, who came rushing in arms ("Black Eepublicans" and "Lincoln's myrmidons" as they are) to protect Kentucky against her South- ern brethren. (Applause.) And there is Missouri, neglected by the War Department, de- fended by her half-armed and half-organized sons until they were decimated by superior numbers, and the gallant Lyon fell a sacri- fice to his unsupported heroism ; and then, when they came to rest on the support of the government of the United States, two thirds of their state was overrun, and a large body of troops and Home Guards captured right on the great highway of the Missouri Eiver for lack of timely support. It is vain to inquire who is responsible for such disasters — the War Department, charged with organizing the force, or the mili- tary officer commissioned to lead them ; it lies between them, and this country will hold both responsible. I fear that the man to whom the destinies of Missouri are committed is fitter to issue proclamations violating every principle of the law of the land, and looking only to one purpose — his political elevation — than he is either to organize a force to repel invasion, or, it may be, to lead it after it is organized. He is not able (such is the last account) to move yet over ground where Lyon moved with none but Mis- 250 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE sourians at his back (applause) — not able yet to move because of lack of transportation, surrounded by loyal people and by loyal States — not able to move for lack of subsistence, in the very midst of the great granary of the United States. No man can believe, if these things be true, that a heavy debt of responsibility does not rest at somebody's door, to be answered for at some not very dis- tant day. I feel for the men of Missouri, for they have not lain supinely down and waited to be defended; but they have been overborne ; I say they are entitled to look to the government not merely for willing troops — they have been furnished by the thousand with that spontaneous enthusiasm which finds no equal in the history of the world — they are entitled to a leader who will not lack transportation, nor food, nor means to reach the enemy. (Applause.) Instead, they have a man who publishes gasconading proclamations fitter for a European despot than an American officer, such as " I do hereby extend and declare established mar- tial law throughout the State of Missouri," two thirds of it in the possession of the armed rebels ; " the lines of the army of occu- pation in this state are for the present declared to extend from Leavenworth, by way of the posts of Jefferson City, Rolla, and Ironton, to Cape Girardeau on the Mississippi River," within which they took Lexington from him the other day ; and then followed by the hrutum fulmen of a threat at the bottom — " all per- sons who shall be taken with arms in their hands within these lines shall be tried by court-martial, and, if found guilty, will be shot" — in the face of the solemn provision of the American Con- stitution that no man out of the military service can be condemned except by a jury of his peers before a court of the State or dis- trict in which the crime was committed, with an indictment and evidence, and the right to have counsel and all the precious guards of the common law thrown around to protect his life. He is to be tried and shot at the will of General Fremont, and whoever he may see fit to appoint to try him over a drum-head court-martial. It received its fit reward in having the very country over which he usurped despotic power swept from beneath him. And then, of course, it was impossible for a man who has high political as well. as military aspirations, to overlook in this agitation the Negro Question as an element of popularity, and thereupon we have this lord and master of the free people of Missouri dealing thus with their property : " The property, real and personal, of all persons ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 251 in the State of Missouri who shall take up arms against the United States, and who shall be directly proven to have taken active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use, and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free." The President, with a straightforward honesty that has marked his every act, seized the earliest opportunity to rebuke that usur- pation of illegal authority. I only regret that he did not go far- ther, and mark with his disapprobation that clause declaring mar- tial law, and that he did not punish the usurpation by revoking the commission of the officer who, charged with high and respons- ible command in the midst of a slave State, gave the enemies of the government so serious a ground on which to impeach their policy, and who treated the representatives of the people with so much contempt as in the face of the very law which they had passed scarcely one month before, declaring exactly how the property of rebels should be dealt with, dared thus flagrantly to usurp legislative powers, and deal out wholesale confiscation and emancipation as if he were above all law. I think that the inter- ests of the people of Missouri would be safer if we had some one who could be content with high military command, without play- ing the dictator, who would confine himself to marshaling his hosts, removing armed opposition, vindicating the authority of the government, and, like George Washington, be content to obey the laws, and not either violate them or attempt to make them. (Ap- plause.) Gentlemen, I have detained you already too long (" Go on"), and I have only one or two observations farther to submit to you. The policy of the administration and Congress in dealing with this rebellion has been eminently liberal. The policy of the peo- ple in the rebellious States has been eminently illiberal and barba- rous. The men who pass along our streets and talk about oppres- sion, are careful never to refer to the enactments of the Southern usurping Legislature ; they never refer to that law which authori- zes and directs the President of the Confederate States to imprison every alien enemy, meaning our fellow-citizens— which banishes every citizen of the United States who will not acknowledge their authority — which sequesters ever} 7 " cent's w r orth of property of every man living in any of the Northern States — which dooms to the halter, or to exile or imprisonment, every resident who, how- 252 ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE ever peaceable, refused to acknowledge their usurping domina- tion. Were we to apply that rule to the gentlemen who insult our moderation, how quickly should we in Baltimore be freed from the scowling looks, and the averted glances, and the insolent tones, and the menaces of retaliation that meet us every day and every where. How different, gentlemen, is the policy of the gov- ernment of the United States. It confiscates nobody's property, even although taken in arms against the government. Fremont's proclamation presumed, in the face of the act of Congress, to do that. The law had forbidden it ; the law condemns only property which has been used for rebellious purposes ; it sets free only slaves that have been used to prosecute the war; it confiscates only property that has been used in the course of commerce be- tween the rebellious States and the loyal States, and there it stops ; lays hold of the thing that sins ; it confiscates nothing beyond : it leaves the estates of the gentlemen who have left Maryland to wage war against their native State untouched by the law of confiscation ; it leaves the negroes, however powerful an clement they might be made of embarrassment in the slave- holding States, untouched, save where their masters have first used them to aid in breaking down the authority of the United States. Moderation, liberality is every where manifested by the govern- ment of the United States, just as vengeance, illiberality, a dispo- sition to grasp and seize every thing within their power, to strip honest, innocent people, widows and children not less than men in arms, of their last support, even of the money that was confided to the faith of tlifcir States by being invested in their public secu- rities. Gentlemen, that is the liberality, the respect for property, that these people show toward our fellow-citizens. It may be the foundation of a serious appeal for more stringent measures if events do not speedily render them unnecessary. (Applause.) Gentlemen, there is nothing of such hopeful augury as the moderation of the United States in dealing with this great rebel- lion; and on that one subject of the freedom of the slave, tempt- ing as it is to political aspirants, tempting as it is to men who wish a short method of dealing with a great rebellion, those in power have felt the responsibilities of power, and know that they are wielding power only to support the laws. They know that they are just as much bound to protect that property as any other property, and that no citizen's property can be taken at the will ON THE TKESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 258 of the government otherwise than according to law and the Con- stitution. Only ignorant fanatics prate about decrees of emanci- pation. Therefore it is that every where wherever the arms of the United States have penetrated any of the slaveholding States, you have found no servile rebellion following their ranks or break- ing out to meet them. A few stragglers find their way into the camps, a few seek protection, a few seize the opportunity of run- ning away from their masters, but any thing like a servile insur- rection has not been heard of any where in the presence of the armies of the United States. That is the short reply to every im- putation upon the faith of the government. (Applause.) But the great question remains, Can the government succeed in maintaining its authority ? ("Yes.") That question events alone can answer. In my judgment, if the wisdom which wields the power be only equal to the enthusiasm, the devotion, the liberal- ity with which the people and the States have lavished men and money in the cause of the republic, then there is no doubt as to what the result will be. (Applause.) It may be that here now, as heretofore in the history of the world, a great cause may fail in the field for lack of great ability to guide it in the proper depart- ments of the cabinet. We humbly and earnestly trust that that will not be the case. Eashness has already been punished ; dis- regard of high military advice has already met humiliation ; hu- miliation has probably brought forth repentance, and repentance is the beginning of wisdom. I have reason to believe that here- after military questions will be left to military men, and military men with heads upon their shoulders will be allowed to organize and direct the military power of the United States. (Great ap- plause.) I know, fellow-citizens, that great changes have been wrought lately in both the military departments. Up to this time the blockade has been a mockery ; the Secretary of the Navy, after six months' experience, has found it out, and there has been . there a change. He has found out that age and decrepitude are not indispensable for command, and that Southern birth and resi- dence are not disqualifications. Maryland and Delaware have been honored by high and responsible commands in the persons of Goldsborough and Dupont, who are about to sail from our ports with great expeditions under their charge — already too long de- layed — but, in their hands, sure to prove fruitful of high enter- prise and great results. (Applause.) 25i ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE The wisdom of their selections redeems many of the delays and blunders which have led to them. The administration have shown no greater knowledge of men, no greater determination to subordinate unjust suspicions to the necessities of the public serv- ice and sound policy, than when from the bosom of two slave- holding States they selected the leaders of these great expeditions, which, uniting under the same command officers of high merit from Massachusetts and South Carolina, together with men from the slave and men from the free States, fitly represent the unity of the national power whose banner they are charged to restore on the Atlantic coast. (Great applause.) The War Department has been taught by the misfortune of Dull Hun, which has broken no power nor any spirit; which bowed no State, nor made any heart falter ; which was felt as a humiliation, and which strung men's nerves to retrieve in, that has brought forth wisdom. They now know, if they did not know before, that a half-equipped army is not fit to deal with the desperate powers arrayed against the government. They now know that equality of forces is not a becoming proportion for a government in the face of a rebellion it is about to suppress; it looks too much like a struggle between a strong government and a weak one. They know now that it requires military knowl- edge to lead a host; that it requires months to convert a crowd into an army ; that without artillery a modern army is nothing, and that without cavalry it is a bird without wings ; that, without the means of following up a victory, victory is worthless. They now know that victory at Bull Run would have been disaster and not success ; that, had they beaten the enemy finally as they had beaten actually from the field at one period in the day the Con- federate forces, they could not have followed up the victory ; that if they had attempted to follow it up, they would have found themselves in the midst of Virginia with an army melting like snow beneath the sun ; that the three months' volunteers, as their terms of enlistment expired, would have left a remnant in the centre ofYirginia to be a prey for the rebels' swollen power. How earnestly true was the exhortation of the great military leader and adviser of the administration appears by this — that Bull Run having been fought upon the 20th of July, the army of the United States, under a commander oi^ relentless activity and energy, and of ability equal to the highest in the army, is still ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 255 drilling, going through its parades, being organized, waiting for its material of war, within five miles of the City of Washington. All that they gained by the battle of Bull Hun was that, instead of being able to march in October, as Winfield Scott told them, they would if they let him alone, and did not push, him on before he was ready to go ; they arc not yet ready, and we arc past the middle of October itself, and probably will not be ready before November. But, gentlemen, when that movement takes place, it will be no array of straggling regiments hunting up a commander over a vast field of battle (laughter); it will be no disorganized body of regiments never bound together in a brigade, and which hardly saw their commander's or their companion's face until the day of battle, but it will be the best men of the American people — as good, ay, better than ever faced an enemy in the same num- bers before (applause), accustomed to all the evolutions of modern warfare, having profound confidence in their young and brilliant leader (great applause), accustomed by continual reconnoissances and skirmishes to meet the enemy in arms and learn what battle is, blended into that compound of steel and fire which makes an army ready to be launched like one of God's bolts upon the ene- mies of the country. (Great applause.) We may fail again, for war is a game of blended skill and chance whose determination is with the Most High (applause); but I earnestly trust and be- lieve we shall not fail. The activity and energy with which those in power are now endeavoring to second the efforts of military men to organize a force before encountering the chances of de- feat are of good augury for the republic. When the banner once more points forward, it will proudly ad- vance until the rejoicing soldier shall, like Xenophon's Greeks at the aspect of the Euxine, after their weary march, greet with the cry of "The sea," "The sea," the glancing waves of the Gulf of Mexico (applause); penetrating at more than one point, armies of deliverance shall march, not to subjugate, but to free ; not to violate any law of the land, but to enforce them all ; to put down rebellion and its armed insolence ; to restore to loyal hearts the security that for long months they have not known ; to restore the ancient boundaries of the republic; to wipe out from the es- cutcheon of the nation the stain of our failing arms; to restore our reputation before the nations of the world ; to teach men that liberty is not a mockery, and a republic is not another name for 20 G ADDRESS TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE feebleness or anarchy ; to teach the jeering tyrants of the Old World that their day is not come yet; to let them know that the Bulwer Lyttons can prophesy in vain, and see false visions in their hopes of the overthrow of the great rival of England, and that Alison does not comprehend the greatness of this people, nor the peculiarity of their genius, when he indites puerile epistles about an Established Church and a limited monarchy for the free men of America. (Laughter and applause.) Gentlemen, wc do not want the assistance of the people across the water. We do not fear their hostility. We shall be glad of their good will ; we will not mourn if it is withdrawn. We know that wc owe them nothing but good will, and that we are ready to reciprocate. It is our duty to take care of ourselves. We mean to be fully up to that duty. We rely upon their interests, and not upon their love, to let us alone. We know that the South is disappointed in the expectation of having the blockade broken merely because John Bull counted the cost, and found that a war with the United States would cost more than the Southern cotton would pay for. Wc know very well that Louis Napoleon prefers not to pick any quarrel with this country, among other reasons because the navy of England overmatches his own, and he sees the time when possibly the sailors of America may be needed to balance the power of England. (Applause.) We know that while one interest would prompt him to embarrass, another, a greater, a near one, compels him to let us alone ; for he is sur- rounded by revolutionary lires, stifled but not extinct, and if he turns from home he may find that " fire in the rear" uncomfort- ably girding his revolutionary throne. (Laughter.) There is some sympathy, strange to say, and it has more than once been manifested, by the great despot of Russia for this great democ- racy. They seem to have a kindred feeling in their youth, their newness, their growing strength, their freedom from most of the embarrassments of other governments, and the boundless regions of space that invites them to expand their empire. They feel that to them belongs the future, however different the form of empire ; and although we may seek our advancement in different methods and in different forms, yet each, in his appropriate sphere, in his appointed time, in his own way, is working out the great problem of human destiny — we of human freedom on this side ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION. 257 the Atlantic, he of human civilization among the half-civilized men of Asia. But, while we accept the courtesy of the Autocrat's good wish- es, we trust nothing to his good will ; our fate is in our own hands ; on them alone we must rely. There is now no prospect of for- eign intrusion, but no man can tell what a day may bring forth. We shall, I think, meet with no disturbance from beyond the At- lantic at present. To-morrow it may suit the policy of England, or France, or Kussia to fling their sword into the scale of our des- tinies, and that might decide them. Now is the time, at once, without delay, unitedly for us here in Maryland, as well as those in Kentucky and those in Missouri, with our brethren in the North, to scatter and destroy at one blow the armed array of our enemies, ere delay consolidates their power or foreign complica- tion embarrasses our arms. We must not merely defeat, we must destroy the army before Washington. That will break the mili- tary power of the rebellion, and whenever the sword shall be stricken from the hand which lifted it against the Union, the ter- rors of despotic power will vanish from the land, and grateful eyes will turn in tears to greet the unforgottcn banner of the re- public. E CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. While thoroughly upholding the government in all lawful and proper efforts to put down the rebellion, Mr. Davis freely criticised those acts of doubtful expediency, and still more doubtful lawfulness, which were, perhaps, almost unavoidable amid such confusion of affairs and such un- certainty as to men, especially at the outbreak of hostilities. He condemned from the first the use of the word " blockade,"' as ap- plied to our own ports held by rebel insurgents, whereby belligerent rights seemed impliedly conceded, or, at any rate, whereby an argument was afforded to those who did concede such rights to those insurgents. lie condemned the virtual suspension of the habeas corpus by the President, which could be authorized by act of Congress alone. He condemned the proclamation of martial law in districts where the execution of the United States laws was not impeded by insurgent force. He condemned the permission by the government of such outrages against law, and such blunders in policy as Fremont was daily committing in Missouri ; and he boldly set forth what he thought the proper course in such respects to be pursued by a government restoring law and order in regions where both had been subverted by insurrection. For these utterances Mr. Davis was condemned by those extreme par- tisans who held that all things which could be wreaked on the insurgents were fair and lawful, although the attempt should involve the extinction of rights not less dear than the preservation of the Union itself. Yet, in thus condemning certain mistakes, Mr. Davis certainly offered that sup- port of the administration which comes from the judicious reproof of a friend, and therein he showed himself a truer supporter than those incau- tious men whose rash advice, or worse than rash actions, only added to the number of its enemies. Mr. Davis availed himself of an opportunity to speak on these points as early as November, 1861, at Brooklyn, in the following address: Mr. President and Gentlemen of this Association, — In the corner-stone of the southern wing of the Capitol at "Washing- ton, in the hand-writing of Daniel Webster, are these words : " If, therefore, it shall be hereafter the will of God that this structure CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT, ETC. 259 shall fall from its base, that its foundation be upturned, and this deposit brought to the eyes of men, be it then known that on this day the Union of the United States of America stands firm, that their Constitution still exists unimpaired, and, with all its original usefulness and glory, growing every day stronger and stronger in the affection of the great body of the American people, and at- tracting more and more the admiration of the world." That de- posit is hardly ten years old. Daniel Webster has not been gath- ered to his fathers ten years, and that stone is rocked by the earth- quake of revolution. Those institutions, whose success he sup- posed he was announcing to a distant futurity, seem now already to be losing their hold on the affections of the people and the re- spect of nations abroad. Were he now called on to rewrite that solemn proclamation to posterity, he would lower its lofty tone. He would say, "The Union of the United States of America is now assailed and shaken to its foundations; their Constitution has ceased, in a great measure, to command the confidence of the people of Amer- ica or the admiration of the world, and the people themselves seek alter a master." The path of a nation in search of a master is broad enough and of varied aspect. Nations have sought him in the imperfections of their national institutions ; in the madness of civil strife ; at the hands of foreign intervention ; in the degeneracy and corruptions of their own manners ; in appeals from the ballot-box to the sword at the bidding or for the advancement of personal ambition. The people of America now exhibit more than one of the symptoms of that fatal hunt. One great region is marching in the path of Mexico to the overthrow of a government it has ceased to control. The other great region is following in that deadly path — uncon- sciously perhaps, not so palpably, but not less surely, not less fa- tally — by the blind madness with which they throw down every barrier liberty has erected against arbitrary power in their reck- less eagerness to preserve the integrity of the nation. They sec the gulf, and think nothing too precious to fill it. They arc ready to lay their liberty a sacrifice on the altar of victory. When Daniel Webster died, American liberty looked strong and was boastful of its strength ; when President Buchanan left the White House, American liberty was like Herod, eaten of worms beneath his royal robes, and ready to give up the ghost. 260 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT The foundations of the constitutional edifice were already secretly sapped; the mortar was already picked from the stones; and when the j udges of the Supreme Court pronounced the Dre"d Scott judgment, the very caryatides of the Constitution were seen to bend beneath the unusual pressure, and the whole edifice seemed, to thoughtful eyes, to rush to its ruin. The sap went on more earnestly, more vigorously ; and as the catastrophe approached, all the energy and audacity seemed on the side of the assailants ; all the doubt, all the hesitation, all the timidity on the side of the de- fenders — paralyzed at the awful aspect of the national dissolution. Then it was that the enemies of the republic thought their day was come ; they rushed openly to the assault of the breach they had been so long and so secretly preparing. In their exulting confidence they boastfully shouted, "York is joined to Boliugbroke, And all your northern castles yielded tip, And all your southern gentlemen in arras Upon his party." And the sovereign people thought their power doomed when breathless messengers from the South gasped out, "White beards have armed their thin and hairless scalps Against thy majesty ; and boys with women's voices Speak big, and clap their female joints In stiff, unwieldy arms against thy crown ; Even thy beadsmen learn to bend their bows Of double fatal yew against thy state ; Yea, distaff women manage rusty bills Against thy seat; both young and old rebel." Bold men thought the last day of the republic was come. Bad men withdrew to seize their part of the dismembered heritage. Timid friends gathered round the bed of the dying patient, and talked hopefully of peaceful dissolution ; and when rash men whispered, even with bated breath, of coercive remedies, they were put far off, lest the shock of the suggestion might hasten the catastrophe. And then an unaccustomed sound echoed over the land — a strange event — a new thing under the sun — American arms point- ed cannon at American breasts — American shot shattered an American fortress — American hands dragged down the standard of the republic, and boasted that they first had trailed it in the dust. FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 261 That touched a nerve of exquisite sensibility which vibrated to the heart of the nation ; and it rose from its bed of death, and cast off its premature grave-clothes, and challenged its right to be a nation of history. From the Pacific to the Atlantic, liv- ing men stretched forth eager hands for arms to defend the re- public. And then the people passed from atomy to paroxysm in a day. Action — action was the cry ! The people were summoned to action — action upon a new the- atre — action upon new principles and for new purposes — action on new paths, different from the recognized and used paths over which the American people had in this generation trodden — ac- tion at the bidding of one stern and irresistible impulse that seemed for an instant — nay, for months — to blind the American people, and make them forget the salutary principles of the Con- stitution, which was framed after the experience of one revolution, and is competent to carry the nation through another revolution. They supposed, because they had not hitherto been called to deal with the great question of the suppression of insurrection — the guarantee of republican government to the States — the assertion of the supreme authority of the United States • — they supposed thatjaws wj^re meant for times of peace, that constitutions were only to be obeyed in courts of law — that now fury mi ght mi nister arms, that wrath might be the measure as well as the instigation to what is allowable to might. The maxims of the hour, urged by the press and the people on those in power, were, " Give them as good as they send — do as they do — make those acts against which you protest the measure of your conduct — we can not af- ford the protection of the- laws to traitors — the laws are silent in the midst of arms — necessity is above all law — the safety of the people is the only law." And these maxims, unheard of before as American law, unheard of before upon American hustings, un- heard of in the councils of legislation — I need not say never dreamed of in the courts of justice — these maxims have in a great measure ruled the government in its dealing with the existing troubles — ruled the government, in a great measure, in the modes in which it has attempted to deal with the great and terrible re- bellion that we are called upon to suppress — ruled it, not at its own suggestion or inspiration — not against the will of the people; but the people leading the government on, urging it on, prompt- 262 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT ing it, rejoicing over every arbitrary act, calling for more vigorous measures, when the vigor had already, in more than one instance, overstepped the bounds of law ; seeing nothing but the enemy before it, and supposing that enemies of law might be subdued by disregard of the fundamental principles of the government. I do not think I have overstated the case. ■Certainly it is not my disposition to overstate the case. I do not know any one who is more interested — no one here, certainly, is so much interested — in the suppression of this rebellion as I am personally. You see the conflagration from the distance ; it blis- ters me at my side. (Applause.) You can survive the integrity of the nation ; we in Maryland would live on the side of a gulf, perpetually tending to plunge into its depths. It is for us life and liberty — it is for you greatness, strength, and prosperity. If you are interested, still more am I ; if illegal measures are necessary for salvation, I am more tempted than you to resort to them ; and yet I desire to say that there is no circumstance con- nected with all the difficulties we are called upon to deal with — nothing, in my sight, so threatening in the future — nothing which I find myself so unable satisfactorily to contemplate, as the temper of the public mind in dealing with this great rebellion. Not that I have any tenderness for the parricidal hands that have lifted weapons against the heart of the nation — let them perish ! (Ap- plause.) But in their grave I do not wish to see American lib- erty buried. It is time that the energy of the nation, having now been aroused, her embattled hosts lining the whole border, flaming with the conflict, by whose light we read that the nation will not die a dog's death and will not perish of rottenness off the face of the earth — it becomes us now to turn our eyes to the principles upon which the contest is to be waged — to hold those in author- ity responsible, not merely for energy, but for legality and consti- tutionality — to silence the sneer with which men are met when they recall their rulers to the limits of law and the Constitution. Let them understand that the American government will not be so degraded in the eyes of history as to be driven to the necessity of inaugurating revolution for the purpose of suppressing insur- rection. (Applause.) They who speak about extraordinary methods — of the necessity of usurpation — of the necessity of neglecting the " technicalities of law," as they politely term them — the necessity of departing from FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 263 all " red-tapeism," which is the ordinary phrase to describe now the regular operations of the government, conducted by wise men — these men must be taught (and it is for gentlemen like you to teach them) that it does not prove a man is disloyal because he thinks the Constitution better than they do, not only powerful in peace, but powerful in war; that its a>gis is notonly so broad as to protect the people in times of peace, but fri the midst of civil war the surest protection; in the face of national disaster, the surest refuge. (Cheers.) Let us review some of the measures which have been resorted to by the government in the name of the suppression of the re- bellion, and with the accord of the people, and see where in six months we have drifted before the storm of war. If it is usurpa- tion, it is usurpation against a willing people. If it is illegal, it is illegality prompted by the people. But it is equally certain that the acclaim of the people is the most dangerous symptom. We have seen in the midst of the American republic, in the midst of the nineteenth century, after more than eighty years of republican rule, under a plainly-written Constitution — we have seen a republican administration assume the right to declare and execute martial law. We have seen a military commander in charge of a great and important district, within two months, I be- lieve, after Congress had adjourned, issue a proclamation inaugu- rating, formally, martial law over two thirds of the State of Mis- souri — threatening with death, at the dictation of a drum-head court-martial, any one caught in arms within the district pre- scribed by his will. We have seen him assume the right to dis- regard the act of Congress ere the ink was fairly dry upon the parchment, and to confiscate property which Congress, by omit- ting, said could not be confiscated. We have seen (and those who have seen them must have laughed) deeds of manumission signed " John C. Fremont, Major General Commanding." (Applause and hisses. A cry, "Three cheers for Fremont!" and cries "for shame !") Free speech exists where I speak. (Tremendous applause.) I have seen tempestuous assemblies before in my day. Nay, more, I have seen, likewise, statements that three or four freemen of America have been convicted before a court-martial in the State of Missouri, presided over by a colonel of Illinois volunteers — that is the judicial tribunal — convicted of being in arms against 264 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT the United States — that is treason — and sentenced to hard labor during the war. The President, with the advice of the chief law officer of the government — a gentleman for whom I entertain, personally and politically, the very highest regard — has, under the pressure of the emergency of the times, asserted a right in the President, and the President has acted upon it in various instances, to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. (Applause.) And under this usurped power the President has arrested or allowed to be arrested many freemen who were not in arms, and had not been in arms, against the United States, and therefore were not fit objects of the mili- tary power vested in the President by Congress ; has refused to submit the causes of their arrest to the judicial tribunal, even in New York, and has incarcerated.them in fortresses that they might be, out of the way of process. We have seen a judge of the highest court of record in the Dis- trict of Columbia held prisoner in his house, with a soldier march- ing up and down before the door, with bayonet on his shoulder. (Cries of " Serve him right! serve him right!") We have not yet reached the question whether it has served him right or not. (Applause.) About the fact there is no doubt ; that there was no sworn statement against him, there is no doubt; that the ordinary formalities of law were not pursued, there is no doubt. If he was guilty, let him be punished by law ; if he was bearing arms, or about to bear arms, let it be known, and the world will justify the act. (Applause.) We have seen likewise (and when we remember that it is the middle of the nineteenth century we may very well be startled at the very reference), we have seen at least one newspaper — prob- ably more than one newspaper — stopped because of the character of its articles. We have seen more than one newspaper — (they do not express my sentiments) — we have seen more than one newspaper excluded from the benefit of the mails without author- ity of law. We have seen a provost-marshal — the police-officer of a camp — inaugurate a civil court in Alexandria, Va., and (I presume I ad- dress not a few of the mercantile gentlemen of New York), if the papers have not again misled me, I think I saw a few days ago that the Chamber of Commerce had suggested to the President that he should vest authority in the provost-marshal to continue FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 265 that illegal and usurped jurisdiction. (Cries of " Good," and ap- plause.) We have seen executed — as nothing of the kind has been exe- cuted in any despotic country of Europe, and with a completeness and precision, secrecy and dispatch, that would have done honor to the chief of police of France — the seizure #f all the telegrams in all the telegraph offices, from one end to the other of the American republic, I believe, in one day. (Loud applause.) We have seen, I believe, without any authority of law — we have seen an order from the Secretary of State saying that no man shall leave the United States without a passport — that is, by his leave. (Renewed applause.) Now these things are not cast in the teeth of any body, nor stated for the purpose of crimination. I use them historically ; I use them for the lesson they teach ; I use them to bring before you, men of America, where you this day stand after your repub- lican government has been in full and blessed operation for over eighty years. These measures have been executed without any authority of law. Some of them might have been authorized by Congress; but M Congress had just adjourned without having authorized them. Over these measures of the executive there is a strange agree- ment between the friends and the enemies of the government. The enemies of the United States have taken the Constitution under their special protection, the more easily to destroy it. They deny the constitutionality of every measure for the suppression of the insurrection, and confound the arbitrary and the legal in one indiscriminate outcry against usurpation and oppression. The friends of the government apparently agree with them in their denial of the sufficiency of the Constitution for the crisis, and propose to eke out its omissions by the law of necessity. I agree with neither of them. Both are wrong, and either view is equally fatal to the existence of the government. The Constitution docs vest in Congress adequate power to sup- press every insurrection. The Constitution does not vest in Congress or the President ar- bitrary or unlimited power for that or any other purpose. Now, TFthe constitutional powers of the government are not sufficient for the suppression of the rebellion — I mean the constitutional powers of the government, not construed by the standard of South Caro- 266 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT lina, but measured by the standard of Daniel Webster, measured by the standard of Henry Clay (applause), measured by the stand- ard of Abraham Lincoln, who differs in nothing from either of those great men (applause) — if the Constitution of the United States does not confer power upon the government to deal with a great rebellion l>ke this, then, gentlemen, I wish you to draw your conclusion. Mine is, that the government of George Wash- ington has failed! (Hisses, and cries of "No!") If the govern- ment that he founded can not deal with the events before it, it is not an inference of logic, it is the verdict of history, it has failed. (Hisses.) And hissing don't change the verdict. (Laughter.) Or else the hiss is to be interpreted in this sense — that the govern- ment has not failed, although it does not afford power to deal with the rebellion, which yet it is its duty to suppress. That argument is worthy of a hiss ! I say, gentlemen, if the Constitution does not furnish these powers, then the people of the United States are in the face of another revolution. If you can not find, within the limits of the law written down, the mode and method by which you arc to stamp out this rebellion, by what law is the President to be guided ? A Voice, The law of self-preservation. Mr. Davis. That is the law of Louis Napoleon. A Voice. The law of military power. Mr. Davis. Yes, the law of Julius Ctesar — the law of the master over the slave. I do not know what you think of George Wash- ington, but I shall not scandalize his memory by such a suggestion until, with all the lights before me, I shall have read the law he proposed for the government of the republic, and sec, with the light of experience, the rulings of the courts, the opinions of great men, and the necessities of national life, whether we can not find on the face of the Constitution, without making ourselves slaves (for it is to be a slave to be bound to obey the will of any body beyond the limits of law), a republican way to preserve at once the nation and the liberties of the people. (Applause.) And I say, in the first place, that martial law, whatever else is allowed — and while, in my judgment, the authority vested in the United States, applied in its proper forms and described by its con- stitutional language, is ample— I say that martial law, in any sense in which it is known to the history of the world, is something which is excluded from our system, and which we ourselves and FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 267 our forefathers have been careful to exclude, because an arbitrary exercise of discretion could not be safely vested any where in our government. Why, what is martial law ? The people are all of them crying out for martial law. If they mean the direction of military power against armed opposition — the direction of the military power to disperse military resistance — why don't they use the language of the Constitution, and speak of " calling out the militia to suppress the insurrection?" But if they use the words "martial law," men of the sword will interpret it in the only sense in which it is known to the history of the world ; and Wellington has defined it, "It is the will of the commander-in- chief." Does the President, of his will, possess the power to de- clare, to inaugurate, or to enact martial law? Unless it is the perpetual law of the republic, it can not be enacted by him, nor declared by him, nor declared by any body that he may authorize to declare it, because the Constitution says — and this is a war for the Constitution as well as for the Union — the Constitution says that " all legislative power herein granted is vested in Congress." Then the President can not proclaim it. Can Congress proclaim it? "'"Why, what is martial law ? Mere will, limited by no defini- tion — controlled by nothing except the will of the commander-in- chief — his discretion under the circumstances — his determination to allow and to forbid any thing — the right to judge people by court-martial— the right to order men to be shot down by a file of soldiers for wearing a red and white cravat — the right to dis- regard the limits of the Constitution. It is blind fate. It is en- acted at the dictation of necessity, and necessity owns no law. It is proclaimed in the name of the public safety — it is the annihila- tion of every guarantee of the public liberty. With us our Con- stitution, framed by George Washington, is the great safeguard of the country. The safety of the people is the supreme law ; but that Constitution is the safety of the people — the Constitution is that supreme law. Above it there is no necessity, beyond it there is no law, outside of it there is no security. That Constitu- tion does not use the word martial law. It does not vest author- ity to declare martial law any where, in any body, under any cir- cumstances. It professes to provide for every necessity of na- tional life, and it forbids martial law; for it forbids arbitrary tri- als, it forbids any conviction for crime but by a jury, any trial but before the judges and courts it has provided, yet martial law 268 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT has tried freemen for treason by a court-martial. It forbids arbi- trary confiscations of property, yet martial law has already exe- cuted arbitrary confiscations. It forbids arbitrary invasions of the right of personal freedom, yet men who had offended against no law now are held by martial law, and in spite of the law of the land. Yet the Constitution has not overlooked grave crises such as that we are now passing through. It provides, under proper sanctions and with proper limitations, for such emergencies ; but it carefully forbids this arbitrary discretion, which British freemen found incompatible with their safety in the hands of the king, and which our fathers knew would he fatal to our liberty in the hands of the President, and too dangerous to be intrusted even to the discretion of Congress. They knew what martial law was, for they rebelled against it as their English ancestors had. X Martial law is not now for the first time supposed to be neces- sary ; it has been often imposed under that pretext in the old home of liberty, and there it has been repealed by arms and for- bidden by laws written in royal blood. Martial law had been thought necessary to prevent the dispersion of papal bulls or trai- torous libels against the queen. It had been thought necessary for the suppression of sundry great unlawful assemblies, that such notable rebellious persons be speedily suppressed by execution of death, according to the justice of martial law; and Charles I. had thought it necessary for his purposes to issue commissions to try not only soldiers, but other dissolute persons who might com- mit murder or other outrage or misdemeanor whatever — -just as Fremont thought it necessary for the quiet of Missouri to sup- press such outrages — by the justice of martial law. But the Com- mons of England, by the Petition of Eight, compelled the revoca- tion of such commissions, and forbade them for the future, because no man ought to be "judged to death, but by the laws established in the realm." And our fathers were fresh in this historjr when they formed our Constitution, and incorporated among its solemn enactments these great prohibitions of arbitrary power which is the spirit of martial law. The Commons of England had prohibited to the crown the arbi- trary right to seize the property of the subject, or withdraw his personal liberty from the cognizance of the courts even on a com- mitment by the special command of the king, or to try him by FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 2 GO commission of martial law, contrary to the laws of the land ; and our fathers took from that petition their great safeguards, and placed them beyond and above even the legislative will of Con- gress. The Constitution declares that the "judicial power shall be vested in our Supreme Court, or in such inferior courts as Con- gress may ordain." The President, then, can't establish courts-martial. " The judges of both the Supreme and inferior courts shall hold their offices during good behavior." L/ Neither Congress nor the President, then, can make a military officer a judge during will, nor a provost-marshal a civil court. " The judicial power shall extend to all cases under the Consti- tution and laws." The courts of law, therefore, alone can take cognizance of any crime against the United States. " The trial of all crimes, except in case of impeachment, shall be by jury." An Illinois colonel can not, therefore, try any one for any crime. " No one shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise in- famous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land and naval service" A man can not then be tried by any court-martial, unless a sol- dier or sailor ; and Congress is especially authorized to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces ; and but for this, no soldier could be tried otherwise than by a court of law. "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press." Even Congress is prohibited from suppressing any newspaper ; how can the executive claim the right ? The fathers of the Constitution assumed that the habeas corpus would protect our liberties ; but they were unwilling to leave that to the discretion of Congress, and they therefore made it perpetual by prohibiting its suspension even, except when in cases of rebel- lion or invasion the public safety may require it. Congress has not suspended it ; it is therefore the right of every man confined contrary to law. It is perhaps to be regretted that Congress did not at its late 270 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT session suspend that writ in a portion of the United States, and give the President a wider power of arrest than the laws now a ll ow — subject to such safeguards as might protect innocent peo- ple from vexatious, or mistaken, or malicious arrests ; but Con- gress thought otherwise, and that confined the President to the limits of the military power conferred on him for the suppression of "the rebellion, and that extends only to persons in arms, or those actively aiding and abetting them against the government. Such persons are liable to arrest by military authority under the law of Congress. Every one else is amenable only to the judicial tribunals and under judicial forms, y These provisions exclude martial law and all arbitrary discre- tion — all exceptional and temporary tribunals— all executive power over the liberty of the citizen. If the government can not meet the necessities of the time with- out transcending these limits, then American republicanism has failed. If a discretionary power over the liberty of the citizen, or a right to try him by exceptional tribunals is to be tolerated, then we are on the eve of a more dangerous revolution than the one we have undertaken to suppress. We have abandoned the attempt to reconcile liberty with a gov- ernment of law, national existence with the supremacy of law ; we have been driven to invoke the principle of executive discretion in the last resort, and at its will to suspend every guarantee writ- ten down in the Constitution to protect the liberty of the indi- vidual against executive power. If it were clear that the national existence demands this sacri- fice, while it might be yielded, it would be not the less certain that our system of government has failed. But if it be not so demanded, and yet the people from negli- gence, or indolence, or weariness of the perpetual demands on their time and attention for the actual conduct of the government by law and on its own principles, tolerate or invite these intru- sions of arbitrary will on the domains of law — whether those in- trusions result from the indifference of those in power, or their obedience to popular clamor, then it is not less certain that our government has failed in fact — failed because the people lacked republican spirit, energy, and vigilance. And if this system of law have failed, there is but one alterna- FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. -271 tive. We pass from the constitutional freedom of America to the democratic despotism of France. To that all free government tends in this age. Only England and the United States have avoided it of all modern free nations, and they have done so be- cause their liberty was organized in institutions approved by ex- perience, improved by reason, and. adhered, to by inveterate habit and national pride. Those institutions exclude every element of arbitrary power, and define by law the rights and duties of every man ; and when those laws are abandoned, we become as France is. Necessity will be the supreme law — the President its supreme interpreter — its only rule his will — his only limit what he thinks the people will bear. He will still speak in their name, but he will not execute their written will, but what he divines to be theirs. This is democratic government, but it is not American republic- anism. It is the system now being inaugurated by the connivance or the blindness of the people. "We are treading the path of the Eoman republic, the history of whose freedom is unconsciously summed up in a single paragraph of Justinian's Institutes, defining the sources of Koman law. Its whole history is there from the day of its vigor and vigilance, when the law was the only rule of action, down to its day of las- situde and corrurjtion, when the weary people had accepted the will of the prince as their only law. Lex est quod popidus Romanus, senatorio magistratu interrogante, veluti consule, constituebat. Plebiscitum est quod Plebs, plebeio magistratu interrogante, veluti Tribuno, constituebat. Senatus consultum est quod senatus jubet atque constituit. Nam- quian auctus est populus Romanus in eum modum ut difficile esset in unum eum convocari legis sanciendoz causa, cequm visum est Sena- tus VICE POPULI CONSULI. Sed et quod Principi placuit legis liabet vigorem, cum LEGE REGIA, quae de ejus imperio lata est, Populus Romanus ei et in eum omne imperium suum et potestatem CONCESSIT ! ! "We have taken our first steps in this downward road. The last six months have laid up a mass of dangerous precedents for future ambition. And after your and my day, when our children shall have inherited the soil without the institutions of their fathers — when it shall have become the settled conviction that the 272 % CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT Constitution is made for times of peace, that necessity is para- mount to its prohibitions, that the President's discretion is the judge of the necessity and of the measures required to meet it, the learned jurist of some American Justinian will enumerate as of the past the old sources of the law of the republic — the Consti- tution and the laws passed in pursuance thereof, by Congress — but will tell us that the frequent necessities of the case, the de- fects of the written law, the inconvenience of consulting Congress — the greater convenience of presidential rescripts, epistles, edicts made for the emergency, in the confidence that the people will approve them — these have become the settled substitutes for con- stitutional legislation ; and he will close his summary by those significant words: "Sed id quod Presidenti phcuil leg is habel vigorcm ! i '" We are taking our first steps toward that dark cavern into which the steps of all free nations before us have strayed, and from which only a few have ever returned, and they scared by the fires of revolution and scarred by the chains of their servi- tude. These dire calamities we may avoid if we resolutely adhere to the limits of the Constitution. Let us appreciate the vast difficulties with which the adminis- tration is called to struggle; let us not judge harshly their errors; let us accord them a generous confidence ; but let us require them to grapple with the difficulties according to law — forbid their recurrence to discretionary devices — rigidly repel usurpation un- der any pretext, at any instigation, even that of the people them- selves. Consistently with our Constitution there can be no. such thing as martial law. lias the Constitution, then, omitted or excluded any thing nec- essary to carry the republic through this great crisis ? Let us turn to its arsenal, and survey its arms. We make the war in the name of the Constitution ; that Con- stitution provides" that Congress shall guarantee to each State of the Union a republican form of government. Wicked men in all the seceded States have flown in the face of that great funda- mental law, and violated the fundamental principle of all repub- lican government, and inaugurated governments in defiance of the supreme law of the land. It is the case in which the Congress FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 278 of the United States — not by the law of necessity, not by the law of self-preservation, not for the safety of the people, not because the President or the people think it advisable, but according to the written law of the land — are bound to intervene with all their powers of every kind, and guarantee to the people of those States, loyal or rebel, a republican government, controlling the people under the forms of law ; and Chief Justice Taney and the Supreme Court have told us so. " Unquestionably," they say, " a military government estab- lished as the permanent government of a State would not be a re- publican government, and it would be the duty of Congress to overthrow- it." It is therefore the duty of Congress now to overthrow the usurping governments in ten rebellious States. And how should it be done? Congress is vested with power to call forth the mil- itia' to execute the laws of the Union and to suppress insurrec- tion, as well as to repel invasion. The critical gentlemen who im- peach the authority of the government to use force, acutely dis- tinguish between the rebellion in the Southern States and an in- surrection. That is done under the authority of State sovereignty ; it is done at the bidding of sovereigns, and therefore it is not in- surrection. The Constitution of the United States, and all laws made in pursuance thereof, arc the supreme law of the land, any thing in the Constitution or the laws of any State to the contrary' notwithstanding. Let them be as sovereign as they please, when they pass an ordinance of secession it falls before that sovereign clause of the Constitution, and is so much waste paper. (Ap- plause.) Their laws arc the acts of a mob, transcending the lim- its of their power, and flying in the face of the supreme govern- ment of the land. If that be supreme, they arc subordinate. If Congress is to declare the supreme law, the Ordinance of Seces- sion is an inferior law. If the judges arc to be bound by the laws of Congress, any thing in the Constitution or laws of the States to the contrary notwithstanding, then the judges are bound to annul and disregard the Ordinance of Secession, and Congress is bound to interfere the moment a State attempts to override the supreme law of the republic. And how? By authorizing the President to use the military power of the republic to compel the submission of its enemies, and by such reasonable penalties and forfeitures as will not exasperate and indurate the hostile population. The S 274 CONSTITUTIONAL TOWERS SUFFICIENT President, of himself, Las no power to do any thing. lie is the executor of the laws. He has authority to command the army when the army exists, but it can only exist by the law of Con- ' gross. He is directed to sec that the laws be faithfully executed, but he can execute no law until it exists. Until the laws give him authority to act, he has just as much power as you or I. He is 'not our master. lie has no discretion vested in him. He is bound by the limitations of the law. What that allows him to do, he can do ; what it docs not allow him to do, he can not do. That is the principle of our republican government. That is the example set by Washington. lie was compelled to suppress the Whisky Insurrection, and he did it in spite of the imperfection of the law, but according to law; yet there arc some people who think that George Washington did not make a government that would conduct us through an insurrection. The law of 1795 was passed in his administration and at his instance, he having found . in the Whisky Rebellion in Pennsylvania that the preceding laws upon the statute-book were inadequate for the purpose. Has any historical gentleman here present ever heard that Washington thought the inadequacy of the law a sufficient reason for usurping a power which the Constitution did not grant? No; he did the best he could. He bewailed the inefficiency of the existing law, but he did not venture to supply it by the law of the public safe- ty, by his own ideas of the public necessity, by usurpation. There would have been no difficulty then, if usurpation could always supply a deficiency. But he, the great Father and founder of the Constitution, went to the Senate and House of Eepresentatives, and laid before them, in his formal message, the deficiency of the law under which he had been obliged to struggle with the rebel- lion which then threatened the existence of the national republic as much as this threatens its existence, and begged them to re- lieve his successors from the embarrassment to which he had been subjected. And they did it. They who impeach Mr. Lincoln for usurpation shut their eyes to that law. They who say that the government has no legal authority to use military power to suppress the rebellion, overlook that law. I read to-day the mes- sage of the self-styled President of the Confederate States, in which he audaciously says that the President has made war upon them without the authority of Congress. And that very man, when he was Secretary of War, under that very law of 1795, organized those infernal proceedings in Kansas. FOR RECESSION OF REBELLION. 275 What has Congress done? If it has not done enough, it will meet in the course of a few days, and may do more. If it has omitted important measures, it can supply deficiencies. But what it has authorized up to this time is the limit of what it is allow- able for the executive power to do. It has passed a law confisca- ting part of the property of rebels, and therefore nobody has the right to confiscate all their property. Be it right or wrong, wise or unwise, it is not in the law, and therefore it is forbidden. It has authorized, and in my judgment wisely, the confiscation of property used to promote rebellion, and there it stops — there the President is bound to stop — there the military commanders are bound to stop, whether on a foraging party or otherwise. That is the impassable limit of their power. It has enacted that there shall be a blockade of the Southern coast, a cessation of commer- cial intercourse. That is the greatest stretch of power that Con- gress has undertaken to exercise touching this subject. In my judgment, it is within its full competency. In my judgment, it was necessary to the accomplishment of the great purpose of pre- venting military and other supplies from reaching men in arms. It doubtless bears hardly on the loyal men of the South, who swarm there, as I am proud to know, by thousands, but disarmed, and therefore powerless. (Applause.) And I know that, while they feel the privations, they submit cheerfully to the restriction, for over the glare of the conflagration they still see the dawn of the coming day of liberty. (Applause.) These are two things that Congress has done. What else has it done? Placed a mag- nificent army at the disposal of the President of the United States, charged to guarantee a republican government to those who now no longer know its blessings, and to extinguish the last spark of rebellion. Is that army an idle pageant — a holiday parade, or may it smite with the sword it bears ? The law is the only criterion ; the law assembles it — the law defines its rights and dlities. Obedience to the Constitution and laws is all the government has a right to demand. If individuals refuse obedience, the courts, and juries, and mar- shals will compel it. If numbers combine to resist, the law vests the marshal with the right to summon the power of the county to dispel the array. 276 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT But when the unlawful combination swells into insurrection, and overmatches and defies the marshal and his powers, is the government to submit? When the ordinary civil, judicial, and legal modes of proceeding have failed, the enemies of the govern- ment say that it must stand with its hands by its side and see it- self torn limbless. But does the law say that because the courts cart render no assistance they can not be opened ? On the con- trary, when they have been closed, then the law lifts the banner of the republic, draws the sword, and, still waiting and giving its erring children time for repentance, forbids the use of the drawn sword till the President shall have issued his proclamation direct- ing- the unlawful combinations — not seceded States, but unlawful combinations of men too strong to be dispersed by the marshal — to go to their respective homes. And that Abraham Lincoln did. (Applause.) And when they did not go to their respective homes, when all the stages of republican forbearance had been passed, when all the forms of law had been duly invoked, and the last remedy was all that remained, he solemnly put forth his procla- mation, and by the written law of the land called the children of the republic to its defense — and they answered by the million. (Applause.) Now, what are they charged to do ? What is the reason that military force is allowed at all? Because the civil process has been overborne. What is the purpose of the military force ? To disperse armed opposition, that arrests the progress of the marshal, that closes the court of justice, silences the judge on the bench, and renders impossible the ordinary and peaceful en- forcement of the law. And what do you want the army to do ? To hunt peaceful people, quietly residing at home, whom a mar- shal with a writ can arrest? Are six hundred thousand men, your sons and brothers, in arms for that ? How wretchedly inad- equate is the cause ! For what, then ! It is to scatter the array of armed men ; it is to break down a combination of armed force — to break the military power arrayed against the republic. When that is broken, what stands between the marshal and the person that the law would punish ? The right to draw the sword comes from the fact that the law is arrested. The sword must go into its scabbard when the law no longer meets with opposition beyond the power of the marshal to disperse it. This is not martial law ; it is the solemn written law of the republic that armed men shall meet armed men — that they who lift the banner of rebellion shall FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 277 be met by the banner of the republic — that they who appeal to arms shall be met in arms. And then when they quote to you, as they do, the language of the Constitution, that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, I reply that against those in arms against the government the bayonet is the process of law. (Applause.) A bullet speeds on its mission just as legally as the marshal with his writ. (Ap- plause.) The order to fire on men arrayed against the govern- ment is as much the language of the Constitution of the United States as the order of the marshal to arrest the man named in his process. (Applause.) Let them disperse if they do not wish to be dispersed, and if they will not disperse when commanded, then they draw the fire of the government — they call down its thunder upon their heads — they necessitate an appeal to the sword. Let them who draw it perish by it. (Applause.) Why talk about that word which is unheard of in republican lands, but is the home companion of the despots of Europe — martial law ; a state of siege — the will of the commander — the necessity of dooming people to death after they have been arrested by the military authority, because vengeance can not wait the lagging process of trial? When the military array is dispersed, they no longer present op- position to the enforcement of the laws ; the necessity of the mili- tary force ceases with the dispersion ; the right to use it ceases with the necessity ; the necessity is limited by the language of the law to combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the or- dinary processes of law. That is the true, legal, and constitutional position. Is it not better to keep to the statute-book and the Constitution, than to insult the memory of Washington by suppo- sing that the machinery of his government has failed on its first trial ? And when the army is assembled, what may it rightfully do ? Is it subject to the caprice of private owners for ground to en- camp on, for positions to fortify, for fields to fight on ? Must it confine its march to the public highways? stop to pay toll? (Laughter.) Ask leave to trespass on a gentleman's ground be- fore it ventures to deploy against an advancing foe? Is it to as- sess damages for treading down grass before it can throw up a breastwork to protect it from an advancing foe? If the Legisla- ture repeal, or the company surrender the charter for the road, is the force stationary, or driven to violate the right of property 278 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT which the Constitution so formally guarantees? So argue the enemies of the republic who profess to be the friends of the Con- stitution, but their argument displays their ignorance only. i/ The same right which takes land for a railway track against the owner's will subjects the whole territory to the burden of war at the will of the military authority. It is not a violation of a pri- vate right — it is the assertion of the right of eminent domain over the national territory. Is the authority to take a man's prop- erty for a railway more imperative than that which allows the government to defend itself against military power? Before the supreme right of the government to wage war — foreign or domes- tic — State lines arc obliterated (applause), every division of pri- vate property is obliterated, every individual right is subordina- ted. It is the right of eminent domain of the republic, asserted in time of war by the highest political authority, the Constitution of the United States. The right to use military force granted in the Constitution must find its interpretation in the laws of tactics and strategy, of projectiles and defenses against them, the formal evolutions of troops on the march and on the battle-field, for these things arc war; these things arc the employment of military force; these things arc what they meant who framed the Constitution. Every political authority so construes the Constitution, and the judicial agrees with the political department of the government. The Supreme Court, in sustaining the appeal to arms by Rhode Island, said, "It was a state of war, and the established govern- ment resorted to the rights and usages of war to maintain itself, and to overcome the unlawful opposition." The same principle vests a military commander with the right to seize personal property for the use of the government on sud- den and pressing emergencies, when recourse can not be had to public supplies — a right which Butler exercised when he seized the Annapolis railway. He may destroy propertjr to prevent it falling into the enemy's hands, even when he could not take it for his own use. But beyond these and the like cases, private property of the citizen, loyal or disloyal, is as sacred in civil war as in foreign war or in peace. Rebellion gives no rights of robbery ; but Con- gress may legalize confiscation — it is not a right of war, it is a penalty attached to crime. But the right to seize and hold persons in arms, or aiding and FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 279 abetting them, is a right involved in the right to use military force. On that the political authority and the judicial authority agree. "In that state of things," say the Supreme Court (in a state of civil war), " the officers engaged in its military service might law- fully arrest any one who, from the information before them, they had reasonable grounds to believe tvas engaged in the insurrection. 1 ' 1 But when arrested, is he to be discharged at the bidding of any judge on a habeas corpus? and can that be prevented only by ad- mitting the President's right to suspend it? On whom docs the Constitution confer the right to suspend it? War does not sus- pend it. Can the President? Blackstone says that in England it is suspended only by act of Parliament. The writ of liabeas corpus, so far as it is applicable, is issued under the language of the stat- ute, and as long as the act is on the statute-book, there is no power in the United States that can arrest the progress of the writ, ex- cept in Congress, which may repeal or suspend the privilege for the time being. Where do they get the authority? If it were not prohibited therein specifically, it would result from their right to repeal a statute which they had enacted. You need go no farther than that. But the Constitution was careful to secure to us the right to the writ paramount to the will of Congress, except in cases of invasion and rebellion, where the public safety might require its suspension. When, therefore, those circumstances oc- cur, that writ ought to be suspended. In my judgment, it was a serious oversight or neglect in Congress at the last session not to have suspended it in some parts of the United States, and in re- spect of some classes of persons. They did not do it ; that is their fault. But that docs not vest any right to supply their omission in the head of the executive department of the government. On this great topic the bar of the United States has been smitten with barrenness or vertigo. Only one discussion of it worthy of the subject and the bar has met my eye, and that was from the justly distinguished Professor Parker, of Harvard University. It is greatly to be regretted that so distinguished a jurist should have dropped an ambiguous doubt of the President's right to suspend the writ — that is, to repeal an act of Congress !X Blackstone denies the right to the crown; Story confines the right to Congress. But no one has quoted the solemn judgment of John Marshall — a man of some repute in his day, and not entirely without weight 280 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT among men in our times — respecting the Constitution, which he consolidated on the foundations of Washington. The writ was moved for in behalf of Bolman and Swartwout — arrested by a military officer at New Orleans, brought to the District of Colum- bia, and there, by President Jefferson, delivered to the court, and committed for trial for treason. The right of the court to award the writ was denied, and, after argument, the court, by John Mar- shall, thus delivered the judgment on the authority to suspend the writ: "If at any time the public safety should require the suspension of the powers vested by this act in the courts of the United States, it is for the Legislature to say so. " That question depends on political considerations, on which the Legislature is to decide. Until the legislative will be expressed, this court can only see its duty, and must obey the laics. " The motion, therefore, must be granted." ^ I think hereafter it will be a stain on any lawyer's reputation to have ascribed to the President that dangerous and unconstitu- tional discretion. I presume that argument may be dispensed with after that great authority, but what then? The enemies of the government draw from that an argument to paralyze the military force of the gov- ernment. The President can .not suspend the writ of habeas corpus, therefore it can be used to discharge every body ! But is there no Congress ? or, is it less trustworthy than the President ? The bus- iness — according to those who wish to destroy the government — of the writ of Jiabeas corpus is to let traitors out ; its great merit is to turn out those who ought not to be free. I respectfully submit that they have overlooked some very material distinctions. "Who is discharged by the writ of habeas corpus ? The person who is not confined by law. If, therefore, he ought to have been con- fined, although he come up under the call of the writ, he will be sent back by the judge. An apprentice, a sailor, a soldier can not be discharged by a writ of habeas corptus. Their error is the as- suming that there can be no legal confinement except that which results from legal process. I say that there can be legal confine- ment whichjs not the subject of judicial examination and which is not by process of law ; and yet unlimited discretion does not exist in the President to arrest any person of whom he may have suspicion ; but there are rules prescribing the limits of that power FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 281 of arrest without judicial process, addressed to the President and not to the courts. That gentlemen who profess to be of the straitest sect of the Republicans should prefer to rush to the dangerous discretion of the martial law and indiscriminate au- thority in the President without limitation, rather than take the trouble to scan the settled law of the republic as it has been de- clared by its greatest lights, is one of the dangerous symptoms of the times. The President is authorized by the act of Congress to exercise military power, not against quiet people at home, nor against people who entertain treasonable sentiments, but against men in arms, against men aiding and abetting them ; that is, against men engaged actually in the insurrection, men conveying military information or military stores, men sending them provi- sions — against men doing any act of any kind to aid the actual ac- complishment of armed rebellion. The military force is directed against them. Chief Justice Taney, in a case which has become celebrated, and always unfortunate for the doubt which in some minds it has thrown over the law, previously well settled by both political and judicial authority, by his judgment in the case of Merriman, alarmed and astonished the country by declaring that there is no authority to hold a prisoner otherwise than by the leave of the courts under judicial process on judicial evidence. Jefferson Davis is now at Bull Run or Manassas Gap. In the course of a few weeks we trust the bayonets of the republic will point in that direction. (Applause.) We hope that superior numbers, great military organization, abundant military materiel, directed by superior military skill, and inspired by the love of the Constitution as well as the Union, will soon unite and destroy the Confederate army ; and when it is destroyed, if Mr. Jefferson Davis shall happen to be taken prisoner, together with 50,000 of his soldiers, we may expect a writ of habeas corpus issued from the Circuit Court of the United States at Richmond, under the protec- tion of United States bayonets, to call all the 50,000 before that court and discharge them, because there is not a magistrate's war- rant to hold them. (Laughter.) You may shoot a soldier, but if you do not shoot him you can not hold him ! Why, has every body forgotten the Dorr rebellion ! ! On a small scale, in a small but very patriotic State, men raised the arm of rebellion, and the Legislature declared " martial law." That is the first time those ill-omened words — " martial laid''' — can be found in an American 282 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT statute ; the weed has since spread and is eating out better grass. The governor understood it to mean — not discretionary despotic power above law, but the right to use military power to suppress that insurrection, and he did so ; and in the course of his efforts, he forced open a house without a warrant of search, and arrested a man who was aiding in the insurrection without a warrant. The question of the right to- do so in this case was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, and there a judgment was rendered which has acquired more significance by subsequent events than by those which brought it forth. He was arrested by military authority ; he was held without process ; he was held by a military officer. Was that a violation of the law of the land ? What does Chief Justice Taney say in that case — for it was his fortune to pronounce the judgment of the Supreme Court in that case — a judgment which has acquired more significance by recent events than by those which brought it forth. " It was a state of war, and the established government resorted to the rights and usages of war to maintain itself and to overcome the unlawful opposition. And in that state of things, the officers engaged in its military service might lawfully arrest any one who, from the information before them, they had reasonable grounds to believe was engaged in the insurrection, and might order a house to be forcibly entered and searched when there were reasonable grounds for supposing he might be there concealed. Without the power to do this, martial law and the military array of the gov- ernment would be mere parade, and rather encourage attack than repel it." No wiser words than those have been said on this delicate sub- ject. First, we learn that when military power has been author- ized by law — as Congress has authorized it now — the " military officers" might lawfully arrest — the lawful right is therefore not confined to a civil magistrate — "any One who, upon information before them" — that is, without sworn statements of any kind — without legal or sworn testimony — any one " whom they had reasonable grounds to believe" — not any one proved legally before a magistrate — " was engaged in the insurrection" — not any one of suspicious opinions, or dangerous influence, or uttering treasonable sentiments — but any one engaged in the insurrection — that is, when hostility had passed from a mental disposition into the external act of hostility ; and such persons may be arrested, not merely FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 283 ■when openly on the field in arms, but a house may without war- rant be forcibly broken open and searched, where there were not sivom but reasonable grounds to believe them concealed. The rights of the people and of the individual are all defined and guarded in this remarkable judgment; the military power is emancipated from judicial shackles and judicial blindness, and in another passage it is freed from judicial revision. Now, one step farther. The court is speaking of the precise case that we have before us — of a declaration on the part of the President of the existence of circumstances requiring the use of military force — and the question is, whether they are cognizable by the courts at all. The courts proceed according to judicial forms ; the political power does not proceed according to judicial forms ; it proceeds in an administrative manner, which is equally legal and constitutional, for the Constitution authorizes both. What was Merriman's case? He had aided to burn bridges and prevent the advance of the national troops to Washington, and was actively engaged in that most efficient method of arresting their progress. That case, then, comes within the military right of the President to make a military arrest. What does the chief justice of the United States say touching the right of the court? What was the case of the Baltimore maj^or and police commis- sioners, and their marshal of police ? They were at the head of an armed force hostile to the United States, which they had actu- ally used for hostile purposes in aid of the insurrection. They were subject to military arrest ; but $fter arrest, were they subject to the results of a judicial process for their delivery, or were they liable by law of equal dignity to be held in spite of the courts and beyond their jurisdiction, and by a right of which they were not entitled even to judge ? Eead the judgment of the court limiting- its own powers. "After the President has acted and called out the militia, is a Circuit Court of the United States authorized to inquire whether his decision was risrht ?" " If it could, then it would become the duty of the court, pro- vided it came to the conclusion that the President had decided in- correctly, to discharge those who were arrested or detained by the troops in the service of the United States. If the judicial power extends so far, the guarantee contained in the Constitution of the United States is a guarantee of anarchy, and not of -order. 28-i CONSTITUTIONAL TOWERS SUFFICIENT Yet, if this right docs not reside in the courts when the conflict is raging, if the judicial power is at that time bound to follow the decision of the political, it must bo equally bound when the con- test is over." It can not, when peace is restored, punish as offenses and crimes the act which it before recognized, and was bound to recognize, AS 'LAWFUL. A military arrest, therefore, of a person engaged in the insur- rection is not only legal, but is beyond the cognizance of the courts. It is true this judgment was rendered when President Tyler was suppressing an insurrection in a free State, and it may be thought doubtful if the same law apply to President Lincoln sup- pressing an insurrection in a slave State. The learned reader will, under Lord Coke's advice, note the diversity. There are those who think against a Southern State the gov- ernment has no rights ; there are those who think against a South- ern State there are no limits to the authority of the government. But these sentences cover the whole case ; not by reasoning on my part from the language of the Constitution, not from judges supposed to be favorable to our side of the case, not in a case made in the heat of the time and in the midst of this controversy, but in a case decided under the presidency of John Tyler — de- cided when Southerners had the possession of every department of the government ; when they had the balance of power in the Supreme Court itself; whcn.it was their power that was arrested and defied, and when they were charged to execute the law and use the military power of the United States to enforce the laws of the United States. This judgment, rendered by one, perhaps, not too friendly to the United States in this hour of peril, is now the wcrj foundation of the law of the republic ; put there in the administration of John Tyler,, as if to provide for the very case — to exclude controversy under changed circumstances. It does not say that if a man is arrested by the military authority and brought before the court, that the court, after inquiry into the jus- tification of the arrest, would remand him, but that the court has a right to inquire into the legality of his arrest. It does not say that the court is entitled to inquire by the oath of witnesses, by the process of a magistrate. It saj^s, when the President has act- ed and men arc arrested, that the courts have no right to inquire into the subject at all. FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 285 The order of the President is conclusive on the courts ; he is exercising a political discretion vested constitutionally by law in him, and for that he is responsible by impeachment in Con- gress. Now we begin to understand the power which resides within the Constitution of George Washington, as well as the limitations which, as with bands of iron, bind it down to the ne- cessities of the public service, limiting and excluding every thing like mere discretion, every thing like mere arbitrary power, and subjecting the liberty of the citizen only to the written law of the land. If, then, after the President's proclamation commanding rebels to disperse and ordering out the militia, a man arrested by the President's order, because engaged in the insurrection, apply for a habeas corpus, how shall the law be administered ? By the settled course of the courts, if he show the facts on the petition, the court will refuse the writ. But if he state a case of illegal arrest, and the court award the writ on the false suggestion, is the military officer to produce the prisoner ? Assuredly not ; his duty is to return to the court the simple fact that the person is held by the order of the President for being engaged in the insurrection. That is a legal and tech- nical answer to the writ; and the court is bound to take official notice of the proclamation declaring the existence of the insur- rection, which carries with it by law the right to use military power. What if the courts attempt to enforce the production of the pris- oner ? It is the legal duty of the officer to resist force by force. Where one is held by authority paramount to the courts, that fact is the legal return. It has been so declared by Judge M'Lean, whose loss the jurisprudence of the country will long feel and de- plore ; and the eminent tribunal of which he was at once the or- nament and pillar, by the mouth of the chief justice, has only four years ago instructed us on this momentous question. A court of Wisconsin, infected by the theories of South Caro- lina, "undertook to compel by habeas corpus the discharge of a per. son held by the United States marshal. The Supreme Court unanimously declared it " the duly of the marshal to make known to the judge or court, by a proper return, the authority by which he holds him in custody." 286 CONSTITUTIONAL FOWEKS SUFFICIENT "After the return is made, and the State judge or court judi- cially apprised that the party is in custody under the authority of the United States, they can proceed no farther ; and, consequently, it is his duty not to take the prisoner, nor suffer him to be taken before a State court or judge upon a habeas corpus, issued under State authority." *But what if the State court appeal to force ? " It would be his duty to resist it, and to call to his aid any force that might be necessary to maintain the authority of law against illicit interference." "No judicial process, -whatever form it may assume, can have any lawful authority outside of the limits of the jurisdiction of the court or judge by whom it is issued; and an attempt to en- force it beyond their boundaries is nothing less than lawless vio- lence." That is the condemnation of the proceedings in the Merriman case ; the asserted right to suspend the writ by the President was justly disregarded by the court; but the return showed a mili- tary arrest in time of insurrection, of a person engaged in it, by order of the President, and such an arrest was by law beyond the jurisdiction of the court; and the officer was not bound to obey the writ to bring up and hold him for the judgment of the court, and take the chances of adjudication for want of legal evidence, although the man might have been arrested upon secret informa- tion which would be sufficient to move an army or fight a battle upon, yet not recognized by a court of justice— it was his duty to give the court information of the authority under which he was held, and that excluded the right to inquire whether he was held rightfully or wrongfully. Now that is the precise condition, in every particular, of the President of the United States, who has seized men in arms against the government, or men who have been aiding those in arms, and is holding them pending the war. There is no hardship in hold- ing a man who is engaged in arms against the government ; and the right to determine who is in arms against the government is necessarily exclusively vested in the President when he is direct- ed by law to suppress the insurrection ; for, before that can be done, he must ascertain who is making it. lie can punish no man for treason, but he can slay thousands on the field of battle ; he can arrest no man because he has committed treason, but he may FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 287 seize and hold thousands engaged in the insurrection till it is ex- tinguished ! It is the difference between suppression of rebellion and pun- ishment for treason ; the power over persons and property inci- dent to military operations allowed by law, and usurpations of power not granted or forbidden. The President may occupy my house with armed men for de- fense, he may pull it down to prevent its sheltering the enemy, but he dare not quarter a single soldier in it without my consent, for the Constitution forbids it. lie may pull down a printing- office if required by military operations; he may, if Congress make seditious articles a crime, prosecute an editor ; but there is no power in the government to prevent him, or others for him, continuing to publish his paper, or controlling its contents by cen- sorship, for the Constitution forbids it. The property of rebel and loyal are alike subject to the sudden necessities of war; but the President, in conducting the war, has no right over property because it belongs to a rebel, more than he would have if it belonged to a loyal citizen. lie is to make war for suppression, not for punishment ; that belongs to the courts. But within the scope of warlike operations, the President, by the law of Congress, is paramount to the courts. lie is charged with a high discretionary political power, of the propriety of whose exercise the courts are incompetent to judge, as they have repeatedly declared ; the courts take the law from the political departments in all such cases. They can recognize no government unless the President has recognized it. They can entertain no question of boundary of the United States other than that rec- ognized by the political departments. They can not question the conduct of the President in declaring a state of insurrection or in ordering the militia to suppress it; and it is merely another application of the same principle which forbids them to control, arrest, or judge of the justification of any military acts done with- in the scope of the military authority confided to the President by Congress. The same law which gives the courts their juris- diction, exempts such acts of the President from their cognizance. I pray your indulgence for these dry details ; but the founda- tion-stones of the republic are not polished as the columns and cornices which glitter in the sun, and it is those deep foundations I am exploring. 288 CONSTITUTIONAL TOWERS SUFFICIENT Gentlemen of the Association, I trust that I have made myself intelligible, but I fear I have wearied you by the dryness of a mere legal discussion, before a mixed and popular audience; but we all profess to be citizens of a great and free government, now engaged in one of those rare crises that every nation has to pass through at some period of its career, and it is well that we should look to the great charter of our liberties, and elevate it, if neces- sary, in our own estimation, by contemplating the wisdom with which it has foreseen every danger, the amplitude of the powers which it has provided to deal with every contingency, and the discretion it has exhibited in confiding powers to Congress, some with limitations and some without, providing in that way for every contingency that can arise. We may very well spend an hour or two, even if it be in the laborious pursuit of a dry argu- ment, to rid our minds of an impression which has so settled into public conviction among great masses of our countrymen that the legal authority is not sufficient to deal with the existing danger. It takes away half our republicanism to feel that we put down rebels by a violation of the law. It takes away from the eleva- tion, the dignity, and the superiority of the government in dealing with them. It is impudently flung into our faces by the message of Jefferson Davis, who speaks about the tyranny of men who are assailing him. I wish the war to be conducted as a war ought to be conducted, which is to determine the life, and not only the life, but that which is more, the freedom of the American people, the reputation of republican government, its respect, its enduring pow- er, and its influence over the nations of the world. There are those abroad who would rejoice at our fall — there arc few who would not, except the oppressed of the Old World. In their name I ap- peal to you — let not the name of the republic go to Europe hum- bled by the confession of its own failure. Let it not go shorn of the glory which has made it an ever-present terror to the enemies of liberty abroad. Let it stand glittering in armor, but the armor of the law. Let it stand the emblem of the power of the people to govern themselves according to laws wisely foreseeing danger, without putting their liberties, their lives, and their honor at the discretion of men no wiser or better than themselves — dictators to supply the want of foresight in the people. (Applause.) I am as humble as any man in this assembly, but there is no man here good enough to be my master. I respect and confide in the wis- FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. 289 dom, resolution, and uprightness of President Lincoln ; but Presi- dent Lincoln is not good enough for my master. (Applause.) I will -trust him with the administration of the laws, but I will not trust him to make them, nor beyond them. I will tr ust him with all the great deposit of power that the Constitution has placed in ftiiTTaancls^— thatvast power which, when it is called forth in the magnificence of its military array, blinds the eye accustomed only to the habiliments of peace ; but I will not add to it a dictator- ship — arbitrary and discretionary powers without the guidance and above the control of written law. I protest against it in the name of republican liberty. I protest against it in the name of every limitation in the Constitution under which we live. I pro- test against it in the name of those Englishmen who defied in arms their king, because he claimed over them discretionary, unlimited power ; and of those fathers of the Constitution who in this coun- try followed in their footsteps, were lighted by their wisdom, were guided by their example, and embodied in a law paramount to the varying will of the people the necessary restrictions upon the frailties of human nature. I turn with reverence to the great Northern light of the Constitution, the Newton of this great sys- tem — which is heaven while it is order, but will be chaos if dis- cretion rule it — to guide my footsteps in this hour of darkness, and with him I read, inscribed on the foundations of the govern- ment, these cardinal principles : first, government by representa- tion ; next, that solemn declaration that the will of the majority — not of newspapers nor of public meetings — the will of the majori- to — not in a fright, not in a panic, not divined from apparent ne- cessity, but solemnly declared according to the forms of law — shall have the force of law; then, that there shall be a written Consti- tution, defining and carefully limiting the powers conferred upon the men charged to represent the people, and restricting their dis- cretion. In that great, last legacy of the great Northern states- man, when he was speaking, as it were, to future ages, and telling them, by the grandest enumeration that ever summed up a na- tion's progress, of the elements of our prosperity, our power, our advancement, and the glories of our achievements — in that great oration he thought it important to call to the minds of his fellow- citizens that these glorious results were not the offspring of mob law, or of arbitrary discretion, of despotism disguised as democra- cy, which rules across the water, or of military law, or of law made T 290 CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS SUFFICIENT for the exigency by executive usurpation, or of the law of neces- sity, or of the law of the safety of the people, but that the fountain from which all flowed was the rigid adherence to written law, to the will of the people proclaimed in constitutional forms. It was law so enacted that he proclaimed to be supreme// It was the result of a government so contrived and so administered, one that had attracted the admiration and the envy of the Old World, and was the foundation and prosperity of the New, which he celebrated; and in this his great parting legacy to his countrymen, when he prophesied the endurance of the republic, it was because these principles were its foundation, and he thought they would not be shaken. It is because these principles have been departed from that the edifice of the Constitution now reels around us. We must recur to them, cling to them, act upon them, if we would maintain the government that we have received from our fathers. It is our liberty that makes us respected and envied, powerful and glorious — our liberty of law in contrast with that which is democratic license, that mere unchecked, uncontrolled, absolute will of a floating majority, rolling over every barrier, where dema- gogues lash the people into fury in order to accomplish their am- bitious purposes. The peculiarity of the American people has al- ways been its adherence and obedience to law ; its hesitation, even under the greatest emergencies, to step across the lines of the law. It is only the revolutionary fever of this latter time that has driv- en for a moment these American ideas and these American feel- in o-s from the American heart. It is now time that we should be enabled to show that we not only have the military power to sup- press insurrection, but that we can do it clad in the panoply of law. It is only weighty to those who are not yet habituated to wear it. We have proved it on many a field ; let us not throw it off in the day of battle. The nations of Europe fail in their efforts for republican gov- ernment because they are not habituated to the restraints of law self-imposed ; they are not habituated to subordinate their will of the moment to the calm judgment which has foreseen and pro- vided for the exigencies of the case. They fail because they ad- mit the law of necessity to control the law of the land, and .leave a discretion which is despotism to provide for the emergencies of the moment. It is self-control that is the greatness of the Amer- ican people. (Applause.) IUs obedience to their own law that FOR REPRESSION OF REBELLION. £91 is their power. It is because they have declared that their Con- stitution is the salus populi ; it is because they adhere to the rule that the written law is the voice of the people ; it is because they appeal from the hour of passion to the day of calm reflection, that they have proved themselves worthy of the liberty that their fathers conquered for them. When they shall neglect to adhere to that great rule, when they shall no longer be masters over themselves, when they can not stop in a moment of passion to re- flect upon the limits they themselves have placed around their passions for their own good, and reverently bow before the holy laws, they can no longer be the peaceful, orderly, progressive, and powerful republic of Washington. Till now the current of our life has rolled on, quiet and powerful as the Gulf Stream. The storm of party strife has rippled on its surface ; the foam of pas- sion has vanished with the storm that caused it ; and the great deep, undisturbed, has rolled still, quietly, majestically, and re- flecting from its surface the image of liberty robed in law. When you shall upheave its lower depths by the earthquake of revolu- tion, you will have changed its majestic course ; you will have dried up the current of your prosperity ; you will have closed the sources of your power ; and in the place of the vanished waters will appear the lava and scoria) which strew the soil of revolu- tionary Europe. (Applause.) .CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF THOSE ENGAGED IN REBELLION. Two Letters to the Hon. Justin S. Morrill, a Representative in Congress from Vermont. Mr. Davis closely followed, and watched with interest the proceed- ings and discussions of the Thirty-seventh Congress, for a seat in which he had been defeated, under the circumstances already stated. During the debates in Congress in regard to the " Confiscation Bills," he fre- quently conferred with his former associates in Congress in relation to those measures, and to one of them he addressed the following letters : Baltimore, Md., June 6, 1862. My dear Sir, — I have followed with great interest and some surprise the course of argument in opposition to the Confiscation Bills. Their opponents seem inclined to trifle with the people, or else they have forgotten the simplest elements of law. I observe that some respectable lawyers confound the Confis- cation Bills with bills of attainder or of pains and penalties ! Congress is rightly forbidden to pass a bill of attainder ; and I would forever maintain that inhibition. But what is a bill of at- tainder ? It is a law performing the office of a judgment. It is a Legis- lature doing the work of a judge. It is an act of Congress or of Parliament, declaring a particular person guilty of a specified act, and ordering his punishment. The passage of the law places the person just where a conviction and judgment of a court places him ; nothing remains but execution. It is ridiculous to call the bills before Congress bills of attain- der. They have no one of the penalties of a bill of attainder, and the word can be applied to them in no sense ever recognized in a law-book. They who do so apply the word are either ill-inform- ed, or invoke a prejudice to do the work of argument. The bills before Congress name no particular persons, therefore they -punish nobody. They declare that certain acts, committed CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY, ETC. 293 after their passage, shall be punished by confiscation ; but, till the act is committed, no one can be declared guilty of it ; they do not therefore attaint any one. A bill of attainder relates to the jiast, and nothing but punishment remains after its passage. The bills before Congress relate to the future — declare the future conse- quences of future acts, and leave both the person and the fact to be ascertained after the law declaring the punishment shall have passed. What excuse is there to confound such a law with a bill of at- tainder? a legislative judgment on a past act with a legislative penalty on a future act? The same gentlemen invoke against the bills the clause of the Constitution which declares that " Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason ; but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted." But what has that clause to do with laws which confessedly provide for confiscation without conviction of the person for treason. The most plausible objection to the con- fiscation laws is that they do not make the forfeiture dependent on a previous conviction ; it is therefore clear that the clause which defines the consequences of a conviction of the person can have no bearing on a law which prescribes other modes of ascer- taining and enforcing a forfeiture. It may be that those methods are forbidden, and, if so, the law must fail of execution ; but it is irrelevant to quote a rule of judgment defining and limiting the consequences of a conviction for treason against a law which con- templates neither conviction nor judgment for treason. It is certain that Congress can pass no law whereby a person convicted of treason can be sentenced to forfeit his property, be- yond his life, as a consequence of the conviction. Such a law would be void. Such a judgment would vest no title in the gov- ernment, and the heirs of the owner could eject any one claiming his property under the United States. But the provision does not say Congress shall not make for- feiture the penalty of any act, nor even that Congress may not make forfeiture a penalty of treason itself; it merely says that forfeiture beyond the life shall not be one of the consequences of a conviction of the person for treason. Now the pending bills do not connect confiscation and convic- tion of the person for any crime, still less for treason. 294 CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF This clause therefore, whatever it meant and whatever be its effect has no relation to bills such as those reported by Mr. Eliot. That clause does not prove Mr. Eliot's bills to be unconstitutional. Is there any other clause of the Constitution which forbids such legislation? It seems to me the lawyers arc especially at fault when they refer to the provisions relating to the trial of all crimes by jury. No person can be convicted of any crime but by a jury; but these bills do not contemplate any conviction of any person, any proceeding against the person whatever. Still less can any argument be deduced from the fifth amend- ment, declaring that " no person shall be held to answer for any capital or other infamous crime, unless on presentment of a grand jury," etc. ; " nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ;" for no one is "held to answer" under these laws at all; and the question is whether this mode of depriving them of property is not a due process of laic for that purpose. There are various processes of law for depriving persons of life, liberty, and property, and one method does not exclude another method, but each is good in its particular ease, while some arc for- bidden, and therefore are unconstitutional in all cases. A bill of attainder and an ex post facto law are forbidden. No person can be held to answer for any crime unless on the presentment of a grand jury, nor tried otherwise than by a jury of the State and district, If, therefore, Congress pass a bill of attainder against Jefferson Davis, or should enact that a Court of Admiralty should try and convict lor murder, without a jury, or indictment by a grand jury, that law would be unconstitutional, for it is forbidden. It is a trial and a conviction without due process of law, and death under it is murder, and imprisonment under it an illegal violation of the liberty o\' the citizen. But it would be a gross error to say that no one can be deprived of liberty or life otherwise than un- der criminal prosecution, for then the President has murdered many men in the field, and enslaved many men in the military prisons. For men in arms, a bullet is due process of law; seizure by military power is due process of law; they arc not conviction, nor trial, nor punishment of the persons ; they as assuredly de- prive them of life or of liberty as a conviction and a sheriff, and they are just as legal as conviction and hanging. So there are methods of depriving persons of property which THOSE ENGAGED IN REBELLION. 295 are not connected with criminal proceedings against the person, and provisions which, define the modes of proceedings against the person, and limit the consequences of such proceedings, have no relation to processes of law not against the person, which yet do deprive the person of his property. Taxation deprives the person of his property, not by any ju- dicial process, hut by an administrative process; yet it is a process <>f hi to, essential to the existence of the government. It is just as rational to quote the prohibition against taking private property for public use without compensation, to prove the unconstitution- ality of taxation, as to invoice the prohibitions against making confiscation a consequence of conviction, to prove that there could be no confiscation without conviction. If taxes be not paid, the failure is followed by seizure and sale, without judicial process; for a small amount of taxes a large- estate may be sold ; and that is a consequence annexed to the ille- gal act of failing to pay the amount assessed. Not unfrequently a percentage is added for delay, and levied with the principal of the tax itself. "When the sheriff, or the marshal, or the collector sells the property for taxes, that is dice process of law, and the change of property is in the nature of a penalty, and the expenses of the proceedings are veritable forfeitures for illegal acts. It is, therefore, a wholly unfounded assumption that property is liable to be taken for the defaults of the owner only upon or after conviction for an offense by jury and court. Yet it is this confusion between criminal proceedings against the person and proceedings against property because of a person's acts, which alone lends plausibility to the argument against the Confiscation Bills. But, so far from being a new method of proceeding, intend* d to evade the securities thrown around the person against criminal prosecutions, it is one of the oldest forms of proceeding known to our laws. The slightest examination of the revenue laws of the United States will show that, from the foundation of the government, for- feitures for illegal acts have always been enforced in the court-, irrespective of the conviction or prosecution of the guilty person. The fact has been investigated by the judge without a jury, and the confiscation enforced for eighty years, without any one dream- ing that citizens were being punished without cither grand or petty jury. 296 CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF The act of 1799 declares goods entered under fraudulent in- voices shall be forfeited ; and the forfeiture is enforced by pro- ceeding against the goods, and not the person committing the fraud. Surely the men of 1799 knew what their Constitution meant. By various acts of Congress, goods imported in certain foreign vessels are forfeited, together with the vessel, and the forfeiture is enforced against the goods and vessel, and not by conviction of the owner or importers. By our navigation acts, licensed vessels are forfeited for being employed in the foreign trade, or when found using a forged or altered license, or if sold to one not a citizen ; and all these for- feitures are enforced against the vessel directly, and not by con- viction of the owner whose property is confiscated. It is a highly penal offense to sell spirituous liquors in the In- dian country, and the law not merely punishes the person who carries liquor there by fine on conviction, but the boats, stores, places of deposit, and packages of the trader are directed to be searched, and if liquor or wine be found there, all the goods, boats, packages, etc., of the trader shall be forfeited to the United States; and the forfeiture is enforced, not by conviction of the person, but by seizure and condemnation of the articles confiscated in pro- ceedings against them. The manner of proceeding for forfeiture under the revenue laws is expressly extended to confiscations un- der the Indian trading laws. The laws for suppressing the slave-trade abound in pointed illustrations. Every person concerned in the trade is declared guilty of a crime punishable by indictment, the penalty varying from a heavy fine to death, according to the acts committed ; and side by side with these penalties, to be enforced by indictment and conviction, are classes of forfeiture to be enforced by libel against the thing- forfeited. The forfeiture of confiscation depends on the fact of a crime committed, but not on the conviction of the person for the crime. The fact is ascertained by the appropriate tribunal in either case independently ; and it is quite possible that the crim- inal may be acquitted while the vessel may be confiscated. No citizen can hold any title or interest in any vessel engaged in the slave-trade; and if he do, it is forfeited by proceedings against the vessel, and the owner is liable to a penalty besides. THOSE ENGAGED IN 11EBELLION. 297 The United States vessels are authorized to seize vessels engaged in the traffic, and the vessel and every thing found on her is for- feited except the slaves. They can not be claimed by their own- er, even though really slaves by the law of the owner's country. It would seem that the slaves are freed by the law ; for the owner can not claim them, and no one else can show a title to them. These laws do not apply merely to the African slave-trade, but the same penalties and forfeitures attach to transporting from Bra- zil or Cuba into the United States persons who arc slaves by the laws of those countries. The owner loses his vessel, the master his slaves on the vessel, and the persons engaged in the traffic or in navigating the vessel commit a crime for which they are punishable on conviction ; but their conviction is not essential to the condemnation of the vessel or the discharge of the slaves. In some cases, persons engaged in the slave-trade are guilty of piracy, and suffer death ; yet in those, as in other cases, the vessel and cargo are confiscated by process against them, and wholly irrespective of any conviction of the guilty persons. The precedents of the slave-trade laws arc of special interest in relation to the confiscation of the slaves of rebels. The necessary form of confiscation is emancipation. The temper of the country would not tolerate the sale of slaves by the United States ; still less would it tolerate the exemption of this species of property from any consequences the law may attach to any property of rebels. Slave property is the pretext of the rebellion, and the chief instrument by which the revolutionists have coerced submis- sion to their will. Sound policy requires that a weapon of such power be broken or wrested from the hands of the enemies of the government, and nothing ought to arrest the blow but the plain prohibitions of the Constitution; for subordination to the supreme law is the condition of national existence. Fortunately, its wise provisions strip the government of no power which a free govern- ment ought to wield ; least of all does it forbid the confiscation of slaves, and emancipation is an inseparable incident of owner- ship. Of course, they who call confiscation laws bills of attainder, will call emancipation of confiscated slaves abolition of slavery in the States by Congress. .But no loyal people will confound the release of the government's title in the slaves confiscated with a prohibition against holding any slave in the State. But Mr. Eliot's bill is in one particular wholly indefensible. It 298 CONFISCATION OF THE PROFEETY OF violates all constitutional principles of American law in requiring persons to prove their innocence. It places the title to negro prop- erty of loyal people at the mercy of the government, for it strips the owner of all power to prevent confiscation unless he can prove that he has not aided the rebellion, and that it is impossible for any one to prove. Eequire an oath that he has not been so en- gaged, but do not stain American law with a provision that a man shall be presumed guilty ! ! The bill is defective in another particular. It gives the frced- man no legal protection. He can, the bill says, plead the law; but the master will never sue him, but seize him. The freedman must be the actor, and the law gives him no standing in court. The United States is in duty bound to extend to him the habeas cor- pus in a United States Court which now no law gives him; and if these be not done, the act of emancipation will give no real free- dom, but will be merely a source of endless confusion. Men freed by the law of the special session are now suffering in Maryland for want of such provision. The slave -trade laws were passed in 1794, 1800, 1807, 1818, 1819, and 1820, in the administrations of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Monroe. They involve every principle now as- sailed in the Confiscation Bills, from the confiscation of property for criminal acts of the owner, without conviction of the guilty person, by process of law against the thing and not against the person, to the freeing of slaves for the violation of law by their owners. It is therefore frivolous to assail these laws on the ground of unconstitutionality. If any principle is settled by the uniform practice of the government, it is this principle of confiscation for criminal acts by direct process against the property confiscated, and wholly without regard to the conviction or prosecution of the guilty person. This review of Congressional enactments may well increase our astonishment at the hardihood of the assailants of these laws. They treat the precedents of the founders of the government with no more respect than they do the Constitution they made. Their objections to the bills are plausible only when the language of the Constitution is perverted and misapplied ; and that distortion can only escape exposure by carefully abstaining from all con- sideration of the contemporary exposition of the Constitution by its authors. THOSE ENGAGED IN REBELLION. 299 It appears, therefore, from this investigation : I. That there is no prohibition in the Constitution against mak- ing confiscation a penalty for any crime. II. There is nothing in the Constitution which makes confisca- tion dependent on the conviction of the person on indictment. III. There is nothing in the Constitution which limits all con- fiscations to the life of the guilty person. IV. The only clause relating to the subject simply forbids Con- gress to make forfeiture beyond the life of the convict a conse- quence of conviction for treason, V. But it does not say that Congress may not by law confiscate absolutely the whole property of persons who do the acts speci- fied in the bills reported by Mr. Eliot, by proceedings against the property, and not in consequence of a conviction of the person. VI. And the whole course of legislation of the country has sanctioned the distinction hy laws passed under the auspices of the fathers of the Constitution. If any one ask, Why prohibit confiscation in pursuance of con- viction, and allow it without conviction? I reply, The burden of showing the unconstitutionality of the law lies in those who affirm it. They can not defeat it by show- ins; that the Constitution has forbidden it in cases not now con- templated. The question is what the Constitution says against confiscation tuithout conviction of the person ; and I say it is silent. It limits confiscation as the consequence of conviction, and there it stops. It is possible a reason may be found for this limitation in con- nection with a conviction, in the spirit which dictated the defini- tion of treason while other crimes were left to the definition of Congress. Treason had been the pretext of many bloody judicial murders in English history ; constructive treasons were the contrivances of jealous tyrants, or greedy applicants, or fierce opponents. To limit the crime to open war, to require double proof, to re- move the temptations of cupidity from among the motives of pros- ecution of the person, were thought correctives to the political or personal passions which might prompt unjust or revengeful pros- ecutions to the death. The temptation of covetousness was re- moved when conviction could involve forfeiture only between judgment and execution ! 800 CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF But a confiscation enforced by other process of law than a con- viction of the person followed by a bloody end was subject to no such objection, and it was justly left to the wisdom and modera- tion of Congress for emergencies like the present. It is quite certain that the restriction of confiscation in conse- quence of conviction and attainder to the life of the person con- victed is not restricted to lands, and still more certainly has no reference to estates tail. They were liable at common law to for- feiture by attainder under their form of conditional fees, though singularly enough a distinguished senator assumes the contrary ; they were exempted for a while by the construction of the statute "De donis conditionalibus,"but lost their exemption in the reign ofnenryVIII. Such attempts to escape a constitutional difficulty merely dis- credit all defense of the Confiscation Bills. The Constitution .means just what it says, and the opponents of confiscation try to make it mean what it does not say. Leave that style of argument to them, in common with those strict con- structionists who have found the denial of powers to Congress the most effectual way of leaving the government disarmed and pow- erless in the face of rebellion in arms. The real explanation of the restriction, as well as of the careful definition of treason, I think I have above given. It indicates the desire to exclude political jwrsecution, but not to deprive the gov- ernment of any power essential to the maintenance of the govern- ment against the temptation of ambition or the violence of insub- ordinate factions. It is quite certain that neither of the provisions respecting trea- son prevents the punishment of acts which amount to treason un- der other names and free from those restrictions. The traitors who burned the Maryland bridges and shot the Massachusetts men on the 19th of April were guilty of treason, but they were also guilty of resisting the laws of the United States, and of a riot, and of obstructing mail routes, and for any of those crimes any punishment, any confiscation may be constitutionally imposed as' the consequence of the judgment, and one witness may prove them. Still, the constitutional provision is a salutary admonition in favor of moderation specially suited to these times. Very sincerely your friend, Henry Winter Davis. Hon. Justin S. Morrill, Washington. CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF 3Q1 Baltimore, Md., June 15, 1862. My dear Sir, — In the hasty note of the 6th of June, I singu- larly enough forgot to mention the most pointed and conclusive authority for confiscation by emancipation. The laws of the United States in the District of Columbia pro- hibited the importation of slaves for sale or residence, declared the slave imported free, and punished the importer by fine. These laws were adopted by Congress from the laws of Vir- ginia and Maryland. They have been repeatedly enforced in both those States. Every gentleman practicing'in the courts of the district has enforced the freedom vested by those laws. I have myself, in more than one instance, successfully asserted the claim before the courts of the District and of Virginia, and the Supreme Court has sustained, in repeated instances, the validity of the law. The most recent case that I recall is that of Rhodes vs. Bell (2 Howard, 397), decided in 1844. Those are old laws, passed in the good old times, before men were smitten with madness. But the compromise acts of Mr. Clay, passed in 1850, embody the same principle. The law of 1850 forbidding the introduction of slaves into the District of Columbia for sale, declared the slave so imported liberated and free. No greater name than Mr. Clay can be cited on any con- stitutional question, and the name of President Fillmore ought surely to satisfy the most timid of conservatives. Never were laws more keenly contested, more gravely considered, or adopted by abler men than the famous compromise acts of 1850 ; and it would seem that a Republican Congress might safely err in com- pany with the men of 1850, than be right with the doubtful friends or secret foes of the republic in 1862. These laws and these judgments of the courts under them dis- pose of the whole question of confiscation by emancipation, with- out indictment and conviction of the guilty person, but by civil process on behalf of the person freed for the master's illegal act. The process for enforcing the freedom of the slave was by suit in the name of the negro against the owner for freedom, in the form of an ordinary action of trespass, and the title to freedom was vested by operation of law immediately on the consummation of the act of forfeiture, and the suit was merely the judicial form of authenticating the title the law had vested. 302 THOSE ENGAGED IN REBELLION. If you sec fit to publish this note in confirmation and illustra- tion of the views formerly presented, you are at liberty to do so. Had I thought of this case, so very familiar in my legal experience and in that of every gentleman of the bar in this region, I should have spared you a long dissertation by this decisive authority. Very sincerely your friend, H. Winter Davis. * Hon. Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont. THE DEMOCRATIC HUE AND CRY A SHAM.— CONFISCATION AND EMANCIPATION. On the 30th of October, 18C2, Mr. Davis addressed a very large meet- ing in Concert Hall, at Newark, New Jersey, on the condition of the country, and directed his argument especially against the "Peace and Kccognition" party, then growing up, and threatening to carry the North- ern elections. In the course of his remarks (of which only an incom- plete account has been taken or published) he said : "In arms, they (the rebels) will defy you; disarmed, they will beg for terms. But there are persons who are opposed to waging a war of subjugation ! With the usual cunning of friends of trai- tors, they attempt to delude you into the supposition that because the South may be beaten in arms, therefore it will be reduced to slavery. That is at its option. If it shall persistently refuse to accept the benefits of free government under the Constitution of the United States, then the question is presented to us, If men per- versely refuse to govern themselves under our laws, whether we shall therefore sacrifice our nation and our independence, permit anarchy because of their refusal, or govern them by law ? The question will be then, Shall we be destroyed, and the government broken into a divided territory, or shall we, when there is no other way, subject and keep in subjection those who will neither govern themselves under the laws nor submit to them ? I have no hesi- tation in saying, put what meaning you please on subjection, that their subjection means my freedom." ltcferring to the threats then made that the army would rebel if General M'Clel- lan were removed from command, he said : "Democrats tell us that they alone can carry on a successful war. But the War of 1812 had Mr. Clay for its civil leader, and General Scott for one of its military leaders, and neither of them was thought to be much of a Democrat. We then had an Indian war, and that was managed by General Ilarrison. Then came the Mexican War ; and the civil mismanagement of it was done 30-1 THE DEMOCRATIC HUE AND CRY A SHAM. by Mr. Polk, while what was done in the field by military chiefs, who won it, was done by Scott and Taylor. " The nearest approach to a war conducted by Democrats is the present rebellion. They got it up, they began it, and the generals now in highest command on both sides are Democrats. Whether they, or either of them, have been successful up to this time, you can judge as well as I. "And I will say, on my own account, although it may not be popular to say it, that in my opinion slowness is not the way to prostrate this rebellion. And say what you please of ' military science,' I think the audacity and perversity of Zachary Taylor at Buena Vista would have stamped out this rebellion a year ago." Mr. Davis then referred to the Democratic clamor about habeas corpus, and re- called the case of General Jackson at New Orleans, of Jefferson in Wilkinson's case, of General M'Clcllan's arrest of the Maryland Legislature, and of the late proceed- ings in Baltimore by Generals Dix and Wool, all Democitits. "All such hue and cry was a sham. They mean to stop the war. These men are insidiously referring to particular instances of interference with rights, which, indeed, are, in my judgment, il- legal and unnecessary, and hereafter to be rebuked, but which can ■ not now be rebuked without endangering the public cause and the safety of all. " Oh ! but they say the President is an ' Abolitionist.' He and his party have abolished slavery in the District. Do they mean to re-establish it there ? If so, let us know it ; if not, why howl ? ' Oh ! but it is a great outrage upon private rights ; and the Proc- lamation ! — it tends to disturb and overthrow all the foundations of society in the Southern States !' Suppose it does. Are we, at this time, to prevent any such disaster which they, the rebels alone, have rendered possible ? I have my difficulties about the Proc- lamation, but not upon their grounds. Their objection is not that it is unconstitutional, not that it is illegal, but that it is dangerous to their friends, and our enemies, in the South. And on those grounds on which they oppose it I am in favor of it. ' Unconsti- tutional!' 'illegal!' grant it. ' Imprudent !' concede it. I always like to concede every thing they say, and then deduce the proper consequences from that with which they attempt to deceive the people. Suppose it is unconstitutional — it is an unconstitutional act that hurts no loyal State. Grant that it is illegal — its illegal- ity does not touch any man in any State not now in rebellion.'''' CONFISCATION AND EMANCIPATION. 305 Referring to the Emancipation Proclamation, he said : " If that proclamation is to be effectual, it must have the force of law — it must have the force of a national guarantee — not mere- ly of the President's intention. Those who are to be emancipated thereby must know that they will be sustained in their refusal to