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VINDICATION OF THE UNION. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 HON. JOSEPH SEGAE. 
 
 FIRST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA, 
 
 BI70BE THI 
 
 UNION MEETING IN PORTSMOUTH, VA., 
 
 ON SATURDAY, 1LA.Y 31, 1862. 
 ( From report of PhUaddphia Jnqteirer. ) 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 PRINTED BY W. H. MOORS 
 
 1862. 
 

 C^tu^ Z^ 
 
SPEECH 
 
 When I last trod the streets of Portaniouth, our country was at peace, and the 
 people of this whole land were the most blessed on the face of the globe. The storm 
 of commercial revulsion which had swept over the land in 1857, had hilled, and under 
 the influence of bountiful crops and the recuperative energies of our people, the coun- 
 try had reached a point of prosperity it had never known before. The whole land 
 bloomed. The plough was sped, the loom rattled, the anvil rang, rnd commerce 
 rejoiced. Plenty smiled over thirty-two millions of contented and happy people. 
 Bat, oh God! how changed the scene I "Wild war's deadly bh;sL is blowing," and 
 has carried desolation to every interest, and every fireside, within our State. 
 
 We are not only involved in war, but in civil war — a war which has ruptured all 
 the ties of kindred and blood, and brought in hostile meeting, on the same battle 
 tield, father a«id son, and brother and brothor Onr trade is gone ; the grass grows green 
 and high in the streets of our cities ; the millions of trade we once had with the North, 
 and which gave thrift and comfort, and even subsistence, to so many of our people, haa 
 perished ; our whole people, from the stripling lad to the hoary head, have gone to 
 the tented field; the price of even the necessaries of life are insufferably high; and 
 the working men ;\nd ihe poor mcu of every cla~s are at starvation s poial. Who did 
 all this? Whose mighty sin is it? Our secession friends say it rests upon us, the 
 Union men — that we, who have stood by ihe stars and saipes, are responsible — that, 
 by a certain sacred principle of State rights, we ought to have followed our State into 
 secession, or whithersoever else she called us — that we are traitors to our State, be- 
 cause we would do it not— and that, by not making common cause against the vile Yan- 
 kees, (who, in my judgment, had done thcin no materi:il wrong.) we were playing into 
 the hands of the enemies of the South, and that thus we are responsiblt- for this ruinous 
 war. I am here to deny the charge, and to disprove it. No part of the mountain- 
 load guilt of breaking up our glorious Union is ours. We are not traitors. 1 have 
 been so denounced a thousand and twice a thousand times, but I vow I am no traitor. 
 The treason is theirs, who, by secession, have thrown down the pillars of the American 
 Union; and their treason is a douln.^ ono ~lif;isun to their State and treason to th« 
 Supreme Government of tlu' I'nitu. 
 
We hav9 obeyed our State ; /Ac,y have not. We have been true both to oar State 
 and the Union, for we hold that loyalty to the Union is no disloyalty to our State. 
 That State herself, when she ratified the Federal Constitution, and became a party to 
 the great compact of Union, bound herself by each and every one of its provisions, and 
 commanded all her citizens to adopt this Constitution as a rule of political conduct — 
 not only as a rule, but a supreme rule. She said to me, and she said to you : " Here is 
 this Constitution, made by Washington, and Franklix, and Madison : take it for your 
 guide — obey it — stand by it — anything in my Constitution or laws to the contrary 
 notwithstanding; which, being interpreted, meaneth this, and this only — that when 
 the Constitution and laws of the Federal Government come in clash with my Consti- 
 tution and my laws, mine must give way, and those of the supreme Federal Govern- 
 ment prevail." Well, the two did come in conflict, and we Union men. like trained 
 soldiers, obeyed orders. 
 
 We took our State at her word. When she brought herself in contact with the 
 Federal Government, we did exactly what she told us to do — recognized the latter as 
 supreme, and herself as subordinate. Is this treason? If so, " make the most of it." 
 Again, our State expressly covenanted with her sister States that this matchless in- 
 strument should never be altered, save by the assent of three-fourths of all the States, 
 Not an i was to be dotted, nor a ? to be crossed, but by the concurrent stipulation ot 
 three-fourths of the States; and a wise provision was it. It had been framed under 
 circumstances the most auspicious, with a light beaming bright from the failure of the 
 old Confederation. It had emanated from matclAss wisdom ; from the wisest heads 
 and the purest hearts ever brought to think and to feel for human afi'airs. No won- 
 der, then, it was provided, in the instrument itself, that it should not be a bandied 
 thing of change, but remain in all its glory and vigor, until its defects should become 
 so manifest as to bring three-fourths of the States to the conviction that it needed 
 amendment. Now, having agreed that three.-fourths of the ratifying parties should 
 alone change its provisions, how can Virginia claim, of her own separate will and act, 
 to change it in any regard, much less destroy it altogether ? Is not secession a change 
 of the Constitution, and a change in the most vital particular ? By wAt .authority, 
 then, can Virginia, herself wanting the power to alter the Constitution in the slightest 
 respect, command her sons to submit to alterations not agreed on by the constitutional 
 majority of three-fourths? 
 
 But a State, (say the secessionists.) acting in convention, is put upon her sover- 
 eignty, and that this putting of her upon her sovereign powers makes secession legal 
 and right — overrules the supreme law of the Union. Immoral doctrine, fellow-citi- 
 zensl Does the formality of a convention make lawful that which was unlawful 
 before? Does the mere going into convention relieve a State of her solemn obliga- 
 tions? Does it wipe out the sin of broken pledges and violated faith? Besides, is 
 any State sovereign ? 
 
 State sovereignty, gentlemen, under our system, is an outspeaking absurdity. The 
 idea is stupidity's self. Virginia could not coin a copper cent, nor a silver dime. She 
 could not declare war, nor raise an army, nor maintain a navy, nor lay an impost 
 duty, nor establish a post road. These, and many other sovereign attributes, she 
 surrendered to the Federal Government for the common good, and with the express 
 understanding that there should be no alteration of the system, no addition to or 
 subtraction from it, except by the concurrent act of three-fourths of her sister States. 
 And yet, this absurd pretension of absolute State sovereignty, this airy myth, has 
 been the false light held up by demagogues and politicians to mislead the honest 
 
masses, and which has led more thousands to the bog of di.^union than =iiiy other 
 iffHisfatuus of the day ! We, then, who have clunfr to the Federal Union, acrai„,t our 
 State, have not been disioyal to that State-have committed no treason against her 
 no rebellion against her government and lavvs-and so no part of the responsibility 
 of this wicked rebellion is upon us. 
 
 And we Union men have the proud consolation that the position ive stand on is the 
 position on' which every great and distinguished Virginian has stood, save one Our 
 secession friends can point to only one great man to justify their madness, and that 
 one IS Littleton Walleu Tazewkll, a great mind, truly, but one, like Mr. Calhoun's 
 misled by too many vagaries to deal rightly with the practical affairs of human gov- 
 ernment. Governor Tazewell, with his truth-distorting powers, was with them 
 The great and good Washington was with us. Old Ben. Franklin, the sage, philos- 
 opher, and statesman, was with us. James Madison, the father of the Constitution 
 whose master hand, more than any other, fashioned the great work, was with us! 
 John Marshall, America's Mansfield and Cato, of Utica, the cloudless light of whose " 
 luminous mind ever made truth's pathway clear, was with us. Patrick Henry, lib- 
 ertys thunderer in revolutionary times, was with us. Spencer Roane, the first Vir- 
 ginia jurist of his day, and a State rights man of the straightest sect,' was with us. 
 John Taylor, of Carolina, the strictest coustruer of all construers, was with us And 
 all the prominent jurists of other States, the Rents, and Storys, and Waynes, and 
 Catrons, and McLeans, and Douglases, and Reverdy Johnsons, all, all are on our 
 side. All these and many more of our eminent legal men, " too tedious to mention " 
 have declared it as their opinion that separate State secession is not only illegal and 
 unconstitutional, but treasonable; and Thomas Ritchie, the great Democratic ex- 
 pounder of his time, who gave law to the State-rights Democracy, who ever and anoa 
 held up State rights to his followers as their guide and Shiloh, even he' denounced 
 secession as treason, " treason to all intents and purposes." Now, if you and I, fellow 
 citizens, who refused to pull down and tear up that glorious ensign of powe^^ and 
 glory, the stars and stripes, are traitors, so were Washington, ai.d Henry, and Madi- 
 son, and Franklin, and Marshall, and Judge Roane, and John Taylor, and Kent 
 and Story, and last, though not least, Mr. Ritchie. If we are traitors, we are in good 
 company-better company, by a thousand-fold, than that of Jekp. Davis, and Toombs 
 and the Rhetts, and Cobb, and Iverson, and Benjamin, and Slidell, and Keitt, and 
 Pickens, and the pigmier secessionists who have dared "rush in where angels fear 
 to tread," and whom folly, or inflttuation, or madness, or unhallowed ambition, or 
 some other false principle or motive, has impelled to the infamous work of breaking 
 down that ever-precious Government which was wisdom's chiefest contrivance and 
 freedom's noblest boast -the Constitution of the United States, and the unmatched 
 Union It created. Stand firm, then, my Union friends of Portsmouth. You are in 
 the best of company. You are in the right, and God is with the right. Stand by the 
 stars and stripes, now and forever. Nail the Union colors to the mast, and if the 
 Union ship must sink, let it go down, as the ship Cumberland did, a short time since 
 in Hampton Roads, with the American ensign streaming above the sinking hulk. 
 
 The Southern secessionists have also appealed to us to go with our State into 
 secession, because of the insufferable wrongs the North has done u^. We are ground 
 into dust, (they say.) We have not a right left, (they declare,) and they appeal to us all 
 to quit our peaceful vocations and our happy homes to go forth to the battle field, and 
 lay low the wicked Yankees who have dared to trample uj^on Southern rights. Well 
 
. L „oo,•,^r■? T rill uDon Tou, one and all, and par- 
 
 ,i,,,„„,y.ny,.eoe».,o„,>l .f h rebeone ^ ^^_^^^,^__ ^ ^____^ ^^^^^ ^_^^^^^ 
 f„,% So lK-l|. n,c- God, I do not tnosv ^^^^^^^ ^^^^ 
 
 and the} rusiRu uowu restore the ancient Union ; to 
 
 k«i, the stars .ud,lr.pe» .float. ' "° "'" "°', ' . „ „ n, ^amp and the battle 
 
 ■- ^^r';: rr :;::;eri:r :r; r ^rrr :i a«r.„ pe.e-,t-o, ... 
 
 has been perpetrated, by this so hated F^<^«^^' ^ ^^^^^ i„ i^ ,,eh 
 
 -r" "^ of ;" !r r,::r ^::-::"" -^- -«> -- - -^ 
 
 . -^ ^^^'•^' 7^ 'Vlo nt 1 to h statut which has hurt the hair of the head of any 
 statute book, and point nie to th ^^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^ ...eh-abused 
 
 Southern man, woman, or child . ihere i. ^^^^^^^ 
 
 ,,d nuich-bated North has put no such statu, ^^ ^ f "^J^ ^J J^^ ^,, S,,,, ,be 
 government done us no practical wron,. but ^^^^^^^^^ ,..„, ,, ^,,,, ^^ 
 Kindest Government that ever a peopl had. f J^^ ^J ^^,^ ^„, ,,, 
 
 ,, Mend S.oa.. ^^^:;:^Z^::^:t;::ZfZZ. done .r y^! all that 
 .ranted you this favo. an 1 a and ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^ ^^^^^^ , ^.. ^ 
 
 you asked, won d you no regaid i ^^^ ^.^^ ^,^ p,,,,,l Government 
 
 would," responded Mr. Stores.) ^^''J"'' ' ,^^_it t. j^ 1793, it asked 
 
 3.a the South. AH that the latter asked^^^^^^^^^^^ ^.^^^ ^^^^^;_ ^^^ ^^^^ 
 
 r : .nd o r.ot it. But in the course of time this law of 1793 was found 
 have It.' And so we „oi North-the Federal Government-- Give us a 
 
 ineffectual, and the South said to tl-^^J '' ^ provisions, one that will more 
 better fugitive slave law, one more ^ ""f "^ ;"/;^^^;7, ,_: You shall have it." 
 effectually protect our slave propert^^^^^^ .t^^ ^rthe l^! was left to a Southern 
 
 '^'^^'^r'^^T^^^Z that^f the fugitive slave law of 1S50 was 
 senator, Ja.ks M. Mas . f Y.rg ^ ,^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^_ ^^^^^^^ ^^^^,^^ ^^ , 
 
 uot a good law, it >^'^^ ^^^ ^ . compromise, and the South was so tickled 
 
 made a bargain, usually called the viis.o nearly every Southera member 
 
 with it that every Southern Senator vod fo -^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^ ^„, ,„,!,, ,, , 
 of the House of Hep-ntati^s,^^e .e N^Mhoiigh g^^^^^ ^.^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ 
 
 spirit of compromise and P^'^'''''.^^^;^ ^^^.^ ,, ,,, Federal Congr.ss-.to 
 
 ran high, got tired of our bargain ot \820, and we s ^^^^.^ ^.^^ .^ 
 
 t- North-" Break up ^^^^^l^^^^s^rkf a ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ with us, in lieu of the 
 .ow,inthisyear,AnnoDom.it 5 , om^^ Government-this nnparental Federal 
 old compromise of 1820. And tne ^^_^ ^^^^^ abrogated 
 
 Oovernment,astheS..^.rnpeopet m t-^^^^^^^ old Missouri Compromise, 
 
 the old compromise, made a uciv o.trB , ^__^^ vaunted, 
 
 ^d gave us the Kaosas-Nebr.sk. .. l^'^T^lX they K.ve us a., .e asked, 
 b„,.f.erw.rd. cootcmoe. ^^ ^^^^ ^L, „'. .„^ht, . know it not. . 
 fielded to every eii.ct.on, and tf they ha ^1^ ,,„„ la, been 
 
 ;,peat, then, that this nnho.y ""^a.J.;.. -j;™ fj„ ,„„„ „,, ,„ u, ,0 far as 
 earned on. «iH"i"' "" '^'•■'"^^^ ""'"> 
 
Southern rights were concerned, than there is that one of you should this moment rise 
 up here and stab me to the heart. 
 
 And we were unr.pproachably safe We had all the security we could asli of God 
 or man. We were far out of harm s way We had, when Mr. Lincoln was elected, a 
 majority of twenty-one in one House of Congress — afterwards increased to twenty- 
 iive — and of si.x in the other. What had we to fear? With these controlling major- 
 ities, how could a law ever have been passed inimical to Southern rights? Take an 
 illustration: A short time since a bill^ passed both houses of Congress abolishing 
 slavery in the District of Columbia — a law affecting the interests, more or less, of 
 every slaveholder in the South. Could this bill have become a law if the seceded 
 States had kept in the Union, and maintained this majority of twenty-five in one 
 House and si.x in the other? Besides, we had the Supreme Court upon our side. Its 
 rulings had all the time leaned to the rights of the slaveholder. Then we were, at 
 the time secession threw its dark shadow upon us, impregnably secure. We were 
 behind the ramparts of a fortification which could neither be shelled nor battered 
 down. All the abolition artillery of the earth would have been as impotent upon its 
 impenetrable walls as were the rebel balls of the Merrimac upon the dentless turret of 
 the Monitor. But we of the South did what ? Why, we opened wide the doors of the 
 fortification, and let the enemy in to take quiet possession. Whom can we blame but 
 ourselves? Whom but the seceding States? And if by opening the gateways of their 
 otherwise impregnable fortress, they are made the sufferers, on whose shoulders rests 
 the harm — on ours, the I'nion men, or on theirs, the seceders? 
 
 But the institution of slavery (argued the disunionists) is unsafe in the Union, and 
 all good and true Southern men must rally to Secession to make it safer. Though 
 the Constitution does for slave property what it does not for any other species of 
 property whatsoever — throws around it the negis of a special protection-^and though 
 the Federal legislature had recognized the obligation to grant it protection, as in 
 the payment for the slaves of the Creole and those taken by the British in the war 
 of 1812, we were invited to secession to put up more props to sustain the institution. 
 True, we had under our beneficent Union a pillar here and a pillar there, and yet 
 there and there again, to uphold the fabric. But we want more pillars yet, (said the 
 secessionists,) to hold up and make stronger this great basis of Southern institutions. 
 Well, how has it turned out? Slavery has been struck a blow from which it may 
 never recover. If peace be made forthwith, the Southern monopoly of the cotton 
 production mai/ he maintained, and some of the rank antagonisms of slavery now 
 striking at its vitals, or sharpening their fangs for a more deadly assault, mat/ be 
 propitiated, and the institution rescued from destruction. But delay in pacific 
 arrangement will he absolutely fatal to slavery On this point T shall not enlaro-e ; 
 but let us enter into a practical consideration and estimate with onr secession an- 
 tagonists. How is it with the value of slave property, and the security of it, under 
 secession and the Union, comparatively? I wi.l illustrate by an argument I used in 
 the county of Northampton, when, in a late canvas*, I was seeking a seat in Congress. 
 I appealed to the people present to tell me what a likely young negro man would 
 then bring for cash. I was answered, "Not more than two hundred and fiftv dol- 
 lars." What would such a negro slave have bronght before the passage of the Vir- 
 ginia secession ordinance? "From seventeen hundred and fifty dollars to two thou- 
 sand dollars," was the reply. Then, said I, here is the arithmetical result : in the 
 happy hours of the Union you could get seventeen hundred and fifty dollars for your 
 
8 
 
 slave, and now, in secession's hour, you can get only two hundred and fifty — ^just one 
 seventh of what you could have obtained in those blessed hours when the stars and 
 stripes waved over an undismembered land ! A loss, (sai.d I,) of just fifteen hundred 
 dollars on each likely slave ! Now give me, I continued, the number of likely slaves 
 in your county, and I will tell you, in figures, what the people of Northampton have 
 lost, by secession, in this single item of slaves. Multiply that number by 1500, and 
 you have it. Figure it up when you will, you will find that while you were striving, 
 by secession, to have your slave property maintained at its old value, you have already 
 lost several millions of dollars in slave property alone 1 And as to the matter of 
 safety, bow is it? In the blessed days of the Union you rarely lost a slave, because, 
 if your slave escaped, he was delivered back to you under the fugitive slave law. 
 But how is it now, in secession's reign? Let, (said I,) the eighteen slaves captured 
 just on the Maryland line, and brought back to their owners here, this morning, let 
 the bills before Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and to eman- 
 cipate nearly all the slaves in the South, answer my question, whether slavery was 
 safer under the blessed auspices of the Union, or under the ruinous ascendancy of se- 
 cession. 
 
 And I propound the inquiry to you, men of Portsmouth, here, to-day, when was 
 'jouT slave property the more valuable, and the safer — in Union's hour or secession's 
 hour? There is not one of you that does not know and feel that your hour of safety 
 was the hour of the Union. The loss of a slave was a rarity, and what you did lose 
 was but a drop in the ocean — not the twentieth part, in proportion, of the annual loss 
 of the Virginia drovers in driving beeves to market. See, then, the delusion of our 
 fellow-citizens of the South in rushing into secessien to save their slave property. Oh, 
 fatal mistake ! 
 
 And here I submit one more arithmetical view. Virginia, by the late census, lost, 
 in 1860, 117 slaves, as fugitives. Put down the average value at §1,000 each (which 
 is most liberal,) and all the loss we have by fugitive slaves, in one year, is $1 17,000. 
 Losing, in this way, only $117,000 per year, we sought to make the annual loss less, 
 and have we not " put our foot into it?" 
 
 Let us have the figures. Annual loss, under the Union, $117,000. Ver contra. Oh, 
 what shall it be? what, really, is it? I shudder to strike the balance. Virginia's 
 share of the confederate debt cannot be less, at this moment, than fifty millions. I 
 believe it to be far more. Her expenditure on her own State account cannot be short 
 of twenty millions — total, seventy millions : a sum which would pay for her loss by 
 fugitive slaves for near six hundred years to come ! Or, in the light of annual in- 
 terest, at 7 per cent, a tax of $4,900,000 per annum on the people, to avoid an an- 
 nual loss of $117,000. If the war lasts two years, it will be a tax upon the people 
 of $9,800,000 per year, to save $117,000 per year. And so on, if the war should 
 last five years, the people of Virginia, to save $117,000 per annum, will find them- 
 selves borne down by a public debt which would not leave a morsel of bread to their 
 starving fiimilies, and which no people on earth could endure. Add the next items, 
 the numerous millions we shall have" lost b}' the prostration of our once great sys- 
 tem of internal improvements, and our incalculable loss in production and trade, 
 and the balance against us is terrific. And when we come to take into the estimate 
 the agonized bosoms which have been wrung by this deplorable conflict — the widowed 
 wives it shall have made — the sonless fathers and mothers — the brotherless sisters — 
 the orphaned children — the ruptured ties in all the sweet relations of life—the 
 
g 
 
 desolation, physical and social — the personal embitterment and undying hates — the 
 want and suffering — the streaming blood and gaping wounds, and the grief and 
 wailing, which have come of this accursed rebellion : I saj' when we come to bring 
 all these items into the dark account, how insignificant becomes that little amount of 
 $117,000, compared with that terrible aggregate of taxation, ruin, and woe, which 
 bears down the other side of the account? Billions, not millions, will denote the 
 fearful balance. Had we not far better have lost five hundred, or even one thousand 
 slaves a year, than to have brought these woes unnumbered, these appalling ills, upon 
 the people of our State ! 
 
 And snppose — what is not impossible, I fear not improbable — that in the effort, by 
 secession, to make slavery stronger, the institution perish altogether by the antagon- 
 isms it has aroused — by a law of general emancipation, for example: why, we lose 
 altogether the very property we designed to have better protected ; we shall have 
 lost forever four hundred millions' worth of slave property; and we shall have 
 among us and around us half a million of slaves, who will either cut our throats, or 
 have their own throats cut by us, to save ourselves, our wives, and our children ! 
 
 Such, my friends, is the result of the efforts of those who would allure you to se- 
 cession, to make slavery safer. Here is the feast to which you have been invited. 
 Oh! how strange the infatuation! Thank heaven, you and I have had no part nor 
 lot in the matter. And I tell our deluded countrymen of the South that they can 
 rescue the institution of slavery in bu't one way. They must come once more under 
 those stars and stripes which protect all they float above. They must fall down and 
 worship once again at the altars of the Union, and vowing repentance there, bring 
 themselves back within that blessed Union which has proved heretofore adequate, 
 and which hereafter, when restoration comes, will continue to be adequate, to protect 
 them and all their institutions, of whatever kind. Let them put up the fallen columns 
 of the Union they have pulled down, and they will have put up the pillars that sus- 
 tain the institution of slavery, not before. In truth, the South has always had a far 
 more peculiar interest than the North in the maintenance of the Union, because, by 
 it, a very peculiar institution is peculiarly cared for and protected ; and so it is the 
 highest interest of the seceded States to hasten back, with double-quick speed, to 
 that asylum of their peculiar institution — the Union of old. 
 
 But I hear it said that, though up to the time of Mr. Lincoln's election the Federal 
 Government had done us no wrong, it has since shown a purpose to convert the war 
 from a war for the Union into a war for emancipation. But whose fault is it, if it be 
 so? Who put it in the power of Congress to change the war for the Union to one 
 for the abolition of slavery? The Southern people themselves— the seceding States. 
 Had they stayed in, could we have ever had an Abolition Congress ? And are we to 
 make no allowance for the present exasperation of the North ? For one, I do not 
 wonder at it. The North had done us no wrong but to talk abolition, which hurts 
 nobody, and which ought to scare nobody ; and to take the man of their choice for 
 President, which, surely, in a democratic government, is no very great offense. It 
 had been kind and forbearing to us ; had even agreed so to amend the Constitution 
 as to put slavery in the States forever beyond the reach of Federal legislation ; and 
 when without cause, we have involved them in a consuming debt, to last for ages to 
 come, and prostrated their flourishing industry, and poisoned the fountains of their 
 social happiness, we ought to expect embitterment and resentment in return. I don't 
 advise revenge. I would rather conjure them to be generous vet ; to forgive and to 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 forget ; to remember that hundreds of thousands of the plain masses in the South 
 have been deceived or coerced into the rebellion, and are in heart guiltless of treason ; 
 to forbear all extreme measures ; above all things to let slavery alone ; to keep the 
 pledges they have so often made to maintain honestly the original aims and character 
 of the war — the preservation of the Government, the enforcement of the laws, and the 
 restoration of the Union. If this be done, (and I entreat them to do it,) reconstruction 
 may yet take place; a potent Union sentiment may yet arise in the South ; and the 
 star-gemmed banner of the Union wave once more over an undivided and happy 
 country. Yet, come whatever results may, we, the Union men, are not responsible; 
 the secessionists are ; and they must take the consequences of their folly. And if not 
 a Southern slave be left, they will deserve no sympathy. On the contrary, their guilt 
 of heinous treason will be aggravated, many fold, by the heartless inhumanity of drag- 
 ging along the guilty and the innocent to a common destruction. Why — will you tell 
 me, fellow-citizens of Portsmouth — why did not the seceded States accept the North- 
 ern proposition to put slavery in the States forever beyond the jurisdiction of Federal 
 power? Alas! was there not a malicious, foregone purpose to break up the Union? 
 And now to a few practical views in conclusion : You are in this war (this twenty 
 years' war promised you by Jeff. Davis,) and you know and feel what it is ; do you 
 not? Are you as happy as you were under the Union of your fathers ? Have you as 
 much bread and meat for j-our wives and children as you used to have ? Have you 
 employment, as you had under the Union ? Does the hard-fisted mechanic, whose 
 chief property is the sinewy arms his God has given him, go to his workshop daily, 
 as he was wont to do? Are your wives and daughters clad with the handsome 
 calicoes and plain silks that once decked and made comfortable their persons? Did 
 3IJ0U pay, under the Union, one dollar per pound for coffee, and forty cents for sugar, 
 and seven dollars per pound for tea, and seventy-five cents per yard for niuepence 
 calico, as you now do in these hard times of secession ? (A voice in the crowd — 
 "We don't have coffee, we use parched corn.") Oh, yes; then, in the blessed hours 
 of the Union, you had cofiee at 12 cents per pound, and now, in secession's reign, yoix 
 have parched corn in the place of that luxury alike of rich people and poor people — 
 coffee. I pity yon from my heart, for I love the beverage, but would not like to quaff 
 it at the secession price of a dollar a pound. But to proceed : are your wives as 
 happy, or \-our childrf^n ? Do not your wives tremble and your children start when 
 gathered at night around the once happy hearth and fireside ? Are you not, many of 
 of you, awaiting every hour painful tidings from the battle-field of fratricidal war? 
 Are you not hourly expecting to see some husband, or father, or brother, or nephew, 
 borne a crippled or a dead body from the gory field ? This is your experience, as it 
 is of us all, of this deplorable war. Then what are you to do ? (A voice — '' Hang the 
 secessionists.") Well, I have no objection to that, so far as the leaders are concerned. 
 Jefferson Davis, and Robert Toombs, and Baukwell Rhett, and Wsi. L. Yancey, 
 and Howell Cobb, and Mason, and Slidell, and Benjamin — I am not sure I might not 
 put in James Buchanan — and the guilty traitors who fomented and nursed this abom- 
 inable rebellion, and essayed, for selfish considerations and without any earthly cause, 
 to tumble into fragments the noblest fabric of government ever reared by man, and who 
 have deceived and misled to their ruin the common people, who have no time to think 
 of political affairs, and a large jjortion of whom cannot even read or write — such men, 
 I say, who know better, ought to be hanged — not the deceived and innocent masses; 
 and this war will be without its moral unless example be made of these wicked fore- 
 
11 
 
 men in a nation's ruin. The Federal Government must, before tliis great fray ends, 
 demonstrate to all the world not only its ability to put down treason and rebellion 
 but the will and the deterniinalion to punish traitors and rebels; for without these 
 admonitory lessons, treason and rebellion may rise up at any hour to disturb the 
 national peace, and to shake the foundations of society. And I thank God that the 
 Constitution has defined treason, and the law provided the death penalty for the 
 crime. I would not only be willing to see these wicked leaders hanged by the neck 
 nntil they are dead, dead, dead, but would stretch the Constitution to the utmost 
 legal tension to find the power to confiscate every dollar's worth of their earthly 
 possessions : 
 
 " Let them not live to taste this lantVs increase. 
 That would with treason wound this tair land's peace." 
 
 I repeat, what are you to do? You must put an end to the war. If you stand in 
 the mire, will you not sink deeper and deeper into it the lonsfcr you stand? Just so 
 it is with this war. The longer you stay in it, the deeper will you sink into the mire 
 of its troubles, and miseries, and desolations ; so get out of it, and as soon as you can ; 
 the sooner you get out of it, the sooner you will have good coffee in the place of 
 parched corn ; the sooner you will get rid of the war prices of $7 per pound for tea, 
 and 40 cents per pound for sugar, and T5 cents per yard for ninepence calico; the 
 sooner will you get employment, and with employment money, and with money an 
 abundance of meat and bread, aye, and w hi^ky, too, if any want it, instead of the 
 stinted allowance this war has put you upon; and the sooner will separated fathers, and 
 mothers, and sons, and husbands, and wives, and brothers, and sisters, meet in happy 
 gathering around the hearthstone of home. And one reason ought to be conclusive 
 with you, and secessionists too — the South cannot win in this contest. It can never 
 establish its independence. The odds are too strong against it. We of the South 
 have seven millions of white men to twenty millions against us. In the nature of 
 things, we cannot overcome this vast superiority in the great material of war — men. 
 We started in the war, I know, with the absurd notion that one Southern man was equal, 
 in battle, to five Northern men , but I presume that delusion is now well cleared up. 
 We hugged that other delusion that Northern men would not fight, and I presume 
 this hallucination has also passed away. The "cursed Yankees," to use Dixie's par- 
 lance, will not fight duels, and in that they show their good sense. But put them to 
 fighting for a principle — for the stars and stripes, for example — and they will fight as 
 hard as any people on earth. And look, too, at the spirit now exhibiting on the 
 second call upon the North for troops. Legion after legion is rushing down to the 
 battle place, resolved, at all hazards, to maintain the Government, and fling again 
 to the breeze the glorious stars and stripes, all over the land. 
 
 The spirit of twenty millions of such men is not to be resisted. Besides, the South 
 wants all the elements of successful warfare. It wants evenpowder. It wants heavy 
 artillery, the great instrumentality of modern warfare — that instrumentality which, 
 Napoleon said, God Almighty was always on the side of It wants the great essen- 
 tials of commerce and manufactures. It wants the woolen clothing to keep the sol- 
 dier's limbs warm, and the shoes to protect his feet from the lacerating tread. Want- 
 ing both commerce and manufactures, it has no hoarded millions of excess cash to 
 draw upon for the necessities of war. About ten millions of loan was all it could 
 rake and scrape from the chests of its capitalists. The result is, that while the Fede- 
 ral Government has unlimited credit, the Confederate States have none. They 
 
12 
 
 have even to legislate their worthless paper issues into currency. Men take it by 
 compulsion only. Patriotism will not take it at par. I know the fact that a huly of 
 Norfolk sent a twenty-dollar gold piece to Richmond, and got for it thirty-three dol- 
 lars in Confederate notes, a discount on the latter of sixtj^-five per cent. Now, when 
 the Confederate curiency shall have settled down to this rate of depreciation, how 
 worthless will it be for carrying on a great war? The South has no navy, and can 
 get none; the Federal Government, in six months, can build and equip any number 
 of ships it needs. And above all, it wants bread and meat, and will want them more 
 and more as the war progresses; for with the whole Mississippi river and valley, and 
 most of the railroads, in Federal possession, it is cut oflf from the supplies required for 
 carrying on the war. Unless, therefore, an army can subsist without bread, success can 
 never perch on the Confederate banner. The hope, too. of foreign intervention, is 
 blasted. The opening of the ports of New Orleans and other Souchern cities, opens 
 to France and England supplies of cotton, and so these nations have lost all induce- 
 ment to interfere in our quarrels. And we have another greater stieugth. We have 
 a just cause to light for. We are fighting to save the best Government known to men. 
 We are fighting for Washington's Union, and we are fighting for principles which 
 Washington, in his parting counsels, gave us in charge. We are repelling aggression. 
 We are defending ourselves from war, actually and wickedly waged upon us— not a 
 war of our making. It is loyalty struggling with treason. In such a cause, the God 
 of nations and of battles will help us as He did our fathers. He will give us the vic- 
 tory. So help me Heaven, fellow citizens, one reason why I could not and would not 
 participate in this unnecessary and heartless rebellion, is, that I have believed in my 
 soul that the God of justice and right could prosper no such cause as that which the 
 seceding States are engaged in. Besides, there is an old saying that " the proof of the 
 pudding is in the eating thereof," and let the secessionists take warning from the 
 adage. They have been defeated in every important engagement, save one, though 
 the masses of the Southern people are still kept in the dark, and made to believe 
 that the South has won all the battles. Why, some of the secessionists here- 
 abouts have faced me down to the last that we, the Federals, the stars-and-stripes 
 men, have been whipped in every fight. They were quizzing me, I suppose, not re- 
 membering that I sometimes read the papers. Or it may be a part of a system of 
 deception resorted to to keep up the drooping spirits of the Confederates, and holding 
 them to the fighting mood by the tempting assurance that, as they have been victo- 
 rious in every trial of strength, ultimate triumph for their cause is sure. Most cruel 
 deception ! Heartless pretext— is it not?— that allures the innocent and unsuspecting 
 to the butchery of the battle field I 
 
 I repeat, the South has lost every important engagement. The Federal arms have 
 re-taken nearly every lost fort. We have New Orleans, and, with it, the whole valley 
 of the Mississippi. We can augment the Union army to two millions of men, if need 
 be, and I solemnly believe that if the North were left out of the fight altogether, 
 the western men alone could put down the rebellion. I repeat, the South cannot 
 win. If it persist, extermination is the only victory it can conquer. In naked 
 truth, you had as well call on me to thrash this large crowd of stalwart men, or upon 
 the puny youngster to take down the brawny giant, as to expect the Confederate 
 States of America to wrestle with the giant power of the United States. I say, then, 
 get out of this horrible war as best you can, and you can best do that by striving 
 for and returning to that blessed Union under whose elevating auspices our country 
 
13 
 
 has growft in a brief space to be among the mightiest of the nations of the earth, and 
 under which you, and I, and all the people of the United States have been the hap- 
 piest that ever God's sun sent down his rays upon. Speak out for the Union. Be 
 not afraid. Fear not, as some do, that the Confederate troops will again'ppssess 
 Norfolk. Xo danger of that ; none whatever. The Confederate flag can never be 
 flung out again over Norfolk and Portsmouth. No ! I would as soon expect 
 the Monitor or Galena to be used up by a half-ton fishiug smack as that Norfolk 
 should be re-taken by the Confederate arms. Federal possession once obtained, there 
 is no power in the South to oust it. You are once more, thank God, under the pro- 
 tecting folds of the Star-Spangled Banner, and if your hearts yearn towards the 
 Union of your fathers, speak out your sentiments like men and like freemen. Don't 
 hide your light under a bushel. Let it shine out, and it may lead others into the 
 path of right and duty. Your example may encourage the weak and confirm the 
 wavering. If you don't plant a nucleus here and a nucleus there, as our fathers did 
 in the Revolution, you may never reach peace and the old Union. 
 
 Do not allow yourselves, I beseech you, to be misled by the fallacy, honest, no doubt, 
 with a few, that the people of Virginia should do nothing, make no move, until a new 
 convention of 'the pecjple shall have sent her back to the Union. No mistake could be 
 more fatal. It is but a knocking under to secession. It is an acknowledgment of the 
 doctrine of secession in its wor.st form. It keeps it in life, and decks it off with the 
 garniture of legality and right. It postpones indefinitely all Union demonstration 
 and' action. I say, let not this fallacy keep you back. The government of our State 
 must be, necessarily, for some time, chiefly a military one. In the meantime, let the 
 voice of the Union men be heard loud and strong ; and when, by the general speakino- 
 out of the Union men, it shall be found that they are strong to save, there will be no 
 difficulty in making the arrangements for restoring the State to her position in the 
 Union. Let your present efforts look to the expression and development of the Union 
 sentiment ; details will follow. 
 
 And be not deceived by the gulling pretence raised by the Confederate leaders and 
 presses, that the Federal Government has made war upon your State. It is not true 
 and none know it better than Jekferson Davis, and Robert Toombs, and Howell 
 CoBB. Mr. Lincoln issued his proclamation on the 15th of April, calling out the 
 militia, but for what? To make war upon Virginia? No ; but to " see that the laws 
 were faithfully executed," and to save the Government he was sworn to maintain. He 
 did so under express authority of law — of law as old as the Government. He did just 
 what Washington did at the time of the Whisky Insurrection — called out the military 
 to put down rebellion. He did just what Andrew Jackson did when South Carolina 
 put herself in opposition to the supreme law of the Union, or what he would have 
 done if this mischief-making State had not dropped her defiance and mended her 
 behavior. He ha^ no alternative left him. Several States had seceded, in other 
 words, had put the laws of the United States under foot ; the forts, and guns, and 
 munitions of war, and money, and other property of the United States, had been seized 
 by the Confederate States ; the raising of an army had been provided for by the Con- 
 federate Congress more than a month before the issue of the proclama'tion ; Fort 
 Sumter had been bombarded — an act of actual war — three days before the date of the 
 proclamation ; and, elated by the grand exploit of capturing a weak fort, garri 
 soned by only seventy men, the Confederate leaders had threatened the capital. Was 
 the calling out of the militia, under such circumstances, an act of war upon Virginia'' 
 
14 
 
 No; Virginia herself made war upon the United States. That is God's truth. Sht 
 was the aggressor. On the 30th of March, 1861, sixteen days before the proclamation 
 appeared, she took by force the guns of the United States at Bellona Arsenal, an act 
 of undisguised war ; for if the taking by one government of the property of another 
 be not an act of war, in God's name, what is? On the iTth of April, Gov. Letcher 
 ordered the channel of the Elizabeth river — a river of the United States, not of Vir- 
 ginia — to be obstructed. The United States post oflBces, and custom houses, and navy 
 yard, were taken, and troops ordered out by the Executive of Virginia to resist the 
 Federal authority, hefort a Federal soldier had trod the soil of Virginia. And on the 
 24th of April — a month before the advance of a Federal army into Virginia — the Stata 
 had become a member of the Southern Confederacy, by which act she became a party 
 to the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and all the other acts of war of the Confederate 
 States. Who, then, began the war? Virginia surely began it upon the United States. 
 The United States is but defending itself from her war, and the war of her rebel 
 associates, and the President would have been himself a traitor if he had not called 
 out the military. 
 
 And so, be not thrown oS" your balance by the artful appeal ever and anon ad- 
 dressed to your State pride, that the " sacred soil" of Virginia has be'en polluted by 
 Federal invasion. Under the laws and Constitution of the United States, the Presi- 
 dent, as Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy, has the power to march the 
 Federal troops over every foot of the territory of each and every one of the States. 
 It is an inevitable deduction from the war-making power, which is vested in the 
 Congress, and not in the separate States. The Federal Government would n6t be worth 
 tenpence, would be no government at all, were it otherwise. The idea that the 
 Federal Executive is bound to see the laws executed all-over the Union, aud yet not 
 possess the power to march the Federal troops all-over the Union to execute them, 
 is an absurdity which could originate only in the inventive brain of secession. 
 
 And, lastly, be not "frightened out of your propriety" by the bug-bear conception 
 of Confederate treason, tha^ the object of this war is the subjugation of the South, 
 or the emancipation of the slaves. The war did not so begin ; let us hope that it will 
 end as it began — in an honest endeavor to execute the laws and restore the Union. 
 You have the solemn declaration of President Lincoln, and of the dominant party in 
 Congress, that this shall not be a war of subjugation or emancipation. Let us hold 
 them to this pledge ; and I have great confidence that Mr. Lincoln will do what he 
 promises. And the sooner we end the war, the more will they be enabled to redeem 
 the pledge. The sooner we end the war, the sooner shall we escape the yawning gulf 
 of " military necessity ," and we shall the soonest end the war by the fearless and 
 out-spoken expression of the Union sentiment, which, being thus expressed, will let 
 the Confederate leaders know that there is a division in the South, and that the 
 people — the masses — the bone and sinew — are entitled to a say in the matter of termi- 
 nating the war, and are resolved to assert their power. I tell you, people of Ports- 
 mouth, in conclusion, that the disunion leaders will not yield until the masses rise up 
 and force them, and that, if you desire to come back to the Union as it was, and to 
 maintain the Constitution as your fathers made it, you must speak out your Union 
 gentiments at once, and at the top of your voice. Tou have not an hour to lose I 
 
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