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STATE OF THE UNION. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OP 
 
 I ^" 
 
 HON. SHERRARD CLEMENS, OF VIRGINIA, 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 22, 1861. 
 
 The House having under consideration the report from 
 the select committee of thirty-three— 
 
 Mr. CLEMENS said: 
 
 Mr. Speaker: For two years and more, my 
 voice has rarely resounded in this Hall. On ques- 
 tions of high debate my vote has even been want- 
 ing. Contending with physical anguish, on a 
 bed of languishment and disease, the dependent 
 mind could be but wearily exercised. 1 know, 
 sir, I have done nothing worthy of the high place 
 to which I have been so generously called. 1 
 know I have not justified the expectations of the 
 noble constituency whose sympathy has soothed, 
 and whose support has smoothed , the thorny path 
 which sickness always brings. Sacred silence is, 
 perhaps, the proper "meed for these sacred mat- 
 ters; but I would feign believe, that, by a benign 
 ordination of God, at the very period when my 
 services are needed by my people most, I have, 
 in the precious boon of renovated health, the power 
 to represent them. I would speak in their cause, this 
 day, living, as they do, upon the very confines of 
 what may be hostile confederacies. I would speak 
 as one who has never known anything from them 
 but the beneficence with which they have sus- 
 tained me , and thegoodofHcesby which they have 
 overflowed my heart with gratitude. Sir, I would 
 not speak in passion. It befits not the solemn 
 and portentous issues of this hour. We are in the 
 midst of great events. We are making history. 
 We may be in the dying days of this Republic; 
 and I should undo my deeds, I should unknow 
 my knowledge, before I would, as the traveler in 
 the Alps, utter, even in a whisper, one word which 
 might bring down the avalanche upon the quiet 
 homes of my people. I would speak as a south- 
 ern man, identified by birth, by education, by 
 residence, by interest, by property, by affection, 
 with her population. Sir, on a bayou of the 
 Mississippi, reposes now in quiet the inheritance 
 of my children — an inheritance which, even in 
 slaves, amounts to one half of the whole number 
 in all the eleven Bounties which compose my con- 
 gressional district in Virginia. I would speak as 
 a western Virginian, and as the custodian of the 
 
 property of those children, who are not old enough 
 to know the peril to which it is exposed by those 
 who are riding on the very crest of the popular 
 wave, but who are yet destined to sink in the 
 very trough of the sea, to a depth so unfathom- 
 able that a bubble will never rise to mark the spot 
 where they went so ignomiuiously down ! Well 
 may those who have inaugurated the revolution 
 which is now stalking over the land cry out, with 
 uplifted hands, for peace, and deprecate the effu- 
 sion of blood. It was the inventor of the guillo- 
 tine who was its first unresisting victim; and the 
 day may not be far off before we may find those 
 among our own people who will be compelled to 
 rely upon the magnanimity of the very popu- 
 lation they have outraged and deceived. The au- 
 thors of revolutions have often been their vic- 
 tims. 
 
 Sir, at this hour, I have no heart to enter into 
 the details of this argument, or to express the in- 
 dignant emotions which rise to my lips and plead 
 for utterance. Before God, and in my inmost con- 
 science, I believe that slavery will be crucified, if 
 this unhappy controversy ends in a dismember- 
 mentof the Union. Sir, ifnotcrucified, it will carry 
 the death rattle in its throat. I may be a timid 
 man; I may not know what it is to take up arms 
 in my own defense. It remains to be seen, how- 
 ever, whether treason can be carried out with the 
 same facility itcan be plotted and arranged. There 
 is a holy courage among the minority in every 
 slave State, that may be for the time overwhelmed. 
 Lazarus is not dead, but sleepeth. Ere long, the 
 stone will be rolled away from the mouth of the 
 tomb, and we shall have all the glories of a new 
 resurrection. 
 
 Sir, who has forgotten that, among the clans of 
 Scotland, beacon fires could be lit, by concerted 
 signals, leaping, for a time, from mountain crag 
 to mountain crag, in living volumes of flame, yet 
 expiring even in its own fierceness and sinking 
 into ashes, as the faggots were consumed? This 
 maybe likened to a "rebellion, such as political 
 leaders may sometimes prompt for a brief hour; 
 but the fires burn with the faggots, and all is cold 
 
t.^ 
 
 
 and dark again. There is as much contrast be- 
 tween such a movement and a real uprising among 
 the masses for their violated rights, as there is 
 between Bottom the weaver and Snug the joiner, 
 who can " roar you as gently as any sucking 
 dove;" and " coo you an 'twere any nightingale.^' 
 One is the stage trick of a political harlequin ysVhe 
 other a living reality. The one is a fitful and lurid 
 flame; the other, a prairie on fire, finding, in ev'e'ry 
 step of its progress, food for its all-ravening maw. 
 
 Sir, in this exigency, before this political con- 
 spiracy, I may stand alone with my colleague 
 from the Norfolk district, [Mr. Millson,] who 
 has more political sagacity than generally falls to 
 the lot of mortal men. Let it be even so. I seek 
 no office. My political race is voluntarily run. 
 History will record the proceedings of this tur- 
 bulent period; and time, the gentle but infallible 
 arbiter of all things earthly, will decide the truth. 
 Cruel words may be borne, in the idea that the 
 day is not far distant when there will be charita- 
 ble speeches, and cool, second thoughts, and the 
 revulsion, which always follows the whipped syl- 
 labub of passion. Here I take my stand ! 
 
 Sir, we live in an age of political paradoxes. 
 Broad, expansive love of country, has become 
 a diseased sentimentality. Patriotism has been 
 transformed into a starveling birdling, clinging 
 with unfledged wings around the nest of twigs 
 where it was born. A statesman no\o must not 
 only 
 
 " Narrow his mind, 
 And to party give up what was meant for mankind," 
 
 but he must become as submissive as a blind 
 horse in a bark mill, to every perverted opinion, 
 which sits, whip in hand, on the revolving shaft, 
 at the end of which he is harnessed, and meekly 
 travels. To be considered a diamond of the first 
 water, he must stand in the Senate house of his 
 country, and in the very face of a forbearing peo- 
 ple, glory in being a traitor and a rebel. He must 
 solemnly proclaim thedeathof thenationto which 
 he has sworn allegiance, and, with the grim sto- 
 lidity of an undertaker, invite its citizens to their 
 own funeral. He must dwarf and provincialize 
 his patriotism to the State on whose local passions 
 he thrives, to the county where he practices court, 
 or to the city where he flaunts in all the meretri- 
 cious dignity of a Doge of Venice. He can take 
 an oath to support the Constitution of the United 
 States, but he can enter with honor into a con- 
 spiracy to overthrow it. He can, under the sanc- 
 tity of the same oath, advise the seizure of forts 
 and arsenals and dock-yards and ships and money 
 belonging to the Union, whose officer he is, and 
 find a most loyal and convenient retreat in State 
 authority and State allegiance. He is ready to 
 laugh in your face when you tell him that, be- 
 fore he was "muling and puking in his nurse's 
 arms," there lived a very ooscure person by the 
 name of George Washington, and who, before he 
 died, became eminent, by perpetrating the immor- 
 tal joke of advising the people of the United 
 States that "it is of infinite moment that we 
 should properly estimate the immense value of our 
 national Union; that we should cherish a cordial, 
 habitual, and immovable attachment to it; that we 
 should watch for its preservation with jealous 
 
 anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest 
 a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; 
 and indignantly frown upon the first dawning of 
 every attempt to alienate any portion of our coun- 
 try from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties 
 which now link together the various parts." 
 
 Sir, that great man penetrated, as with the 
 acumen of a seer, into the crowntng bane of this 
 disastrous period, when he warned his country- 
 men against the consequences of geographical 
 parties. Extremes in the North and extremes in 
 the South have at last met. Parties have been 
 organized and carried on by systematic perver- 
 sions of each other's aims and objects. In the 
 North it has beren represented that the South de- 
 sired and intended to monopolize with slave labor 
 all the public territory; to drive out free labor; 
 to convert every free State into common ground 
 for the recapture of colored persons as slaves who 
 were free; and to put the Federal Government, in 
 all its departments, under the control of a slave 
 oligarchy. These and all other stratagems that 
 could be resorted to to arouse antagonistic feel- 
 ings were wielded with turbulent and tumultuous 
 passion. As we planted, so we reap. Now, 
 that victory has been obtained by the Republican 
 party, and the Government must be administered 
 upon national policy and principles, the fissures 
 in the ground hitherto occupied become apparent; 
 and hence there must necessarily be a large de- 
 fection in its ranks among the more ultra of its 
 adherents, who are, as a general thing, ideal, 
 speculative, and not practical men. 
 
 Out of power, a party is apt to be radical; vest 
 it with power, and it becomes conservative. This 
 is the ordeal through which the Republican, like 
 all other parties, is now passing; and it is to be 
 jj hoped, for the peace of the country, it will result 
 II in the triumph of practical and national, rather 
 | j than ideal policy and sectional measures. Herein 
 jj consists the almost insuperable difficulty of com- 
 i] ing to any feasible adjustment upon the existing 
 |! discontents. The bulk of politicians, North and 
 South, are bound by a past record and past pro- 
 fessions. They are thinking all the while of what 
 Mrs. Grundy will say. The people understand 
 the cause of the difficulty, and are moving. If 
 they could interpose, the country might yet be 
 saved. 
 
 Sir, what is that difficulty now; what has it 
 always been? I appeal to every unprejudiced 
 man's experience to say, whether it has not been 
 that, in the hands of ultraists North and ultraists 
 South, the slaveholder has been used as a shut- 
 tledore, and, for purposes utterly dissimilar, has 
 been banded from South Carolina to Massachu- 
 setts, and from Massachusetts to South Carolina, 
 until now the last point of endurance has been 
 reached. Every virulent word uttered North 
 has been sent South, and the South has responded 
 in the same virulent spirit. Nay, the Abolitionist 
 himself has been' granted an audience in every 
 southern city , at every southern political meeting, 
 and the most violent, insulting, agrarian speeches 
 repeated in the hearing even of slaves themselves. 
 Is it not a humiliation to confess, that the very 
 people who would burn in effigy, if not at the 
 stake, a postmaster who would dare to distribute 
 
a copy of ultra abolition speeches, honor as among 
 their chief defenders, the candidates who can quote 
 the most obnoxious passages from all ? Who has 
 made of southern politics, a vast hotbed, for the 
 propagation of abolition sentiments, but ultra 
 southern men themselves? Who has indoctrin- 
 ated the northern people with dissimilar senti- 
 ments, expressed by the most ultra southern men, 
 but northern zealots themselves ? 
 
 The population of the two great sections of this 
 nation stand, therefore, towards each other, at this 
 moment, like encamped armies, waiting for the 
 command to battle. The patriot plans, deplores, 
 appeals, deplores and plans and appeals again, find- 
 ding but little succor in the only^quarter whence , 
 succor can come. The Abolitionist revels in the j 
 madness of the hour. He sees the crack in the ice- 
 berg at last. For him the desert and the battle field 
 are both alike welcome. He kneels down in the 
 desert with the camels, for a speck in the far distant 
 horizon shows the simoon is coming. He looks 
 into the future as into a dark cloud in the morn- 
 ing, when nothing sings but the early lark. Soon 
 history, like the light of that eastern horizon, will j 
 curtain back that cloud, and paint in blood's rud-i 
 diest tints, field and forest, hamlet and city, the | 
 very mountains, to their pine crowned tops, and i 
 the great o^ean itself, as an ensanguined flood, 
 where brother contending with brother, shall find 
 a nameless sepulcher! 
 
 No anaconda, with his filthy folds around the i 
 banyan tree, ever threw out the venomous tongue, 
 and yearned with fiercer passion for the crushed 
 bone and the pulpy flesh-, than he now expectant 
 of his prey, yearns for the long postponed repast. 
 Well may he cry that the day of jubilee has come. ! 
 Well may he marshal his hosts to the last great 
 war of sections and of races. Defeated, stigma- j 
 tized, insulted, scoffed at, ostracized, gibbeted by 
 his countrymen, he now gloats over the most 
 fearful of all retributions. His deadliest foes 
 hitherto in the South, have now struck hands in 
 a solemn league of kindred designs, and with 
 exultant tramp, stolidly march, adorned like a 
 Roman ox, with the garlands of sacrifice, to their 
 eternal doom. 
 
 Sir, is it necessary to proclaim what Mat is? 
 At this moment, when a sudden frenzy has struck 
 blind the southern people, it cannot even be real- 
 ized; and I may be scoffed and hooted at with 
 that perversity in ill which masses of men some- 
 times display who are intent on their own inev- 
 itable destruction. Sir, when 1 look at my coun- 
 try, its present desolate condition , and its possible 
 fate, I am almost ready to close the quick accents 
 of speech, and allow the heart to sink down voice- 
 less in its despair! Listen to the words of Wil- 
 liam Lloyd Garrison, and tell me what answer 
 you will give to them: 
 
 " At last the covenant with death is annulled and the 
 agreement with hell broken, by the action of South Carolina 
 herself, and ere long by all the slaveholding States, for their 
 doom is one. Hail the approaching jubilee, ye millions who 
 are wearing the galiing chains of slavery, for assuredly the 
 day of your redemption draws nigh, bringing liberty to you 
 and salvation to the whole land." 
 
 Hear him again: 
 
 "Justice and liberty, God and man, demand the disso- 
 lution of this slaveholding Union, and the formation of a 
 
 northern confederacy, in which slaveholders will stand be- 
 fore the law as felons, and be treated as pirates." 
 
 Hear him again, in a voice so familiar that it 
 sounds like one which ere-while rung out from 
 the portico of the Mills House, in Charleston: 
 
 " In all this, what State so prepared to lead as the old 
 Bay State? She has already made it a penal offense to 
 help to execute a law of the Union. I want to see the of- 
 ficers of the State brought in collision with those of the 
 Union. Up, then ! up with the flag of disunion ! that we 
 may have a free and glorious Union of our own ! How 
 stands Massachusetts at this hour in reference to the Union ? 
 Just where she ought to be, in an attitude of open hostil- 
 ity." 
 
 Sir, there is an old maxim that it is lawful and 
 wise to learn from our enemies. There is an- 
 other man in the North — Wendell Phillips — of 
 great pertinacity of purpose, of a heart like a vase 
 filled with fire, of vast powers of illustration and 
 declamation; and to whom the passions of the 
 multitude are as clay is in the hands of a cunning 
 molder. The senior Senator from New York 
 [Mr. Seward] has an intellect of high culture, 
 and his speeches are philosophical essays, mod- 
 eled after the idealism and style of Burke; but his 
 voice is harsh and guttural, and his spirit cold and 
 impassive. Phillips is the man for the multitude. 
 Seward for the closet. Since this session com- 
 menced he has had an opportunity to make him- 
 self immortal. Intrepidity of soul in a statesman 
 carries with it the victories of peace, which the 
 military chieftain gains in war. The panoply of 
 political martyrdom, in this age, might have been 
 a species of deification in the next. The accepted 
 moment has passed; and I am fearful it will come 
 to him never, never more. The dissolution of the 
 Union dethrones the Republican party, disrobes 
 it of power, and makes Garrison and Phillips, 
 and their confederates, the absolute dictators of 
 the North. 
 
 And what says Phillips; 
 
 " We are disunionists, not from any love of separate con- 
 federacies, or as ignorant of the thousand evils that spring 
 from neighboring and quarrelsome States ; but we would get 
 rid of this Union, to get rid of slavery." 
 
 Hear him again. He used the following lan- 
 guage: 
 
 "All hail, disunion! Sacrifice everything <bi the Union? 
 God forbid ! Sacrifice everything to keep riouth Carolina 
 in it ? Rather build a bridge of gold, and pay her toll over 
 it. Let her march off with banners and trumpet 
 will speed the parting guest. i hot not stand upon the 
 order of her going, but go at once. Give her the forts and 
 arsenals and sub-treasuries, and lend ber jewels of silver 
 and gold, and Egypt will rejoice that she has de| 
 
 We have, then, before us, these knights of a 
 new crusade. The Constitution of the United 
 States is the sanctified Jerusalem, against which 
 their deluded cohorts are arrayed. They contend 
 the only mode to overthrow slavery is to overthrow 
 the Constitution. They refuse to take office un- 
 der it, because it recognizes slavery. They will 
 not take an oath to support it, because it protects 
 slavery They claim their allegiance is due to 
 the State, and to the State alone. They are State- 
 rights men of the straightest sect; and they wield 
 the legislative power of the State for the extinc- 
 tion of slavery, as South Carolina professes 'to 
 wield her's for the perpetuation of slavery. 
 
Sir, is there not left among us statesmanship 
 sufficient to control these issues, and apply the 
 corrective in time, and save this great country, 
 now convulsed from its center to its circumfer- 
 ence? Standing in the midst of these troubles, 
 and looking into the future with the most inex- 
 pressible apprehensions, I acknowledge, with 
 rleasure, one patriotic move in the right direction, 
 t is one of the cheering signs of this most disas- 
 trous time, when "an airy devil's in the sky, and 
 rains down mischiefs," that the descendant of 
 two former Presidents, who bears an ancestral 
 fame now greater than any man in America, should 
 step forward with an offering of peace to an af- 
 flicted people. Sir, grant it was nothing more 
 than a covenant declaratory of the spirit of the 
 Constitution. It was meet that Massachusetts, 
 so largely partaking of our common glory in the 
 past; Massachusetts, where the first blood for 
 American liberty was shed — should rise superior 
 to the convulsions of the hour, and give an ear- 
 nest, at least, that the spirit of conciliation, of 
 inter-State comity, of fraternal affection, was not 
 yet wholly lost. As the worn traveler in the 
 midst of the snows of the Alps lingers, with de- 
 lighted gaze, upon the friendly light which peers 
 from the windows of the distant convent, where, 
 from the desolation of the storm around him, he 
 may at last find repose, so do I hail that little 
 gleam of hope in the midst of all the darkness of 
 thjs hour. 
 
 Sir, I speak not as a suppliant. I ask not for 
 bounty. I will not accept quarter. I demand 
 only that justice which springs at the bidding of 
 an honest magnanimity ! North Carolina, which, 
 first of all, proclaimed ourindependence;and Vir- 
 ginia, which, first of all, gave birth to it, both 
 allied to Massachusetts by the renown of a great 
 past which no civil convulsion can ever destroy 
 or impair, yet linger within the bounds of the 
 Union in hppes to save a country whose glory 
 belongs to us all. Will you step forward and meet 
 them, with grasped hands, in the spirit which 
 made your fathers illustrious; or will you steel 
 yourself against every noble impulse, and shut 
 out every access to sympathy and affection? Let 
 the errors of the past be forgotten. If the disas- 
 ters of the hour have sprung from the seeds you 
 planted, let the act be forgiven. Fruitful examples 
 in your history cluster all around us. Let us ex- 
 hume the records of the past, and hear the senti- 
 ments of another distinguished son, and see 
 whether we cannot gather from him some wis- 
 dom to guide our counsels. 
 
 In March, 1798, when the bill for the erection 
 of a government in the Mississippi Territory 
 was before Congress, it was moved that the same 
 should lie, in all respects, similar to that estab- 
 lished in tin 1 Northwestern Territory, except that 
 '• slavery should not be forbidden." Mr. Thatcher, 
 of Massachusetts, moved to strike out the ex- 
 cepting clause, thus excluding slavery in that 
 Territory. 
 
 Mr. Otis, of Massachusetts, " hoped his col- 
 league would not withdraw his motion; and the 
 reason why he wished this was, that an oppor- 
 tunity might be given to gentlemen who came 
 from the same part of the Union with him, to mani- 
 
 fest that it is not their disposition to interfere with 
 the southern States as to the species of property fii 
 question. He thought it was not the business of 
 those who had nothing to do with that kind of 
 property, to interfere with that right. If the amend- 
 ment prevailed, it would declare that no slavery 
 should exist in the Natchez country. This would 
 not only be a sentence of banishment, but of war. By 
 permitting slavery in this district of country, the 
 number of slaves would not be increased, as if 
 emigrants from South Carolina or Georgia were 
 to remove into this country, they would bring 
 their slaves with them; and he could see nothing 
 in this which could affect the philanthropy of his 
 friend." » 
 
 Sir, if a descendant of Mr. Otis lives, let him be 
 still prouder of the memory of his father; for the 
 inauguration of the policy upon which he acted, 
 in this high place, would at this time, give peace 
 to thirty millions of people. Is the spirit of the 
 olden time all vanished? Is patriotism to be ex- 
 humed from the cooled lava of another Pompei 
 and Herculaneum? 
 
 What divides the North and South at this mo- 
 ment? Is it the personal liberty bills? No, sir! 
 Not so much them. Is it the fugitive slave law? 
 No, sir; not so much that. The great superin- 
 ducing cause of all difficulty has been that very 
 territorial question which was settled so quietly 
 by the policy of Mr. Otis in 1798, and is now 
 settled on the same principle by the Supreme 
 court. # 
 
 In the superb argument made by my colleague 
 from the Norfolk district on yesterday, (in my 
 estimation the best effort of his life,) he declared 
 that, upon this question, the South had gained 
 the principle, but the North had the benefit of its 
 practical operation; that the North had the sub- 
 stance, but the South the shadow. That both 
 were victors, and yet both were vanquished. Sir, 
 it is even so. In 1790, the price of a male field 
 hand twenty -four years of age, as shown by the 
 recorded appraisement of an estate in the county 
 where I live, was $250. At that period , the labor 
 of a slave was cheaper than that of a freeman; but 
 the invention of Whitney's cotton-gin, opening 
 the virgin soil of the tropics to a more profitable 
 investment than had ever been hitherto known, 
 rapidly increased the value of slaves, during a 
 period of thirty years, to an incredible per cent- 
 age. Slavery became allied with capital, and, as 
 the remunerative prices for cotton increased, was 
 placed more and more beyond the reach of men 
 of small means. In 1850, hi the slave States, 
 with a population of 6,000,000, the number of 
 slaveholders was 347,555, heads of families, rep- 
 resenting 1,500,000 people, and the number of 
 slaves was over 3,000,000. Of this number, 68,820 
 had but one slave each, 105,683 had under five 
 slaves each, 174,503 slave owners held but 385,869 
 slaves, while 173,022 held the whole balance, 
 amounting to 2,818,444. In Virginia, in 1830, 
 the white population amounted to 694,302; slaves 
 to 469,755. In 1840, the whites were 740,968; 
 slaves, 448,988. In 1850, the whites were 894,800; 
 slaves, 472,528. In 1859, according to the report 
 of the auditor, the whites amounted to 915,204; 
 the slaves taxed were 272,073; and the slaves 
 
exempt from taxation, as under twelve years of 
 age, were 2G0,507; leaving the whole number 
 532,580. Here, in a period of thirty years, 
 every man can see for himself what increase was 
 made in slavery and white population in Vir- 
 ginia. In a cycle of sixty years, the increase of 
 the slaves in the border States has been only 64 
 per cent., and the increase in the other southern 
 States, including Texas, has been 700 per cent. 
 In 1850, the number of white persons born south, 
 who had voluntarily emigrated to the free States, 
 amounted to 726,450; and it is most remarkable 
 that the greatest number came from the border 
 slave States. The number from Virginia was 
 184,000; from Kentucky, 150,000; from North 
 Carolina, 64,000; from Missouri, 20,000; from 
 Maryland, 72,000; from Delaware, 7,000; and 
 from Tennessee, 50,000. By the census of 1860, 
 there are estimated to be about 4,000,000 slaves 
 and about 7,500,000 whites who have no slaves. 
 By the same census, the northwestern tier of free 
 States, (Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wis- 
 consin, and Minnesota,) gain by Representatives 
 14membcrs of Congress. The New England States 
 lose 4; the middle free States lose 5; the central 
 slave States lose 6, and the coast-planting States 
 lose 2. The whites in the free States are estimated 
 at 19,000,000, and in the slave States at 9,000,000. 
 I have grouped together these facts for the pur- 
 pose of showing there is an irreversible law of 
 population governing this question; and that it 
 has been population the South wanted , rather than 
 territory. They want population and capital; and 
 if the proceedings of these days are allowed to 
 be as inauspicious as they seem to be, I will show 
 you a southern confederacy (created out of this 
 Union) from which every man will turn back af- 
 frighted and pale, because it will be on the bloody 
 and reeking hand that his rights of property 
 must depend. The deductions which might be 
 drawn are diversified and various; but I have not 
 now the time to amplify them. This fact, at 
 least, is apparent to the plainest comprehension, 
 that slavery cannot rapidly expand, either in the 
 Union or out of it, as long as slaves remain at the 
 present high prices. I defy any man here — I care 
 not who he is — to meet me in the fair argument 
 of this question, and not be tied down by that 
 scythe [pointing to the clock] which revolves and 
 cuts down the grassy moments as they spring. 
 The only mode by which slavery can ever ex- 
 pand is to reduce the price, and have a new source 
 of supply. Now, mark you, in nearly all the 
 southern States, except South Carolina, free white 
 suffrage prevails, and the slaveholders hold their 
 property under constitutional restrictions, it is 
 true, but, at the same time, at the sufferance of 
 seven millions, who have no slaves. We can 
 begin to understand, now, why it is that, within 
 late years, we have heard so much in regard to 
 the reopening of the African slave trade. The 
 class who hold the votes and exercise sovereign 
 political power are beginning to make themselves 
 felt They can see no difference between buying 
 a slave in Africa and in Virginia; and it is espe- 
 cially desirable to get a naked, chattering barba- 
 rian, from the barracoons of Congo for $100, and 
 lick him into shape, through the benign process 
 
 of Christian civilization, rather than pay $1,600 
 for one already civilized, in a domestic marke*. 
 From 1856 up to this day, in every southern com- 
 mercial convention — at Savannah, in Georgia; at 
 Montgomery, in Alabama; at Vicksburg, in Mis- 
 sissippi — the question has been agitated, and that, 
 too, by many of the very men who, as politi- 
 cians, have been most prominent in the existing 
 revolution. 
 
 A member of this House from Illinois, on the 
 28th of December, 1859, put certain questions to 
 certain gentlemen on this floor, and I desire to 
 recur now to their answers; and, so far as Vir- 
 ginia and the border slave States are concerned, 
 it may not be without benefit in the present exi- 
 gency. The answers were, substantially, as fol- 
 lows. Every gentleman can see for himself the 
 whole of them, by consulting the Congressional 
 Globe: 
 
 Mr. Miles, of South Carolina. " I am not pre- 
 pared to say that I may not, at some future time, 
 be in favor of reopening the African slave trade. 
 There is no sensible man, north or south, who 
 believes we can in the present Union reopen the 
 African slave trade legally.'' 
 
 Mr.Bonham, of South Carolina. "As to whether 
 I would be in favor of reopening the African slave 
 trade, in tht- event that this Confederacy should bt 
 dissolved, I am not prepared to say." 
 
 Mr. McRae, of Mississippi. " I am in favor 
 of enforcing the laws as they now stand; but I 
 consider them unconstitutional and bad laws: 
 laws which are oppressive to the South; laxa 
 which take away from the southern States their equal- 
 ity in this Union, in reference to their labor sys- 
 tem, so far as its supply is concerned. 
 
 They go out of the Union because she will nol 
 give them equality, and they go into the other 
 Union to get equality. Suppose they do not gel 
 it, what becomes of them ? That is a little prob- 
 lem in the rule of three which will be ciphered 
 out, if these events are much longer pending. 
 
 Mr. Crawford, of Georgia, said: " Under ^par- 
 ticular state of circumstances, I would be in favoi 
 of reopening the African slave trade." 
 
 Now, sir, if one so humble, as myself may ven- 
 ture an opinion upon these and kindred matters 
 I must be allowed to say that the border slave 
 States may as well be prepared first as last for tht 
 realization of the truth, that the coast States are 
 aiming not so much ate&pansi <n within as expan- 
 sion without the Union. Visions of conquest 
 visions of military glory, float before the 
 enthusiast, in the glowing speeches of at ctn; ..... 
 Hermit of a new crusade, whose declared policy ii 
 was " to inflame the southern mind, fire the south- 
 ern heart, and precipitate the cotton States into o 
 revolution." 
 
 But where is slavery to expand ? The South 
 goes out of the Union, and it will never touch as 
 much earth of the territory that now belongs to 
 it as I can grasp thus. Never ! Never ! A war of 
 thirty years will never get it back. If you fight, 
 you will never extort by a treaty from the North 
 the same guarantees that you now have in this 
 Constitution emblazoned on those shields above 
 us — the very type of national strength and na- 
 tional unity. 
 
6 
 
 Where is slavery to expand ? Will it be to 
 Central America? There England exercises sov- 
 ereignty over more than half of her domain, com- 
 prehending nearly the whole coast from Yucatan 
 to New Granada. A debt of $70,000,000 is due 
 from that country to British creditors, and British 
 war vessels are at good anchorage to see that cus- 
 tom-house duties are punctually paid for their ben- 
 efit. Who has forgotten the interposition of Com- 
 mander Salmon against the designs of General 
 Walker, and his death mainly through that cause 
 alone. In all that country slavery is abolished by 
 treaties with England. Have we forgotten that 
 the Earl of Aberdeen admitted that the utmost 
 influence of the Government was to be exerted 
 to procure the abolishment of slavery in Texas; 
 and both he and Mr. Packenham admitted that 
 this was with the ultimate view of a similar re- 
 sult in the United States? At this very hour a 
 commissioner is said to be in England to nego- 
 tiate for southern independence, and to enter into 
 an offensive and defensive treaty, based upon mu- 
 tuality of interests. The South cannot descend 
 to take the manufactures of New England , but she 
 will gladly take those of Old England. No mat- 
 ter that she docs give secure refuge in Canada to 
 every fugitive slave; no matter that she did give 
 in her dominions a safe place for Brown and his 
 confederates to hatch their treasonable conspir- 
 acy, and furnished Forbes, an English subject, to 
 drill them; no matter if she did set the example 
 of emancipation at an expense of hundreds of mil- 
 lions as indemnity, and hundreds of millions more 
 in losses of agricultural products, in the West 
 Indies; no matter that she did procure the abol- 
 ishment of slavery in Mexico, and has now a sum 
 of $200,000,000 due her subjects, with a British 
 vessel in the offing at Vera Cruz to see that the 
 interest is duly paid; no matter if she devastates 
 Hindostan with the tornado of her limitless rapa- 
 city , makes Ireland a pauper house, and exiles four 
 millions of her people from their native soil; no 
 matter if she did expel the negroesof New Zealand 
 from their lowly huts, and drive them to whole- 
 sale slaughter. No, she may do ail this; she may, 
 in cold blood, cut the throats and smother to 
 death in their caverns the Caffirs of Good Hope; 
 she may search out every square foot of soil upon 
 God's habitable globe to raise cotton in competi- 
 tion with that of the South; she may send Liv- 
 ingston into the furthest recesses, the ultima Thule 
 of Africa, where a buffalo, if stung by an insect, 
 will die, to find some new soil in the secluded 
 valleys of the interior, where the Manchester 
 spinner can plant and grow the staple for his own 
 spindle. Sir, this is the benefieent country, and this 
 is the beneficent policy, the South is called to rely 
 upon, through alliances offensive and defensive, 
 and all the inter-complications of interest involved 
 in a commercial treaty, after having, with more 
 than judicial blindness, cut themselves off from 
 their brothers on this continent; brothers in lin- 
 eage; brothers in allegiance; and, in the midst of 
 all perils, brothers in affection still! 
 
 Mr. Speaker, there isachapter in the past which 
 our retiring confederates may do well to remem- 
 ber. In 1834, an English Abolitionist, by the 
 name of George Thompson, was sent from Exe- 
 
 ter Hall, in England, to enlighten the dead con- 
 science of the American people. About that period 
 John A. Murrill, of Madison county, Tennessee, 
 had, by means of a secret band, bound with signs 
 and oaths, arranged for a general rising of the ne- 
 groes on the 25th of December, 1835. Among 
 other papers found, was the following epistle of 
 love from the English emissary, dated March 18, 
 1834. It was addressed to Murrill: 
 
 " Dear Sir: Your favor of the 4tli has come to hand, and 
 its contents have been carefully observed. I think you can 
 count upon the aid you demand with tolerable certainty by 
 the time you name. I approve of your arrangements, and 
 can perceive abundant justification of your views. Could 
 the blacks effect a general concert of action, and let loose 
 the arm of destruction among their masters, and their prop- 
 erty, so that the judgment of God might be visibly seen and 
 felt, it would reach the flinty heart. We must reach the 
 tyrant in another way. His interests must be affected be- 
 fore he will repent. We can prepare the feelings of most 
 of the northern and eastern people by lecturing. The dis- 
 solution of the Union is the object to be kept steadily in 
 view. War will result, and sacking and pillage and in- 
 surrection will follow. Their cities, with all the merchan- 
 dise, may be destroyed, their banks plundered of specie, 
 their paper discredited, so that thousands of eastern capi- 
 talists would suffer great loss, and would henceforth con- 
 sider a slave country an unsafe place to make investments. 
 This state of affairs would naturally diminish the value 
 of slave property, and disgust even the tyrant with the pel- 
 icy of slavery, while the whole country would be thus in 
 a state of anarchy and poverty. Their banking institutions 
 and credit sunk into disrepute, it would be an easy matter 
 to effect the total abolition of slavery. Desperate diseases 
 require desperate remedies." 
 
 Mr. Speaker, was this prophecy, and is it about 
 to become a part of the history of this country? 
 Mr. AVERY. If the gentleman means John 
 A. Murrill, as I suppose he does, I will say that 
 he quotes from the correspondence of a convict, 
 who served out ten years in the penitentiary of 
 Tennessee for stealing negroes. 
 
 Mr. CLEMENS. Very well; the gentleman 
 from Tennessee does not seem to understand that 
 a man who would incite a negro insurrection 
 would be very likely to steal negroes. 
 
 I dismiss this unwelcome theme. Let me pass 
 to another. It is evident that, in the event of the 
 formation of a southern confederacy, there will be, 
 besides the African slave trade, another element of 
 discord and agitation, in which the Gulf and border 
 States will have interests entirely dissimilar. Sla- 
 very is the great ruling interest of the extreme Gulf 
 States; the other States hare great interests besides 
 slavery, which cannot be lightly abandoned. I admit 
 it is to the advantage of the coast States to have 
 a direct exchange of staple commodities for the 
 manufactured articles of England and France. 
 That this is proposed to be realized, we have the 
 fullest proofs. Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, 
 and New Orleans will become great marts of 
 trade. Export duties and direct taxation will be 
 to them a prosperous policy; but how will it op- 
 crate upon the mechanical and manufacturing and 
 mining industry and capital of Missouri, of Ken- 
 
 j tucky, of Virginia, of North Carolina, of Mary- 
 land, and Delaware, if they should form part of 
 the confederation? I know it is asserted that a 
 
 j mutuality of purposes and a community of inter- 
 
 ! est in slavery will avoid this result. How is it to 
 be avoided? Sir, when it involves a contradiction 
 
 ' of the avowed designs of South Carolina for the 
 
last thirty years, and is in perfect correspond- 
 ence with the declared plans of the people of the 
 cotton States themselves, how, I say, will you 
 avoid it? 
 
 An examination of the census of 1860 will dis- 
 close the astounding fact that if the Constitution 
 of the United States is taken as a provisional 
 form of government under this new convention 
 which they have called to meet in Montgomery, 
 Alabama, the cotton States, with those abutting 
 upon them, will have, under the fixed ratio of 
 representation, the legislative power over the bor- 
 der slave States, and they will be bound by a 
 policy which may be, as to their great material 
 and mechanical interests, as oppressive as it will 
 be ruinous. If these causes should exist, we shall 
 have an antagonism in that union quite as great; 
 fiftyfold intensified, it may be, beyond anything 
 we have ever had m this. But if the other view 
 is taken, and the border States are encouraged and 
 protected in manufactures, the white population 
 of those States will be so vastly increased that 
 they will be but nominal slave States, finally be- 
 coming free States by the very necessities of their 
 existence under that inexorable law of population 
 to which I have referred. What principle in free- 
 trade, or any other principle for which they are 
 now contending, will the cotton States have gained 
 by this most disastrous revolution? What time it 
 may take to effect these results, no human sagacity 
 can foretell ; but that they will follow, if any reli- 
 ance at all can be placed upon past experience, is 
 at least my own fixed and solemn conviction. 
 With a tier of free States along the whole northern 
 border of Texas, the western borders of Louis- 
 iana and Arkansas, the northern and western 
 portions of Missouri, of Kentucky, of Virginia, 
 and of Maryland, a distance of nearly four thou- 
 sand miles, this inevitable law of population, 
 operating from its geographical center in the 
 Northwest, and with the facilities for settlement 
 which a Pacific railroad will give, a branch of 
 which the South voluntarily and most fallaciously 
 relinquishes, the great hog-eating Teutons of these 
 vast plains will bear down even upon Texas and 
 Mexico, and ultimately bear them away from any 
 confederacy into which they may enter. In the 
 ■ Union there is at least a fair prospect that Mex- 
 ico, by the very necessities of our position, will 
 fall into our hands, and in the providence of God 
 it may yet be that this now distracted land, cursed 
 with civil feuds, and racked with internecine 
 wars, may yet be reserved for the purpose of 
 working out the great problem under which the 
 brain of this vast nation is now overwhelmed and 
 reels. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, gentlemen from the North shrink 
 back in dismay at the very mention of a propo- 
 sition to protect slavery south of the line of 36° 
 30', either as applied to territory now existing, or 
 which may be hereafter acquired, when it is per- 
 fectly demonstrable, on the law of population to 
 which we have referred, that every slave State 
 erected within the tropics can only be had at the 
 ultimate sacrifice of a kindred State along the bor- 
 ders of the free States. The policy is the policy 
 of Saturn feeding on the bodies of his own chil- 
 dren. It is time the North, as well as the South, 
 
 appreciated this state of facts. The field for argu- 
 ment and illustration thus presented is inviting 
 indeed; but within the limits of an hour 1 can but 
 make suggestions, rather than maintain any ex- 
 tended line of remark. The question for the states- 
 man to decide is: whether the South shall not be 
 guarantied by constitutional enactments, if need 
 be, in the principle secured to her by that instru- 
 ment itself, by the decision of the Supreme Court; 
 a principle which may not only be barren of any 
 practical advantage to her, but, if rendered effect- 
 ive, can only be so on the basis of a compensat- 
 ing benefit to the free States themselves, of open- 
 ing up new fields in a temperate and genial clime 
 for the increase of white population. 
 
 I would fain hope, in the determination of this 
 vast question, we may rise above the silly pre- 
 judices and splendid shams of the hour. Let wa 
 have no more cant. Let our eyes not blink under 
 the truth as it is. Let us enlighten, as best we 
 may, the people of this great country, not only 
 as to theirduties in the present, but as to their 
 destiny to come. Let us feel we have a country 
 to save, instead of a geographical section to rep- 
 resent. Let us act as men, and not as partisans; 
 and the old Constitution, now in the very trough 
 of the sea, with battered masts and sails in shreds, 
 rolling at the mercy of every breaker, will again, 
 with her dark and weather-beaten sides, loom 
 from the deep; will again skim over the waves 
 like the sea-bird, that scarce wets his bosom on 
 their snowy crests, ringing with glad shouts, and 
 the rapture of anticipated triumph, as when she 
 ranged, like a mighty monster of the deep, be- 
 neath the castles of Tripoli, striking them dumb 
 as she passed, or, as when she spread her broad 
 and glorious banner to the winds, and rushed, 
 like a strong man rejoicing to run a race, on the 
 Guerriere and the Java. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I have necessarily left much un- 
 said. My last hope upon this most distracting 
 question is upon the action of Virginia. Heed 
 her voice while yet you may ! I would now con- 
 clude all I have to say in the solemn warning of 
 one of her noblest sons, the author of the Dec- 
 laration of Independence himself, who, in 1798. 
 in a period not unlike the present, appealed to 
 erring sisters to cling to the sanctuaryof their 
 fathers. 
 
 " In every free and deliberative society, ".say* 
 he, " there must, from the nature of man, 'be op- 
 posite parties and violent discussions and discords; 
 and one of these, for the most part, must prevail 
 over the other for a longer or snorter time. Pe f - 
 haps this party division is necessary to induce 
 each to watch and delate to the people the pro- 
 ceedings of the other. But if, on a temporary su- 
 periority of the one party, the other is to resort to a 
 scission of the Union, no Federal Government can 
 ever exist. If, to rid ourselves of the present rule 
 of Massachusetts and Connecticut, we break up 
 the Union, will the evil stop there ? Suppose the 
 New England States be alone cut off: will our 
 natures be changed? Are we not men still, with 
 all the passions of men? Immediately we shall 
 see a Pennsylvania and Virginia party arise in tho 
 residuary confederacy, and the public mind will 
 be distracted with the same party spirit. Wlxat 
 
8 
 
 game, too, will one party have in their hands by eter- 
 nally threatening each other, that unless they do so, 
 they will join their northern neighbors ? If we re- 
 duce our Union to Virginia and North Carolina, 
 immediately the f nflict will be established be- 
 tween the rt ■ - ntatives of these two States; 
 and even they * ill end by breaking into their sim- 
 ple units. Seeing, therefore, that an association 
 of men, who will not quarrel with one another, is a 
 thing that never yet existed, from the greatest 
 
 Confederacy of nations down to a town meeting 
 or vestry; seeing that we must have somebody 
 to quarrel with, J had rather keep our New Eng- 
 land associates for that purpose than to see our bick- 
 erings transferred to others." A little patience, 
 mark you, Mr. Speaker — " a little patience, and 
 
 WE SHALL SEE THE REIGN OF WITCHES PASS OVER, 
 THEIR SPELLS DISSOLVED, AND THE PEOPLE RECOV- 
 ERING THEIR TRUE SIGHT, RESTORING THEIR GOV- 
 ERNMENT TO ITS TRUE PRINCIPLES." 
 
 Printed at the office of the Congressional O v 
 
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