LETTER TO A FRIIEN'D IN A SLAVE STATE.
My cear --
EVERYBODY recollects the turn given to the idea
that the fence of the law cannot be made perfect, when the
Englishman said he never saw an Act of Parliament lie
could not drive his coach through; now signalized, alas,
but a thousand years too soon, in the illustrious instance
of the Constitution of the United States. Any one or more
of the States which drove into this great work may drive
out again by the Southern road, and we are taught by lessons, both Legislative and Executive, that as long as the
States which remain to us are united, the Constitution is
unwounded, though the Northern chariot and scythes be
driven through every clause of it. What the South accomplishes at a blow, we do piecemeal. Eight millions of
people hold that, if a State had called a convention and
asked of the Federal Government a boon, which was refused, or being refused nothing whatever, had expressed a
preference to live alone, they might make their act of constitutional secession, and bow themselves out of the Union.
Nor would it be possible to exaggerate theheresies of those
that are leading the fortunes of the other eighteen millions,
who assail, in his liberty and property, the plainest rights of
the citizen; who mean to consolidate the Government, if
they can, and whose schemes for the consolidation of large
parts of it, are already before Congress. These are the
extremes of tilought and action that aecompany national
calaamitv.
1




In any other part of the globe the next act would be anarchy, the edifice would come down and crush its inhabitants under the ruins of centuries; our house was built
yesterday, with our own hands, and we can hold it up if we
will. But we must not deceive ourselves. We must accept, what is upon us, as revolution. If we conquer the
South and take possession of their vanquished country, it is
revolution; to make peace and separate from them, for
which there is no power in the Constitution, would be revolution, and that revolution is the name that applies to our
existing condition, every man's senses assure him.
We are in the midst of civil war, to North and South alike
unexpectedly; for when was civil war deliberated on? The
North did not believe the South would leave them; the
South did not believe the North would fight to retain them;
the South armed and struck the blow, and now the sword
is drawn on both sides, and cannot be sheathed without
conquest or a compromise. We have to conquer the South
or settle with them; and their unconditional conquest seems
the policy of those that rule us.
The purpose of this letter is to explain to you some of the
views of the persons in this State who regard conciliation
as our only available resort, and look upon the extreme
course of the Government as ruin.
In such a crisis, the most perilous in which a nation can
stand, of what materials is composed the party in possession
of the Government, and which controls our destinies?
They may be classed under three heads. The original
abolitionists who engage themselves, without disguise
or denial, in the work for which they were ordained, and
which they have from the beginning, when they were but a
speck on the remote horizon, steadily pursued, that of destroying the Constitution and Union; the political abolitionists, or those who, for the sake of power and access to
the treasury, have adopted their principles, and act with
them; and last, the body of the Republicans, who voted for




3
Mr. Lincoln as the anti-Democratic candidate, and who,
sincerely attached to both the Constitution and the Union,
yet stand helplessly by, and allow the stakes of national existence to be played by the abolitionists.
If the President and his advisers were reliable men,
though the philosophy of freedom teaches to distrust
power, every citizen with the love of country in his breast,
would be disposed, in a great emergency, to bestow on them
a liberal confidence; but when his want of force and their
want of virtue are the vice of our position, instead of the
call not to embarrass the Government, which we hear front
so many mouths when a measure of the administration is
challenged, a watchful jealousy is the duty of all.
Nothing but a restoration of the Union can save us.
Peace and a separation cannot be agreed on with the South;
the President and Senate having no power to make a treaty
by which the Union is divided. It would have the effect
of restoring the States, upon the instant, to the condition of
independent sovereignty, in which they stood before they
came under the Constitution of 1789. And the attempt
which you may expect to see, some day, made by Mr. Lincoln's government, to give effect to the secession of at least
part of the South, by letting them go, would be futile. The
President and Senate may enter into treaties with foreign
nations, but they cannot convert into foreign nations,
States of the Union. What then is to become of us?
Mr. Seward has well said that we are not to break at what
he calls a "line of latitude;" meaning probably that the present line, between the two hostile sections of the country,
or any other line, could never be a permanent demarcation of boundaries. When he stated his proposition, he
struck a chord which vibrates to every heart, for the question directly follows, if we cannot divide by this line, and
if the States cannot live isolated in their separate sovereignties, and it is plain they could not, what line is there to




4
divide by; and if, which is equally plain, there is none,
where shall we be, and where find habitation for our liberties, when the Union is broken up? When we came together in 1790, we had never been separated; we had not
quarrelled; yet the Union was effected with much difficulty,
and not at the first intention; though having all the advantage of the auspices of Washington and the other men of
that day.
If, by some process of disintegration, through political
mishap, the territory of any people, for example, France,-a
very compact countiy, which has added to its square miles
from century to century-could be divided by a "line of latitude," or separated into the many parts which originally
composed it, so that those, which once were independent
sovereignties, might live alone, and those which were
wrested  from  Germany, Spain  and  England, renew
their relations with them, it is plain that these disjointed
members, if they did not come together again as France,
would have altogether new combinations to form. Now in
what particular would our condition, in case of final disunion, whether divided into two parts or many, be better
than theirs?
We have existence as an united country, by compact, a
fairer and better than any other that could be devised,
and which was for seventy-one years respected. If it be
broken, not to be renewed, our condition is just as much
worse than would be that of France, as the cohesion of the
provinces of a country, accustomed to highly centralized
rule, is greater than that of a system of States in a union
or confederacy. Where then, the force of arms and habit
that united France, the force of compact that united us,
being broken, would be found the new combinations that
must settle their destinies? The answer is, in war! War
gave to France, in about a thousand years of fighting and
negotiating, their territory as we see it to-day. This pro
cess must be with them begun, for the second time, and




with us, for the first. Every cause of strife, that makes war
so frequent beween the different powers of the earth, that
it may be said to be always imminient, would be reason
enough for hostilities among us; and there would be elemental questions to settle besides.
In Europe their map is made. Each country has its
identity, any two or more of them may engage in conflict;
but it would not be allowed to affect a question which has
been settled for them, for centuries, and must not be touched,
not only because it has long since been decided, but because
it is the interest of other nations, of that part of the world,
for the sake of the general peace to insist upon, and, if need
be, enforce it. To alter the map of Europe by the annexation of a part of Savoy to the French Empire, though by
treaty between the nations concerned, backed with the consent of the population affected, as expressed by their votes
at the polls, startled the Continent.
But what map have we, when there is' no longer the
United States of America? There is no identity for Pennsylvania or any other State, when the Union is broken up.
They are not nations, founded, fixed and established, but
things of yesterday, whose relations with themselves and
with surrounding territory, were based upon, and adjusted
to the Union; which being gone, there is no identity left to
be respected, and if there were, no power to enforce it.
War, therefore, would be with us a necessity of our situation, and not as with other countries, an occasional fact, depending on accident, interest or passion. It would be our
normal condition until we came to a settlement; and that
could only be when we had mastered one another. Whoever will look at our present map will perceive that the
states are divided, for the most part, by surveyors' lines.
Pennsylvania, which bounds on six States, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, New York and New Jersey, is separated from live of them by the surveyor, and from one
only by a natural boundary, so that, perchance, the farmer




6
in plowing his field, does not know whether he is plowing
Pennsylvania or Virginia. When we had the Union, this
was cement to it; but make us no longer one, and it becomes the source of bitter and iicessant hostilities.
We must be broken and shaped into nations; the process
will be long, and nobody can anticipate its results. The
strong will establish themselves behind rivers, chains of
mountains, and lines of fortresses, and encroaching on the
weak, annex, absorb and divide them into provinces, or rule
and scourge them as colonies. States will recede or advance-some will become great nations, others will disappear, and new ones will arise, as Poland has left the family
of nations, and Holland and Prussia have come into it; as
France and Russia have advanced, and Austria and Sweden receded. South Carolina, with her swamps and rice
fields, will fall a prey to the more vigorous regions of
the upper country of Georgia and Tennessee.   Ohio,
Virginia and  Kentucky, which, on their fertile soils
could maintain four hundred souls to the square mile, will
be strong; New England, which could not support a third
of that number, will be weak; and so must be immense
tracts of country in the South which are better adapted to
the mosquito and crocodile than to the habitation of man.
Physical force, measured by population, and the number of
men they can bring into the field, will settle all mooted
points, and neither South Carolina nor Massachusetts,which
will have had so much hand in doing away with the old
form of arbitrament, would find reason to congratulate
themselves on the new.
In the midst of these discords, and it would be long before the questions dividing the country were sufficiently settled to give hostilities any other character than that of civil
war, liberty would be engulphed. We see now, in the first
stage of our disturbances, the proneness of power to usurpation and violence; we witness audacities which, a year
ago, would have been pronounced impossible. Already the




liberties of the citizen are a thing not jealously regarded;
and we are told that the Government must be sustained today, and the Constitution righted to-morrow. But for this
fatal mistake of our rights, and of the duty we owe our
country, and the yet more flagrant error that it is not in the
power of events to do us permanent political injury, under
the influence of which we made our first mis-step, and by
which we seem to this day to be infatuated, we would not
be where we are.
That this is not only an unexaggerated, but the only view
to be taken of our future, in the event of failure to restore
the Union, and dividing at a "line of latitude," or in
any other manner, we learn by lessons taught in the history
of the world, on too many of its pages, to be doubted either
by the exalted, like Mr. Seward, or the more humble, like
you and me. We might swear to treaties and enter into
well-schemed divisions of the country; and they might last
a few feverish years, but the sword must make our map
at last.
A word now-the question for the country being war or
compromise-upon the war which we are at this time
waging, and the probabilities, as they strike people generally, of its success as a war of conquest. Let us suppose to
ourselves all the advantages of an immense force, and grant
we can keep it up to 700,000 men, which is out of the
question, for no free people will pay heavy taxes, which in
the much burdened countries are imposed by one class, and
paid by another, and not imposed by the people on themselves. Let us also suppose, which is equally out of the question, that for any length of time we can safely tempt
authority with the control of such a force.
You and I would not venture to criticise campaigns, but
there are things belonging to them, as plain to the common
soldier as to the commander-in-chief. If we had declared war
with England, or taken the chances of one, rather than pass
under the Caudine forks and surrender Mason and Slilell,




the people might have praised the firmness of tllhir rulers;
but if pursuing the bold train of his diplomatic thinking,
when just before, Mr. Seward expressed himself to his
representatives abroad, as ready to fight all Europe together, should they cross his path, he had gone to war,
not to save our honor, but with the object of conquering
and keeping the British islands, we should, any of us, have
been able to give good reasons against so extreme an
undertaking.
We must assume that the South will resist with all their
might, and that our progress in their territory is to be effected by force of arms. Not only has there been no evidence, but the contrary, by mlany Northe]lrn witnesses, of a
desire to see a Northern army amongo them; and Twhatever
the Union feeling in the South, if kindly dealt with, it is
against all reason and probability tlhat a spirited and free people should invite to their conquest a government, howeverl
legitimate, which their immiediate State, by organized action,
and a majority of their people, Ias agreed to throw off.
It is in the nature of men, especially freemen, to go by the
will of the majority, a human instinct on which republican
government is founded, which carried us through the Revolution of'76, when a minority subrmnitted their opinions, and
which we see operate in the daily circumstances of life, where
the leading few - comnmonlo ly infi se their i(deas into and control
the action of the many. Wr  e    also assumle that the troops
of either side fight equally well, "withl tlie ingle diffterence
that the South has the advantage of us ii, contending in
defence of their homes. As to the claiml of superior skill
on the part of Southern generals, it seems to be not only
against probabilities, but disproved by factss. We further
assume that we fight with, not on our part prodigiously
superior numbers, for, though we are much the more numerous population, and able to pay more soldiers, yet, having to invade a widely extended territory, there is no reason why they should not bo as strong as we are, at the point
of conflict.




If then the forces are of nearly equal numbers, and equally
well led, how ought we to count the chances, the question
being the conquest of the Southern States?  In Missouri,
Kentucky and other States, where, divided in opinion, they
resist the secession movement, Northern armies find a country in which, no more being necessary than to give military
aid to the well-affected part of the population, conquest is
not in question: but the vast region comprising Western
Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and
Eastern Virginia, have to be brought to submission by the
sword. I do not mean, by the sword, the sort of ruin like
that of the iron pot coming against the earthen one-which
must ensue to them at last, as co-terminous neighbors of a
hostile people, stouter, stronger, richer and more numerous
than themselves-but military subjugation.
To accomplish this, to invade, conquer and occupy, it is
indispensable that our military movements have the positiveness and certainty of those of trained armies, led by experienced officers, and supported by a vigorous government,
supplying them with constant reinforcements. We begin,
subject to the immense disadvantage of being without the
necessary foundation on which to build; for the handful
of soldiers who composed the army before these troubles came
on us, cannot serve as a frame for a force of 718,000 men.
It is the best military opinion that the French revolution
could not, for want of soldiers, have conquered its way,
and must have broken down, notwithstanding the rush
of the people into the ranks from all classes, had it not
been for the remains of the old royal army, which the republicans used as the basis for their new military establishment. If; having an organized army of 359,000 disciplined
men, we add to it 359,000 more, making up our number
of 718,000, it is plain tlat the whole establishment would
be alike in its parts when the recruits had had a few
months of drill and discipline, every ten of them being
2




alongside of ten soldiers, whose experience and knowledge would instruct them and inspire them with confidence; but if the whole 718,000 be equally raw and ignorant, they can be educated only by marching and fighting,
and must for their primary instruction go through, in the
field, a course of reverses and successes. We are now at the
second stage of our education, that of successes, on a very
long course of schooling that is before us. As to officers,
beginning with almost none, which, considering our immense force, may be said to be the case, our condition
must needs be much worse than in the department of
soldiers.
The invaded South light lose twenty battles and not be
conquered, while the loss of one by the invading North,
when their work was almost accomplished, might be fatal,
and operations to be begun again from the beginning.
In 1808, the finest troops in the world were in possession
of a great part of Spain, when the battle of Baylen lost
them  every foot of it but that which was north of the
river Ebro, and on the confines of their own country.
Iave we then an invading force? one with which to
conquer, take and keep military possession? War is a
trade, and armies only a machine. Our soldiers are brave,
but courage, as was said by one who must have known,
is not the first quality of a soldier. The question is, do they
make a force which can be carried to the field, and relied
on to struggle with the realities of war - cold, hunger,
fatigue and privation, the miseries of the roadside and the
hospital, without becoming disorganized; not merely,
though that is not easy, when engaged with the enemy, to
advance with alacrity and retire in good order?
The events of the memorable day of Bull Run, answer
this question. We may have some better soldiers than
then we had; men who have been under fire and done their
duty well; but the character of our force must be the same,
new levies led by new officers.
It would seem, taking the Southern accounts with our own,




11
that from about 10 o'clock, when the engagement began,
to between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, when it ended in a
panic rout, we constantly gained ground and lost none,
and finally took flight, simply and merely because we were
not soldiers enough to make a retreat in the presence of
the enemy, when owing to his being reinforced or from
some other cause not perfectly agreed on, by both sides, a
backward movement had become necessary. Armies have
been seized with panic before the 21st of July, 1861.
This has happened so often that we were able to console
ourselves, in our disgrace, with instances of it from
all countries; but the fact, for it was without necessity,
and for no reason in the world than because we did not
know how to retire, went to prove, and did prove, that our
soldiers were unsure.
But if good troops everywhere have been sometimes
panic-struck, good troops nowhere ever acted such a part
as did the Southern army when ours fled before it.  Their
enemy flying, in the last confusion, had scattered themselves, and left, unprotected and uncovered, the capital of
their country, distant thirty-four miles, one day's forced
march; and that place, for a certain number of days, if not
weeks, they had only to enter and possess, if they had had
troops with which, abandoning their position, and the
forests and fastnesses under cover of which they fought,
they could have ventured the simplest operation in the
open field, without incurring the hazard, in their turn, of
military disaster. But far from advancing on the place
thus lying at their discretion, they did not, in any force,
so much as pursue, and the foe was allowed, while they
must have had under their hands a very large army, of
which any 10,000 men capable of being moved, might have
entered Washington, to collect again his disbanded forces,
repair his losses, restore his condition, then lie for months
opposite them, stronger than he was the dlay before the defeat took place, and finally sec them retire.




12
Any general, they say, may gain a battle, for it may be
given him by his adversary; the true general is he that can
reap the fruits of success; but no want of generalship
would explain this most remarkable forbearance, which
could be accounted for by nothing but the want of solidity
of their soldiers. All kinds of reasons have been suggested
for it: a defensive policy, bad weatlher, imperfect information, ignorance of the extent of their success, that they did
not want the seat of government of the United States, with
others equally unsatisfactory. If they were all founded in
truth, and were combined together, it is not imaginable that
that army would not have been in Washington, if they could
have been taken there. When General Ross seized Washington, he did not hold it forty-eight hours; but the political as well as the military effect of its fall was immense,
When Wellington, the most cautious of commanders, and
not a man to give the substance for the shadow, had the
choice, after his victory of Salamanca, to pursue, with the
lope of d(estroying the enemy, or take, and immediately
abandon Madrid, at the hazard of being overwhelmed by
three armies, then in the field against him, he marched on
the capital, although he knew he could not remain there,
and, in fact, came within an ace of being cut off; in retiring
from it.
The capture of Washlling',ton, beside its prodigious military results, would hIave h!ad such an echo everywhere,
both here and in Europe, where it would have been worth
to them, probably, the recognition they so much covet,
that, granting no more than rationality to the Southern
leaders, its remaininig in our hands after the day at Bull
Run, can be accounted for in one way only. It is altogether
incredible that they were so unworthy of their trust,
as immediately upon such a success, to remain ignorant
for days of the state of things, just on their fiont, or
that they were reluctant to rouse Maryland behind us,
or that their defensive policy would be interfered with by




13
seizing the enemy's capital, lying before them, any more
than his camp equipage or artillery, that he left behind
him.   The simple truth is, General Beauregard's troops
could not be relied upon; he may explain his course
in after-dinner speeches, and quote Alcibiades till doomsday,
" Audacious drink, and greatly daring dine,"
but turn it as he will, in his carousals in celebration of
that not unprecedented event in war, a defeat without a
victory, it could have been alone the discretion which is
the better part of valor, which, begetting diffidence of the
materials of his army, made him forbear to snatch so great
a prize.*
Here, then, was an army, composed of materials as good
as ours, longer than we had been under military organization and discipline, which had defended themselves well in
their position, not only wholly unable to invade, as we
must, an enemy's country on a long line of operations, but
unwilling to hazard, in the flush of success, a march of
thirty-four miles, in the open field, to reach his Capital.
How long must it be before an army of such soldiers
and such officers could be depended on to make their
way through    the North to the line of Canada?        If
the contending parties could have changed places, and we
had been attacked behind cover, and they our assailants, we
should have had the victory, and they have undergone the
defeat; when they could make no impression on us, instead
of retreating, they would have fled in disorder, and we, in
our turn, would have been unable to move and gather the
harvest of success.
When we march our soldiers against those of the South,
while theirs do exactly the work to which they are compe* Since the text was written, General Beauregard's official report has been
added to his speech, and published in the North. It may be taken for absolute proof, inferring from what he says, and does not say, because not "proper to be * * * communicated," of what could not be doubted before.




14
tent-that of making good in. the midst of a friendly population, a region fortified by nature with deep ravines, broad
rivers, high hills, narrow passes, and the never-ending
forest;-we, on the contrary, have to take the open field,
and there contend with obstacles at every step. The best
troops, in a position fortified by nature or art, and assailed
by troops only equally good, may by valor and pertinacity
of assault, be overcome; but let both armies be composed
of raw soldiers, and the troops behind cover fight well,
while those who have to make an assault requiring
vigor and determination, cannot be depended on. Jackson, entrenched at New Orleans, with a very imperfect
force, successfully resisted excellent troops, but, after having  cut them   to pieces, he allowed them, thoulgh
a man all fire and action, to retreat unmolested, because he
did not deem it safe to move against them in the field.
The attacking army at Waterloo, to take another familiar
illustration, veterans playing desperately their last stake,
under a consummate commander, were very superior to the
defending army, composed of soldiers of different nations,
hastily brought together, and some of them so lately on the
other side, that they were yet in their French uniforms;
but the position made the difference, and they fought without decisive advantage until the party assailed was
reinforced. Had tlhe assailants been raw soldiers, and
had the defences they attacked, instead of being intrenchmnents, flarm  buildings and  uneve:nnesses of the
ground, been such prodigious works as are everywhere establlished by nature among us, they would have had no possible chance. Wlhen (General Braddock, with a regular
force, undertook to penetrate the Amlerican forest, his army
was destroyed by a handful of French soldiers, with a few
Canadian militia and Indians,
But a glance at a map, showing the area of the Southern;States, which is much greater than that of the territory of.any European power, except Russia, the State of Texas




alone being as large as France, or Spain and Portugal, will
satisfy us that the South have an ally that is altogether invincible, in space. Space, when the scale is great, is, in a
war of invasion, too much for any military power that can
be brought against it. It had well nigh conquered Napoleon in Russia, who was exhausted in contending with
it before he was attacked by the frost and snow. We
invaded Canada three several times during the war of 1812,
in considerable force, and with the fullest confidence of
overrunning the country, but were, each time, quite unable
to make any impression on that extended region, defended
though it was by but few British troops. Alexander the
Great covered space more extended than that which is before
our armies, inhabited, however, for the most part, by effeminate nations; but neither Julius Cuesar norNapoleon ever performed such a feat, and, if they could be brought to Washington to advise with Mr. Lincoln, would assure him it was
not possible. To keep the line open, if that were all, would
be a military marvel; and what would communication be,
and transportation, costing as they do now, when we came
to reach the Rio Grande?
As to detached expeditions against the coast, Twhich serve
to annoy and distress an enemy, but, however gallantly conducted, not to carry us into the country, they exasperate the
population against which they are directed, without advancing us an inch beyond the ground we occupy; of which the
numerous English expeditions to our own shores and those
of Europe are signal proof. If we detach 15,000 men
against a given point of the Southern coast, the 15,000 put
there by the enemy to defend it, have infinitely the advantage of them, for they are in their own country, and within
reach of everything, while we can only communicate with
our supplies and reinforcements, at great loss of time, and
the largest expenditure of money. We must be able to
possess ourselves of not merely Charleston, Norfolk, New
Orleans, and Savannah, but the whole country to which




16
they belong; and estlablishing ourselves at these places,
however important, would give us only a foothold from
which to make our progress.
~What progress in the conquest of North and South Carolina have we made from Beaufort, from Hatteras, from Roanoke, and in the conquest of Tennessee from Nashville?
How much would be furthered the work if we occupied
Richmond? If the Southern troops were withdrawn from
Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee to the country south
of them, leaving us to operate against the cotton States,
across a hostile and desolated region, or from the coast, we
should only be where we were before hostilities began.
North Carolina and Tennessee were of the Southern
States, two of the truest to the Union; North Carolina always the antipodes of South Carolina, and Tennessee by
climate, soil and population, more western than southern,
and through the powerful and long-exercised influence of
General Jackson, strongly prejudiced against the doctrines
of Mr. Calhoun. And now, having occupied the capital of
Tennessee, and Newbern and other places on the shores of
North Carolina, what have we done towards bringing back
those States? If their Union feeling is not to be stirred by
the roll of the Northern drum, of which, probably, we are
satisfied, we have to bring them back, and then to control
them, by arms. Has such a task been begun? Do you expect to see it attempted? Are we to believe it ever will
be? And if we do not to think of military reduction of
the people, and if they do not voluntarily flock to our standard, are not, to-day, North Carolinaand Tennessee further
from the Union than before we marched troops on them;
infinitely further in Union feeling, and not nearer, militarily?
If having armies on their soil,be not a commencement
of the systematic work of military subjugation, how long we
can remain at points remote from supply and reinforcement,
and what measures of soldierly severity may be, in the




17
meantime, required to keep down discontent and insurrection on the part of the inhabitants, are questions that military men must answer. I presume the Medical Staff have
informed themselves of the chances of life in the case of
northern constitutions, exposed and tried like those of the
soldier, in such climates as are found in portions of the
southern country, after the hot season begins.
If, after their success at Bull Run, the South had notonly
seized Washington, but pushing forward, been able to hoist
the Secession colors over the towns along the southern
boundary of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Lancaster, York,
Gettysburg, Pittsburg, and the rest-levying contributions
for the support of their troops, using the Provost Marshal
to check the inhabitants, and exercising the usual license
of the camp-is it to be inferred that the people of this State
would be coming forward, to swear allegiance to the South;
or, that before they could be induced to organize a Secession government, pay Secession taxes, send Senators and
Members to the Secession Congress, and join the Southern
Confederacy, the entire State must not be thoroughly
reduced by the power of arms? Let those who throw
up their hats and cry, the war is over, or that the
beginning of the end has arrived, in this or that Southern state, because we have made a lodgment there, ask
themselves, taking one reflecting moment to it, what the
operation is, by which, and by which alone, the military
subjugation of a country can be effected, and they will see
the emptiness, idleness, and vanity of such a thought.
Of what avail would it be, could we navigate, in our gunboats, every stream from the mighty Mississippi to the shallowest of them, if we did not conquer and take military
possession of the country which they water?  We have
been now at war twelve months, and with the best materi.
als for an army, to be found in the world-a free people, accustomed to the use of fire-arms-what have we accomplished? In the hostile country, (I do not speak of semi3




18
friendly countries, like Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri,
which, before the fighting began, were wholly friendly,) we
are at certain points on the coast, carried thither by the
navy; we are at Nashville, via, partly, the Cumberland
river, and have just begun to penetrate Eastern Virginia;
but we have nowhere penetrated, with our bayonets, to the
promised stratum of Union feeling; and we have everywhere raised against ourselves, in the bosom of the whole
invaded population, a feeling of detestation, which, when
they can no longer defend them, exhibits itself in burning
their houses, crops, towns and villages, before our advancing
colors, and in some instances, leaving poison behind them,
as they fled, in the wells, and in the food which our troops
were to consume; a feeling of deep hate, which no invading
army, in any part of the world, ever failed to arouse; for an
army is, at best, a terror to the fields and cities it pours its
flood over; and which, new soldiers, like ours, of all others,
must needs produce in the most frightful abundance. The
South are discouraged, no doubt of it; they ought to be;
the reality is upon them; they will be unable, unless aided
from abroad, to fight us in the doubtful States, and must
restrict their operations to territory absolutely their own,
where secession is undiluted; and there the tide of battle
will roll, with various success, sometimes with us, sometimes with them, but always in brothers' blood, until both
parties, disgusted and shocked by the unnatural controversy, become satisfied, at last, of the truth of what Bishop
Berkely said, that it is not individuals alone, but nations
sometimes, that go mad.
Did you ever hear of a people that were conquered? In
the great wars of the beginning of the present century,
kingdoms were overrun, and peace dictated in the capitals
of half dethroned monarchs; but the people made no resistance; it was only to overcome the army; and when it
came, in Spain, and to some degree in Russia, to conquering also the inhabitants of the country, military power




19
seemed to be dealing with air or water, on which no lasting
impression could be made. Poland was seized ninety years
ago, and partitioned by three adjacent neighbors, among
them, at that and subsequent periods, so greatly their superiors in strength, that no war for conquest, when the country was entered, took place, and, at this day, if we are to
believe the newspapers, the people in parts of Poland are
in a state of insurrection. The north of Italy was, some
ten centuries, almost constantly under foreign occupation,
so powerful as to be overwhelming; but the people were
not changed into Germans, Frenchmen, or Spaniards,
when conquered by them in turn; they remained Italians, always discontented and revolting, and now seeming, with the aid of foreign intervention, to have thrown off
the yoke at last. Do we entertain of our blood so poor an
opinion, as for a moment to suppose we could ever beat
into the Union the people of the South?
The great powers of Europe are constantly fighting, but
how often do they make a conquest of one another, in Mr.
Lincoln's sense of taking, holding and keeping? Although
it is to be observed, in a war for conquest, they would have
the great advantage over us, of operating, not only with
long organized armies, supplied with all the material of scientific war, but also in territory, dotted at every strategical
point, with fortified places and strongholds, by means of
which, when the conquest is made, the country can be held;
while our armies, on the contrary, in this, so lately happy
and peaceful land of ours, if the South were conquered,
would have to keep it, not with soldiers at Dantzics and
Magdeburgs, but lying in the fields and open towns. If
the Southern country were handed over to us to-day, and
we were permitted to put down so many men here, and so
many there, at points selected for the purpose, by military
skill, how long could we hold it?
When the Cabinet say to an officer, there is the enemy, take an army and operate against him, he obeys,




20
whatever he may think of the chances of success; but that
is not enough for the country, whose all is at stake. When
the Government shall tell us that a military scheme has
been submitted, not for a movement, which may prove useful, on the Potomac, the Cumberland, or the Mississippi,
wlhich, or any other such, can be made for the South, as
well as for the North, and cal only be a victory, more or
less serving to keep up the price of public securities, and
float the Administration for a certain number of days; but
a comprehensive plan for the general subjugation of the
Southern States, despite all opposition of the population of
that part of the country, then, and not till then, the people
of the North will begin to think possible, what they now
deem out of the question
We may not be right, we people in Pennsylvania, who
have seen no enemy since Sir William Howe left us; but
these are our opinions of the war now waging against our
brethren of the South.
And if we be wrong, are not compromise and conciliation
better than war? We have, among the powers of the world,
one friend, the great head of the Russian Empire: and in
the late note of his Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Representative of the Government of the Czar at Washington,
on the Mason and Slidell difficulty, he is told to reiterate
to the President " the assurance of * * * the satisfaction
" with which his Imperial Majesty would see the American
"Union consolidated by measures of CONCILIATION."
And why should not the strong conciliate; why should
not the head of an army of seven hundred and eighteen
thousand men compromise? Whoever, let him be the most
passionate Republican of them all, will recollect what is the
way of the world, must admit that compromise is not a policy, but a necessity. In religion, what we call toleration,
which is compromise, has become the rule of Christendom;
the opposite system being abandoned. If the Emperor of
Germany had compromised with the Protestant influence,




21
his successor, this day, would be the arbiter of Elrope; but
he preferred war, and after thirty years' fighting, had to
come to compromise at last, with a loss of power which
never has been, or can be recovered. Georlge I1t. was an
uncomipromnising monarcli, and lost his thirteen colonies.
James II., in the same way, lost his crown. Wellington
was called the Iron Duke, but he was a man of eminent
- good sense, and he compromised with the Catholics rather
than quarrel with them. The first Napoleon ruined himself by an uncompromising foreign policy; but his papers,
now in course of publication by the present Emperor,
show that in the early period of his career, when everything
succeeded to which he put his hand, his system was the very
contrary of what: afterwards, it became. In England, where
power and influence are in the hands of the few, they retain it, by, from time to time, compromising with the many,
and nobody doubts that without it, the question between
the parties would have to be settled by main force. The
Constitution of the United States was, in the strictest sense
a compromise, and unattainable on any other terms. The
Missouri Compromise was repealed in 1854, and agitation
redoubled its violence. The so-called compromise with
South Carolina, in 1833, was not a compromise, it was a
surrender.
Moderation is with us, who, in our career hitherto, have
little consulted the opinion of others, more than a duty.
We, for the first time since the achievement of our independence, bend to the judgment of foreign nations. With
France and England, who have armed in jealousy of one
another; who are ready for war, and in a state of preparation for naval hostilities, on a scale of unprecedented magnitude, any untoward event, such as we have seen in the
Mason and Slidell difficulty-and, when blows are exchanging, and belligerent and neutral rights in constant question, another might occur at any moment-would serve as
an excuse for intervention in our affairs. And what would,




22
more than anything, in the eyes of Europe, strengthen their
position, and weaken ours, would be the fact of our carrying
on our war, in a manner unusual among civilized nations;
unaccompanied with offers of peace, and insisting on unconditional submission. The sensibilities of the world, when
they desire to be shocked, are easily aroused. Rage against
rebellious subjects, has been thought inhuman, when the
people of Poland and Hungary were threatened with it by
despotic and offended masters; but in the case of a difference among one another of citizens of a Republic, dating
its recent existence from a successful revolt, there is an air
about it which has already been the subject of criticism
among those trans-Atlantic nations, which, as Mr. Seward
must have satisfied himself, when he surrendered the passengers by the Trent, are masters of the game, whenever they
choose to come in.
And are they not masters of it? Are we not at the mercy of foreign countries? Is it not in their power, by intervention in favor of the South, to settle our fate, and sink
us? And why should they not intervene, to-morrow, to-day,
at aly moment? Doubtless they would prefer to find reasons for it, answering, as they do, to one another, at the
bar of the world; but these are not always waited for, as
we see in many instances, our own, among the rest.
Our independence having been declared only nineteen
months before, on the 6th of February, 1778, our excellent
and never to be forgotten friend, Louis XVI., not pausing
upon a recognition, or to raise a blockade, or for any minor
object, entered with our provisional government, at once,
upon a treaty of aliance, offensive and defensive, which was
followed, soon after, by a French fleet and army sent to
our aid, there being for intervention no better reason
than a desire to damage Great Britain. Nor can we have
already forgotten our own recent treatment of Mexico, in
the case of Texas. Nations do not love one another; and
we, who have added rough manners to conduct not always




satisfactory, must not expect to be dealt with from the point
of justice and morality.
We must bear also in mind the natural desire of aristocratically ruled countries,to witness the failure of our institutions.
The sentiment of sympathy, in the United States, was loud and
universal, when, in the eventful year of 1848, crowns seemed to
be falling off the heads of the monarchs of Europe; and shall
they not rejoice, though too well bred to say so, when, in
1862, the Republic, whose prosperous career was daily encouragement to those domestic discontents, which are their
main affliction, seems crumbling to the ground? The true
mode, and the only one, of considering the question of intervention, is recalling what so often has happened in the
history of nations, to assure ourselves that when it becomes
decidedly the interest of any foreign country to interpose
between us and the South, the interposition will speedily
follow.
But they say to you, shall we treat with traitors? Shall
we deal with rebellion as if it were virtue? If the question
lay between parties who could refer their difference to a
court of justice, the reasoning might be good, but we talk
of nations. Practically, it matters not how unnatural the rebellion, how just the cause of the North, how indefensible the
course of the South, for the question must be regarded from
quite another platform; the concession, namely, that the
South maintain what they believe to be their rights, and that
the people of the seceding States, rather than submit to what
they deem injury, have resolved to change their institutions. If Mr. Jefferson Davis, in his inaugural speech at
Richmond, appeals to God, to protect and bless the people
who chose him to rule over them, shall Mr. Lincoln, after
his own speech of 1848, in vindication of the right of insurrection, to which I will presently refer you, say he is not
sincere?  Shall he refuse to recollect that rebellion
must be treated with measure and gravity? The Right
Reverend head of the diocese of Louisiana leads in the




24
field, a body of troops, a crime to parallel which we
must go back to medieval abominations; but does any
man doubt his zeal?  The women and children are, in
the South, everywhere on fire with secession, are we to
set it down as hypocrisy? Mr. Rives, a man of the highest
character, of the most conservative views, and opposed, on
strong conviction, to the secession movement, is a member
of the Confederate Government; is he acting unwillingly?
has he been drafted or compelled to act? The South, like
the North, is full of citizens, sound in thinking, and pure
of life, and they all unite in sustaining their government.
They do not struggle against, but enthusiastically support it.
Secession is a malady, which has affected Northern
Churches, as well as Southern States: the Society of Friends,
the Presbyterians, and other religious denominations, have
had their divisions, but what is called their New School,
though schismatic, is sincere,  We take up the argument
on false principles when we take it up in anger, and
make it turn on the South being wrong. The question
is not, whether they are right, but whether they are
in earnest. Anger may be very well in the field, when
the enemy is before us, but an angry government is an
absurdity.
How much out of the question it may be, that those
who enjoy high places in the South, could be induced to
listen to terms, the President and Cabinet can judge,
but whoever will read the note of the 14th August, 1861,*
of the Southern Commissioners, at London, to Earl Russell,
in which those gentlemen, late the extreme advocates
of slavery, reverently approach what they call " the anti" slavery sentiment, so universally prevalent in England,"
" that high, philanthropic consideration, which undoubtedly
" beats in the hearts of so many in England," can come to
no other conclusion, than that the Southern statesmen, to
a See it, as lately published in all the newspapers.




conciliate an enemiy, will pass through the eye of a needle,
If the Southern masses can read that letter, by which they
are made to knock under to the base bigotry of Exeter
Hall, to the prejudices of the most inveterate foe of their
institutions, to  deprecate his haughty  dislike, and,
having sued in vain to one that never would touch but to
nrin them, can refuse terms of restoration to this Union,
which is theirs as much as ours, and which, alone can protect their negro property, the fury of civil war must have
blinded them indeed. It is not to be credited that the people of the South-I speak not of those who think they have
founded an Empire; leaders pledged by ambition, and
oaths of office, to perpetual separation from the North, but
the population generally-should prefer to shiver in the
blast of the "anti-slavery sentiment, so universally preva-' lent in England," rather than be reconciled to their own
countrymen. Is it possible that the citizens of the South
know what, already, they have come to-that their representatives wait, in English anti-chambers, to palliate their
sin of slave-holding, by laying it on the North, that they,
too, are for slavery: "that, even after the battle of Bull' Run, both branches of the Congress, at Washington,
" passed resolutions, that the war is only waged to uphold' that pro-slavery Constitution, and to enforce the laws,
"' many of them  pro-slavery, and of one hundred and
"' seventy-two votes in the lower house, they received all
4' but two, and in the Senate all but one vote," that "the
4' great object of the war, as now officially announced, is,
<' not to free the slave, but to keep him in subjection to his
" owner?" If they do not, let them read this dispatch and
be instructed.
Nothing could, better than this letter to the British
foreign Secretary, illustrate the fact, that no country, based
on negro slavery, as modern society is organized, can have
a safe, independent national existence, and how sensible
those persons are, on whom has been devolved the office
4




26
of providing for the fortunes of the seceding States, that
they have not within themselves the elements of nationality; that the South, now  little more than an aggregation  of farms, to become a nation, must be born
again; that to acquire that variety of articulation which
goes to the national composition and quality, their whole
frame of things must be renewed; that to retain their
property they must restore themselves to the colonial relation with some European power or to this Union.
In this paper, a study for every citizen of the South, the
folly of the secession movement developes itself at its first
diplomatic step, as does the weakness of our -Northern position, in the diplomacy of Mr. Seward. The extreme
Southern leaders delighted to call tlemselves fire-eaters, but
what is eating fire to eating one's words and principles?
To the proud stomach, fire ought to be a less uncomfortable diet than that on which the South have put themselves. When, for the sake of slavery, they left the Union to
establish a slave republic, they did not reflect, in the haste
of their movement, that the prejudices of mankind would
not tolerate such an establishment; just as in counting
cotton as king, they missed the fact that a rich and weak
nation is the poorest of all nations, and that, if their cotton
were really necessary to the world, the world would come
and take it, as they would come and dig their soil if gold were
found under it. When we think of all this extravagance
of Southern error, when we think how the North cruelly
and long goaded them to it, and that it is ntutual ruin;
ruin to us as much as to them; that this slavery was prosperity to the North, and mischief, only to Southern
masters; that the territorial rights asked by the South,
though very well to quarrel about, were, to practical purposes, nothing, and in themselves, but fair and equal justice, and that, could we but have forborne family difference,
and a few years longer remained united, we might have,
"confident against a world in arms," shaken slavery and




27
freedomn, both, in their faces; wheni we think what we
ought to be, and see what we have come to, it is perfectly
heart-breaking.
Emancipation is a word which sounds to virtue, for who
can doubt that Slavery is a blight to any region in which it
is tolerated? But it means with us in the United States, to say
nothing of the rights of property, that four millions of negroes, now slaves, should be freed and added to five hundred
thousand already free negroes that are among us, making
four million five hundred thousand emancipated Africans,
to be taken up into the channels of circulation of a body
now overloaded and oppressed] from the inability to absorb
the five hundred thousand.       And, as no time or tonnage
would suffice, supposing the enormous sum        of money necessary to such a purpose provided, to transport a nation of
negroes to foreign parts, one of two events must happen;
these unhappy beings, as the inferior and degraded race,
excluded from the career of life, will miserably decay, by
slow degrees, in the course of ages of oppression, or be more
suddenly, but not more inhumanly, butchered in a war of
races.*
But fanaticism which will not compromise, does not reason; nor do they, in any just sense, who, for political objects, avail themselves of it.   After the death of Mr. Clay,
the emancipation party, made up of New Englandt bigots,
*Within the last few days, there have been discharged upon this town, a
number, variously estimated at from three to seven hundred, of negro slaves,
sent hither, it is said, from the head-quarters of Major General Nathaniel Banks
of the Massachusetts militia, father of the famous expression, " Let the Union
slide!" being trophies of his warfare in Virginia; some, from age, filth and
infectious disease, fit only for the hospital; others, young and vigorous
enough to depredate upon the community, till they can be lodged in the jails.
t But for their persistent intolerance, it is sooth to say, that the slavery
question wouid have had its day and gone by, like all the rest, from
the funding of the revolutionary debts, to the surrender of Mason and
Slidell; and the country would now be at peace, for not a State of the
Union, but the six furthest from the slaves and having the least to do
with them, would have pressed the agitation. The same spirit of persecution,




28
and clouds of unscrupulous politicians of all parts of the
country, which had of late made immense strides, obtaining possession of several of the State governments, and
advancing in political influence generally, put forward for
the lead of the opposition to the Democratic party; till then
controlled and kept within bounds by Mr. Clay.       They
succeeded in getting it, and established themselves in
1854, for the first time, on what may be called a national
footing, by the election of Mr. Banks as the Speaker of the
House of Representatives, who was nominated and carried,
after a desperate struggle of several weeks of balloting, as
the avowed anti-slavery, abolition Candidate.  It was from
the Speaker's chair, which was the prize in 1854, they went
forward to their fall success in 1860.
And now, is it the cue of this controlling influence to restore
the country to quiet, to come to terms, and make peace with
the South, on the footing of the Constitution and the Union?
Is that the object with which they pursue the war? Does
the anti-slavery interest, the active principle which scattering before it the less energetic particles of Republicanism,.
has turned to its uses Mr. Lincoln's government, notwithstanding the wishes and prayers of a great majority of the
votes which elevated him-do they want harmony? We
must be credulous to think so. Would not any reader
of the proceedings of Congress suppose that we were
engaged   in  foreign  war; and that the design     of the
government, without exposing themselves to the maledictions of the world, by proclaiming freedom to the slaves,
was to damage, as much as possible, the enemy, through
which in the history of New England manifested itself from its earliest
colonial period, and fastened, from time to time, upon various objects has for
the last twenty-five years been concentrated on the South. The people of
New England possess many admirable qualities, and the citizens of Pennsylvania have a high respect for them, but to be divorced from Virginia to
marry Massachusetts is not a change of condition which comes within their
views.




that, his most vulnerable side? If he were showin the provisions of the Constitution of the United States, and then the
acts of Congress and orders to officers in the field, on the
subject of negro slaves, how small, would he suppose, were
executive and legislative reverence for organic law? Could
he doubt-do any of us doubt —that the present Executive and Legislature of the United States, if not checked,
will come at last, to what many of them long for now, a
proclamation of universal emancipation? The simple truth
is that, of the men now uppermost no small number have
so long and so cordially hated the government of the country,
that they may be said to have hated the country itself; and
under their present cry for the flag and the war, conceal a
strong desire of deadly mischief.
Is there a test by which they can be judged, the diplomacy of Mr. Seward, the measures of Congress, the constant language of the members, the appoinitments to place,
the tone of the press, which can be construed in any other
way than that to turn loose the negro, and injure and insult
his owner, is the policy of the administration? Is there the
man who does not see that the course which has been pursued on the point where the whole South, slaveholding or
not, are most sensitive, and on which they are unanimous, is
not only disturbing and insulting, but is meant to be, even
to the gentlemen representing the border slave States in
the Senate and House, who ought, of all others, to be treated
with the most reconciling forbearance. Under such influences, the position of the country is a perfect dilemma; we
must have victory, for if the South conquer us, the Union
never will be restored; yet each military success being an
addition to the strength of the abolitionists, the cry of
emancipation, which is disunion, is only the louder for it.
Restore the Union, and where would these real and pretended fanatics be? Would it not be the downfall forever of
all the hopes of the party now1 in power; would not abolitionist be the most odious of epitllets; would not Northerni




30
democratic alnd Southern votes be again united, no longer
to be startled by the anti-slavery halloo, and is there one of
them   that could politically survive the return of the seceding States to the fold of the Constitution?       To be in favor
of the Union is one thing, to be in favor of the Union and
the Constitution is another.       What these men want is to
keep the Union and break up the Constitution; and in
that sense they are all for the Union. That late respectable
cut-throat, Mr. John Brown, was in favor of the Union.
The high-scented negro, whom         the President in his message to Congress* at the opening of the present session,
beckons'over as Ambassador from         Hayti, will be in favor
of the Union; the extremest worshippers at the African
altar, who, in their love for the black family, or their blind
hate of certain portions of the white, counselled Mr. Lincoln to solicit this accession to the diplomatic corps, to elbow his way among Senators and Secretaries at drawingrooms and levees, are all in favor of Union.            But what
Union?-a Union which no eye will see!
To bring back the South as territory, not States, or without their slaves, or crippled in their condition of equality,
might comport with the designs of those who drive Mr.
* "If any good reason exists why we should persevere longer in withhold-'ing our recognition of the independence and sovereignty of Hayti and Li"beria, I am unable to discern it. Unwilling, however, to inaugurate a novel
*" policy in regard to them without the approbation of Congress, I submit for
"your consideration the expediency of an appropriation for maintaining a
" Chargd d'Affaires near each of those States."-Message of the President, 3d December, 1861. Mr. Lincoln is said to be a well-meaning man, and
perhaps is so, having in that, however, no advantage over nineteen-twentieths of his fellow-citizens; but is it conceivable that any but the most devilish spirit of disunion could have dictated to him, for it is not to be believed
the malice was his own, such a suggestion at such a time; not only abhorrent
to the interests and instincts of the slaveholding country, but of all the North
too, that is not absolutely abolitionizedl; as disgusting to us in Pennsylvania,
as to you. Mr. Lincoln desires, we are told, to avoid too close communion
with the extreme emancipationists, but it doth not appear, and in such a proposal one may see the hand, in his message, of the silliest and worst of them.




31
Lincoln's machine, but when we recollect in wvhat light
they have, from   the beginning, regarded the now broken
compact with slave-holders, it would be downright simplicity to suppose that any party, controlled by them, should
desire a restoration of it on terms that are either fair or possible.  Is it not intelligible that, rather than it should come
back, they would say in their hearts after its the deluge, and
let the country go forward on its road of revolution?
But even as I write to you, the proof presents itself,
and deduction ceases to be useful. We need no longer
infer the project of the party; you have now in the vote of
the House of Representatives of the 3d of March, on Mr.
Holman's resolution, the authoritative admission that the
object of the war is not "the restoration of the authority
of the Constitution."    In a House of one hundred and
twelve members, on motion of Mr. Lovejoy, of Illinois,
Mr. IIolman's resolution, that it was the sense of the
House, that the war was a war for, and not against the
Union and the Constitution, was laid on the table by sixty
votes to fifty-eight, onlythirteen members of the Republian
party voting against Mr. Lovejoy, and but a single Democrat voting with him.    Here is more than could have been
looked for so soon; for you have a present avowal of what
it might have been supposed would yet a little longer be
denied by all but the thorough-paced abolitionists, who, to
do them justice, never disguise anything.     I give you the
resolution, and the yeas and nays on it, with the politics
of each voter affixed, as found in a Republican newspaper,
of the fourth of this month, in the daily report of Congressional proceedings.
MR. HOLMAN (Dem), of Indiana, offered a resolution declaring that, in the
judgment of this House, the unfortunate civil war into which the Government
of the United States has been forced by the treasonable attempt of Southern
Secessionists to destroy the Union, should not be prosecuted for any other purpose than the restoration of the authority of the Constitution and welfare of
the whole people of the United States, who are permanently involved in the
preservation of our present form of government without modification or
change.
MR. LOVEJOY, (Rep.) of Illinois, moved to lay the resolution on the table,,
Carried-yeas 60, nays 58.




32
YEAS.-Aldrich, Rep.; Alley, Rep.; Arnold, Rep.; Ashley, Rep.; Babbitt,
Rep.; Baker, Rep.; Baxter, Rep.; Beaman, Rep.; Bingham, Rep.; Blair, Rep, Pa.;
Blake, Rep.; Buffinton, Rep.; Burnham, Rep.; Campbell, Rep.; Chamberlain,
Rep.; Clark, Rep.; Colfax, Rep.; Conkling, Fred. A. Rep.; Conkling, R.
Rep.; Conway, Rep.; Cravens Dem.; Cutler, Rep.; Davis, Rep.; Delano,
Rep.; Duell, Rep.; Ely, Rep.; Fessenden, Rep.; Franchot, Rep.; Frank Rep.;
Hooper, Rep.; Hutchins, Rep.; Kellog, Rep, Mich.; Lansing, Rep.; Loomis,
Rep.; Lovejoy, Rep.; McKnight, Rep.; McPherson, Rep.; Mitchell; Rep.;
Moorhead, Rep.; Morrill, Rep, Me.; Morrill, Rep, Vt.; Patton, Rep.; Pike,
Rep.; Pomeroy, Rep.; Rice, Rep, Me.; Riddle, Rep.; Sargeant, Rep.; Sedgwick,
Rep.; Shanks, Rep.; Stevens, Rep.; Trowbridge, Rep.; Van Wyck, Rep.;
Verree, Rep.; Wallace, Rep.; Walton, Rep, Me.; Wheeler, Rep.; White, Rep,
Ind.; Wilson, Rep.; Windom, Rep.; Worcester, Rep.
NAYS.-Bailey, Dem. Pa.; Biddle, Dem.; Blair, U. Va.; Browne, U. R. I.;
Brown, U. Va.; Calvert, U.; Clements, U.; Cobb, Dem.; Corning, DeIm.;
Cox, Dem.; Crisfield, U.; Crittenden, U.; Diven, Rep.; Dunlap, U.; Dunn,
Rep.; Goodwin, Rep.. Granger, Rep.; Iale, Rep.; Hall, U.; Har'ding, U.;
Harrison, U.; Holman, Dem.; Horton, Rep.; Johnson, Dem.; Kellogg,
Rep, 111.; Knapp, Rep.; Law, Dem.; Lazear, Dem.; Leary, U.; Mallory, U.;
Maynard, U.; Menzies, U.; Nixon, Rep.; Noble, Dem.; Noell, IYem.;
Norton, Dem.; Nugent, Dem.; Odell, Dem.; Pendleton, Dem.; Perry, Dem.;
Richardson, D.; Robinson, Dem.; Rollins, U. Mo.; Sheffield, U.; Shellabarger, Rep.; Smith, Dem.; Steele, Dem, N. Y.; Stratton, Rep.; Thomas,
Rep. Mass.; Thomas, U. Md.: Trimble, Rep.; Vibbard, Dem.; Wadsworth,
U.; Webster, U.; Whaley, U.; Wickliffe, U.: Woodruffe, Dem.; Wright, U.
In the same paper of the 5th March, is the following paragraph:
In the House to day, Mr. Low of Indiana, corrected his vote on Mr. HCLMAN'S
resolution, offered yesterday, declaring " that, in the judgment of the House,
the war should not be prosecuted for any other purpose than to preserve the
Constitution in its present form," so that there was a tie vote; but the Speaker
announced that he voted in the affirmative, so that still tabled the resolution.
Thus it appears, called forth by Mr, HIolman's motion a
little prematurely for the Republican leaders-but the gates
were forced     open   and   the   monster revealed-that they
fight not to maintain the Union and the Constitution, but
to make a revolution to destroy the Union, to            cancel the
Constitution, and      in  Mr. Lincoln's      words     of  1848, to
"shake off the existing government and form              a new    one
that suits them    better."
I will ask you now, to recur with me, as bearing upon
the political justice of a settlement with the South, to some
points of party history, as well recent as more remote. I
desire by them to recal to yourrecollection that it is emphatically to the hard and uncompromising course of the friends
of Mr. Lincoln we have to attribute as its immediate cause




33
our present unhappy condition; and that the dogma to
which the people of the South betook themselves for
refuge from the anti-slavery hurricane, has flourished in
other States than the slave holding, and in other times than
those of 1860-1.
What is by the Republicans reproachfully called the
slave power had, as they truly insist, with the aid of the
Northern Democrats, ruled the Union for the much more considerable portion of the period which elapsed from the first
election of Mr. Jefferson to the recent elevation of Mr. Lincoln. Instinctively opposed to over-governing, they, upon
the whole, ruled judiciously, the let-alone policy prevailing,
and never interrupted by the coming in of the opposing party
without damage to the country, through the forcing system.
Nor was there anything in this that revolted Northern
pride; they did not ask, nor seek, nor want what the
South so much valued. They attended to their affairs at
home, and any traveller who opened his eyes and looked
at the shining face of the prosperous North, and then at
the laggard South, must have recognized the wisdom of
their choice. But with the disproportion between the two
parts of the country as it grew, and with increasing national
wealth and power as they advanced, came the desire of
the anti-democratic part of the North to possess so
considerable a prize as the administration of them; and
with it the temptation to take for their allies that active
and extreme faction which were fanatically bent upon the
abolition of slavery. The abolitionists gave at once to the
struggle a sectional character, of the most violent and
unsparing kind, and backed it by the fiercest denunciation of
negro slavery, so that when the North called upon the
South to surrender the reins of government, they accompanied it with a cry for their property.  The South,
would fain have kept power as long as they could,
and have contended, like other men, for mastery when it
did not belong to them. Btt as they well knew, their slave
5




34
property could never be as safe as when the Union protected it, their opposition to Northern ascendancy, fairly
insisted on, would not, nor is it easy to imagine why it
should, have led them beyond the limits of Constitutional
resistance; and it was a bitter insult, a grievous wrong and
lamentable mistake, when, after long and violent anti-slavery agitation, the South conducting themselves no worse
than would any injured and perplexed minority, the election of anti-slavery candidates for the Presidency and
Vice-presidency, with an anti-slavery platform, inaugurated
in November, 1860, the final triumph of the exclusive
North.
The elevation of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Hamlin, to the
eyes of all that chose to see things as they were, and they
included the greater number of those who had cast their
ballots against the Republican candidates, could not but
cause a political crisis; which they flattered themselves would
bring with it nothing more serious than a convention of the
slave-holding States, to be followed, they hoped, by some
arrangement, which if it did not deaden the fury of the
anti-slavery agitation, at least would blunt its effects. But
the preposterous example of South Carolina, bent upon at
once withdrawing from the Union, and taking measures
accordingly, led, in an evil hour, the people of Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Arkansas and
Texas, to prepare for immediate secession, should it become,
as they might deem, expedient; and upon the new President depended the course of action of each of these States.
Mr. Lincoln's advent to Washington was looked for with
hope, unknown though he was, to the country, and deep
anxiety; but it soon developed itself, in his addresses delivered by the way, that we were not to find in the Republican President, at a juncture that so much needed them,
either the will, or the understanding of a statesman. Arrived at the centre of movement, he exercised no influence
that was not negative, or more than belonged to inaction.




35
IHe had, in one of his speeches on the road from Sprinlgfield, been reported as saying, with a levity now known to
be characteristic, that he would drice the,ma(-c.ine as hefound
it; and such seemed really to be the limit of his ambition.
The whole session of Congress, before and after Mr. Lincoln's appearance, was a chaos of resolutions, and proposals
of arrangements, by members of the middle States and
Southern border, and'mutual defiance of the extreme
South and extreme North. But no State, South Carolina
excepted, was irrational, for no other desired to leave the
Union; not that there were not persons in the South, and
members of the Southern delegations in Washington, who,
like the Northern abolitionists, desired the worst, men
blinded by passion, or ruled by the desire of change. But
to be able to move, they must carry their States with
them, and the Southern masses, like those of the North,
were for the Union. The Union majority of Missouri
was upwards of eighty thousand on a test vote; that
of Virginia fifty-six thousand; Tennessee and North Carolina refused to stir, so did even Arkansas; in the Alabama
Convention, the votes were for Secession sixty-one, against
it thirty-nine; in Georgia so small was the popular majority
for Secession, that a change of three or four hundred votes
would have turned the scale. It was well understood that
the adoption of the resolutions offered by Mr. Crittenden,
and earnestly and solemnly pressed by him with all his
weight of influence, would have left South Carolina to secede alone. If the President, elect had but signified to his
friends that their passage would be agreeable to him, the
mischief would have stopped-the Union losing for the moment a single State. In Pennsylvania they would have
been voted at the polls with no party opposition, for the
politicians would not have ventured to contend with the
current, so strongly did it set in. Nor is it credible that
the masses anywhere, even in New England would have
rejected them; and petitions from the people poured into




36
Washington, covered with names of those who had expended their time and thousands of their dollars to elect
Mr. Lincoln, but now alarmed, and earnestly praying for
measures of harmony.
We cannot bring back the past, but let us, for present
instruction, bear in mind, that what the people wanted, the
leaders refused because to save the country would have
damaged themselves. The President was not yet installed,
the patronage all undistributed, and to yield to the pressure
from without and settle with the South, was to let down the
pegs of every republican who had come to Washington as
a place hunter, with no other merit than that of uncompromising hostility to slavery. The cry of the people for
peace and union was so nearly universal, that the abolition
influence seemed for a moment to quail, and nothing remained utterly unappeasable but the sacred thirst of the
crowd that besieged the doors of the treasury. It is a melancholy truth, that if the crisis could have occurred after,
instead of before the patronage had been distributed, there
probably would have been a settlement and not a rupture;
for then, of a hundred politicians, the disappointed ninetynine would have been sulky and silent, and the hundredth
a place-holder and content.
Nothing was done; the fourth of March came, South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and
Florida had left the Union; and the border States had
remained; but the places-the places-those rewards of
the faithful, which before, they were only looking for,
they were now in the act of receiving, and the Government engrossed in giving. Future ages will with difculty believe that down to the 14th of April, the day
after the Fall of Fort Sumter, no move was made by the
new government towards saving us; but the message of
the President, with the papers accompanying it, at the
opening of the session of Congress, the 4th of July, 1861,
are before the country, and put it beyond the possibility of




37
doubt.*   That Mr. Lincoln must have a cabinet to advise
him is very certain; and, if they thought it necessary, the
appointment of new representatives abroad, at the more
important Courts, is intelligible; but that a government
should have actually spent their time in emptying and filling little offices, of which it was no sort of public moment
whether the incumbent was of one party or the other, at
such a juncture, is utterly inconceivable.   It was the
Greeks of the lower empire on,the benches of the circus
when the enemy was thundering at the gates.
Six precious weeks passed after the 4th of March, as the
three months that preceded it, with nothing done to meet
an exigency which it was in their power to control.  The
President says his "policy" was " time, discussion, and the
ballot box."  These were the measures of action, as denoted in the 4th of July message, resolved on for the rescue of the Union! "Time, discussion, and the ballotbox!"   They might be well enough for the States which
had seceded, and useful in those that never would secede;
but Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, where the Union men were in large majorities, but needed a helping hand and encouraging word;
where events were precipitating themselves; which the seceding States must carry with them  or fail, and to which
every seceding hand would apply a torch, was " time, discussion and the ballot-box," a policy for them?  "Time,
discussion and the ballot-box" meant the chapter of accidents. But soon Fort Sumter was fired upon and fell; the
stars and stripes were hauled down, the rattlesnake hoisted
in their stead; the indignant North started to their feet,
and Mr. Lincoln had his cue, and a "policy!"    It was a
* It had nearly been much worse than doing nothing; the unanswered letters of the late Mr. Justice Campbell, of the Supreme Court of the United
States, to Mr. Seward, dated Washington, the 13th and 30th of April, 1861,
and published soon after in all the newspapers, are proofs too clear to be
doubted, and it never'has been doubted, that the Administration were on the
very point of tamely sltrrendering Fort Sumter to the authorities of South Carolina!! 




38
fitting prelude to the Mason and Slidell dilemma. There
the Government waited and were swept into disgraceful
peace; here they waited and were swept into uncompromising war. Five States, of the six which went out before
Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, and three of the four which
went out after, have been lost to us because, while he could
not make up his mind, the Abolitionists made up theirs to
to rid the Union of the slave States.
Thus, out of the extreme purposes of some of the Southern
leaders, the greediness of the seekers of office, the malignant violence of the Abolitionists, and the miserable weakness of the President, came the final event of actual secession.
But the ground was laid for it long ago, and not in the
South alone. Secession was the plague of confederacies
long before America was discovered; and since these colonies were planted, under different forms, but always in the
same substance of defiance of federal authority, secession
has abounded, in every part of the coLutry. Let me cultivate your feeling of charitable compromise by recalling
to your recollection some of the facts. It was British
arms, more than the articles of confederation, that kept us
together during the war of the revolution, when the requisitions of Congress, so weak was its authority, the exigency
being at its highest, were disobeyed by nearly every State
of the thirteen.t The Federal Government was hardly organized, under the administration of Washington, when the
New England delegations in Congress announced that, if
the revolutionary debts of the States were not assumed
by the Union, the New England States would secede. The
very term, secessionist, was, no great while ago, it is to be
believed, a favorite with the Abolitionists, for the American Anti-Slavery Society, at its annual meeting, in May,
1844, adopted a resolution "That secession from the present
"United States is the duty of every Abolitionist."*
t New York and Pcnnsylvania are said to have been the two exceptions.
^Scc a pamphlet published ill 1815, by, or at tih office of the o American




With the jealousy of the States of their sovereignty, of
which it was neither wise nor possible to divest them, the
framers of the Constitution dealt as well as they could, but
always   gently.   It was a jealousy, of which         Franklin
complained, now a century ago, which existed then, which
went with us through the Revolution, and has adhered to
us ever since. It was always, and is now, a necessary and
honorable jealousy, arising from the love of freedom, and a
just apprehension of power. But liberty has its excesses as
well as despotism; it is easy to persuade men, however
free, that they    ought to   be freer; and the     office of inflaming   the  States against Federal authority, has been,
amid the heats of party, undertaken        by, sometimes, the
most enlightened statesmen, and often, the meanest demagogues.     Patrick  Henry    in  Virginia, Mr. Yates       and
Mr. Lansing     in  New    York, the distinguished      men   in
all parts of the country     who   opposed the     Constitution,
the leaders of the      large  minorities of the     Massachusetts  and  other conventions, which by        majorities only,
adopted it, the coventions of the States of Rhode Island
and   North   Carolina, which, at first, wholly rejected it,
mainly based their opposition upon the necessity of the
States retaining their full power, as well as right, of sovereignty.   Patrick Henry, to the position taken in argument,
"Anti-Slavery Society," with an "introduction," by Mr. Wendell Phillips,
dated Boston, 15th January, 1845, which ends thus: " To continue this dis-' astrous alliance longer, is madness. The trial of fifty years, only proves
" that it is impossible for free and slave States to unite on any terms, without
all becoming partners in the guilt, and responsible for the sin of slavery,
"Why prolong the experiment? Let every honest man join in the outcry of
"the American Anti-Slavery Society,' No union with slave-holders."
Boston, Jan. 15, 1845.                    "WENDELL PHILLIPS."
The resolution entire, of the Anti-Slavery Society, was as follows:
" Resolved, That secesssion from the present United States Government, is
"the duty of every Abolitionist, since no one can take office, or throw a vote
"for another to hold office, under the United States Constitution, without vio" lating his anti-slavery principles, and rendering himself an abettor of the
"sslveholder in his sin."




40
in the Virginia Convention, that the States, by the ternl,
of the compact, would have the right, if oppressed by the
Federal Government, to secede from the Union, answered,
True, we will have the right, but not the power.
The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, from    the time
when they were penned by Mr. Madison and Mr. Jefferson,
and passed the Legislatures of those States in 1798-9,
never ceased, in any part of the Union, to be the text of
party, although from their doctrine to that of Secession,
there is but a single and inevitable step. The Virginia resolutions declared it as the sense of that State " that, in case
"of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other
"powers not granted by the said compact, the States, who
" are parties thereto, have the right and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintain"ing within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liber" ties, appertaining to them."  Those of Kentucky, that " each
"State acceded as a State, and is an integral party; that
" this government, created by this compact, was not m,.ade the exelusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to
"itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not
"the Constitution, the measure of its powers, but that as in
"all other cases of compact among parties having no common
"judge, each party has an equal right tojudge for itself, as well of
"infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." And further, "That the several States who formed that instrument,"
the Constitution of the United States, "being sovereign
" and independent, have the unquestionable right, to judge
"of the infraction; and, that a nullffication, by those sover"eignties, of all'unauthorized acts, done u1der color of that in"strument, is the riqgtful remedy."
These resolutions, to speak of the work of such men as
Mr. Madison (who afterwards, in effect, recanted) and
Mr. Jefferson, in the mildest and most charitable sense,
were follies of the wise, for it is in the nature of governxnent that the power of governing siould be somewhere




41
lodged, and to denounce the perils of permitting it to be
exercised by the united discretion of all, and find for it
no safer depository than the uncontrolled pleasure of one,
was surely an impotent and unstatesmanlike conclusion.
They were the early fruit of Democratic discontent. But
in 1801 Mr. Adams and the Federalists went out, Mr. Jefferson and the Democrats came in, and the virtue of the
followers of Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Jay was next to be
tried, when in 1803 the purchase of Louisiana threatened
to swamp Federal influence forever, by bringing into the
Union and opening the great western country to a pioneer
population.  The right of State resistance became now
New England doctrine, and was maintained by Puritanism
with hereditary  energy.   As a specimen   of its tone
take a speech in the House of Representatives, made the
14th of January, 1811, after the Louisiana question had been
in fact settled for some years, and the subject long enough
before the public to allow the first effervescence of party to
subside, by Mr. Quincy, of Massachusetts, a member representing the city of Boston, and a gentleman of the highest
standing, on the bill to admit Louisiana into the Union.* "I
" am compelled," said he, "to declare it as my deliberate
" opinion, that if this bill passes, the bonds of the Uniont are vir"tually dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from
" their moral obligations, and that as it will be the right of all, so
" it will be the dty of somec, to prepare de finitivelyfor a separation" amicably if they can, violently f they.ntst.l"
But in June, 1812, when war was declared against Great
Britain, and their militita was required by the Federal government, by virtue of the clause of the Constitution authorizing Congress to provide for calling them out to " repel
invasion," secession ripened fast in the cold climate of New
England. Governor Strong, of Massachusetts, backed by
a large majority of the legislature, proceeded under an opi- GalcA & Seatoen   Annals of Congre-ss, vol. 3. p. I 5, 1  h-l ('onil r'  I qO  1.
6




42
nion obtained by him from the highest Court of law of hi
State, to carry into action the dogma of the Virginia and
Kentucky Resolutions, and refusing to furnish the Massachusetts troops, he set Congress at defiance. He put to the
court the following question, in an official communication
to them, dated Boston, August 1, 1812.
" 1. Whether the commanders-in-chief of the militia of
"the several States have a right to determine whether any
of the exigencies contemplated by the Constitution of the
" United States exist, so as to require them to place the militia,
"or any part of it, in the service of the United States, at the
"request of the President, to be commanded by him, pur"suant to act of Congress."
To this the Judges, who were Mr. Chief Justice Parsons, a jurist of the highest standing, and a Federalist, as
were doubtless his brethren, Mr. Justice Sewall and Mr.
Justice Parker, of the straitest sect, officially answered
thus:
" It is the opinion of the undersigned, that this right is
"vested in the commanders-in-chief of the militia of the sev"eral States, The Federal Constitution provides that when
"either of these exigencies exist, the militia may be employed,
" pursuant to some act of Congress, in the service of the United
" States; but no power is given, either to the President or to the
" Congress, to determine that either of the said exigencies does in
"fact exist. As this power is not delegated to the United States
" by the Federal Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States,
"it is reserved to the States respectively."
Governor Strong accordingly refused to obey the call for
troops, but in his resistance, which did not here end, of
Federal power, he went on his dangerous way, not supported by Massachusetts alone. Nothing but the peace of
Ghent, signed in December, 1814, prevented that State,
and perhaps others also, of the New England States, from
withdrawing themselves,* in some form from the Union.' It is but justice to say that between the secession measures insisted o,




43
Sanction was to be given to this step by a convention
which was to meet at Boston at the recommendation of the
famous Hartford Convention, where the preliminary movements to that object had been organized, but all of which,
including the assembling of the Boston Convention, became unnecessary, and fell through, when intelligence was
received of the treaty of Ghent.
The original convention was called,* and sat at Hartford,
Connecticut, in December, 1814, composed of delegates appointed by the constituted authorities of the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and of delegates
" chosen by local conventions," in the States of New Hampshire and Vermont, many of them men of the most eminent position, who after a session of three weeks, in which
were fully considered the grievances of New England by
reason of the war, agreed on, and transmitted to their
several States, a series of resolutions, accompanied by a report, in which they hold this language:
"That acts of Congress in violation of the Constitution are ab" solutely void, is an undeniable position.  It does not, however,
" consist with the respect and forbearance due from    a con"federate State towards the general government, to fly to
" open resistance upon every infraction of the Constitution.
" The mode and the energy of the opposition should always' conform to the nature of the violation, the intention of
" its authors, the extent of the injury inflicted, the determi" nation manifested to persist in it, and the danger of delay.
" But in cases of deliberate, dangerous, and palpable infractions
" of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a State and
during the war, by Massachusetts, which was the South Carolina of that day,
and those of other States which assembled at Hartford, and consented also to
go into the second Convention, there were material differences as to the lengths
they ought to go, and the Legislature of Vermont declined to send delegates
to the Convention at all, while the Executive Council of New Hampshire refused to call the Legislature to appoint them.
* History of the Hartford Convention, with a Review of the Policy of the
United States Government, which led to the War of 1812, by Theodore Dwight
Secretary of the Convention," New York and Boston: 1833.




44
" liberties of the people, it is not only the right, but the duty of
" such a State to interpose its authority for their protection, in
the manner best calculated to secure that end.  When emergen"cies occur which are either beyond the reach of the judicial tri"bunal, or too pressing to admit of the delay incident to their
"forms, States which have no common umpire must be their own
"judges, and execute their own decisions. It will be thus pro"per for the several St.ates to await the ultimate disposal
" of the obnoxious measures recommended by the Secretary
" of War or pending before Congress, and so to use their power
" according to the character these measures shall finally assume,
" as effectually to protect their own sovereignty and the rights and
"liberties of their citizens."
Here was the doctrine acted upon by the seceding
States in  1860  and   1861.   Having pledged themselves
to it, and to much more, the Convention, in adjourning,
the 5th of January, 1815, resolved, by one of their resolutions, which were numerous and, at this day, read
most strangely, in case their grievances should not be
in the meanwhile redressed, that it was " expedient for the
"Legislatures of the several States to appoint delegates to
"another Convention, to meet at Boston, in the State of
"Massachusetts, on the third Thursday of June next, with
" such pnwers and instructions as the exigency of a crisis so' momentous may require."        Before that day the treaty
with Great Britain was signed, and the States which met at
Hartford, and such others as might have been represented
in the hotter region of Boston*, lost forever the glory of
anticipating the Secession of 1860.
The 24th of November, 1832, piloted by Mr. Calhoun
the State of South Carolina, by what they denominated a
nullifying ordinance, which was the new name they gave to
* The rebellious fury of Massachusetts opposition to the Union, at that day,
may be seen in an advertisment in the Boston Gazette of the 14th April, 1814,
of the,Federal agent to receive subscriptions to the war loans, that the
" armle of any applicant shall, at his request, be known only to the subscriber!!"




45
Secession, declared that " the several acts and parts of acts
of the Congress, especially those of the 28th May, 1828, and
14th July, 1832, imposing duties on imports, were " unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States, and violated the true meaning and intent thereof, and are null and
void, and no law."
When, in the session of Congress of 1836-7, the slavery
agitation, which it was hoped had ended with the Missouri
question of 1819-20, was resumed, never since to cease for
a moment, it produced among its results, state acts, defying or seceding from a portion only, of the Federal Constitution. The rejected portion was the provision forthe restoration of fugitives from labor, which, by the States enacting
these laws, called Personal Liberty Bills, sometimes with
open boldness, sometimes with evasive duplicity, was set
at naught. These statutes engendered in malice, and not
like the New England and South Carolina resistances of
1812 and 1832, in a sense of supposed injury, by which
so many States set aside the part of the Constitution of
the United States which they did not choose to comply
with, had immense operation in the region at which they
were aimed, in bringing and reconciling men's minds to
the movement of 1860-61.
Massachusetts, in 1814, had not, by continuous action for
a course of years, defied the laws of the Union; Virginia
and Kentucky, in 1798, had not approached, and South
Carolina, in 1832, had not quite reached the point of action;
but here were resistance and defiance of Federal authority,
violently, persistently, and, to all appearance, irrevocably
adopted into state legislation; and depriving, from time to
time, citizens of the United States of property of a peculiar
and most delicate kind, solemnly guaranteed to them by
the Constitution. These enactments, repeated over the
North, through the influence of the abolitionists, openly
avowing their purpose to dissolve the Union, and of
their party allies not only not joining in any desire to




46
invade the peace of the country, but by a singular inifatuation, to the last moment, refusing to believe it was
in danger, were revolts against the Constitution in a more
really dangerous form than any in which secession
had  yet appeared.   They were more perilous than
when secession took the form of opposition to revenue
measures, or war, or to the alien and sedition laws, because
aided by that irrepressible instinct of man's nature, which
teaches him to love freedom and not slavery, they damaged,
and were able to threaten the eventual destruction of an
interest, at the same time the most vulnerable and the most
wide spread, the very thought of a general assault upon
which was frightful to all concerned in it. They were part
of a system of torture, unrelentingly applied for a quarter
of a century, by which the South were driven mad. The
perplexity which haunted the owners of 4,000,00') of slaves,
under the influence of incessant and ferocious anti-slavery
agitation, from 1836 to 1861, that increased in violence and
enlarged in extent from one Presidential canvass to another, was at last, too much for them, and in 1861, appealing
from New England fanaticism, to the New England doctrine
of 1812, that " States which have no common umpire, must
"be their own judges, and execute their own decisions,"
slavery flew to arms from the Rio Grande to the Potomac.
The State that defies the Federal Constitution runs into
revolution, and the reasoning that maintains it can do so
constitutionally, is perverse; and so is the reasoning which
insists that to annul one provision, by making laws against
restoring slaves, is less unconstitutional than to annul
them all, by going out of the Union. But the countenance, given it by the organized action of so many
States was not lost on individuals, and tempted to
demagoguism occasionally, statesmen —oftener, less noble
politicians. Mr. Lincoln's doctrine, laid down as lately as
1848, as the rule of men's right to defy the government under which they live, is "inclination," and their




47
power to carry it through. I quote from a speech made by
him in the House of Representatives, the 12th January,
1848, on the former relations between Texas and the Mexican Union, of which it was once part. The speaker, who
had voted that the war with Mexico was unnecessary and
unconstitutional, is disputing a position taken, in the message of the President to Congress, touching the extent and
limits of the Mexican territory.  After saying that to ascertain the boundary between the two countries, it was
necessary to know where jurisdiction was exercised, and
asserting that it had been fixed, not by treaty but revolution, he thus proceeds:
"Any people," said he, "anywhere, being inclined, and having' the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing gov" ernment, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a
" most valuable, a most sacred right-a right which, we hope
" and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right con"fined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government
" may choose to exercise it. Any portions of such people that can,
" may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the terri" tory as they inhabit.  More than this, a majority of any por"tion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a
"minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who
" may oppose their movements."*
Here is secession in its cups: from all this to the Virginia
and]Kentucky resolutions, is the appeal from secession drunk
to secession sober. The authors of those resolves, thinking
with the rest of the world, that nothing but intolerable
wrong can justify revolution, find the way through what
they call an open door, but which was a breach in the Constitution, to revolutionary defiance of it.  Mr. Lincoln
deeming revolution virtue, "where being inclined and having the power," the promoters of it "can shake off the ex*Congressional Globe, 1st session 30th Congress, Appendix, p. 94, where
the debates appear, the speeches corrected by the members who deliver them.
These remarks, therefore, of Mr. Lincoln, are from under his own hand.




48
"isting government and form a new one that suits them
"better," disdains to mince into secession this "most valu" able and most sacred right" of rebellion.
And what does he mean, when, after telling us that
this most valuable right is not confined in the exercise of
it to "the whole people of an existing government," he
goes on to say that "any portion of such people that can,
"may revolutionize;" and again, rising in the climax, that
"more than this, a majority of any portion of such people
"may revolutionize?" Does he mean that any fragment
of a portion of a State may rebel and set up for itself; that
in the ocean each drop is an ocean, and may declare itself
an ocean, and have tides, tempests and sea monsters for
itself? If they be "inclined and have the power," no part
of the population can be too small to rebel!!!
It was the saying of the famous Carnot, a man of the first
order, and an unquestionable democrat,-perhaps the truth
lies between him and Mr. Lincoln,-after playing one of
the busiest parts in the most effective revolution the world
ever saw, that in his judgment it was better to submit to
the worst government, than attempt to pull it down. But
the tendency is to the denial of authority, and politicians
stimulate it by false doctrine. In 1798 Mr. Jefferson and
Mr. Madison dipped their hands in this kind of mistake;
in 1848 Mr. Lincoln jumps into a horse-pond of it. Who
would have believed who listened (if there were listeners)
to such stuff as this in 1848, that in 1861 the speaker of it'would be sending his messages to Congress as President of
the United States, and marshalling armies against doctrines
which are unintelligible enough, but, when compared with
his own muddy principles, are purity itself?
Ah! well would it have been for the country had this
subject of resistance to constitutional authority, been always dealt with as it was by Mr. Clay, in the debate on the
Compromise bill of 1850, rwhen, in reply to a Senator, who
assumedl to tsu stain i triell whlo a( n.l1.is lied, he said,




49
I1 know him personally, and have some respect for him.
"But if he pronounced the sentiment attributed to him, of
"raising the standard of disunion, and of resistance to the' common government, whatever he has been, if he follows' up that declaration by corresponding overt acts, he will
"be a traitor, and I hoope he will meet the fate of a traitor!"
But for schemes of resistance to authority, no brain
too deep, none too shallow; the stream of doctrine tolerating the Union but denying its power, everywhere encouraged by political engineering, now soaking through
the swamps of Carolina, now rushing over the rocks of
New   England, has swelled into the  torrent of actual secession. We have nursed and petted, what has
grown to be a giant of mischief, and now, when he does
his office, we can see nothing in it but "causeless and unnatural rebellion." For exactly seventy years prior to the
late Southern movement, this "causeless and unnatural rebellion " had rioted among us, in every part of the country,
not only unpunished but applauded and caressed; encouraged by the example of States, and countenanced by
the precept of Mr. Lincoln!
Secession is no new heresy in the United States; and
to the present hour, in the form of nullification, abounds
in Northern statute books.  Let Mr. Lincoln, whose
lot is to make war on it, remember equal justice, and be
ready with terms of gentle peace. Let him take down
from the colors of the Union his vile scroll of Unconditional
Submission, and write there Conciliation and Compromise!
And would it be asking too much of a Magistrate whom we
made, and can unmake; who was elected by voters and
may be impeached by their representatives, to inform his
constituents, the people of the United States, categorically
and exactly, what are his terms of settlement? Is it a new
thing that a free people should know what they fight for?
Such are some of the reasons-of which the number could
easily be swelled-why it would seem to be humane, as
7




50
well as wise and necessary, to come to an amicable adjustment, if possible, with the seceded States. But have the
individuals who direct the present unhappy course of the
policy of the country, reflected on the peculiarities of their
own personal positions, when they thus push extreme
measures to their utmost limits?
The government, at Washington, are servants of a people
who have but one desire left, all others being absorbed in
it, and should they disappoint them, let them look to the
day of reckoning. Large majorities in the Houses of Congress, unhesitatingly co-operate with them, and leave no
shadow of irresponsibility, under which to take shelter.
They have all the troops, all the money, all the legislation
which the country can give. If they make good their proInises; if the war restore the Union, though coming to us
with not a blade of grass, South or North; if they possess
us again of the territory of the United States, the mere
area of land that belongs to us, we can begin again, and
profiting by our lesson, be what we had promised ourselves.
But where will they be, if they bear us to destruction?
Should the wild and desperate game, now playing, of
Union and Emancipation, give us no Union, and only
Emancipation, they will do well to remember that revolutions, which Barrere said, are not made with rose water, when
they come to a bad end, usually find in the leaders of them
the first victims of a deluded and exasperated people. And
let the Republican party, of whom the immense majority
are citizens of moderate and patriotic sentiments, transporting themselves "beyond the ignorant present," put
their houses in order against the day when revolution, in
rags, may march up to the doors of every one of us. It is
infinitely more probable now, that eighteen months hence
we shall be paying the last penalty of civil discord, than
eighteen months ago it was, that we should be where we
are to-day.
The people of the United States, who have come to dis



51
aster under the delusion that, unlike the rest of mankind,
they are immortal and invulnerable, in truth, have a quality not possessed in the same degree by any other population, the sentiment of individuality, the sense of each man
of his own importance. This is infinitely unlike the very
restricted estimate placed on himself by the inhabitant of
other countries, where high rank, hereditary power, and old
establishments, meet, in every direction, his eye, and with
the aid of a government which quite relieves him of the
cares of State, let down his pride far below the point at
which is fixed that of the free and untrammelled citizen,
who standing in a new and vast country, where yet there
are no monuments, looks round him and says, there is nothing
better than myself. This ought to be an element of strength,
though the converse, exactly of the sentiment of the Roman
citizen, that he and all he had were the City's. Whether it
be nationally force or weakness, the people in the absoluteness of their will, could they reach this question, which
perplexes the present, and threatens their future, would
seize and settle it; but between it and them stand two
organized governments.
The objects of that of the South are undisguised; it was
ordained for separation; to that their chiefs pledged themselves; they are in arms for it; to carry it through, and prevent the restoration of the Constitution and laws, they
would use all means, ill or good, foreign alliance, auxiliary
troops, a return to European influence, if not dominion;
anything would be preferred to the Union; such is the
nature of their position. It would be impolitic to act on the
belief that the government at Richmond would listen to
any terms of arrangement which the North could, would,
or ought to enter into.
But are there any terms to which the Government at
Washington would agree, which the South could, would,
or ought to enter into; to which any Northern Republican,
imagining himself for a moment a Southern citizen, would




52
consent? To which any people in arms, having risen to
shake off the existing Government, and form a new one
"that suits them better," ever did consent? If the Government could to-morrow, bring back every seceded State
on the terms of the Crittenden resolutions, they would not
do it. And if the Crittenden arrangement be unadvisable,
what other will they advise? There is none. And if there
be none, what is the difference between the two Governments, on the head of opposition to the Union? The
Southern victory at Bull Run strengthened the hands of
Mr. Jefferson Davis, darkened the prospects of Union, and
encouraged the hopes of European recognition.  The
Northern victory at Fort Donelson fortified the Abolition
party in Congress, and enabling them to lay on the table
of the House of Representatives Mr. Holman's resolution,
that the war was for the Union and the Constitution,
served as so much anti-slavery artillery to batter them
both.
Our position is most critical, and demands all our energies. That Governments must occasionally stand between
the people and their immediate inclinations, is true; but it
is also true-and the administration ought to reflect on itthat the day has gone by when the people were not consulted; when York and Lancaster could divide and deluge
the land with blood, and count the people nothing; that
all they have they hold from us, and are to account for to
us; and that we have no more stake in the game, playing
between the abolition and secession factions as a game of
dynasties, of ambition, of present power, and future Presidencies than if it lay between the White and Red Rose.
We want peace and union with the South, not the humiliation of the South; and the government that uses us to seek
for more, betrays us.
Is there, then, the vital energy in the people of the United
States to hold their own, and stand firm against not one,
but two governments, that are bent on their ruin; not to




53
be crushed to death in the conflict of organized and opposing forces, each ruling supreme in its section of country';
one insisting on unconditional submission, which is absurd,
the other on perpetual separation, which is ruin; and both
acting against the wishes of the people, and the Union of
the States? Have we in the North fortitude to wait, undemoralized, for a Democratic House of Representatives,
which cannot take their seats until December, 1863; as
the passengers wait and cling to a shipwrecked vessel, and
gaze helplessly at sea and sky, tossed about by the tempest, so many days more?
Are we already demoralized? The government is in the
possession of the political abolitionists, who fain would
perpetuate their power. They control the republicans, get
along, as well as they can, with the abolitionists proper,
and spurn the democrats as rebels. The state is deep in
corruption, and we, its citizens, exhaust our pockets, empty
our veins and peril our liberties in civil strife-which could
have been ended a year ago, without raising a man or expending a dollar-for the profit of political leaders, politicians, who availing themselves of the passiveness of
some, the thirst for office of others, and the fury of
those of whom John Brown was no exaggerated type, have
in craft and cold blood, through long years of treacherous
agitation, brought us to this pass, with no better apology
for it, than that they did not know what was coming!
They know it now; they knew it during the session of
1860-61. But the slavery question has, alas! its political
mission-which is to make Presidents; and to settle it
would extinguish too many lights. The political Abolitionists will do nothing for us-will permit nothing to be
done for us, aid are as little to be trusted as the Abolitionists themselves. If we are to be rehabilitated, it must be,
under God, through our own energies.
But if we submit our necks to the yoke; if we yield to
unconstitutional pressure, to a mock reign of would-be




54
terror; if, by a system of spying and seizing, violations of
the person, violations of property, violations of the press,
violations of papers and private correspondence, we are to
be muzzled and hushed up; if the voice that is raised for
freedom   and union is to be choked in men's throats; in
the North by Mr. Lincoln, in the South by Mr. Davis; if,
when our plainest word ought to be spoken in its loudest
tone, some Jack-in-office is to command silence; if, at an
hour when each citizen should be sentinel to the State, and
public judgment monitor to authority, we, whose blood and
treasure support them, are to be kept under, like an Asiatic
population, by a feeble Government, at the head of a numerous army, why then, God help us!
If that Almighty and benificent Being to whom         some of
our pulpits* pray for success in the shock of battle, that we
may make deeper gashes in our brothers' bosoms than they
can make in ours, that our swords may be sharper than
theirs, our artillery more crushing, would vouchsafe more
humble supplications, to enlighten the understanding and
change the heart of Mr. Lincoln, it is not too late yet to
restore peace and Union.     But until Providence shall listen
to such prayers let us make up our minds to the worst,
and looking at things as they are, see in them this, that
for measures having for their object the restoration of the Union,
* Is it not the bounden duty of the clergy, a duty to God and man, to do
something towards extinguishing the flames of civil war? While there have
been witnessed, within the year of our troubles, cases of ministers of religion
who manifest the rancour of some of the New England pulpits of 1812, or
those of England of 1650, they are, let us believe, rare instances, for the Christian Clergy comprise among them more virtue, learning and ability, than any
other class. But much having been given them, much is expected of them; and
their function, surely, is to resist, and not to be swept away by the errors of
those whom they watch, and should control. How could they so well do their
duty to their country and their sacred calling as by an united movement? " I
call," said the magnificent Chatham, when the question was to put an end to
civil war, "upon that Right Reverend Bench, those holy ministers of the
Gospel and pious pastors of our Church; I conjure them to join in the holy
work, and vindicate the religion of their God!"




55
there could not be less chance than with the party now controlling
the Federal government.
Thus you have the views of the citizens of this midland
region, who look to compromise with the South. It is the
feeling of many of the Republicans, that an endeavor ought
to be made to effect an amicable adjustment with the slaveholding States. That the Democratic party, which carried
the State at the last election, and will sweep it at the next,
will insist on an earnest and persistent effort, be it successful or unsuccessful, to restore the Union by measures of
conciliation, you may be sure.
After more than a year of hostilities, with all the political complications, forced upon us from so many sources,
and which now fill the place of the once fraternal relations
between the two parts of the country, it is true that reconciliation must be difficult; but it is not impossible.
Men's passions may be high; civil war may have
stirred the depths of mutual hate, yet national fury
cannot blot out the sense of individual interest and
safety.  Nations even in the midst of a career of
foreign conquest, rejoice to return to peace. Whatever
the present state of the public mind in the two sections of
country now arrayed against each other, if the people of
the North and South could meet in a field, they would settle their differences. They would listen to the war speeches,
and then make peace. Had the South known that war was
to follow, secession would not have been resorted to. Had
the North known secession was to be the consequence, they
would not have tolerated the slavery agitation.
We are told that the South would not return to the
Union;-never would consent to come again under the federal government-that the very children are inflamed with
animosity against us;-but the difficulty is with the North,
not the South.
The slave States, now out of the Union, seceded and be



56
took themselves to arms, when they would have rejoiced to
remain with us on terms which the mass of the Republican
party desired to offer, and which now ought to be freely
tendered them. Why should they not return on the same
terms, on which they would have remained?
That the feeling in the seceded States is extreme, may be
admitted; it is the natural and necessary consequence of the
war, but it would be reasoning against the current of human motive to argue that the people of those States would
rather suffer the ills which must accompany the Northern
attempt to subdue them, than to come to a fair and equal
settlement. When did the weaker party-or any party-so
act in national controversy?'We are to suppose the men
in the South are like the rest of the world, and will follow
their interests-will accept the advantages and blessings of
peace, if they can be obtained at no greater price than that
of digesting their anger.
They have gone to war for what they think their rights,
and separating from us is but the means, not the end. That
is of hostilities, the declared, but not the only object.
Nay, it was with the utmost reluctance that they admitted it
within their line of objects at all. To give it the fullest prominence, it is but one of the purposes for which they fight.
Now, peace may be honorable, and may be hailed and welcomed by all, though not carrying out the manifestoe,
which accompanied the declaration of war.
We went to war in 1812 in defence of our neutral rightsWe were to the last degree provoked, as well as injured,
and our determination, solemnly declared, was to require the
abandonment by Great Britain, of the claim to exercise the
maritime violences so long practiced by her, at the expense
of our commerce. The war ended in a treaty satisfactory
to ourselves, and honorable in the eyes of the world, by
which we passed over without any mention whatever, all
the objects for which we had been fighting by land and sea




57
for between two and three years. The articles of peace
said not one word about them.
The Government of the United States pledged themselves formally, to maintain our right to the territory of
Oregon to the parallel of 54~ 401 of north latitude. Was
the treaty dishonor, by which, to avoid a war, we accepted
less favorable terms?
Washington —whose great name, like everything else
that is American, must fall with the Union, and will be
abridged from that of the founder of an Empire, to that of the
author of an unsuccessful experiment-Washington himself,
by the treaty of 1794, yielded, for the sake of peace, a point
on which the heart of the country was fixed.
The last march of European armies on the largest
scale, was pointedly announced to have for its object, the
freedom of all Italy; but the powerful people who undertook so large a task paused, after a successful and victorious
commencement of their war, and declaring their programme
had been too large, made peace, obtaining the freedom of but
a small part of Italy.
The South, too-it would be strange, indeed, were it
otherwise-will make peace, if it be honorable and fair,
not following their programme, and omitting disunion.
The difficulty-I repeat-is not with the South, it is
with the North. Doubtless there are other difficulties;
the two governments, the government at Washington and
the government at Richmond, with two entire national
establishments, two debts, two armies, two navies, two
allegiances, and all the infinite entanglements which have
supervened since the session of Congress of 1860-1. But
the main difficulty is with the North-the North ruled by
the Abolitionists. While their dominion lasts, the difficulty
is insuperable.
But should the next Congressional election leave theAdministration in a lean minority, the Democratic party-if




58
events do not in the mean time overwhelm the country* —will
have it then in their power, and they will assuredly use it,
to compel a change of measures; to require an earnest and
sincere effort to bring about a settlement.   Why should
they not, out of their preponderance of votes, when opposed
to the abolition party, in Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland,
Western Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
Indiana, Illinois, and California, with the aid of portions of
the States of New York and Ohio, elect the majority of
the members of the next House of Representatives? If
they do, the back of abolition is broken, and the process of
regeneration will be commenced.
You tell me-native and resident, as you are, of a slave
State-that you are in favor of the Union, despite the
worst measures of which the Government is capable. I rejoice to hear it, and find in such sentiments firm ground on
which to build my hope.    If other citizens of your part of
the country be as true and patriotic as yourself, it remains
only that the North do its duty at the polls, to enable us to
make our beginning, and break the fastenings which bind
us to the fatal principles of the men now in power.
When that shall be accomplished we will apply ourselves
to further effort; day will have begun to dawn, our hopes
to assume form and shape; the ship will be off the shore;
we can put sail on her and try the ocean.      We will no
longer be, as now we are, helpless. To support the government will no longer mean, to stand mute when the Constitution is violated, and the Union undermined.
To support the government will mean that, we support lawful authority in lawful courses, and oppose it in all other.
* As the country may be overwhelmed by the vices of a government conducted
as is that of Mr. Lincoln, so may be the Admninistration of it, and thus save
the country. Why should not the accumulation of faults, and the enormity
of their consequences, compel, at last, the President to that sort of sudden
and complete change of a ruinous policy, and of the persons who influence
it, which has been often resorted to-but usually too late-in other parts of
the world?




59
This war, in which we have been miserably involvedby the act of the South —by the faults of the North-we
will support, as a war for the Union-which being assailed
with the sword, must be maintained with the sword. We
will carry it on, not with the power of arms alone, but
essaying also, the force of ample justice, and offers of frank
conciliation.